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Some Observations on the Chronology of Šuppiluliuma's Reign
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 23 December 2013
Extract
KUB XIX 9, a text dating to the reign of Hattušili III, has long been regarded as an important source of information on the chronology of the reign of Hattušili's grandfather Šuppiluliuma I. The text makes reference to the following events in Šuppiluliuma's career: (1) campaigns in Anatolia, allegedly covering a period of 20 years and devoted to the reconquest of territories lost to Hittite control prior to Šuppiluliuma's accession, (2) a First Syrian War, (3) the appointment of Šuppiluliuma's sons Telipinu and Piyaššili/Šarri-Kušuh as kings in the Lands of Aleppo and Carchemish (respectively), (4) a Second Syrian War, allegedly of 6 years' duration.
The information contained in this document, although not entirely free from problems of interpretation, is to a large extent confirmed and amplified in various other documents relating to Šuppiluliuma's reign. The most notable of these is the so-called Deeds of Šuppiluliuma, a biographical account of Šuppiluliuma's achievements composed by his son Muršili II. However, the usefulness of this document, within the context of a study of the chronology of Šuppiluliuma's reign, is limited by a number of factors.
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- Research Article
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- Copyright
- Copyright © The British Institute at Ankara 1989
References
1 For early discussions of the text, see Forrer, E., Forschungen 2. 1, Berlin, (1926), 10Google Scholar, Goetze, A., “Zur Chronologie der Hethiterkönige”, Kleinasiatische Forschungen 1 (1930), 115–119Google Scholar. For a more recent discussion, with translation, see Kitchen, K., Šuppiluliuma and the Amarna Pharaohs, Liverpool (1962) (henceforth cited as SAP), 3–5Google Scholar.
2 The relevant passage appears in col. I, 6′–23′.
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16 I.e. to the end of frag. 14 (Deeds, 59–68).
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65 See in particular the so-called Testament of Hattušili I (CTH 6), secs. 7–8.
66 We should note the claim made by Muršili in one of his prayers that in the year of the pharaoh's (i.e. Tutankhamun's) death he was still a child, and was therefore too young to know whether the pharaoh had made any approach to his father over territorial matters (KUB XXXI 121a II 10′–15′Google Scholar). Muršili cannot have been older than his late teens—at the very oldest—at this time, i.e. approximately seven years before his accession.
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68 The latter possibility was considered and discussed by ten Cate, Houwink, review of SAP in BiOr XX, 275–276Google Scholar.
69 “Chronologie”, 97.
70 I have discussed this in the article to appear in JEA (see n. 27 above).
71 Most recently in “The Basics of Egyptian Chronology in relation to the Bronze Age” in the Acts of the Gothenburg Colloquium (see n. 5 above); see Kitchen's table, 52.