Zalpuwa

Zalpuwa, traditionally also thought to be Zalpa, was a still-undiscovered Bronze Age city in Anatolia of around the 18th century BC. Its history is largely known from the Proclamation of Anitta, CTH 1. It has now been proposed that the Zalpa mentioned in the Annals of Hattusili I, CTH 4, was a different city located at Tilmen Höyük, in the Karasu River Valley south of the Taurus Mountains by Tubingen and Chicago Universities recent excavations. Zalpuwa is the setting for an ancient legend about the Queen of Kanesh, which was either composed in or translated into the Hittite language: "[The Queen] of Kanesh once bore thirty sons in a single year. She said: 'What a horde is this which I have born[e]!' She caulked(?) baskets with fat, put her sons in them, and launched them in the river. The river carried them down to the sea at the land of Zalpuwa. Then the gods took them up out of the sea and reared them. When some years had passed, the queen again gave birth, this time to thirty daughters. This time she herself reared them." The river at Kanesh (Sarımsaklı Çayı) drains into the Black Sea, which seemingly supported the argument that the city was located near the Black Sea. "Zalpuwa" is further mentioned alongside Nerik in Arnuwanda I's prayer. Nerik was a Hattic language speaking city which had fallen to the Kaskians by Arnuwanda's time. This portion of the prayer also mentioned Kammama, which was Kaskian as of the reign of Arnuwanda II. The conclusion until recently, was to locate Zalpuwa in a region of Hattian cities of northern central Anatolia: as were Nerik, Hattusa, and probably Sapinuwa, and Zalpuwa was thought to have been founded by Hattians, like its neighbours. Around the 18th century BC, Uḫna the king of Zalpuwa invaded Neša, after which the Zalpuwans carried off the city's "Sius" idol. Under Huzziya's reign, the king of Neša, Anitta, invaded Zalpuwa. Anitta took Huzziya captive, and recovered the Sius idol for Neša. Soon after that, Zalpuwa seems to have become culturally and linguistically Hittite.