Volume 44, Issue 2

An essential aspect of understanding past human activity is knowledge about the natural environment. Like almost no other landscape in Asia Minor, the Cilician Plain is defined by strong topographic contrasts: a large fertile plain surrounded by the sea and steep mountain ranges. The Cilician Plain is separated by a natural border into a western (Çukurova) and an eastern (Yukarıova) settlement cluster. All central places in the Çukurova have been located over the millennia at the foothills of the mountains. By contrast, the central places in the Yukarıova were less constant. The avulsion of the rivers can be seen as a reason for this development. However, there also exists for the construction of main Late Bronze and Iron Age monuments in the Cilician Plain a correlation with rivers and channels.

This article presents a preliminary comparative stratigraphy of excavated sites in Plain Cilicia and one in Rough Cilicia. It is the outcome of three workshops held in 2014, 2015 and 2017. Plain Cilicia at the junction of Anatolia, Syro-Mesopotamia and Cyprus is one of the most fertile regions of the Ancient Near East. In recent years, archaeological research in the region has intensified, re-opening questions of chronology. The comparative stratigraphy discussed in the workshops is presented here in form of a gazetteer of the participating sites and a chart. This is to be understood as a first step towards a more comprehensive chronology.

In 1937, British archaeologist John Garstang (1876–1956) excavated several trenches at the site of Kazanlı Höyük as part of the Neilson Expedition in Cilicia. The site is located in Plain Cilicia, approximately 2 km from the modern coastline (ca. 11 km east of modern-day Mersin, and 17 km west of Tarsus, roughly located by the ancient/modern road connecting these two cities). After these short trial excavations, however, Garstang’s interest shifted to the site of Mersin/Yumuktepe, where he then excavated for a number of years. Apart from two very brief preliminary reports on his excavations at Kazanlı Höyük, which were published in the journal “Annals of Archaeology and Anthropology of the University of Liverpool,” not much is known about his work at the site. Unpublished photographs kept in the Special Collections of the University College London (UCL) shed new light on Garstang’s work at the site.

Recent scholarly trends diminish Nabû-kudurrī-uṣur’s II (Nebuchadnezzar’s II) military achievements in general while, at the same time, amplifying hypothetical martial accomplishments of Psammetichus II in the Levant. This paper argues that Nabû-kudurrī-uṣur’s military reputation should be maintained and that during his reign Egyptian advances in the Levant were decidedly modest.

This contribution presents a copy, transliteration and translation of a Neo-Sumerian cuneiform tablet from the Ur III administration. The document comes from Umma and is kept in the Archaeological Museum of as-Sulaimānīyah (Iraqi Kurdistan).

The article addresses long-standing but still pertinent questions regarding the two most frequent toponyms in Hittite texts: Ḫatti and Ḫattuša . The first question concerns the exact meaning of each name. Was Ḫatti the Akkadian name for Ḫattuša , as is widely (although not universally) held, or are both originally Hittite names? If the former view is adopted, then subsequent questions naturally arise, namely: What is the origin of the name Ḫatti ? And how did it come to be used by the Hittites? In order to deal with these issues, all attestations of both toponyms have been collected and analyzed statistically, taking various criteria into consideration: the dating and language of the texts mentioning Ḫatti and Ḫattuša , the determinatives, and the immediate context of the attestations.

The Anatolian Hieroglyphic script is a mixed writing system which contains both phonetic and semantographic signs. The latter may be used in the function of logogram and/or determinative. A dedicated study of the script’s determinatives has so far not been undertaken but promises insight into structures of mental organization and script development. Because of its pictorial character, individual signs can occasionally be shown to act in a dual capacity, as icons and signs of writing. This article forms part one of a diachronic study of the determinative system, and adresses the period 13 th –10 th century BC.

This article explores the use of <CV-V> sign sequences ( plene writing ) in Hieroglyphic Luwian. It is argued that the vowel signs in these sequences are frequently used as space-fillers in almost all texts dateable to the Iron Age. Space-filling explains the presence of many vowel signs commonly taken as linguistically void, and a new transliteration method is proposed to mark these space-fillers in a uniform way. It is also shown that many vowel signs cannot have been used as space-fillers. Rather, these signs are linguistically significant and bound to express a phonetic feature. On a methodological level, this article considers how we can meaningfully distinguish space-fillers from linguistically real plene writing, as both were not marked differently by the scribes. The last section examines space-fillers in greater detail: their chronological distribution and vowel quality are treated, as are some conspicuous and rare types of space-filling.

Nabû-šuma-iškun is described as the emblematic malevolent king in the polemical pamphlet, authored in all probability by an anonymous member of the Urukean priestly establishment. However, certain measures taken by him are within the norms of ancient Near Eastern politics. In addition, accusations made against him by the author of the polemical pamphlet may be relativized. Nabû-šuma-iškun’s actions in the international sphere prove that he was a far-sighted statesman. It is demonstrated that important religious and political objectives of this king were not fundamentally different from those of later Babylonian rulers, including kings of the Neo-Babylonian Empire.