221 The kingdom of Tarhuntassa: A Reassessment of its Timeline and Political Signiicance Lorenzo d’Alfonso New York W ith the discovery of the Bronze Tablet and the bullae sealed by Kurunta in the late 1980s, Tarhuntassa has become one of the most relevant and discussed topics in Hittitology during the last thirty years. Etymologically, Tarhuntassa is the city of the Storm-god Tarhunt(a). Apart from two syllabic spellings of this toponym (del Monte – Tischler 1978: 405), most attestations from the archives of Boğazköy-Hattusa employ an ideographic writing with phonetic complementation: d U-(t)asa (del Monte – Tischler 1978: 467-470; del Monte 1992: 162). A few attestations from Syria, however, seem to indicate that the city name was possibly spelled Tarhudassa, or even Tarhuddasa/i (d’Alfonso 1999: 316; Belmonte Marín 2001: 286), with an assimilation of the nasal to the following voiced dental. 1 As is well known, Tarhuntassa was the new Hittite seat of power founded by Muwatalli II during the second part of his reign, at the acme of the political expansion of the Empire (early 13th century BCE). Why Muwatalli moved the capital from Hattusa to the south, the Lower Land, is still matter of discussion. While some scholars maintain that internal and foreign politics were the main causes for the transfer of the capital (e.g., Bryce 2003: 91; 2005: 231; 2007: 122), others consider a religious reform promoted by Muwatalli to be the real motor behind the transfer (Singer 1996; 2006). Indeed, if not the main cause, the growing importance of the cult to the Storm-god Tarhunt(a) piḫassassi was inextricably linked with the transfer. The cult to this hypostasis of the Storm- god was initiated in Samuha by Muwatalli II, who thereafter moved it to the new capital (most recently, Taracha 2009: 93, and 98-99). Whatever the reason, 1 The form could be southern Anatolian, adopted in northern Syria. On the loss of /n/ in Luwian see Melchert 2003: 182. I wonder whether instead of a nasalized vowel, as Melchert argues for the Hittite form (Melchert 1994: 124), the result of /n/ + voiced dental in Luwian could be a voiced assimilation /-dd-/. The Syrian writing Tarhu(d)dassa/i certainly supports an interpretation pertaining to the phonology (with Melchert, quoted above), and not to the graphic system, and this can also be valid in Hieroglyphic Luwian (contra, e.g., Plöchl 2003: 16). kongres.indd 221 2011-05-10 15:38:26