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P H A S I S II VOLUME 10 (II) 2007 IVANE JAVAKHISHVILI TBILISI STATE UNIVERSITY

P H A S I S II VOLUME 10 (II) 2007 IVANE JAVAKHISHVILI TBILISI STATE UNIVERSITY Greek and Roman Studies THE ARGONAUTICA AND WORLD CULTURE THE ARGONAUTICA AND WORLD CULTURE INSTITUTE OF CLASSICAL, BYZANTINE AND MODERN GREEK STUDIES P H A S I S II 10 (II) 2007 Editorial Board: Rismag Gordeziani – Editor-in-Chief (Tbilisi) Dimitris Angelatos (Nicosia) Valeri Asatiani (Tbilisi) Irine Darchia (Tbilisi) Riccardo Di Donato (Pisa) Tina Dolidze (Tbilisi) Levan Gordeziani (Tbilisi) Sophie Shamanidi (Tbilisi) Nana Tonia (Tbilisi) Jürgen Werner (Berlin) Tamara Tcheishvili – Executive Secretary (Tbilisi) f asi si 1 0 (I ), 2007 i vane j avaxi Svi l i s saxel o bi s T bi l i si s saxel m wi f o u ni ver si t et i s kl asi ku r i f i l o l o gi i s, bi z ant i ni st i ki sa d a neo gr ec i st i ki s i nst i t u t i s ber Znu l i d a r o m au l i St u d i ebi © pr o gr am a "l o go si ", 2007 ISSN 1512-1046 Phasis 10 (I), 2007 Itamar Singer (Tel Aviv) WHO WERE THE KAŠKA? During the 500 years of their history the Hittites fought many formidable enemies, but none of them was as as persistent and evasive as the Kaška tribes of the Pontic ranges. All efforts of the superior and well-organized Hittite armies to keep them at bay and to efficiently protect the vulnerable northern frontier of their kingdom repeatedly failed, and the Kaška perennially invaded Hittite-dominated territories and laid waste to border cities and cult-places. It was probably the Kaška who eventually gave the final blow to the weakening Hittite capital of Hattusha. This is of course the "colonial" perspective as portrayed in Hittite sources and in Hittitological studies, in which the Kaška appear as the "aggressive" and "barbarian" nemesis from the north. In a more recent "post-colonial" perspective, as now in vogue in frontier studies, the Kaška might be conceived as the abused victims of Hittite aggression and occupation of their traditional habitat (Glatz/Matthews 2005: 49). We always have to remember that all the textual evidence comes from the Hittite side and the voice of the other side in this strained relationship is not heard. The Hittite sources on the Kaška were first assembled and discussed in the monograph of Einar von Schuler Die Kaškäer published in 1965. In this seminal study (and in his summary in RlA 1976-80) the illustrious German scholar provided translations of the main sources, including treaties, administrative lists, prayers, rituals, oracles, and of course historical references. This data base was then processed into chapters on the history, the political organization, the economy, the religion, and the onomastics of the Kaška. Von Schuler's monumental work remains the basic tool for any further studies on the Kaška, but of course, forty years of research have adduced plenty of new data and a reevaluation of some of his conclusions is necessary. Who Were the Kaška? 167 One of the most spectacular new discoveries were the texts from Maúat Höyük, published by the Turkish scholar Sedat Alp in 1991. These documents, mostly letters but also some administrative lists, provide a vivid picture of everyday life in a Hittite border town and its continuous struggle with the threat posed by the Kaška tribes. Thousands of tablets were also unearthed at Ortaköy/Šapinuwa east of Maúat, which probably contain similar information, but only a handful of documents have been published so far. Archaeological surveys conducted in the area in the 1970ties (Dinçol/Yakar 1974; Yakar/Dinçol 1974) have greatly improved our understanding of the settlement history in these remote regions and the same applies to the current survey of Paphlagonia, ancient Pala-Tumanna (Glatz/Matthews 2005). However, without full excavations at sites of various sizes, the archaeological evidence remains insufficient. One hopes that the recently launched archaeological exploration of Oymaa÷aç/Vezirköprü, probably ancient Nerik, will provide valuable of new evidence. But again, we are dealing with a large site which was probably occupied by the Hittites most of the time and its contribution to the Kaška problem will probably be limited to the dating of the destruction levels. Until recently, conventional wisdom saw the Kaška as inhabitants of northern Anatolia already in the Old Hittite period. This view is based on 13th century historical references to the loss of the north, notably the cities of Tiliura and Nerik, already in the days of the Hittite king Hantili. The town of Tiliura was empty from the days of Hantili and my father Muršili resettled it (KUB 21.29 I 11-13). And from there they (i.e. the Kaška) began to commit hostilities and Hantili built an outpost against them. Earlier, Labarna and Hattušili did not let them over the Kumešmaha River (ib., ii 2 f.). The reference to the first great kings, Labarna and Hattušili, makes it very likely that Hantili in this and in the following passages must be the first king bearing this name, i.e. the son-in-law and murderer of Muršili I. The city of Nerik, which was in ruins from the days of Hantili, I have rebuilt (Hatt. iii 46'-48'). The city of Nerik was ru[ined by the Kaška]-men in the days of Hantili. In the past [the city] lay empty for four hundred years (KUB 25.21 iii 2-5; von Schuler 1965: 186). It seems that Hattušili III and his son Tuthaliya IV, who invested plenty of energy in the restitution of Nerik into a major cult center, maintained a firm view about the time of the city's fall to the Kaška, even though the stereotyped number of four (or possibly five) hundred years falls far off the mark. Itamar TSingerT 168 This Late Hittite historiographic tradition has already been questioned by von Schuler himself (1976-80: 461 f.) and was recently fully refuted by Jörg Klinger (2002) who serves as the philologist of the Nerik expedition. Both of them pointed out that in the Old Hittite sources of the 17th-16th centuries B.C. there is no mention at all of the Kaška, even though several Hittite kings, notably Hattušili I, operated as far as the Black Sea. Only from the second half of the 15th century we begin to receive contemporary reports on Kaška intrusions into Hittite territory. In the annals of a Tuthaliya (CTH 142), probably Tuthaliya I the founder of the New Kingdom (Klinger 2002: 446 ff.), we hear that the "Kaška enemy" attacked Hatti taking advantage of the absence of the king who was campaigning in Aššuwa in western Anatolia. On his way home Tuthaliya still managed to drive out the enemy from Hittite land, but his successor Arnuwanda I suffered serious territorial loses to the Kaška, as lamented in his famous prayer to the Sun-goddess (CTH 375; Singer 2002: 40 ff.). The royal couple Arnuwanda and Ašmunikal deplore in particular the ravages imposed by the Kaška to Hittite temples and cult places, and in particular to the sacred city of Nerik. The correspondence from Maúat, probably dated to the next generation (Tuthaliya II/III), describes in detail the enormous difficulties encountered by local Hittite commanders in securing this frontier and the Hittite border towns along it. We hear about the defensive measures taken to protect the population of Hittite held towns and villages from Kaškan onslaughts, but at the same time there is growing evidence about the massive capture and surrender of Kaška fighters, many of whom are blinded and set to hard labour in mills (Hoffner 2002). In contemporary Amarna letters we hear for the first time about Kaška-men transported to Egypt, probably to be recruited in its armies, a phenomenon which only increased after the successful northern campaigns of Šuppiluliuma I and his able successors. Finally, the most important Hittite victory on the Kaška front was the liberation of the sacred city of Nerik, for which Hattušili III took credit for himself. This brief characterization of Hittite-Kaškan relations raises intriguing questions regarding the nature of the Kaška tribes and their first appearance on the Anatolian orbit. If indeed their emergence in the days of Hantili I and even before is based on fictive historical constructs of the Late Hittite Empire, this would mean that they must have been newcomers who first penetrated into northern Anatolia in the second half of the second millennium (Klinger 2002: 451). This would of course be squarely opposed to the view that conceives of the Kaška as an autochthonic population of Anatolia (cf. the hesitation of von Schuler 1976-80: 463).We shall return to the crucial question of Kaškan origins later on, after briefly surveying some socio- economic and cultural aspects of the Kaška presence in Anatolia. Who Were the Kaška? 169 Not much can be said on the socio-economic organization of the Kaška without adequate archaeological investigation (for which see Yakar 2000: 295 ff.). The general impression is of sedentary pastoral communities practicing transhumance. That would mean uploads/Geographie/ singer-kaska-phasis-2007.pdf