Tarkasnawa King of Mira ‘Tarkondemos’, Boǧazköy sealings and Karabel

Abstract

The historical geography of Anatolia in the period sourced by the Boǧazköy texts (Middle-Late Bronze Age) has proved an on-going problem since they first became available, and nowhere was this more acutely felt than in southern and western Anatolia, generally acknowledged as the site of the Arzawa lands, also probably the Lukka lands. A major advance has been registered since the mid-1980s, with the publication and interpretation of the Hieroglyphic inscription of Tudhaliya IV from Yalburt, and the Cuneiform treaty on the Bronze Tablet of the same king. These two documents have established that the later territory of Rough Cilicia constituted the Late Bronze Age kingdom of Tarhuntassa with its western border at Perge in Pamphylia, and that the Lukka lands did indeed occupy all of (or more than) classical Lycia in the south-west. These recognitions, by establishing the geography of the south and south-west, correspondingly reduced the areas of uncertainty in the west.In 1997 I was fortunately able to establish the reading of the Hieroglyphic inscription attached to the long-known Karabel relief, which lies inland from Izmir in a pass across the Tmolos range between Ephesos and Sardis. This can be shown to give the name of Tarkasnawa, King of Mira, and those of his father and grandfather, also kings of Mira but with names of uncertain reading. This is the same king known from his silver seal (referred to as ‘Tarkondemos' from an early and incorrect identification), and impressions of other seals of his have more recently been found at Boǧazköy. Clearly he was an important historical figure.