Kizzuwatna

The expanded Hittite Empire (red) replaces Hatti, including Arzawa and Kizzuwatna c. 1290 BC and borders the Egyptian kingdom (green)

The country possessed valuable resources, such as silver mines in the Taurus Mountains. The slopes of the mountain range are still partly covered by woods. Annual winter rains made agriculture possible in the area at a very early date (see Çatalhöyük). The plains at the lower course of the Ceyhan river provided rich cultivated fields.

Several ethnic groups coexisted in the Kingdom of Kizzuwatna. The Hurrians inhabited this area at least since the beginning of the 2nd millennium BC. The Hittite expansion in the early Old Kingdom period (under Hattusili I and Mursili I) was likely to bring the Hittites and the Luwians to southeastern Anatolia. The Luwian language was part of the Indo-European language group, with close ties to the Hittite language. Both the local Hittites and the Luwians were likely to contribute to the formation of independent Kizzuwatna after the weakening of the Hittite Old Kingdom. The toponym Kizzuwatna is possibly a Luwian adaptation of Hittite *kez-udne 'country on this side (of the mountains)', while the name Isputahsu is definitely Hittite and not Luwian (Yakubovich 2010, pp. 273–4). Hurrian culture became more prominent in Kizzuwatna once it entered the sphere of influence of the Hurrian kingdom of Mitanni, with whom they shared various degrees of kinship.

Puduhepa, queen of the Hittite king Hattusili III, came from Kizzuwatna, where she had been a priestess. Their pantheon was also integrated into the Hittite one, and the goddess Hebat of Kizzuwatna became very important in Hittite religion towards the end of the 13th century BC. A corpus of religious texts called the Kizzuwatna rituals was discovered at Hattusa. Believed to be at present the earliest Indo-European ritual corpus discovered to date.

King Sargon of Akkad claimed to have reached the Taurus Mountains (the silver mountains) in the 23rd century BC. However, archaeology has yet to confirm any Akkadian influence in the area. The trade routes from Assyria to the karum in the Anatolian highlands went through Kizzuwatna by the early 2nd millennium BC.

The kings of Kizzuwatna of the 2nd millennium BC had frequent contact with the Hittites to the north. The earliest Hittite records seem to refer to Kizzuwatna and Arzawa (Western Anatolia) collectively as Luwia.

In the power struggle that arose between the Hittites and the Hurrian kingdom of Mitanni, Kizzuwatna became a strategic partner due to its location. Isputahsu made a treaty with the Hittite king Telepinu. Later, Kizzuwatna shifted its allegiance, perhaps due to a new ruling dynasty. The city state of Alalakh to the south expanded under its new vigorous leader Idrimi, himself a subject of the Mitannian king Barattarna. King Pilliya of Kizzuwatna had to sign a treaty with Idrimi. Kizzuwatna became an ally of Mitanni from the reign of Shunashura I, until the Hittite king Arnuwanda I overran the country and made it a vassal kingdom. Due to the exceedingly rough and unfavorable terrain of the Tarsus Mountains, it is likely that in order to remain in a position of prominence among their Hurrian and Luwian speaking neighbors, favorable terms were requested by the Kizzuwanta and subsequently granted.

Kizzuwatna rebelled during the reign of Suppiluliuma I, but remained within the Hittite empire for two hundred years. In the famous Battle of Kadesh (c. 1274 BC), Kizzuwatna supplied troops to the Hittite king. As master equestrians, some of the first in the areas south of the Caucasus region, they provided the horses, later favored by King Solomon, which allowed the more aggressive use of the Hittite chariot in contrast to their Egyptian and Assyrian rivals.

The Kizzuwatna were master craftsman, mining experts and blacksmiths. Being the first to work "black iron" which is understood to have been iron of meteoric origin, into weapons such as maces, swords and warheads for spears. Their location in the mineral rich Tarsus Range gave them ample materials with which to work.

Around 1200 BC an invasion by the Sea Peoples is believed to have temporarily displaced the people of the Cilician plain, though many among the entourage of said peoples were likely to have been composed of Luwian and Hurrians. Possibly to ensure that they had a stake in how the invasions ended for their people, and not be simple victims of them.

After the fall of the Hittite empire, the Neo-Hittite kingdom Quwe or Hiyawa emerged in the area of former Kizzuwatna.

• Pariyawatri
• Isputahsu / Išputahšu†
• Paddatisu / Paddatišu
• Pilliya
• Sunassura I / Šunaššura I
• Talzu
• Sunassura II / Šunaššura II - contemporary of Hittite king Tudhaliya II (c. 1400 BC)

† Š represents a "s" sound (as in "sun") in Hittite and Luwian transliteration, [ s ] in the International Phonetic Alphabet (IPA), despite the fact that š usually represents "sh" (as in "shun") in other languages [ ʃ ] in the International Phonetic Alphabet (IPA).

• Beckman, Garry M.: Hittite Diplomatic Texts, Scholars Press, Atlanta 1996.
• Götze, Albrecht: Kizzuwatna and the problem of Hittite geography, Yale university press, New Haven 1940.
• Haas, Volkert: Hurritische und luwische Riten aus Kizzuwatna, Butzon & Bercker, Kevelaer 1974.
• Yakubovich, Ilya: Sociolinguistics of the Luvian Language, Brill, Leiden 2010.
• Novák, Mirko: Kizzuwatna, Ḥiyawa, Quwe – Ein Abriss der Kulturgeschichte des Ebenen Kilikien, in J. Becker, R. Hempelmann, E. Rehm (ed.), Kulturlandschaft Syrien – Zentrum und Peripherie.Festschrift für Jan-Waalke Meyer, Alter Orient und Altes Testament 371, Ugarit-Verlag, Münster 2010, pp. 397–425
• Forlanini, Massimo: How to infer Ancient Roads and Intineraries from heterogenous Hittite Texts: The Case of the Cilician (Kizzuwatnean) Road System, KASKAL 10, 2013, pp. 1–34.
• Novák, Mirko and Rutishauser, Susanne: Tutḫaliya, Šunaššura und die Grenze zwischen Ḫatti und Kizzuwatna, in: C. Mittermayer, S. Ecklin (eds.), Altorientalische Studien zu Ehren von Pascal Attinger, Orbis Biblicus et Orientalis 256, Academic Press, Fribourg/Göttingen 2012, pp. 259–269.
• Kozal, Ekin and Novák, Mirko: Facing Muwattalli. Some Thoughts on the Visibility and Function of the Rock Reliefs at Sirkeli Höyük, Cilicia, in: E. Kozal, M. Akar, Y. Heffron, Ç. Çilingiroğlu, T.E. Şerifoğlu, C. Çakırlar, S. Ünlüsoy and E. Jean (eds.), Questions, Approaches, and Dialoguesin the Eastern Mediterranean Archaeology Studies in Honor of Marie-Henriette and Charles Gates, Alter Orient und Altes Testament 445, Ugarit-Verlag, Münster 2017, pp. 371–388.
• Novák, Mirko and Rutishauser, Susanne: Kizzuwatna: Archaeology. In: M. Weeden und L.Z. Ullmann (ed.), Hittite Landscape and Geography. Handbuch der Orientalistik I,121, Brill, Leiden 2017, pp. 134–145.
• Kozal, Ekin and Novák, Mirko: Alalakh and Kizzuwatna. Some Thoughts on the Synchronization, in: Ç. Maner, A. Gilbert, M. Horowitz (ed.), Overturning Certainties in Near Eastern Archaeology, A Festschrift in Honor of K. Aslıhan Yener for her 40 years of Field Archaeology in the Eastern Mediterranean, Brill, Leiden 2017, pp. 296–317.

• Ancient regions of Anatolia
• Cilicia
• Neo-Hittites