Ancient cuneiform tablet found in Turkey’s Hatay

HATAY

A 3,400-year-old tablet has been found in archaeological excavations carried out in Aççana Mound, the old city of Alalah in the Reyhanlı district of the southeastern province of Hatay.

The head of the excavations and an academic from the Hatay Mustafa Kemal University, Murat Akar told state-run Anadolu Agency that important discoveries were made during the excavations.

Akar explained that the ancient city of Alalah was the capital of the regional Kingdom of Mukish, which was located in the Amik Plain in the past, and stated that they have been trying to understand the traditions and cultures and sociopolitical structure of the region in the Bronze Age with the archaeological research they have conducted for 20 years.

Akar stated that they found a cuneiform tablet during the excavations they carried out on the mound and said, “The find is important for us. It is not that easy to reach cuneiform texts, especially in the Bronze Age. You don’t always have the chance to obtain such data. It was a find that excited us. The archive value is great.”

Stating that “payments made to a king” were mentioned in the tablet, Akar said: “However, we don’t know who the king is and his name. The tablet is still very important to us, within the time period between 400 and 350 years B.C. We know that there was a fight between the Mitanni and the Hittite Empire in the region, and the regional kingdom between this fight actually served the Hittite empire once and then the Mitanni empire. Tablet is important to us in this sense. We will also find out who the king was.”

Akar said that the tablet was read by team member philologist Jacob Lauinger, adding that detailed works were continuing.