Tunna might have been founded during the Hittite Old Kingdom by the sons of the king
Ḫattušili I, some time during the late Middle and early Late Bronze Age.[7]
Beginning with the reign of the Hittite king
Šuppiluliuma I, Tunna was referred to in state treaties of the Hittite Empire as the cult site of the goddess Ḫallara, who headed the local pantheon.[5][8][1]
According to a bronze tablet and the Ulmi-Teššub treaty, Tunna was a location in the region of
Tarḫuntašša in the Ḫūlaya River Land where the hypostasis of the storm god
Tarḫunzas bearing the epithet of piḫaššaššiš (𒁉𒄩𒀸𒊭𒀸𒅆𒅖) was venerated.[8][4]
Tunna was mentioned alongside
Ḫupišna and
Zallara in a Hittite local deity list, and a Chief of the Cooks was responsible for the cult inventory of the country of Tunna.[4]
Due to its strategic location at the Cilician Gates, Tunna was located on one of the main routes which in ancient times connected the Anatolian Plateau to the Syro-Mesopotamian region.[2]
In the 9th century BC, Tunna was destroyed during the campaign of the Neo-Assyrian king
Shalmaneser III in the Tabalian region in 837 BC.[9]
During the 8th century BC, Tunna was a
Tabalian petty city-state ruled by a king named Tarḫunazas, who was himself a vassal of the king
Warpalawas II of
Tuwana.[10] In an inscription at the site corresponding to present-day Bulgarmaden, Tarḫunazas recorded that, in exchange for his services, his overlord Warpalawas II had offered to him the Mount Mudi.[11][12]
New defensive structures were built at Tunna during the reign of Warpalawas II.[9]
Mount Mudi was a rocky outcrop of the
Taurus Mountains near the
Cilician Gates,[13] and was likely identical with the "alabaster mountain," Mount Mulî, which the Neo-Assyrian king Shalmaneser III climbed and from where he extracted
alabaster during his campaign in the Tabalian region in 837 BCE. The name Mulî (𒈬𒇷𒄿[14][15][16][17]) was the Akkadian form of a Luwian original name Mudi (𔑿𔑣)[18][19][20][21] which had experienced the Luwian sound shift from /
d/ to /
l/.[12][22]
Based on the close association of the "silver mountain," Mount Tunni, with Mount Mulî in the Neo-Assyrian records, both of these mountains were located close to each other, in the northeastern end of the
Bolkar and Taurus Mountains, where are presently located the silver mines of Bulgarmaden and the
gypsum mine at Porsuk-Zeyve Höyük.[12][2][23]
Another petty-king of Tunna who was vassal of the kings of Tuwana might have been Masauraḫisas, who possibly reigned in the middle or late 8th century BC,[2] and who is known from an inscription by his general Parḫwiras.[9]
Barat, Claire; Köker Gökçe, Emine; Pichonneau, Jean-François; Sadozaï, Chamsia (2022).
"Porsuk – Zeyve Höyük : Rapport préliminaire de la campagne 2021" [Porsuk – Zeyve Höyük: Preliminary Report of the 2021 Campaign]. Anatolia antiqua = Eski anadolu. 30: 67–81. Retrieved 13 April 2024.
Hawkins, John D.[in German] (2000a). Corpus of Hieroglyphic Luwian Inscriptions. Vol. 1: Inscriptions of the Iron Age. Part 1: Text, Introduction, Karatepe, Karkamis, Tell Ahmar, Maras, Malatya, Commagene. Walter de Gruyter.
ISBN978-3-110-10864-4.
Weeden, Mark (2017). "Tabal and the Limits of Assyrian Imperialism". In Heffron, Yağmur; Stone, Adam;
Worthington, Martin (eds.). At the Dawn of History: Ancient Near Eastern Studies in Honour of J. N. Postgate. Vol. 2.
Winona,
United States:
Eisenbrauns. p. 721-736.
ISBN978-1-57506-471-0.