The luwian-phoenician bilinguals of Çineköy and Karatepe: an ideological dialogue

This article is devoted to the study of the relations between two important Luwian-Phoenician bilinguals excavated in the territory of ancient Cilicia (south-eastern Anatolia), and to be dated to the end of the VIIIth cent. BCE. One (found in Çineköy) was produced for Warikas, king of Hiyawa (Cilicia); the other for Azatiwatas, a person not designated "king" who restored the fortifications of Karatepe, in eastern Cilicia. The latter boasts to have reinstalled on the throne the dynasty descending from Muksas, the same dynasty to which Warikas claims to belong. The study mainly consists in a very detailed comparison of the rhetorical formulas employed in both inscriptions and of their sequence in the texts. Although the Karatepe text is much longer, much detailed and more elaborated, in its first half is exactly structured as a condensed parallel of the Çineköy text, being both strictly similar in structure, formulary and lexicon. It is almost certain that they were the product of the same scholarly and scribal school, and it is also clear that one was a rhetorical quotation of the other. Chronologically, Çineköy is most probably older than Karatepe, since king Warikas is not mentioned in the latter and it is well known that Sargon II in some way removed him from the Cilician throne. The article focuses on the contrast between the strictly pro-Assyrian attitude of the Çineköy text and the silence on the Assyrians in Karatepe. Through a detailed analysis of the textual differences and variants, it is suggested that Karatepe was composed during a short period of independence of Cilicia from Assyria, probably after a rebellion against the Assyrian dominion enhanced by the unexpected and tragic death of Sargon II in the battlefield. The strict quotation of Çineköy in Karatepe would have been determined by the will of distinguishing Azatiwatas' anti-Assyrian attitude from king Warikas' pro-Assyrian attitude, although following the traditional patterns of the Cilician Luwian royal inscriptions. Ideologically, Çineköy would represent an effort to celebrate the alliance to an empire, Karatepe an effort to celebrate local autonomy and anti-imperial resistence.