ROMSO Cyprus Knowledge Base

--- CONTENT ---
The Šaušgamuwa Treaty (CTH 105 = CUB 23.1 (VAT 7421) and some smaller fragments) is a letter from the Hittite Grand King Tudḫalija IV to Šaušgamuwa, King of the Hittite vassal state of Amurru. The document was probably written around 1230 BC. It is preserved in two copies, each on cuneiform clay tablets. A clay tablet, on which many important passages remain, is probably a rough draft of the Treaty because of the many corrections and deletions; From the other table only the upper right corner is preserved. It is believed that this letter could be an investiture certificate at the beginning of the reign of Šaušgamuwa, who succeeded his father Bentešina on the throne. The text is written in Hittite language and may not have been translated into Akkadian – the language used in treaties with other states at the time – because Šaušgamuwa, who had married a sister of Tudḫalija, was proficient in Hittite.

Because of the mention of the country Aḫḫijawa, the document has been counted among the Aḫḫijawa texts in research since the 1920s and is listed under ATH 2 by Beckman–Bryce–Cline (see literature). The historical excursion in the contract contains important information about the history of Amurrus, to a lesser extent also about Šeḫa. Furthermore, the text clearly speaks of serious tensions with Assyria, which is why the Hittite king wants to impose a trade embargo against Assyria with the support of Šaušgamuwa. Furthermore, the text indirectly – according to the prevailing research opinion – a loss of power of Aḫḫijawa can be seen.

History of research
A larger part of the two-column draft of the treaty was discovered during the excavations of 1906 and 1912 by Hugo Winckler in the Hittite capital Ḫattuša (Boğazköy). This has many additions, corrections, different character sizes, deletions and passages that go beyond the edge to the narrow side of the board, so that Ferdinand Sommer already suspected that it was a Kladde. In the 1960s, several small fragments were found in the excavation debris of earlier excavations, some of which fit the design, some of which had a different version, but only with regard to the upper right corner (or the lower left of the back). After Emil O. Forrer had already drawn attention to the mention of Aḫḫijawa, in 1932 a translation and detailed discussion and interpretation of the document by Ferdinand Sommer took place. In essential parts, Sommer’s translation is still shared by the prevailing research opinion today. Full translations of the contract were made by Oswald Szemerényi in 1945 and by Isamu Sugi in 1960. Most recently (as of 2021) a translation of the received text and its interpretation took place in 2011 by Backman, Bryce and Cline.

In 1971, a detailed Ana appeared