Zalpa (also calledZalba,Zalpah,Zalpuwa) were ancient regions mentioned in Assyrian, Mari and Hittite records. The toponyms appear in a variety of forms and contexts and likely refer to multiple similarly named regions. They have been located on the Pontic coast of the Black Sea, along theEuphrates in northern Mesopotamia and along theBalikh river in northern Syria.
The etymology is uncertain but the toponyms may have been Sumerianformulaictheophoric names derived fromKA.ZAL.[1][2] The samesyllabary is found in theAkkadian toponymka-zal-luki in records of the twenty-second through sixteenth centuries BC,[3][4][5][6] which could explain the presence of multiple forms and uses of the toponyms in the historical record.[7]
Zalpuwa is the setting for an ancient legend about the Queen ofKanesh, which was either composed in or translated into theHittite language:[8]
"[The Queen] of Kanesh once bore thirty sons in a single year. She said: 'What a horde is this which I have born[e]!' She caulked(?) baskets with fat, put her sons in them, and launched them in the river. The river carried them down to the sea at the land of Zalpuwa. Then the gods took them up out of the sea and reared them. When some years had passed, the queen again gave birth, this time to thirty daughters. This time she herself reared them."
The river at Kanesh (Sarımsaklı Çayı) drains into theBlack Sea, which seemingly supported the argument that the city was located near the Black Sea.
"Zalpuwa" is further mentioned alongsideNerik inArnuwanda I's prayer. Nerik was aHattic language speaking city which had fallen to theKaskians by Arnuwanda's time. This portion of the prayer also mentioned Kammama, which was Kaskian as of the reign ofArnuwanda II. The conclusion until recently, was to locate Zalpuwa in a region ofHattian cities of northern central Anatolia: as wereNerik,Hattusa, and probablySapinuwa, and Zalpuwa was thought to have been founded by Hattians, like its neighbours.
Around the 18th century BC,Uḫna the king of Zalpuwa invadedNeša, after which the Zalpuwans carried off the city's "Sius" idol. UnderHuzziya's reign, the king of Neša,Anitta, invaded Zalpuwa. Anitta took Huzziya captive, and recovered theSius idol for Neša. Soon after that, Zalpuwa seems to have become culturally and linguistically Hittite.
Arnuwanda's prayer implies that Zalpuwa was laid waste by Kaskians, at the same time thatNerik fell to them, in the early 14th century BC.
İkiztepe on theKızılırmak Delta near theBlack Sea coast was suggested as a possible location for Zalpuwa.[9]
In 1990, J. M. Córdoba identified Zalpa withTell Hammam et-Turkman, on theBalikh river, and this proposal was commented as possible by French scholars Nele Ziegler and Anne-Isabelle Langlois in 2016,[10][11] as well as Eva von Dassow in her (2022) essay.[12]
The city of Zalpa was formerly equated by scholars with Zalpuwa in Anatolia, located to the north of Ḫattuša near the Black Sea. But the Zalpa mentioned in the Annals ofHattusili I has now been proposed as being at the site of Tilmen Höyük, in theKarasu River Valley south of theTaurus Mountains, which had a palace and temple that were violently destroyed near the end of the Middle Bronze Age II. This North Syrian Zalpa was called Zalwar in Old Babylonian texts. The military exploits ofHattusili I, a Hittite king who reigned in the latter part of the seventeenth century BC, are described both in Hittite and Akkadian in clay tablets, now in theCatalogue of Hittite Texts, excavated in Hattusa, the Hittite capital, and mention that he destroyed the city of Zalpa (writtenZa-al-pa in Hittite andZa-al-ba-ar in Akkadian).[13]
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