Lost in Translation

Hugh Nibley liked to point out that historical texts cannot be adequately analyzed in translation. Here is an interesting example of that phenomenon, a unique document, part of whose uniqueness is lost in translation.

To date, only one letter survives from the Old Hittite empire. It is from the Hittite king Hattusili I (the famous one is Hattusili III) to his vassal Tunip-Teshub, the ruler of Tikunani. Letters from Hittite kings to their vassals are standard fair. We have dozens of Hittite letters from kings to their vassals. The letter starts in a common enough way:

Say to Tuniya, my servant: Thus speaks Labarna, the Great King (translation from Harry A. Hoffner, Jr., Letters from the Hittite Kingdom [Atlanta: Society of Biblical Literature, 2009], 77).

This is all pretty standard. Nothing in the translation betrays how strange this document is. Hattusili requests his vassal's assistance in the war that he is fighting. Again, nothing seems particularly unusual about the request.

If I reproduced the entire letter here, nothing in the translation would tell how strange this document is. The reader might be struck by Hattusili's vivid animal metaphors, but they are common in Hattusili's other surviving records. War accounts from the ancient world are fairly standard fair.

What is so unusual is apparent to anyone who reads the original. This letter, the earliest Hittite letter known, the only one to survive from the Hittite Old Kingdom, is not in Hittite at all; it is in Akkadian.

The Edict of Telepinus

The Edict of Telepinus is an interesting document from the ancient Hittite kingdom at Hattusha, now Boghazkoy. It comes from the dark ages between the Hittite Old and New Kingdoms. It also contains some Hittite history that otherwise is not preserved. Like most Hittite legal treatises, historical precedent is invoked as the reason for legislation.

Telepinus begins by discussing the idyllic times under Labarnas:

Previously Labarnas was the great king. Then his sons, his brothers, his relatives, his family, and his soldiers were united (1.2-4).

So the Hittites went conquering as they went.

Then Hattusilis became king. Then his sons, his brothers, his relatives, his family, and his soldiers were likewise united (1.13-15).

Then, too, the Hittites were always victorious. But things did not remain so.

When the subjects of the princes later rebelled, they started to take their property, to conspire against their masters, and to shed their blood (1.21-23).

Under Mursilis too (you have to love the name since it sounds like merciless), the Hittites were generally united and victorious, defeating the Hurrians and sacking Babylon (1.24-29). But then Hantilis, the butler and Musilis's brother-in-law, conspired with Zidantas and killed Mursilis (1.30-33).

Zidantas in turn killed Hantilis's sons to become king (1.63-66). Ammunas, Zidantas's son, killen Zidantas to become king (1.66-69). Unfortunately, everything went badly for him; the crops failed and so did the campaigns (1.69-2.3).

The Hittite kingdom descended into a series of internecine coups that Telepinus tracks down to his own day. One suspects that it did not cease with Telepinus. In fact, we know it did not because many years after Telepinus, Hattusilis III usurped the throne from his nephew Urhiteshup.

Telepinus tries to set forth legislation that will put an end to the internecine rivalries plaguing the Hittites. For the most part it seems to have worked. The legislation, however, just seems have regularized the succession patterns. It does not seem to have necessarily guaranteed that the Hittites had the best rulers.