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Tabal (Neo-Assyrian Akkadian: 𒆳𒋫𒁄 and 𒌷𒋫𒁄), later reorganised into Bīt-Burutaš (Neo-Assyrian Akkadian: 𒆳𒂍𒁹𒁍𒊒𒋫𒀾) or Bīt-Paruta (Neo-Assyrian Akkadian: 𒂍𒁹𒉺𒊒𒋫), was a Luwian-speaking Neo-Hittite state which existed in southeastern Anatolia in the Iron Age.
The name Tabal given to the kingdom by the Neo-Assyrian Empire was likely an Akkadian term meaning "bank" or "shore" of a body of water, in reference to the kingdom and region of Tabal being on the southern bank of the Halys river.
Due to an absence of relevant Luwian inscriptions, the native name of the kingdom of Tabal is still unknown.
The kingdom of Tabal was located in a region bounded by the Halys river, the Taurus Mountains, the Konya Plain and the Anti-Taurus Mountains, and which was occupied by a cluster of Neo-Hittite states.
The Neo-Assyrian Empire used the name of Tabal in a narrow sense to refer to the kingdom of Tabal and in a broader sense to designate both this larger region of which the kingdom was part of and to the other states within this region collectively.
Modern scholarship therefore designates the kingdom as "Tabal proper" to distinguish it from the broader region of Tabal.
The kingdom of Tabal was one of the several states located in the larger region of Tabal, and was the northernmost and largest of them: the territory of Tabal proper was bounded to the north by the Halys river and it covered the areas surrounding what is presently the city of Kayseri in the modern Turkish provinces of Kayseri, Nevşehir, and Niğde until as far south as the region corresponding to present-day Aksaray. To the west, Tabal reached Lake Tatta, while it bordered Malizi in the east.
Some inscriptions referencing its king Tuwattis II nevertheless suggest that the kingdom of Tabal might have had some control in the areas to the north of the Halys river as well.
The capital of Tabal, Artulu, has still not been discovered, although it might have been located at the site of present-day Kululu in Turkey, and another city belonging to this state was discovered at Sultanhan, itself in the western whereabouts of Kululu.
The most important neighbour of Tabal in the 8th century BCE was the kingdom of Tuwana, which was located immediately to the north of the entrance to the Taurus mountains. The southern border of Tabal was formed by the Erdaş and Hodul mountains, which separated it from Tuwana.
A possible but uncertain early reference to Tabal from the Late Bronze Age might have been the "Land of Tuali" (Middle Assyrian Akkadian: 𒆳𒌅𒀀𒇷, romanized: māt Tuali) whose king was member of a coalition of 23 rulers whom the Middle Assyrian king Tiglath-pileser I defeated during his first campaign in Nairi. The name Tuali might have been an Akkadian form of a Luwian original name Tuwattis which had experienced the Luwian sound shift from /t/ to /l/. The name Tuali/Tuwattis appears to have belonged to an ancestral king of the kingdom, whose name was then reused by the later kings of this state.
Another possible but uncertain reference to Tabal might have been the prince Tuwattis whose image was carved in the Lion Gate of Malatya.
The first certain mention of Tabal proper is from the records of the Neo-Assyrian king Shalmaneser III's (r. 859 – 824 BCE) campaign of 837 BCE in the region of Tabal, which was then constituted of 24 states.
During this campaign, Shalmaneser III crossed the Anti-Taurus Mountains, invaded the lands of the Tabalian king Tuwattis I and destroyed the settlements in his kingdom, forcing the latter to flee to his capital of Artulu. Shalmaneser III then besieged Artulu, but Tuwattis I immediately surrendered when the Neo-Assyrian army surrounded his city, and his son Kikki paid tribute to Shalmaneser III, as did the rulers of the 24 other states of the region without fighting, after which Kikki might have been installed by Shalmaneser III as the new king of Tabal.
The position of Tuwattis I in the dynastic history of Tabal is uncertain: he might have founded a new dynasty in Tabal in the 8th century BCE; or he might have alternatively been a member of an older dynasty founded by an ancestor of his.
The kings of the region of Tabal offered tribute to Shalmaneser III again in 836 BCE, after he had conquered the fortress of Uetaš during campaign in Melid.
During the century following the campaign of Shalmaneser III, the kingdom of Tabal had absorbed several of the nearby small states in the Tabalian region, likely through aggressive expansionism, to grow into the largest, and northernmost, of its six main kingdoms, with the others being Atuna, Tuwana, Ištuanda, Ḫubišna, and Šinuḫtu.
By c. 738 BC, the Tabalian region, including Tabal proper, had become a tributary of the Neo-Assyrian king Tiglath-pileser III (r. 745 – 727 BCE), either after his conquest of Arpad over the course of 743 to 740 BC caused the states of the Tabalian region to submit to him, or possibly as a result of a campaign of Tiglath-pileser III in Tabal.
In the middle of the 8th century BCE, Tabal was ruled by the king Tuwattis II, who might have been a descendant of Kikki. Some time before 738 BC, Tuwattis II, along with the kings Warpalawas II of Tuwana and Ašḫiti of Atuna, offered tribute to Tiglath-pileser III; Tabal's tribute to the Neo-Assyrian Empire at this time consisted of horses, oxen and sheep.
Several inscriptions by people referring to themselves as servants of Tuwattis II found to the north-east of the region around Kululu and Sultanhan, and a lead strip mentioning a "Lord Tuwattis" to the north of the Halys river, suggest that Tabal was during this time using one of these two locations as a base for consolidating its power in northwestern Cappadocia. Thus, Tuwattis II, and possibly his son Wasusarmas after him, had interests in the region to the north of the Halys river, and the region to the north of the Halys river might itself have been ruled by either Tabal directly or by a vassal of Tuwattis II named Muwatalis.
One sub-kingdom within the territory of Tabal was ruled by a man named Ruwas who styled himself as the "servant of Tuwattis" on several stelae erected in the Tabalian capital. This Ruwas described himself as the "lord-house" (Hieroglyphic Luwian: 𔔙𔗐𔖺𔗐𔓯𔗆, parni=nannis) of his overlords and styled himself as "the sun-blessed one" (Hieroglyphic Luwian: 𔐓𔗦𔓷𔓚𔗬𔖱𔖻𔖭, asḫa tiwaramis) which were titles used by caretaker rulers who were in the service of great rulers.
Tuwattis II was succeeded by his son, Wasusarmas, who was also a tribute-paying vassal of the Neo-Assyrian Empire.
Wasusarmas regarded himself as the local hegemon of the Tabalian region, and he styled himself and his father using the prestigious titles of "Great King" (Hieroglyphic Luwian: 𔐒, romanized: uras ḫantawattis) and "Hero" (Hieroglyphic Luwian: 𔐕, romanized: ḫastallis). Along with the revival of this title by the possibly contemporary king Ḫartapus who ruled a state further to the west, this was the first time that a Luwian ruler had adopted these imperial Hittite titles after the end of their use by the rulers of Karkamiš in the 10th century BC.
Wasusarmas's use of these titles for himself and his father appears to have been significant enough that the various rulers of the Tabalian region either identified or rejected it, and some other Tabalian rulers, such as Warpalawas II of Tuwana and Kiyakiyas of Šinuḫtu, might possibly have been his vassals.
Thanks to the renewed interest of powers like the Neo-Assyrian into the Tabalian region at this time, Wasusarmas was able to build his kingdom into a powerful and influential state: during the 8th century BC first appear the oldest datable Luwian monuments and inscriptions from the Tabalian region, with the earliest of them dating from the reign of Tuwattis II; most of these inscriptions were commissioned by servants of Tuwattis II and Wasusarmas; the Tabalian elite became rich and powerful enough to invest in these self-aggrandising monuments thanks to a political and cultural flourishing made possible by being clients of the Neo-Assyrian Empire.
Wasusarmas's expansionist ventures brought him into conflict with a coalition of eight enemy rulers attempting to encroach on the Tabalian region that was led by the king of Phrygia or by king Ḫartapus in the Konya-Karaman Plains, and which Wasusarmas claimed to have defeated with the help of the kings Warpalawas II of Tuwana, Kiyakiyas of Šinuḫtu, and the otherwise unknown king Ruwandas. This victory allowed Wasusarmas to expand his borders to the west.
Despite being a Neo-Assyrian tributary, Wasusarmas continued using the titles of "Great King" and "Hero"; since the Neo-Assyrian Empire sought to prevent local rulers from becoming too powerful, Tiglath-pileser III accused Wasusarmas of acting as his equal, in consequence of which he deposed him around c. 732 to c. 730 BC and replaced him as king of Tabal with a man named Ḫullî. The deposition of Wasusarmas resulted in a power vacuum in the Tabalian region, and no subsequent ruler from the Tabalian region claimed the title of "Great King" again after him.
The deposition of Wasusarmas showed that the status of client kingship had its downsides: once he had become the client of a more powerful state, his position became drastically more complicated and uncertain. While he could claim powerful military support and obtain economic advantages from this arrangement, the tribute and corvee demands could set into motion popular revolt and provide reasons for rival political factions to move against Wasusarmas, who was thus caught between the demands of his suzerain and the ambitions of his subjects. However, the Neo-Assyrian response made it clear that dissent would not be tolerated and informed other kings that peace with the Neo-Assyrian Empire would depend on its generosity rather than on a specific local individual.
The identity of Ḫullî is still uncertain: although Neo-Assyrian sources referred to him as a commoner, he might have instead been the same individual as Ḫulis the nephew of Ruwas, the vassal of Tuwattis II, who had erected a stele in his uncle's honour in the Tabalian capital of Artulu, or alternatively he could have been of northern Syrian origin.
The raising of Ḫullî to kingship was the first of a series of direct Neo-Assyrian interventions in the Tabalian region and established the trend in the relations between it and the Neo-Assyrian Empire. With Tiglath-pileser III having ejected Urartu from this region, he could focus on fostering and exploiting his dependencies there: the Tabalian vassal states were expected to maintain internal security, inform the Neo-Assyrian Empire, provide the Neo-Assyrian authorities access to natural resources, pay tribute and support Neo-Assyrian ventures as was needed from them, in return of which Neo-Assyrian power granted favours to the Tabalian kings and likely promised to help them during emergencies. Being completely understanding of the nuances of client-patron relations, Tiglath-pileser III managed his vassals with a prudent balance of threats and subsidies.
The deposition of Wasusarmas and his replacement by Ḫullî did not solve the problems which Neo-Assyrian power was facing in Tabal, and Neo-Assyrian policy in the Tabalian region throughout the 8th century BCE would continue being characterised by an inability to find any compatible partners there. Thus, in 726 BCE Tiglath-pileser III's son and successor, Shalmaneser V (r. 727 – 722 BCE), deported Ḫullî along with his whole family to Assyria, possibly because Ḫullî had conspired with Phrygia.
The situation of Tabal during the exile of Ḫullî is unknown, although the deportation of its king likely to have resulted in the leadership vacuum there. Alternatively, another Tuwattis, possibly a son of Wasusarmas II, might have been installed on the throne of Tabal after the deportation of Ḫullî.
Meanwhile, the kingdom of Atuna appears to have benefited from the deportation of Ḫullî, with the power vacuum in Tabal proper having allowed it to become a local power in the Tabalian region.
Text from the Wikipedia article “Tabal (state)”, available under CC BY-SA 4.0.