Sunday, July 21, 2024

Ugulzat another name for Ugarit (Akkad)

by Damien F. Mackey “The main city was named Ugulzat …. Hittite texts mention the "Kings of Nuhašše", indicating that the region consisted of a number of petty kingdoms that might have formed a confederacy; one of the monarchs took the role of primus inter pares (first among equals),[5] and resided in Ugulzat.[3]” Wikipedia The capital city of the mighty Akkadian kingdom, namely AKKAD (Sumerian Agade), I determined to have been the important port city of Ugarit (var. IKAT): My road to Akkad (5) My road to Akkad | Damien Mackey - Academia.edu Ugarit (Akkad) was in what was, or became, a separate land in antiquity. That region would come to be known as Nuḫašše. Ancient regions such as NW Syria, which were affected variously by Mitanni, Hittites, Assyria, and Egypt, would have been known under different names. For instance, the region that included Ugarit and Qatna was known as Nuḫašše. According to the Wikipedia article, “Nuhašše”: Nuhašše - Wikipedia “Nuhašše, also Nuhašša … was a region in northwestern Syria that flourished in the 2nd millennium BC. It was a federacy ruled by different kings who collaborated and probably had a high king. Nuhašše changed hands between different powers in the region such as Egypt, Mitanni and the Hittites. It rebelled against the latter which led Šuppiluliuma I to attack and annex the region”. The article goes on to tell of the geographical extent of the kingdom of Nuḫašše: “The name "Nuhašše" is Semitic meaning rich or prosperous.[1] Nuhašše stretched from the Euphrates valley in the east to the Orontes valley in the west between Hamath in the south and Aleppo in the north;[2] it did not include Ebla and it was separated from the Euphrates river by Emar and Ashtata.[1] In the west, it reached the Orontes river only if it included the region of Niya which is debated.[1]” Here I am particularly interested in two potential facts (below), that the Nuḫašše “federacy … probably had a high king”, and that he would have resided in the “main city [that] was named Ugulzat”. Wikipedia again: “The main city was named Ugulzat (possibly modern Khan Shaykhun).[3][4] Hittite texts mention the "Kings of Nuhašše", indicating that the region consisted of a number of petty kingdoms that might have formed a confederacy; one of the monarchs took the role of primus inter pares (first among equals),[5] and resided in Ugulzat.[3]” Typically, the precise location of the important city of Ugulzat is not known. As I would expect the capital city in a region that included Ugarit to be Akkad (IKAT), then my Akkad-Ugarit should also be the same as the kingdom of Nuḫašše’s “main city [that] was named Ugulzat”. My conclusion, therefore, would be that Nuḫašše’s capital city, Ugulzat, represented just another version of the name Ugarit. Thus: UGULZAT = UGARIT (IKAT) = AKKAD = AGADE.

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