Kaskians

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For kas-kas, or poppy seeds, refer to poppy seeds.

The Kaska (also Kaška, later Tabalian Kasku)[1] were the loosely-affiliated Bronze Age tribal people of mountainous Pontic Anatolia, known from Hittite sources.[2] They lived in the mountainous region between the core Hittite region in eastern Anatolia and the Black Sea, and are cited as the reason that the later Hittite Empire never extended northward to that area. The Kaska tribes may have displaced the speakers of the Palaic language from their home in Pala.

When the Kaska were not raiding or serving as mercenaries, they raised pigs and wove linen,[3] leaving scarcely any imprint on the permanent landscape.[4]

In the first Hittite references to the Kaska in prayer inscriptions that date from the reign of Hantili II, ca 1450 BC, the Kaska had moved into the ruins of the holy city of Nerik.[5] As of the reign of his son, Tudhaliya II (about 1430 BC), "Tudhaliya's 3rd campaign was against the Kaskas." [6] His successor Arnuwanda I composed a prayer for the gods to return Nerik to the empire; he also mentioned Kammama and Zalpuwa as cities which he claimed had been Hittite but which were now under the Kaskas. Arnuwanda attempted to mollify some of the Kaska tribes by means of tribute.

Some time between the reigns of Arnuwanda and Suppiluliuma I (about 1330 BCE), letters found in Maşat Höyük note that locusts ate the Kaskas' grain. The hungry Kaska were able to join with Hayasa-Azzi and Isuwa to the east, as well as other enemies of the Hittites, and burn Hattusa, the Hittite capital, to the ground. It is probable that they also burned the Hittites' secondary capital Sapinuwa. Suppiliuma's grandson Hattusili III in the mid-13th century BC wrote of the time before Tudhaliya. He said that in those days the Kaska had "made Nenassa their frontier" and that their allies in Azzi-Hayasa had done the same to Samuha.

In the Amarna letters, Amenhotep III wrote to the Arzawan king Tarhunta-Radu that the "country Hattusa" was obliterated, and further asked for Arzawa to send him some of these Kaska people of whom he had heard. The Hittites also enlisted subject Kaska for their armies.

Tudhaliya III and Suppiluliuma (c. 1375-1350 BC) set up their court in Samuha and invaded Azzi-Hayasa from there. The Kaska intervened, but Suppiluliuma defeated them; after Suppiluliuma had fully pacified the region, Tudhaliya and Suppiluliuma were able to move on Hayasa and defeat it too, despite some devastating guerrilla tactics at their rear. Some twelve tribes of Kaska then united under Piyapili, but Piyapili was no match for Suppiluliuma.

Eventually Tudhaliya and Suppiluliuma returned Hattusa to the Hittites. But the Kaska continued to be a menace both inside and out. At one point they fielded 800 chariots.[citation needed]

In the time of ailing Arnuwanda II (around 1323 BC), the Hittites worried that the Kaskas from Ishupitta within the kingdom to Kammama without might take advantage of the plague in Hatti. The veteran commander Hannutti moved to Ishupitta, but he died there. Ishupitta then seceded from Hatti, and Arnuwanda died too.

Arnuwanda's brother and successor Mursili II recorded in his annals that he defeated this rebellion. Over the ongoing decades the Kaskans were also active in Durmitta and in Tipiya, by Mount Tarikarimu in the land of Ziharriya, and by Mount Asharpaya on the route to Pala; they rebelled and/or performed egregious banditry in each place. At first Mursili defeated each Kaska uprising piecemeal.

Then the Kaska united for the first time under Pihhuniya of Tipiya, who "ruled like a king" the Hittites recorded. Pihhuniya conquered Istitina and advanced as far as Zazzissa. But Mursili defeated this force and brought Pihhuniya back as a prisoner to Hattusas.

Mursili then switched to a defensive strategy, with a chain of border fortresses north to the Devrez.[7]. Even so, in the early 13th century, when Mursili's son Muwatalli II was king in Hatti, the Kaskas sacked Hattusa. Muwatalli stopped enlisting Kaska as troops; he moved his capital to Tarhuntassa to the south; and he appointed his brother, the future Hattusili III, as governor over the northern marches. Hattusili defeated the Kaska to the point of recapturing Nerik, and when he took over the kingdom he returned the capitol to Hattusa.

The Hittite kingdom fell in the Bronze Age collapse. The Assyrian king Tiglath-Pileser I recorded late in the 12th century BC that the Kaska and their Mushki allies were active in what had been the Hatti heartland. Tiglath-Pileser defeated them, and the Kaska then disappear from all historical records.

[edit] References

  1. ^ š is the convensional rendering of /s/ sound in Hittite; an unrelated kaska in cuneiform texts found at Kirkuk, in Hurrian written in Akkadian cuneiform, apparently referred to the first cutting of a moiety of the grain, which a debtor might not remove from a harvested field in the temporary possession of a creditor: E. A. Speiser, "New Kirkuk Documents Relating to Security Transactions" Journal of the American Oriental Society 52.4 (December 1932:350-367), esp. pp 362ff. Also, Kašku was the name of a moon god in Hattic, which was spoken at the site of their first known conquest, at Nerik. This Hattic ethnonym need not reflect the language or self-identification of the Kaska themselves.
  2. ^ "Although attested historically, the Kaska are virtually unknown archaeologically," Roger Matthews has observed, "Landscapes of Terror and Control: Imperial Impacts in Paphlagonia" Near Eastern Archaeology 67.4 (December 2004:200-211) esp. pp202f.
  3. ^ Concise Britannica, s.v. "Kaska"
  4. ^ Matthews 2004:esp. pp 202f.
  5. ^ Matthews 2004:206.
  6. ^ Information about the Hittites - Hittite History
  7. ^ "To the north and west of the Devrez-Dahara very few Hittites sites were detected," Matthews reported of the thorough Project Paphlagonia field survey (Matthews 2004:204).

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