A Reinterpretation of the Milawata Letter in the Light of the New Join Piece

At the Rencontre Assyriologique held in Vienna in July, 1981, Dr. Harry Hoffner Jr. presented a paper in which he discussed a new join he had made to the Milawata letter, a document long recognized as being of considerable importance for Hittite historical studies, although one which is frustratingly fragmentary and incomplete.

Without doubt, the join provides important new information on historical and political developments in western Anatolia in the period when the letter was written, during the 13th century B.C.; more specifically, it throws interesting new light on the circumstances in which it was written, and may help indirectly to establish the identity of both its author, a Hittite king, and its recipient. Perhaps of most immediate interest is the fact that we now have the name of another king of Wilua—Walmu. Walmu was already known to us from the original text, but the two passages in which his name appeared were too fragmentary to provide any more specific information about him. The new join provides us not only with this information, but a good deal more besides.