Pasuhalta was an ancient region of Anatolia and one of the lands of the Assuwa coalition that opposed the Hittites toward the end of the fifteenth century BC. It is named only in the Annals of Tudḫaliya, a text that chronicled the acts of Hittite monarch Tudḫaliya I.
Etymology
Pasuhalta has also been transliterated as pasu halta.Özgüç, N. (1993). Aspects of Art and Iconography: Anatolia and Its Neighbors : Studies in Honor of Nimet Özgüç. Türkiye: Türk Tarih Kurumu Basımevi. The Indo-Iranian root pasu means "livestock"Mayrhofer, Manfred. (1996). Etymologisches Wörterbuch des Altindoarischen, volume 2, p. 108. Heidelberg: Carl Winter Universitätsverlag Archive.orgOlsen, Birgit. (2023). An Archaeological Approach to Wool Terminology. The Indo-European Puzzle Revisited: Integrating Archaeology, Genetics, and Linguistics. (2023). United Kingdom: Cambridge University Press. or "cattle."Bianconi, Michele. (2023). Homo Homini Lupus: Anatolian Echoes of Indo-European Ideology, p. 27. Castalia: Studies in Indo-European Linguistics, Mythology, and Poetics. (2023). Germany: Brill.Sasseville, David. “Luwian and Lycian Agent Nouns in *-é-leh2.” Die Sprache 51,1 (2014-2015) (2016): n. pag. Print. Academic.edu The Luwic stem -halta has been translated as "to appeal" or "to call."Sasseville, D. (2020). Anatolian Verbal Stem Formation: Luwian, Lycian and Lydian, p. 38. Netherlands: Brill. Its name suggests one of the cattle-cultures of ancient AnatoliaArbuckle, Benjamin S. (2014). The Rise of Cattle Cultures in Bronze Age Anatolia. Journal of Eastern Mediterranean Archaeology and Heritage Studies, 2 (4): 277–297. as addressed in the Hittite Telipinu myth.Justus, Carol F. (2011). "The Impact of Non-Indo-European Languages on Anatolia." Reconstructing Languages and Cultures, p. 449. Germany: De Gruyter.
Geography
Bryce describes a Hittite cattle raid toward "the south-west" in Arzawiya as early as circa 1650-1620 BC.Bryce, Trevor R., (2018). "The Annals and Lost Golden Statue of the Hittite King Hattusili I", in Gephyra 16, November 2018, pp. 1-12. The subsequent reference to PasuhaltaBryce, Trevor. (1999). The Kingdom of the Hittites. United Kingdom, Oxford University Press. Google Books. (or pasu halta) likewise gives no specific geographic indicators except the vague appellation of Arzawan lands. See generally the debate concerning the location of Assuwa. The Luwic cognate ("pasba") is found on the Xanthian Obelisk.
History
Pasuhalta (or pasu halta) is named as one of the lands that comprised the Assuwa league, a military confederacy of twenty-two towns that opposed the Hittite army as it campaigned west of the Maraššantiya:
As with most of the Assuwan states, it has yet to be located archaeologically.Gander, Max. (2022). The West: Philology, p. 264-266. Hittite Landscape and Geography, Netherlands: Brill. Academia.edu The coalition appears to have been destroyed sometime after 1430 BC.Cline, E. H. (2015). 1177 B.C.: The Year Civilization Collapsed, p. 28–41. United Kingdom: Princeton University Press. Google Books
See also Ancient regions of Anatolia Assuwa
References