Mursilis II's «Comprehensive Annals»: Just a Textological Conventionality?
Nemirovsky Alexandr A.
Do all fragments of the so-called Mursilis II's Comprehensive Annals really belong to one narrative? Hittite tablets KBo V 8 and KBo II 5 (each one of them describing campaigns of Mursilis II in Kaska Lands on the one hand, and in Pala, Tummanna and Kalasma on the other) are considered by specialists to contain parts of the same narrative, the so-called Mursilis' Comprehensive Annals (in this case the text of KBo V 8 would render earlier events more than those rendered by KBo II 5). A detailed comparison of the texts under discussion shows, nevertheless, that both tablets are largely parallel in content and give account, in partly different ways, of the same events of Mursilis' reign (e.g., Kaska campaign of KBo V 8 I 1 - II 7 = Kaska campaign of KBo II 5 II 1-52; campaign in Tummanna-Kalasma of KBo V 8 II 8-IV 22, where Nuwanzas is mentioned, corresponds to destroyed passages in KBo II 5 III 1-28, where Nuwanzas is mentioned too, and tells about the beginning of Kaasma war, the next phase of which is rendered in KBo II 5 III 29-IV 28). Thus, KBo II 5 and KBo V 8 belong to different versions of Mursilis' Annals, and not to the same narrative.