Prince Zannanza: Egyptian and Anatolian Perspectives

Sometime in the 14th century BC, the widow of an Egyptian king contacted the Hittite Great King Šuppiluliuma I with the request to send a son of his as her future husband and king of Egypt. Like many episodes of the Amarna Period, this one too remains vague as neither Egyptian nor Hittite sources are sufficient to reconstruct the course of events, let alone their background, in desirable detail, but it is certain that the Hittite prince died before this interdynastic Hittite-Egyptian marriage took place. Among many uncertainties, the name of Prince Zannanza stands out, because it has been subject to utterly contradictory interpretations. On the one hand, it has been judged as a Hittite cuneiform rendering of Egyptian s#-njśwt (or hypothetical *s#-n.j-njśwt) “king’s son” to the result that the entire episode is a fable; on the other hand, it has been understood as a proper Anatolian personal name the etymology of which is unknown. A closer look at the philological and linguistic details shows that Zannanza- cannot be a Hittite cuneiform rendering of Egyptian s#-njśwt (or hypothetical *s#-n.j-njśwt) “king’s son” for reasons of phonology and morphology. Instead Zannanza- belongs to a group of personal names in the Indo-European section of the Anatolian onomasticon with the suffix -anza-. Al­though any attempt at an etymological interpretation remains tentative, the first component of Zannanza may be traced back to a hypothetical Luvian adjective zanna- “sharp, acute, clever”. The name of Prince Zannanza would thus mean “the clever one”.