The Çineköy Luwian–Phoenician Bilingual

A farmer's plough exposed the monument at Çineköy on 30 October 1997. Museum personnel recovered a composite cult image: a limestone storm-god standing on a basalt chariot drawn by bulls, with the royal text cut on the basalt base. The original publication was prepared by Recai Tekoğlu and André Lemaire with Adana Museum archaeologists İsmet İpek and A. Kazım Tosun. Because the object came from agricultural ground rather than a controlled architectural excavation, its original setting is not securely known. Its physical identity, find locality, scripts, and museum custody are nevertheless well documented. The monument is now displayed at the Adana Archaeology Museum, and modern photographs show both the sculpted deity and the inscribed vehicle that must be read as one royal monument.

The monument combines a limestone figure of the storm god Tarhunza with a basalt wheeled base pulled by two bulls. The base carries parallel versions of a royal inscription in Hieroglyphic Luwian and alphabetic Phoenician. The ruler names himself Warika in the Luwian version and corresponds to Urikki in Phoenician and Assyrian sources; he identifies his dynasty with the house of Mopsos/Muksa and rules Hiyawa, called the Danunians in the Phoenician text and Que in Assyrian records. The surviving text credits divine favor, population and building works, and a political bond in which the king and house of Assyria became father and mother to him and Hiyawa and Assyria became one house. Damage prevents a completely continuous reading, but the bilingual format permits unusually strong cross-checking of names, titles, and political language.

The inscription belongs to Iron Age Cilicia and is normally placed in the eighth century BC. Identifying Warika with Urikki of Que, who appears in the records of Tiglath-pileser III and later Assyrian texts, provides the principal historical synchronism, although the precise point within his career and the monument's exact date remain debated. Cilicia stood between Anatolian, Levantine, and Assyrian spheres, and the deliberate use of Luwian and Phoenician addresses that multilingual political world. The statement that Hiyawa and Assyria formed one house is royal rhetoric, but it is direct evidence that a local ruler publicly framed his position through relationship with Assyria. That is the same broad imperial system pressing westward into the kingdoms described in 2 Kings during the reigns of Tiglath-pileser III and his successors.