A 184-tablet Hittite royal archive describes a fever spreading city to city

Türkiye’s Culture and Tourism Minister, Mehmet Nuri Ersoy, announced on Oct. 8, 2026 that excavators at the Hittite city of Samuha had recovered 131 more cuneiform tablets and fragments, lifting the royal archive there to 184 pieces. Some of the texts, he said, hold traces of a high-fever epidemic that spread from city to city and struck children and infants hardest.

The tablets are about 3,400 years old and come from the reign of King Tudhaliya II. The ministry calls the collection the most extensive Hittite-language archive uncovered in the 21st century, a ranking that, as the ministry words it, applies to texts in the Hittite language and to this century only, and that leaves the far larger archives of the capital, Hattusa, untouched.

Samuha and the 131 new tablets

The site is Kayalıpınar, in the Yıldızeli district of Sivas Province in central Türkiye, which earlier cuneiform finds identified as the ancient Hittite city of Šamuḫa. Daily Sabah reports that the 2026 season produced 131 tablets and fragments, which join 53 recovered in 2025 for the total of 184. The count covers whole tablets and broken pieces together, so it is a count of recovered items, not of complete documents.

Arkeonews adds that Šamuḫa was a major administrative and religious center, a royal residence during unstable periods, and a cult site linked to the Hurrian goddess Šauška, whom scholars identify with Ishtar. Excavations have run under Çiğdem Maner, an associate professor at Koç University, who has led the work since 2021, according to Turkish Minute, with permission from the Culture and Tourism Ministry. The texts are written in Hittite and Hurrian and include letters, prayers, rituals and divination records.

A September 2025 report had already described 56 cuneiform tablets and 22 seal impressions from the site, several recording bird divination in which priests were asked about the fates of royal heirs. The new season more than doubles the number of pieces recovered in 2025, and the 2025 report notes that seal impressions of officials and royal family members were used to authenticate administrative and financial documents, which is the kind of paperwork a royal archive exists to hold.

The fever, the infant princess and the diviners

Ersoy described the texts as holding “traces of a high-fever epidemic that spread from city to city,” as quoted by La Brujula Verde. The records indicate that children and infants were the main victims, and that diviners monitored the health of young princes and princesses and of the children of senior officials. Divination was how a Hittite household asked the gods whether a sick child would live, so the tablets preserve the questions a worried court put to its priests rather than a clinical description of symptoms.

Arkeonews describes one account that follows an infant princess who fell ill in Ziulila, a city whose location is unknown, died, and was given funerary rites. Another tablet shows concern for a princess who was still nursing, with diviners reading omens about her future; a separate tablet records her death and funeral. The disease has not been identified.

That caveat matters: no scientific study with a translation of the tablets has been published yet, so everything known about the epidemic comes from the ministry statement and from the officials and excavators who have spoken about it.

A call for troops and the king at Samuha

The archive is not only medical. One letter, from Hittite generals in western Anatolia to the king at Samuha, warns that enemies surround Hittite territory and asks for soldiers, horses and chariots, cautioning that the army could be destroyed without reinforcements. Another text is a diary-style record of the travels of bird diviners, noting the routes they took, the stops they made and the omens they observed. Daily Sabah adds that the generals said they could not be held responsible for the consequences if no help arrived, a line that places the epidemic and the military emergency in the same reign and the same royal correspondence.

Sivas Governor Yılmaz Şimşek told reporters, per Heritage Daily, that the tablets carry important information on many aspects of Hittite civilisation. Researchers cited there, who have not yet published a formal study, say the archive could illuminate Hittite administration and Late Bronze Age daily life, and describe it as among the most significant Hittite document collections found outside the capital, Hattusa.

Tudhaliya II’s reign is placed around 1400 BC, though specialists disagree on how the Tudhaliyas are numbered and on their exact dates. The first test of the epidemic reading will be the translation: until the 184 pieces are published, the disease, the number of cities it reached and the toll on the royal household remain what the ministry has said and no more.

This article was produced with the assistance of AI and reviewed by Morning Overview editors prior to publication.

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