Isuwa

The Isuwans left no written record of their own, and it is not clear which of the Anatolian peoples inhabited the land of Isuwa prior to the Luwians.

Aram Kosyan identified etymologically Hittite, Luwian, Indo-Iranian (possibly connected to the Mitanni), Hurrian, and Kaskian personal names in Isuwa, as well as a number of anthronyms with unknown or unclear origins.

The Hittite king Hattusili I (c. 1600 BC) is reported to have marched his army across the Euphrates river and destroyed the cities there.

This corresponds with burnt destruction layers discovered by archaeologists at town sites in Isuwa at roughly this date.

The Hittite king Suppiluliuma I records how in the time his father, Tudhaliya II (c. 1400 BC), the land of Isuwa became hostile.

These hostilities lasted into Suppiluliuma's own reign when c. 1350 BC he crossed the Euphrates and entered the land of Isuwa with his troops.

The encounter with the Assyrian king of Tiglath-Pileser I (1115–1077 BC) resulted in Kammanu being forced to pay tribute to Assyria.

The movement of these nomadic people may have weakened Kammanu before the final Assyrian invasion, which probably caused the decline of settlements and culture in this area from the seventh century BC until the Roman period.

The Turkish Southeastern Anatolia Project which started in the 1960s resulted in the Keban, Karakaya and Atatürk Dam which entirely flooded the river valley when completed in the 1970s.

A great salvage campaign was undertaken in the upper Euphrates river valley at instigation of the president of the dam project Kemal Kurdaş.

The sites of Ikizepe, Korucutepe, Norşuntepe and Pulur around the Murat (Arsanias) river, a tributary of the Euphrates to the east, revealed large Bronze Age settlements from the fourth to the second millennium BC.

Today an Italian team of archaeologists led by Marcella Frangipane are working at the site and studying the surrounding area.