BĪT BUNAKKI (or Bīt Burnakki/Purnakki), the name of an Elamite border city mentioned frequently in the eighth and seventh centuries in neo-Assyrian texts. It is first mentioned during the reign of Shamshi-Adad V; it then appears in a letter to king Sargon II and again in the royal inscriptions of Sermacherib, Esarhaddon, and Ashurbanipal. One text notes that the people of Mihranu call the city Pitanu (cf. Zadok, p. 136). In one inscription Bīt Bunakki is called a royal city. The location of Bīt Bunakki is not known. It is near or in the mountains, as the “passes of Bīt Bunakki” are noted, and it is located near Rāši, east of Dēr (modern Badra), in one text.
Bibliography:
W. Hinz and H. Koch, Elamisches Wörterbuch, 2 pts., AMI Erg.-b. 17, Berlin, 1987, I, pp. 390-91, s.v. uru.ı.v.bunakki.
F. W. König in Reallexikon der Assyriologie, Berlin and Leipzig, 1938, II, p. 38.
Répertoire géographique des texts cunéiformes, Tübinger Atlas des Vorderen Orients, Beihefte, Reihe B, vol. 7/8, Wiesbaden, 1985, vol. VIII: R. Zadok, Geographical Names According to New- and Late-Babylonian Texts, p. 99.
R. Zadok, “Iranian and Babylonian Notes,” Archiv für Orientforschung 28, 1981-82, pp. 135-39 (esp. p. 137a; suggests Iranian origin of the name, from *-pṛna-ka “filled with X”).
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(Louis D. Levine)
Originally Published: December 15, 1989
Last Updated: December 15, 1989
This article is available in print.
Vol. IV, Fasc. 3, pp. 307-308
