Šapinuwa was a Bronze Age Hittite city at the location of modern Ortaköy in the province Çorum in Turkey. It was one of the major Hittite religious and administrative centres, a military base and an occasional residence of several Hittite kings. The palace at Sapinuwa is discussed in several texts from Hattusa.
The fire which destroyed Sapinuwa also damaged its archive. Most of the tablets are fragmentary, and must be pieced together before interpretation and translation.
The Building A tablets are mostly in Hittite (1500); but also in Hurrian (600), "Hitto-Hurrian", Akkadian, and Hattian. In addition, there are bilingual texts, not heretofore known, in Hittite / Hattian and in Hittite / Hurrian; vocabulary lists in Hittite / Sumerian / Akkadian; and seal impressions in Hieroglyphic Luwian.
The Hittites commonly invoked the Storm God of Sapinuwa alongside the Storm God of Nerik. Since Hattusa was to the south and Nerik likely further north, both initially Hattic-speaking; given the presence of the Hattic language in the Sapinuwa archive (and apparent paucity of the Palaic language); and given that its name makes sense in Hattic as a theophoric (sapi, "god"; Sapinuwa, "[land] of the god"): it is likely that Hattians founded Sapinuwa as well. In that case, the Nesian-speaking people would have taken over Sapinuwa at the same time they took Nerik and Hattusa, in the 17th century BC.
Oguz Soysal wrote, "The excavators of Ortaköy believe that this city was a second capital of the Hittites or a royal residence, for a specific period, namely during the Middle Hittite Kingdom, ca. late 15th century B.C." However, "Most of the epigraphic finds are dated to the last phase of the Hittite Middle Kingdom (ca. 1400-1380 B.C.)", contemporary with Tudhaliya I and the archive at Maşat Höyük.
The Hittites' enemy at that frontier during the 15th century BC were the Kaskas. It is presumed that the Kaska were responsible for the 14th century BC burnings which turned some of the building materials into coal. The Hittite court moved away, probably to Samuha, and did not rebuild Sapinuwa. + de
