Ià ¡tanuwa was a town in Bronze Age Anatolia located along the à  aḫiriya river and known to the Hittites as the site of a regional religious festival. Its inhabitants were Luwic speakers. Cultic practices associated with the town are believed to have been antecedents of the same tradition that spawned the Iliad and the Odyssey.
The toponym Ià ¡tanuwa is named only in the Luwian ritual texts known as the Songs of Ià ¡tanuwa and the Songs of the Men of Lallupiya. Woudhuizen regarded it as an Arzawan word that originated before "the infiltration of Thracian and Phrygian population groups" ultimately derived from the Indo-Iranian root istan ("land") and the foreign ethnic designation nuwÃÂ-um ("Luwian"). Laroche believed it was a Hittite word that "must be derived from that of the Anatolian Sun deity" Istanu and the nominal stem -wa so prominent in Taurisan Luwian. An alternate spelling of Aà ¡tanuwa is found in Assyrian records.
The language of Ià ¡tanuwa is now understood as a dialect of luwili, perhaps influenced by an unknown Arzawan language. Called ià ¡tanumnili by the Hittites, it lacked some of the innovative forms (genitive plural and related adjectives) of luwili and appears to have been regarded as a separate language.
Ià ¡tanuwa was located "in the Luwian-speaking territories west and southwest of Hatti proper," near the Sakarya River in classical Phrygia at or near Gordion.
There are thirty-six texts dated to the 1500s BC which mention Ià ¡tanuwa, all of which contain Hittite descriptions of the men of the town undertaking religious rituals or celebrations and/or the gods of the polity themselves. The opening line of one song - "When they came to steep Wilusa" has been interpreted to suggest a Luwian counterpart to the Homeric traditions of Ancient Greece, where "the Hittites participated in the network of traveling poets who were the ancestors of the poets working in the oral tradition that eventually produced the Illiad."
Certain rituals have been linked to the subsequent Greek cult of Cybele. The town seems to have been a regional cult center, with a local festival lasting several days. The appearance of the Hittite great king and queen suggests a corresponding festival at Hattusa attended by the men of Ià ¡tanuwa. The religious celebrations included chants in the local dialect as well as specific ritual conduct:
Some of the deities attested for Istanuwa included the grain god Warwaliya, the wine god Winiyanda, the dancing god Tarwaliya, the field god Immarà ¡iya, the trade god Iyaà ¡alla, the protective god Runtiya, the plague god Iyarri and the garden goddess Maliya.
The tyoponym Ià ¡tanuwa disappeared with the emergence of the Phrygians, either already resident west of the à  aḫiriya river or in the process of immigrating from Thrace and Macedonia.