Religions of Second Millennium Anatolia

Religions of Second Millennium Anatolia

Author: Piotr Taracha

Publisher: Otto Harrassowitz Verlag

Published: 2009

Total Pages: 252

ISBN-13: 9783447058858

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This book examines Hittite religion from a historical point of view, stressing two basically different stages in its development. The Old Hittite pantheon of the capital Hattu'a maintains the indigenous religious tradition of the Hattians without any trace of Mesopotamian, Hurrian or Syrian influence, although Hittite and Luwian deities were worshiped in the family and house cults. The Hittite religion of the Empire period has been examined from a new viewpoint. At the time there were two offi cial pantheons in the state and the dynastic cult respectively. The former is an amalgam of Hattian, Hittite, Luwian, Hurrian, Syrian and Mesopotamian deities organized on a geographical principle, whereas the latter is purely Hurrian, refl ecting the religious beliefs of the new royal family of Kizzuwatnan origin that also infl uenced local pantheons of central and northern Anatolia. Through the Hurrians, Mesopotamian and Syrian cults were adopted. Simultaneously, many aspects of the Luwian religious tradition were absorbed into both the state and local cults.


Officials and Administration in the Hittite World

Officials and Administration in the Hittite World

Author: Tayfun Bilgin

Publisher: Walter de Gruyter GmbH & Co KG

Published: 2018-12-03

Total Pages: 524

ISBN-13: 1501509772

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There are few studies that deal with an overall treatment of the Hittite administrative system, and various other works on its offices and officials have tended to be limited in scope, focusing only on certain groups or certain time periods. This book provides a comprehensive investigation of the administrative organization of the Hittite state throughout its history (ca. 1650–1180 BCE) with particular emphasis on the state offices and their officials. Bringing together previous works and updating with data recovered in recent years, the study presents a detailed survey of the high offices of the state, a prosopographical study of about 140 high officials, and a theoretical analysis of the Hittite administration in respect to factors such as hierarchy, kinship, and diachronical changes.


The Kingdom of the Hittites

The Kingdom of the Hittites

Author: Trevor Bryce

Publisher: Oxford University Press

Published: 2005

Total Pages: 575

ISBN-13: 019927908X

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Translations from the original texts are a particular feature of the book. Thus on many issues the Hittites and their contemporaries are allowed to speak to the modern reader for themselves."--BOOK JACKET.


Hittite Texts and Greek Religion

Hittite Texts and Greek Religion

Author: Ian Rutherford

Publisher: Oxford University Press

Published: 2020-09-23

Total Pages: 320

ISBN-13: 019259995X

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Our knowledge of ancient Greece has been transformed in the last century by an increased understanding of the cultures of the Ancient Near East. This is particularly true of ancient religion. This book looks at the relationship between the religious systems of Ancient Greece and the Hittites, who controlled Turkey in the Late Bronze Age (1400-1200 BC). The cuneiform texts preserved in the Hittite archives provide a particularly rich source for religious practice, detailing festivals, purification rituals, oracle-consultations, prayers, and myths of the Hittite state, as well as documenting the religious practice of neighbouring Anatolian states in which the Hittites took an interest. Hittite religion is thus more comprehensively documented than any other ancient religious tradition in the Near East, even Egypt. The Hittites are also known to have been in contact with Mycenaean Greece, known to them as Ahhiyawa. The book first sets out the evidence and provides a methodological paradigm for using comparative data. It then explores cases where there may have been contact or influence, such as in the case of scapegoat rituals or the Kumarbi-Cycle. Finally, it considers key aspects of religious practices shared by both systems, such as the pantheon, rituals of war, festivals, and animal sacrifice. The aim of such a comparison is to discover clues that may further our understanding of the deep history of religious practices and, when used in conjunction with historical data, illuminate the differences between cultures and reveal what is distinctive about each of them.


Nairi Lands

Nairi Lands

Author: Guido Guarducci

Publisher: Oxbow Books

Published: 2019-12-19

Total Pages: 664

ISBN-13: 1789252792

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This study analyses the social and symbolic value of the material culture, in particular the pottery production and the architecture, and the social structure of the local communities of a broad area encompassing Eastern Anatolia, the South Caucasus and North-western Iran during the last phase of the Late Bronze Age and the Early Iron Age. This broad area is known from the Assyrian texts as ‘Nairi lands’. The second part of the study, furnishes a reassessment of pottery production characteristics and theories, as well as of the socio-economic structure and issues, tied to the sedentary and mobile local communities of the Nairi lands. The study brings into focus the characteristics, the extension and the distribution of Grooved pottery, along with other pottery typologies, by providing an accompanying online catalogue with detailed descriptions and high-resolution images of the pots and sherds obtained from public and private institutions in Turkey and Armenia. Moreover, the socio-political organisation and subsistence economy issues are addressed in order to advance a possible reconstruction of the social structure of the Nairi lands communities. Particular attention is devoted to the pastoral nomad component and the role played within the Nairi phenomenon. The study includes a very large corpus of text images and high-resolution color images of the pottery of the area under examination, gathered by the author in order to offer a reliable tool and compendium.


Contacts of Languages and Peoples in the Hittite and Post-Hittite World

Contacts of Languages and Peoples in the Hittite and Post-Hittite World

Author: Federico Giusfredi

Publisher: BRILL

Published: 2023-07-03

Total Pages: 540

ISBN-13: 9004548637

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Ever since the early 2nd millennium BCE, Pre-Classical Anatolia has been a crossroads of languages and peoples. Indo-European peoples – Hittites, Luwians, Palaeans – and non-Indo-European ones – Hattians, but also Assyrians and Hurrians – coexisted with each other for extended periods of time during the Bronze Age, a cohabitation that left important traces in the languages they spoke and in the texts they wrote. By combining, in an interdisciplinary fashion, the complementary approaches of linguistics, history, and philology, this book offers a comprehensive, state-of-the-art study of linguistic and cultural contacts in a region that is often described as the bridge between the East and the West. With contributions by Paola Cotticelli-Kurras, Alfredo Rizza, Maurizio Viano, and Ilya Yakubovich.


Letters of the Great Kings of the Ancient Near East

Letters of the Great Kings of the Ancient Near East

Author: Trevor Bryce

Publisher: Routledge

Published: 2004-03-01

Total Pages: 286

ISBN-13: 1134575858

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Offering fascinating insights into the people and politics of the ancient near Eastern kingdoms, Trevor Bryce uses the letters of the five Great Kings of Egypt, Babylon, Hatti, Mitanni and Assyria as the focus of a fresh look at this turbulent and volatile region in the late Bronze Age. Numerous extracts from the letters are constantly interwoven into the fabric of narrative and discussion, and this lively approach allows us to witness history through the eyes of the people who lived it, revealing the personalities and reactions of kings, queens, princes, princesses and royal officials more than 3500 years ago to the current events of the day.


Religious Convergence in the Ancient Mediterranean

Religious Convergence in the Ancient Mediterranean

Author: Sandra Blakely

Publisher: Lockwood Press

Published: 2019-12-15

Total Pages: 597

ISBN-13: 1948488175

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This volume brings together scholars in religion, archaeology, philology, and history to explore case studies and theoretical models of converging religions. The twenty-four essays offered in this volume, which derive from Hittite, Cilician, Lydian, Phoenician, Greek, and Roman cultural settings, focus on encounters at the boundaries of cultures, landscapes, chronologies, social class and status, the imaginary, and the materially operative. Broad patterns ultimately emerge that reach across these boundaries, and suggest the state of the question on the study of convergence, and the potential fruitfulness for comparative and interdisciplinary studies as models continue to evolve.