A View of Hittite Literature

Abstract

IN ATTEMPTING TO GIVE an outline of Hittite we shall try to take term literature in its specific sense, considering as mainly such compositions as myths, epics, prayers, and what little exists of poetry. We shall have to include historiography, because narrative was a field in which Hittites excelled from early times on and because many texts have their merits also as compositions. We are, however, aware of fact that our definition of literature is not that of ancients. Professor Oppenheim in a recent article' pointed out that great majority of texts forming what he calls the stream of tradition of Babylonia-others have called it canon because of standardization it underwent around 1000 B.C.-is in sense that it consists of material scribes considered essential for their training, and that its bulk is made up by word lists, omens, and prescriptions for exorcistic rites. The preference given to these kinds of texts reflects an encyclopedic approach, as Professor Landsberger was first to point out, insofar as word lists aim at covering entire vocabulary, omens consider all possible occurrences that could be taken as portentous, and magic rites also aim at complete coverage. As far as Hittites are concerned, we shall see that their scribes used this main stream of Babylonian tradition as syllabus in their training, too. But they also produced other classes of texts that from our point of view are non-literary, while they themselves treated them as part of their literature. This last statement is based on an observation of contents of various tablet collections found in different locations within Hittite capital, Bogazkoy. Such a study is rendered difficult by fact that unfortunately tablets found before World War I in three different locations were hopelessly mixed after they had reached museum. In contrast to this, find spots of all tablets found after First War have been carefully recorded. Some notes of first excavator, Hugo Winckler, were recently rediscovered by Professor Otten; they give find spots of a little over one hundred texts2-out of 10,000 fragments found in those early excavations! Taken together with what was later found in same buildings as well as in some others, and also taking into account what texts were absent in places recently excavated, one can get a rough, though incomplete, picture of contents of various collections. It would seem that one building in particular deserves name library. This is a building situated on slope of acropolis, above temple of city, partly excavated by Winckler in 1911 and re-investigated in recent years including campaigns of 1960 and 1961.3 Most of what may be called scholarly and literary texts seem to have been kept there: vocabularies, omens, epics, and texts of historical tradition-categories to which we shall return. On other hand, largest number of state treaties was found by Winckler in temple precinct; this fits statement contained in some treaties that they were deposited in temple. However, majority of texts found in each