Hittite Religious Rituals and the Ideology of Kingship

Abstract

AbstractWhat did the victorious Hittite king do on his return home from battle? Surprisingly perhaps, the pertinent Hittite sources offer different, even contradictory answers to this question. For a study of the relations between ritual practices and political power in the Hittite Kingdom, however, the question is not without interest. The occasion of the victorious return of the king from battle lends itself splendidly to, even calls for, a conscious use of ritual activity for the manifestation of political power. It will be argued that the evidence concerning the ritual activities of the Hittite king on his return from war show no conscious attempt to mould ritual practices into political goals or to exploit the glory of battles just won for a demonstration of power. This fact may shed a new light on the relations between ritual activity and political power in the context of the Hittite empire and its characteristic textual inheritance.