Mythological Time of the Hittites

Abstract

Scholars usually consider the Hittite mythological and epic texts to reflect the narrative traditions of Anatolia, Mesopotamia and Syria, the same as could be said for many other elements of the Hittite culture. Despite the epic texts found in the Hittite archives are often labeled to be foreign or translated literature, the Hittite scribes worked a lot to adapt them to their own worldview. The paper will discuss the temporal aspect of these texts to understand the peculiarities of the Hittite time perception. These texts show little attention to small units of time like day. The only mention of the seven-day-term in the Song of Release can be the feature of Syrian and not Hittite culture. The positive distinction of these texts from their analogues in the rest of the Ancient Near East is the detailed description of the multi-month processes like gestation that can find its counterpart in the ritual texts. The Song of Going Forth have shown the limits of time in the Hittite worldview and gave life to the vivid discussion about how long were the nine years of kingship for the primeval gods. The detailed analysis of all attestations of time periods in the Hittite mythological and epic texts shows that the Hittites had no passion to the great numbers measuring their real or mythological past even with the availability of tools for it, in contrast with other Ancient Near Eastern and Indo-European traditions. These features of time perception in the Hittite myth and epic fit well to our knowledge of the Hittite calendar, based on the periods of one month and of one or several years.