Contained in:
Book Chapter

A Quantitative Analysis of Theonyms and Panthea in the Hittite Cult Inventories

  • Michele Cammarosano

The riches of the Hittite tablet collections are justly famous for the great mass of information they provide about deities, cult, and religious beliefs all over the Kingdom of Hattusa. The sheer amount of available texts and the fragmented state of many of them pose nontrivial problems for any systematic study of the Hittite religion. Expanding on the digital edition of the so-called cult inventories (CTH 526-530, ca. 450 fragments) and exploiting the potential of the related database, this paper provides for the first time a quantitative analysis of the panthea of local towns in the core area of the kingdom in the Late Empire period. The study is organized in two parts. Part One sets out the methodological basis for the analysis by examining the target corpus in terms of internal consistency, discussing the appropriateness of a distinction between “state” vs. “nonstate” cults both within the perspective of the current discourse on Hittite religion and specifically with regard to its consequences for the proposed analysis, and laying out the analytical principles used in the extraction of the relevant information. Part Two presents selected sets of data, explores ways to interpret and combine them, and investigates their significance for the study of local panthea in the Late Empire. The results are twofold. On the one hand, an innovative picture of the panthea under discussion is obtained, with substantial implications for our understanding of a number of deities, their relationship to each other, and their role within the religious life of provincial communities. On the other hand, the critical scrutiny of the nature and specific traits of the data sample highlights methodological pitfalls in a purely quantitative analysis of Hittite religious texts, and proposes correctives for mitigating their impact, thereby providing a significant case study for future research.

  • Keywords:
  • Hittite religion,
  • ancient Anatolia,
  • quantitative research,
  • centre-periphery studies,
+ Show More

Michele Cammarosano

University of Naples L'Orientale, Italy - ORCID: 0000-0003-3571-9544

  1. Beckman, Gary. 2004. “Pantheon. A. II. Bei den Hethitern”. Reallexikon der Assyriologie und vorderasiatischen Archäologie 10: 308-16.
  2. Cammarosano, Michele. 2012. “Hittite Cult Inventories - Part Two: The Dating of the Texts and the Alleged ‘Cult Reorganization’ of Tudhaliya IV”. Altorientalische Forschungen 39: 3-37.
  3. Cammarosano, Michele. 2013. “Hittite Cult Inventories - Part One: The Hittite Cult Inventories as Textual Genre”. Welt des Orients 43: 63-105.
  4. Cammarosano, Michele. 2018. Hittite Local Cults. Atlanta: Society of Biblical Literature (WAW 40). DOI: 10.2307/j.ctv6gqxkm
  5. Cammarosano, Michele. 2021. At the Interface of Religion and Administration: The Hittite Cult Inventories. With a contribution by Adam Kryszeń. Wiesbaden: Harrassowitz (StBoT 68).
  6. Corti, Carlo. 2017. “From Mt. Hazzi to Šapinuwa. Cultural Traditions in Motion in the First Half of the 14th Century BC”. Mesopotamia 52: 3-20.
  7. Gilan, Amir. 2021. “‘Let Those Important Primeval Deities Listen’: The Social Setting of the Hurro-Hittite Song of Emergence”. In Gods and Mortals in Early Greek and Near Eastern Mythology, eds. Adrian Kelly, and Christopher Metcalf, 19-36. Cambridge: CUP.
  8. Goetze, Albrecht. 1933/1957. Kleinasien. München: Beck (1st ed. 1933; 2nd ed. 1957).
  9. Houwink ten Cate, Philo H. J. 1992. “The Hittite Storm-God: His Role and His Rule According to Hittite Cuneiform Sources.” In Natural Phenomena: Their Meaning, Depiction and Description in the Ancient Near East, ed. Diederik J.W. Meijer, 83-148. Amsterdam: North-Holland.
  10. Hutter, Manfred. 2021. Religionsgeschichte Anatoliens: Vom Ende des dritten bis zum Beginn des ersten Jahrtausends. Stuttgart: Kohlhammer.
  11. Kryszeń, Adam. 2021. “The geography of the Hittite cult inventories”. In At the Interface of Religion and Administration: The Hittite Cult Inventories, ed. Michele Cammarosano, 31-62. Wiesbaden: Harrassowitz (StBoT 68).
  12. Laroche, Emmanuel. 1975. “La réforme religiuse du roi Tudhaliya IV et sa signification politique.” In Les syncrétisme dans les religions de l’Antiquité, Colloque de Besançon (22–23 Octobre 1973), eds. Françoise Dunand, and Pierre Lévêque, 87-94. Leiden: Brill.
  13. McMahon, Gregory. 1991. The Hittite State Cult of the Tutelary Deities. Chicago: The Oriental Institute of the University of Chicago (AS 25).
  14. Miller, Jared L. 2013. Royal Hittite Instructions and Related Administrative Texts. Atlanta: Society of Biblical Literature (WAW 31).
  15. Mouton, Alice. 2021. Review of Cammarosano 2018. Syria DOI: 10.4000/syria.11322
  16. Neve, Peter. 1987. “Boğzköy-Ḫattuša: Ergebnisse der Ausgrabungen in der Oberstadt”. Anatolica 14: 41-71.
  17. Rieken, Elisabeth, and Daniel Schwemer. 2022. "hethiter.net/: HFR Einleitung (2022-05-12)". https://www.hethport.uni-wuerzburg.de/HFR/, last visited 02/08/2023.
  18. Schwemer, Daniel. 2006. “Das hethitische Reichspantheon: Überlegungen zu Struktur und Genese”. In Götterbilder – Gottesbilder – Weltbilder. Polytheismus und Monotheismus in der Welt der Antike. Bd. I: Ägypten, Mesopotamien, Kleinasien, Syrien, Palästina, eds. Reinhard Kratz, and Hermann Spieckermann, 241-65. Tübingen: Siebeck & Mohr (Forschungen zum Alten Testament 2/17).
  19. Schwemer, Daniel. 2016. “Quality Assurance Managers at Work: The Hittite Festival Tradition”. In Liturgie oder Literatur? Die Kultrituale der Hethiter im transkulturellen Vergleich: Akten eines Werkstattgesprächs an der Akademie der Wissenschaften und der Literatur Mainz, 2.–3. Dezember 2010, ed. Gerfrid G. W. Müller, 1-29. Wiesbaden: Harrassowitz (StBoT 60).
  20. Schwemer, Daniel 2022. “Religion and Power”. In Handbook Hittite Empire: Power Structures, ed. Stefano de Martino, 355-419. Berlin–New York: de Gruyter (Empires through the Ages in Global Perspective 1).
  21. Singer, Itamar. 1994. “The Thousand Gods of Hatti: The Limits of an Expanding Pantheon”. In Concepts of the Other in Near Eastern Religions, eds. Ilai Alon, Ithamar Gruenwald, and Itamar Singer, 81-102. Leiden: Brill.
PDF
  • Publication Year: 2023
  • Pages: 69-88
  • Content License: CC BY 4.0
  • © 2023 Author(s)

XML
  • Publication Year: 2023
  • Content License: CC BY 4.0
  • © 2023 Author(s)

Chapter Information

Chapter Title

A Quantitative Analysis of Theonyms and Panthea in the Hittite Cult Inventories

Authors

Michele Cammarosano

Language

English

DOI

10.36253/979-12-215-0109-4.09

Peer Reviewed

Publication Year

2023

Copyright Information

© 2023 Author(s)

Content License

CC BY 4.0

Metadata License

CC0 1.0

Bibliographic Information

Book Title

Theonyms, Panthea and Syncretisms in Hittite Anatolia and Northern Syria

Book Subtitle

Proceedings of the TeAI Workshop Held in Verona, March 25-26, 2022

Editors

Livio Warbinek, Federico Giusfredi

Peer Reviewed

Number of Pages

194

Publication Year

2023

Copyright Information

© 2023 Author(s)

Content License

CC BY 4.0

Metadata License

CC0 1.0

Publisher Name

Firenze University Press

DOI

10.36253/979-12-215-0109-4

ISBN Print

979-12-215-0108-7

eISBN (pdf)

979-12-215-0109-4

Series Title

Studia Asiana

Series ISSN

1974-7837

Series E-ISSN

2612-808X

163

Fulltext
downloads

128

Views

Export Citation

1,329

Open Access Books

in the Catalogue

2,077

Book Chapters

3,709,757

Fulltext
downloads

4,287

Authors

from 902 Research Institutions

of 65 Nations

65

scientific boards

from 347 Research Institutions

of 43 Nations

1,245

Referees

from 379 Research Institutions

of 38 Nations