#damn i love the hittites

[apollosgiftofprophecy]

i love thinking about apollos anatolian origins 😵‍💫

It stews in the back of my head too :3

There was this really good podcast on Spotify I found about Ancient Greece, and I listened to his Apollo episode first (because I honestly can't stomach the ones who paint him as 'terrible assaulter'/'epitome of the patriarchy'. Can't stand it. Seriously, there was this so-called 'feminist' mythology podcast i found and I Noped out of there as fast as I could - she didn't even mention Eros's involvement in the Daphne myth! She immediately went 'Apollo: the man who doesn't know the meaning of No' and I was like I'M OUTTA HERE.)

(It's very hard to find good Apollo content out there when you have educated yourself on what he's actually like :( )

(At least you immediately know those people didn't do their research shrug)

Thankfully, this one had a really good, really in-depth discussion about Apollo; his origins, his domains, his myths, ect!

COMPLETELY FREE OF BIAS TOO! HE JUST GIVES YOU THE FACTS, THE SYMBOLISM OF THE MYTHS, HOW THE CULTURE INFLUENCED THEM, ECT!

On my first (and only rn) listen I was like "damn i need to take notes on this sometime" that's how in-depth it is!

Here's the episode link if anybody is interested, btw!

What's cool is that he said that before Apollo came along, oracles and the like weren't as common in Greece - they existed, because Gaea was a thing - however, when he was imported in (possibly also with Leto! She has Anatolian origins too!), oracles became more of a thing as Apollo's popularity skyrocketed!

If you look at the number of Oracles Apollo had, you'd also notice that a lot of them are in Anatolia (Turkey today)!. Didyma, Miletus, Claros, ect ect! I think this just adds to the theory that Apollo's main origins come from Anatolia! When he moved to Greece, oracles came with him!

Which is so cool because in my drafts I currently have a picture of a webchart I made of Apollo's (many) domains, and I narrowed down the ones I think are his Big Ones - and Prophecy is one of them.

Very cool that Prophecy has always been part of him <3

Also, Apollo has many cities he is the patron of in Anatolia - Troy is obvious, but the island of Tenedos was his too (his son Tenes founded the city there), and he was the patron of Miletus (the city where he met Branchus btw for my Branchus fans out there)!

And going to Leto real quick, her migration from Anatolia religion to Greece's is probably represented in the Hymn to Apollo! Sometimes myths about wandering from place to place were meant to symbolize the importation of a god (Aphrodite floating ashore of Cythera, for example), and Leto...well, she was doing a lot more than the typical wandering in the hymn, but it still fits!

Some versions say she was guided to Delos by wolves from Hyperborea, others say Boreas helped her escape Python, still others claim a rooster was present when she finally was able to give birth and thus became her sacred animal (also she apparently gave birth to Apollo as a wolf? I don't quite remember which version says that but it's something I've heard XD).

Also Delos was very self-conscious about Apollo being born on it because it was afraid he would judge it for not being up to typical island standards XD

Moving to Apaliunas now! He's a Hittite god, but I haven't been able to find out of what :( The main piece of evidence we have of his relation with Apollo is Troy - Apaliunas was the god of Wilusa, who has been found out to be another name for Troy! There was a treaty signed between Wilusa and another city, and the representative of Wilusa's name was commonly translated to "Of Ilios" - and Ilios was another name for Illium, aka Troy.

(Fun fact: The son Apollo had with Ourea was named Ileus, after Troy! They are but a footnote in mythology but I made them Important in my Troy fic XD)

Plus, Apaliunas's name was connected to the Hittite reflex of Apeljōn, which scholars have theorized to be an early form of Apollo's name - remember Apollon? :D

Apollo also has connections to various other deities - the Italian Etruscan god Apulu (Aplu), the Celtic god Grannus, his Egyptian equivalent is Horus and his Phoenician one is Resheph! He's also been identified with Baldur from Norse mythology.

Apollo be wearing that trenchcoat, and he is wearing it well XD

[sisterofiris]

Hi, my name is sisterofiris and I’m here to provide you with extremely niche Hittite memes

[creacherkeeper]

The thing is, when you live so long, you forget a lot of things. 

Like, where Crowley was when the Black Plague started, he doesn’t remember. Where he was when the French Revolution ended, he doesn’t remember (he does remember the crepes were pretty good, but that’s neither here nor there). 

Languages! Crowley could do without languages. Messy human business, that. There was a certain pleasure to them--learning a hundred different ways to tell someone to fuck off was rather satisfying, and some of those languages got pretty creative on the delivery of the cursing. And of course, demons could take all the credit they want for mistranslations (Crowley in particular took credit for Google Translate), but mostly that was all human business. They spoke a lot of languages, those humans, and there were a lot of glorious ways to mess that up. 

So, it really shouldn’t be surprising that, though he’d learned many of them (or--bits and pieces, at least) over his 6,000 year lifespan, Crowley had forgotten a lot of languages. Akkadian spends a couple hundred years dead, and whoop, that one’s gone. Hittite he’d forgotten almost immediately. And they didn’t have to be a dead language for him to forget it, either. Mostly, he just falls out of practice.

The thing about Aziraphale is that he reads a lot. He’s reading constantly, whatever books he can get his hands on, in whatever language they happen to be in. And he loves translations. He once spent a week reading every translation of a book he didn’t even like, just to see if he’d like it better in a different language. So, things slip into his vocabulary. Just little phrases, little words. And Crowley notices them—it doesn’t just get translated like their speech does for humans. When Aziraphale wants to say je ne sais quoi, that’s what he says. Not their celestial equivalent, but the actual French. And French is what Crowley hears.

Some things, he understands. Some, he picks up on in time. Some things, though, he swears Aziraphale says just to mess with him.

Like when he scoots past him at the table, letting loose a little, “Excuse me, grazie, cuore mio.” And if Aziraphale’s ears look a little pink, well, that’s probably the wine getting to him.

Or when Crowley casually offers up some trinket he’s procured at the shops, just a little thing that he knows the angel would love, some bookmark or a new mug, and Aziraphale beams and says, “I’ll treasure it, Schatz.” Well, that must mean thank you.

When they finally get around to trying that Korean place that’s opened up near Crowley’s flat, and the waiter sets the meals on the table in front of them. Well, Crowley might be imagining the waiter’s smile when Aziraphale says, “Meokja, yeo-bo.” He might’ve imagined the waiter’s smile, but he’ll find he has a flat tire when he’s done with his shift all the same, just for being in on the joke.

It’s all the little things that build up—a “golubchik” here, a “lirvaya, yakir” there. A lot of the time, he means to google them, but the sounds slip out of his brain before he can get back to his flat and pull up Google Translate (which, okay, admittedly, was not his doing).

It takes one last “mi cielito” before Crowley finally snaps.

“I know these languages!” he shouts, and Aziraphale raises his eyebrows at the sudden outburst. They’re just in the bookshop, at least, so there’s no one around to hear them. “Or, at least—I mean, I recognize them. I know of them, I—” He huffs, crossing his arms and then uncrossing them. “But these words, I swear I’ve never heard them before in my life.”

Aziraphale, damn the bastard, actually looks a little sad at that. “Never?”

“I- No, never. At least, I don’t think.”

“Well.” He tries to pull on a smile. “We shall have to remedy that, won’t we, my love?”

And that’s … that’s when it all starts to slot together for Crowley. Suddenly, all these little phrases start to make sense. It’s not Aziraphale showing off, or taunting him—two things which would probably make more sense for Crowley to do.

Won’t we, my love?

Crowley’s ears go pink.

“Still need a dictionary?” Aziraphale says, and, okay, there may be just a pinch of teasing involved.

“Uuuhm. No, no, I think I got it, uh …” Crowley wracks his brain. He’s holding a hand out for any language he can think of, but most of them are just giving him inventive insults. “My … cinnamon?”

God. Fourteenth century. Why did his brain have to go 14th century?

He winces as Aziraphale laughs, standing and crossing over to him. He’s still chuckling as he reaches down to press a kiss into Crowley’s hair.

“It’s alright, my dear,” he says. “You’ll get better at it.” 

[xanthiasonadonkey]

For the (Iron) throne

Hittite rulers would love George Martin's fantasy epic, and no one can convince me otherwise: messed up families? Backstabbing nobles? Humans being humans in all the best and worst ways? Feels familiar.

Imagine Hattusili I obsessed with Aegon's conquest Telepinu shaking his head sadly every time stupid shit happens because of the damn uncomfortable chair. Suppiluliuma I defending Tywin Lannister. Passionately. Also, drawing maps of fictional battles. catch Mursili II reading for the complex characters ("The human heart in conflict with itself" TM), but, frankly, preferring Ursula K. Le Guin. Muwatalli would be somewhat disappointed - because where are the actual battles? - but find the political storyline sadly familiar. Hattusili III would be a Stannis stan, and not even notice the irony. Puduhepa would be all over the mystical side of the story, all the prophecies and religions (but fail to see why they can't coexist)

[221bshrlocked]

Your ask box is gonna be full Of panties and screams for Seb!

Once again I lost the ask for the archaeologist Seb one but you know who you are who requested this so I hope you enjoy it :) NSFW gifs under cut…this came out longer than expected btw.

He was being an asshole. He knew he was. But he also knew that he couldn’t show any signs of preferences towards the TAs. It’s not like any of them worked under him to begin with or needed to be on his good side to get a job. On the contrary, none of them ever even took his courses before. But he was replaced last minute as the linguistics pro on the dig team. So in reality, he didn’t even have the right to criticize your work.

But he just couldn’t stop himself. He wanted to see that blush going down your neck so often and sure as hell wasn’t about to compliment you to see it. Whatever he could do just so he doesn’t stare at your sweaty skin for too long. God damn every time you were in one of the dig holes, he’d see you moving so eloquently around and making sure everything was perfect and it was such a weird turn on. The way you ordered the less experienced students around or helped them with something they were about to royally fuck up.

The things he’d do to have you moaning beneath him. He thought for a split second you were interested as well, the way you licked your lips whenever he blurted out those stupid ‘fun facts,’ but there was no way. And then there was the shameless checking out when he lifted the tools and set them in the cars. He’d hate to admit it but he always put on a show whenever you were around, choosing to do extra work just to show off. It was so stupid though because you wouldn’t look at him while there were guys your age here. Right?

He was snapped out of his thoughts when he heard you laughing and joking around with another TA, beer in one hand and books on the floor while you kept on fanning yourself.

“It’s a bull hunt not a fucking war with the goats Matt!” You recorded some more stuff before smiling at something he said. “Oh you can’t possibly believe that do you.”

“All I’m saying is, he’s just comparing himself with the ‘victorious bull’…doin the nasty business with the great royal wife. I’m telling you, there are some inuendoes in there.”

“Okay first of all, no. Just no. The Bull Hunt Scarab of Amenhotep III has nothing to do with whatever the fuck you’re saying alright. Now, if you really want to read some sexy stuff, check out the letters with the Hittites. Oh man, I ship those kings so hard.” He splashed water on you and you started laughing again, eyes falling on Sebastian and suddenly losing your train of thoughts because the things this man could do to you just from giving you the death stare.

“What’re we talking about?” He came and sat down opposite of you, making Matt straighten up and snort before he shook his head.

“I was just telling Y/N over here that the Egyptians liked to hide some personal things in their stelas.”

“It’s a scarab not a stela.” You corrected him, not wanting to look up or say anything else because of course Sebastian was going to tell you that you’re wrong.

“The one from his 2nd regnal year?” He kept on looking at you writing stuff down, his eyes following the sweat dripping between your cleavage.

“Yeah. I was just telling him that Queen Tiye’s name appears in many inscriptions like this one because she was deified.”

“Well, she was deified later in Upper Nubia but not during the time this scarab was made so I wouldn’t say that.” He chuckled, blinking and looking away when you gave him that look.

“She was the most influential woman during his reign…is that a better reason?” You couldn’t help but slap back at him, the heat going straight to your head. “I- well I was just saying…” Sebastian stuttered, making you mentally pat yourself on the back.

“But yes you are right. It’s for that reason that he called her-”

“bi3it.” You cut him off again, finishing your beer before standing up and excusing yourself.

“What does that mean?” Matt wasn’t following along to any of what just transpired. He did, however, notice the way Sebastian looked at you when you walked back into the house.

“Marvel.”

“You know-” Matt was about to say something when he held up his hands as soon as Sebastian gave him the ‘shut the fuck up’ look he gave the other new students when they didn’t know what the hell was going on.

“Good night professor.” Matt grabbed the rest of the drinks and walked away, leaving Sebastian meditating by himself in front of the fire. He really should apologize he thought to himself. But how? Another few minutes passed before he decided he’ll just do it now before he chickened out.

Putting out the fire, he said goodnight to the workers and told them to take care of the rest of the drinks before walking to your room nervously.

You had the entire third floor to yourself, the other TA’s choosing the second floor where the rooms connected. Sebastian made sure to stay quiet, not wanting to alert anyone at such a late hour. He was about to knock on your door when he heard sighs coming through, his mind frantically thinking of so many scenarios.

Was he too late? Did he misunderstand your conversation earlier and you were actually flirting with Matt? Were you and him a thing? Fuck what if he was in there right now?

He kicked himself and was about to walk away when he heard it. It was so breathy and low but he was sure he heard his name. Pushing the door open just a little, he stopped breathing as soon as he saw what you were doing.

“Yes…yes oh shit Sebastian right there. Want you so bad- ‘m so wet please…please.” Your hands were rubbing furiously through your panties, fingers pinching and rolling your nipples before you moaned his name over and over again. “Got me so wet professor…I want your cock Sebastian…want you to shove that thick, hard cock in my mouth…in oh fuck yess…m-my pussy…any- ahh oh god yesss yes- anywhere you want.”

He couldn’t believe what he was hearing. You were pleasuring yourself to the thought of him using you. Pleasuring you. Fingering you. Fucking you.

Sebastian’s eyes widened when you rolled over and cried into the covers, almost screaming his name as soon as your fingers punished your clit.

He was so lost into watching you he didn’t notice when you’ve already come and arched your back before you pulled your hands away. But then you kept on grinding against the mattress, wanting a second release and praying his name.

Sebastian couldn’t take it anymore, walking in and making his presence known. As soon as you heard him clearing his throat, you rolled over and sat up, grabbing the covers and throwing them over your chest before your breathing picked up.

“Tsk tsk tsk…I didn’t tell you to do that sweetheart.” He locked the door and approached you slowly, eyes lingering on your still wet fingers before he kneeled in front of the bed. He knew you probably wanted the earth to swallow you at this moment but the refused to pass up an opportunity on teasing you.

“It’s so difficult sometimes…being your professor. Oh wait- I’m not.” He spread your thighs open, fingers inching slowly down your knees before he winked at you. “Which means…I can do this.” Leaning forward, he took your lips in a dizzying kiss, tongue licking and teeth biting at your skin. You so willingly opened your mouth to him, moaning and dropping the covers to pull him by his neck. Within seconds, he was on top of you, hands roaming your body and making you more hot and bothered.

“Do you have any idea how much I thought of pushing the back of your head and your mouth on my cock? Fuck baby girl…and your nose touching my groin.” You couldn’t believe your ears. Here was the man that acted all professional and quiet, whispering the filthiest things to you and cupping your boobs. He leaned down and took a nipple in his mouth, harshly sucking before letting go and licked a stripe between the valley of your breasts.

“You’d like that wouldn’t you? Sliding my cock out of your mouth? Seeing my cock hard and glistening with your spit…answer me!” Sebastian pulled on your hair, a quick ‘yes sir’ escaping your lips before you thought about it.

“Hmm…good.” He pushed off of you, hands trailing down to your panties before taking them off and shoving them in his pocket. Laying down next to you, he kissed you again before shoving two fingers in your mouth and reclaiming your lips after. Too busy thinking of how amazing of a kisser he was, you didn’t notice his fingers massaging your thighs before attacking your clit again. He had you crying his name within seconds, already sensitive from before.

“God baby you’d take my cock so well too…I just know it. The way you lick your lips when you look at me. It fucking turns me on so much when you walk around in those shorts and tank tops. Making me hard in front of all those students. You enjoy your little teasing don’t you love?”

“Right there Seb ple- oh fuck yes please I’m so close so so close-”

“You’re making me so hard right now Y/N. Feel what you do to me.” He pushed his crotch into your hands, moaning your name when you palmed him through his jeans. “So beautiful Y/N. You ready for my cock? I’ve wanted to feel this pretty little pussy for so long baby you have no idea…fuck you like I own you.” He kissed you again, this time more aggressively than before, like he was a parched man and you were an oasis in the middle of the desert. You felt his hands squeezing your neck before he completely pulled away and started stripping. You kept on playing with yourself, watching him taking his clothes off and suddenly feeling self-conscious because damn he was built like a god.

“I’m gonna make you feel real good Y/N…” As soon as he stepped out of his pants, he gipped your thighs and pushed them wide open, rubbing his hard cock on your wet slit before pushing in agonizingly slowly.

“You want this so bad don’t you? You want it as much as I do…you gonna let me fuck you hard baby girl…shit you’re tight- no-” Sebastian felt one of your thighs shutting slowly, smacking one of them and making you shiver from the contact/ “Keep those legs open…ahhhh fuck yes yes baby.” He drove his cock right into you, hips slamming and making the filthiest sound when they met your ass.

“Oh yeahh….r-right there Seb..you’re so hard for me sir!” You laid your hands on his, holding tightly onto them as he squeezed your hips and dragged you down the bed. He filled you over and over again, the sounds of skin slapping on skin along with your moans the only thing he wanted to hear. “Ohhh fuck- your pussy feels so fucking good on my cock.”

Your legs circling around his waist, heels digging into his ass and pulling him further into you.

He couldn’t get the sight of you rolling beneath him out of his mind, still not believing this was real. You threw your head back, hands scratching his head when he leaned down and bit your nipples. He slid in and out, his groin rubbing your clit and before you knew it, you were coming on his cock, pussy clenching and gripping him so tightly he was sure he was going to die.

Sebastian managed to pull out just in time, about to pump his cock when you smacked his hands away and pushed him to lie on his back, getting on your stomach before sucking on the tip of his cock and massaging his balls. He shut his eyes and bucked his hips, coming down your throat and enjoying the feeling of your silky tongue rolling around the tip before he pushed you away.

You both laid there panting, limbs tangled and chests heaving for a good while before he stood up and walked to the bathroom. For a second, you thought he was about to leave. But then he came back with a washcloth and dabbed your skin, smiling when you raised an eyebrow at him.

“Would you look at that, he can actually smile.” You joked, giggling when he shook his head and threw the washcloth on the floor. “Only for you sweetheart. Only for you.”

[zyzzyva1936-blog-blog]

“Lemma the Librarian - The Choice”

Published: 5 May, 2018

http://www.mcstories.com/LemmaTheLibrarian/index.html

Spoilers in effect.

And here we are at the very end (almost). The Chekov’s gun doomspell Lemma’s been toting around since “Sucker For a Good Book” and which has been hanging over her head specifically since “The Choosing One” finally pays off, and it’s pretty great*.

A lot of things are paid off here, actually (they’d better be, it’s the climax of the series). Rhoda gets to be heroic, as usual***; Lemma and Iola have only been on the outs for one story but they resolve that again; Iason, big doofy slab of decency that he is, gets to sacrifice himself for the greater good; Lemma gets to finally admit that she loves Iason and rescue him from his heroic sacrifice. And they kiss, for real, for the first time.

And Iola gets to make up for “Iola Special!” and “The Choosing One”. Which is not the most important part of the plot in this story - you could, and I probably will, argue that the whole arc is about Lemma and Iason hooking up - but it’s the part that makes me the happiest. Lemma and Iason bounce back from some pretty awful shit without blinking; Iola’s been dealing with it in a much worse (put probably more plausible) way, as symbolized by the two times so far she’s refused Iason’s offer of their father’s sword out of guilt****.

Now she’s got another group of innocent, besieged women to defend from evil, soul-eating forces, and she does so. (The destruction of Ardatlili is probably the cleverest single thing in the story; the fact that Iola and Ardatlili got a death-feud going in less than six hours beats out even Rhoda’s goodness and puppies speech for the funniest.*****) Iola is finally able to think of herself as a hero again, she’s rescued hundreds of people******, earned her father’s sword (at least in her own eyes; I’m with Iason that it was always hers for the taking), and can go off and have exciting adventures fighting monsters and saving people again. It’s great.

Iason and Lemma finally have an honest discussion about their feelings (the fact that Iason is a dom, and just has been too decent and self-concious to act on it, is a little over-neat but by this point Lemma has damn well earned it). And that’s it for the publicly available stories! There’s one more story, an epilogue, but @midorikonton​ has thankfully made this a satisfying jumping-off point. I’ll cover the epilogue (briefly) next time. 

*Back then Lemma described the spell as being really, really simple and low-power, which in this sort of thing is usually just puffery. But the description of it in this actually does bear that out, which is a nice touch. Relatedly, Vamp!Brea’s plan is never laid out explicitly, but my suspicion is that it would have been to have Lemma slag the city as soon as possible, unmaking Ardatlili** and Asmodai and Iason and Iola but “protecting” the world from destruction.

**Blink and you miss it, but she survives! Iola kills her, which really just means unsummoning, so she isn’t in Hattush when it gets unmade. So she’s still kicking around, which wouldn’t make a bad sequel hook.

***We also get a hilarious explanation of how Rhoda makes heroic demon-summoning work:

“[...]They're evil, they can only get you if you do evil, and we're good guys, so we don't."

I stopped dead in the street and stared at her.

"What?" she asked.

"You..." I sputtered. "How are you not already in some demon's thrall?"

"Because I'm a good guy," she repeated slowly and with emphasis. "So I don't do evil, so they can't get me."

It’s usually the other way around - “I’m a good guy, so what I’m doing can’t be evil” - and that leads to lots of awful things. Rhoda’s got it the right way around, which is harder; but I suppose in a career where your soul will be eaten within 30s of your first evil deed, you’ve got what we call incentive.

****At the ends of “The Glamour-ous Life of a Slave” and “The Choosing One”, natch.

*****It reminded me of a particularly quotable joke from the always-brilliant Narbonic. “Dave... have you been battling my arch-nemesis behind my back?” “He’s our arch-nemesis now, Helen.” Incidentally, @midorikonton is also a big fan of Narbonic, as all right-thinking people should be. ;) ****** “Oh, by the way, all the kids escaped” is a little funny in its blunt contrivance - right up there with “a monster is attacking the abandoned warehouse district!” from Power Rangers. But, as the DCEU movies have been working very hard to prove, the alternative is much, much worse. Besides, I’ve spent half the review series nursing a grudge against the opening of “The Choosing One”; I can hardly complain that Jenny has since learned better. :)

When The Fuck Are We? 🤷

Hattush is Ḫattuša, the Hittite capital, probably, although there’s mostly only circumstantial evidence here. (The goddess whose temple they end up defending is Hittite, at any rate.) In the real world, the Hittites were an empire in Anatolia (modern-day Turkey) that dominated the near east towards the end of the Bronze Age. Part of the reason for this was their early mastery of iron; still rare and expensive, but enough to kick off the Iron Age and give them a crushing strategic advantage. (This gets a minor shout-out in the story; Hattush is where Iason’s father had his sword forged.) Ḫattuša was destroyed along with the Hittite Empire and a lot of other places during the Bronze Age Collapse; so this is at the right time, even if real Ḫattuša left remains and not a giant smouldering crater. Still, at least we can go out on the high note of “we’re actually at the Bronze Age Collapse, huzzah!” Plus, I’ve always had a soft spot for the Hittites, all the way back to when I was first introduced to them in the AoE 1 demo.

This story, being concerned with the much-more-Christian-than-anything-else-in-the-series demons, also imports great piles of Judeo-Christian folklore. Nephilim, in Hebrew mythology* were the descendants of angels sent to watch over humanity, and the human women that they got their rocks on for. (Sometimes the women they bone are descendants of the cursed Cain, specifically.) They were giants and “warriors of renown”. People have periodically explained dinosaur bones as the bones of the Nephilim. So not a lot like the baby demons depicted here. 

Lilith, Ardatlili and Asmodai’s boss, was (again according to tradition) Adam’s first wife, also created from dirt, who got kicked out and replaced by rib-critter Eve for not being subservient to him. She is traditionally the mother of all sorts of monsters, especially sexy ones, so that lines up. Her demonic aspect probably also was something of a conflation with neighbouring Mesopotamian fertility goddesses: the Israelites were pretty industrious about making all of their neighbours’ gods into demons. Asmodeus, probably originally a god of a Syrian tribe near Judea - I told you - is the demon prince associated with the Deadly Sin of Lust, which in medieval demonology makes him Lilith’s boss, because gender roles. 

Dybbuks are modern** Jewish folklore: malicious ghosts who possess people. They’re not really demonic, just evil, but as they’ve been incorporated into broader popular culture they’ve been conflated with demonic possession pretty generally, so that also matches up. The poor victims of Hattush probably most closely resemble the “gebbeths” of A Wizard of Earthsea, though. ;)

*Which is to say, the word’s used once or twice in the Bible but all the actual details I recount come from apocrypha like 1 Enoch or just oral tradition. Ditto for all the other names, except for the ones that don’t even occur once.

**“Modern” in the historical sense: post-1600 CE or so. The word is Yiddish rather than Hebrew. That’s still enough to make it comfortably the most recent thing in the whole series, give or take a “French maid” joke.

~

Next time: brief coverage of the epilogue, and look back at the series as a whole.

[dfroza]

the Body.

all parts interconnected, to function as a whole. different parts, different functions. all significant.

we are children of Light who form the Temple of our Creator here on beautiful earth carrying within the sacred treasure of the Spirit and the Word of God (who is the True illumination of the Son)

and this significance is seen in Today’s reading of the Scriptures from Paul’s Letter of First Corinthians with chapter 12:

What I want to talk about now is the various ways God’s Spirit gets worked into our lives. This is complex and often misunderstood, but I want you to be informed and knowledgeable. Remember how you were when you didn’t know God, led from one phony god to another, never knowing what you were doing, just doing it because everybody else did it? It’s different in this life. God wants us to use our intelligence, to seek to understand as well as we can. For instance, by using your heads, you know perfectly well that the Spirit of God would never prompt anyone to say “Jesus be damned!” Nor would anyone be inclined to say “Jesus is Master!” without the insight of the Holy Spirit.

God’s various gifts are handed out everywhere; but they all originate in God’s Spirit. God’s various ministries are carried out everywhere; but they all originate in God’s Spirit. God’s various expressions of power are in action everywhere; but God himself is behind it all. Each person is given something to do that shows who God is: Everyone gets in on it, everyone benefits. All kinds of things are handed out by the Spirit, and to all kinds of people! The variety is wonderful:

wise counsel

clear understanding

simple trust

healing the sick

miraculous acts

proclamation

distinguishing between spirits

tongues

interpretation of tongues.

All these gifts have a common origin, but are handed out one by one by the one Spirit of God. He decides who gets what, and when.

You can easily enough see how this kind of thing works by looking no further than your own body. Your body has many parts—limbs, organs, cells—but no matter how many parts you can name, you’re still one body. It’s exactly the same with Christ. By means of his one Spirit, we all said good-bye to our partial and piecemeal lives. We each used to independently call our own shots, but then we entered into a large and integrated life in which he has the final say in everything. (This is what we proclaimed in word and action when we were baptized.) Each of us is now a part of his resurrection body, refreshed and sustained at one fountain—his Spirit—where we all come to drink. The old labels we once used to identify ourselves—labels like Jew or Greek, slave or free—are no longer useful. We need something larger, more comprehensive.

I want you to think about how all this makes you more significant, not less. A body isn’t just a single part blown up into something huge. It’s all the different-but-similar parts arranged and functioning together. If Foot said, “I’m not elegant like Hand, embellished with rings; I guess I don’t belong to this body,” would that make it so? If Ear said, “I’m not beautiful like Eye, limpid and expressive; I don’t deserve a place on the head,” would you want to remove it from the body? If the body was all eye, how could it hear? If all ear, how could it smell? As it is, we see that God has carefully placed each part of the body right where he wanted it.

But I also want you to think about how this keeps your significance from getting blown up into self-importance. For no matter how significant you are, it is only because of what you are a part of. An enormous eye or a gigantic hand wouldn’t be a body, but a monster. What we have is one body with many parts, each its proper size and in its proper place. No part is important on its own. Can you imagine Eye telling Hand, “Get lost; I don’t need you”? Or, Head telling Foot, “You’re fired; your job has been phased out”? As a matter of fact, in practice it works the other way—the “lower” the part, the more basic, and therefore necessary. You can live without an eye, for instance, but not without a stomach. When it’s a part of your own body you are concerned with, it makes no difference whether the part is visible or clothed, higher or lower. You give it dignity and honor just as it is, without comparisons. If anything, you have more concern for the lower parts than the higher. If you had to choose, wouldn’t you prefer good digestion to full-bodied hair?

The way God designed our bodies is a model for understanding our lives together as a church: every part dependent on every other part, the parts we mention and the parts we don’t, the parts we see and the parts we don’t. If one part hurts, every other part is involved in the hurt, and in the healing. If one part flourishes, every other part enters into the exuberance.

You are Christ’s body—that’s who you are! You must never forget this. Only as you accept your part of that body does your “part” mean anything. You’re familiar with some of the parts that God has formed in his church, which is his “body”:

apostles

prophets

teachers

miracle workers

healers

helpers

organizers

those who pray in tongues.

But it’s obvious by now, isn’t it, that Christ’s church is a complete Body and not a gigantic, unidimensional Part? It’s not all Apostle, not all Prophet, not all Miracle Worker, not all Healer, not all Prayer in Tongues, not all Interpreter of Tongues. And yet some of you keep competing for so-called “important” parts.

But now I want to lay out a far better way for you.

The Letter of First Corinthians, Chapter 12 (The Message)

and in Today’s paired chapter of Genesis 25 we see the point when Abraham married for the 2nd time, along with the children of Isaac and Rebekah of whom Jacob was born, whose name was eventually changed to Israel:

Abraham married a second time; his new wife was named Keturah. She gave birth to Zimran, Jokshan, Medan, Midian, Ishbak, and Shuah.

Jokshan had Sheba and Dedan.

Dedan’s descendants were the Asshurim, the Letushim, and the Leummim.

Midian had Ephah, Epher, Hanoch, Abida, and Eldaah—all from the line of Keturah.

But Abraham gave everything he possessed to Isaac. While he was still living, he gave gifts to the sons he had by his concubines, but then sent them away to the country of the east, putting a good distance between them and his son Isaac.

Abraham lived 175 years. Then he took his final breath. He died happy at a ripe old age, full of years, and was buried with his family. His sons Isaac and Ishmael buried him in the cave of Machpelah in the field of Ephron son of Zohar the Hittite, next to Mamre. It was the field that Abraham had bought from the Hittites. Abraham was buried next to his wife Sarah. After Abraham’s death, God blessed his son Isaac. Isaac lived at Beer Lahai Roi.

[The Family Tree of Ishmael]

This is the family tree of Ishmael son of Abraham, the son that Hagar the Egyptian, Sarah’s maid, bore to Abraham.

These are the names of Ishmael’s sons in the order of their births: Nebaioth, Ishmael’s firstborn, Kedar, Adbeel, Mibsam, Mishma, Dumah, Massa, Hadad, Tema, Jetur, Naphish, and Kedemah—all the sons of Ishmael. Their settlements and encampments were named after them. Twelve princes with their twelve tribes.

Ishmael lived 137 years. When he breathed his last and died he was buried with his family. His children settled down all the way from Havilah near Egypt eastward to Shur in the direction of Assyria. The Ishmaelites didn’t get along with any of their kin.

[Jacob and Esau]

This is the family tree of Isaac son of Abraham: Abraham had Isaac. Isaac was forty years old when he married Rebekah daughter of Bethuel the Aramean of Paddan Aram. She was the sister of Laban the Aramean.

Isaac prayed hard to God for his wife because she was barren. God answered his prayer and Rebekah became pregnant. But the children tumbled and kicked inside her so much that she said, “If this is the way it’s going to be, why go on living?” She went to God to find out what was going on. God told her,

Two nations are in your womb,

two peoples butting heads while still in your body.

One people will overpower the other,

and the older will serve the younger.

When her time to give birth came, sure enough, there were twins in her womb. The first came out reddish, as if snugly wrapped in a hairy blanket; they named him Esau (Hairy). His brother followed, his fist clutched tight to Esau’s heel; they named him Jacob (Heel). Isaac was sixty years old when they were born.

The boys grew up. Esau became an expert hunter, an outdoorsman. Jacob was a quiet man preferring life indoors among the tents. Isaac loved Esau because he loved his game, but Rebekah loved Jacob.

One day Jacob was cooking a stew. Esau came in from the field, starved. Esau said to Jacob, “Give me some of that red stew—I’m starved!” That’s how he came to be called Edom (Red).

Jacob said, “Make me a trade: my stew for your rights as the firstborn.”

Esau said, “I’m starving! What good is a birthright if I’m dead?”

Jacob said, “First, swear to me.” And he did it. On oath Esau traded away his rights as the firstborn. Jacob gave him bread and the stew of lentils. He ate and drank, got up and left. That’s how Esau shrugged off his rights as the firstborn.

The Book of Genesis, Chapter 25 (The Message)

my personal reading of the Scriptures for friday, february 21 of 2020 with a paired chapter from each Testament along with Today’s Psalms and Proverbs

[sisterofiris]

Hittite onomatopoeia

One of my favourite things about the Hittite language is how many of its words are onomatopoeic. An onomatopoeic word is a word that sounds like what it describes, like “fizz” or “hiccup”. There’s something wonderful and intimately familiar about finding them in a language like Hittite, which hasn’t been spoken in over three thousand years - yet which suddenly, in words like these, feels all too alive.

Here are some of my favourites:

akuwakuwa-: a small amphibian, possibly a frog

kallikalli-: a kind of bird

wappiya-: to bark

ḫaršiḫarši-: a thunderstorm

tetḫa-: to thunder

taštašiya-: to whisper

lala-: tongue

anna-: mother (from the sounds that babies make when they are learning to speak)

atta-: father (same as above)

ḫuḫupal-: a percussion instrument

ḫaḫḫarš-: to laugh

Also worth mentioning is the Luwian hieroglyph known as BOS, which looks like a bull’s head:

It is, of course, read as u or mu.

[sisterofiris]

Hittitologists really need to start doing interdisciplinary research before I end up fighting someone for coming up with outlandish theories when the explanation is right there in a neighbouring culture’s sources.

[sisterofiris]

Everyday life in the Hittite empire

Have you ever wondered what your life would have been like if you had been born in central Anatolia 3500 years ago? No? Now that I’ve brought it up, are you curious to find out?

Well you’re in luck, because that’s just what this post is about. So sit back, close your eyes, and imagine yourself in Anatolia - that is, modern Turkey. Are you ready? Can you see the mountains, the red river and the towering buildings of your capital, Ḫattuša? Can you hear the chariots driving up the road? Can you feel the electric brewing of a storm in the distance?

Then let’s go.

(With a brief disclaimer: while I study Hittitology, this is not intended as an academic-level post. It was written to give general, approachable insights into Hittite culture and can be used as writing inspiration or to titillate curious history nerds around you, but if you’re writing an academic paper on the subject, I would recommend you check out the bibliography instead.)

About you

First things first, are you older than five? If so, congratulations on being alive. Child mortality in this place and time is very high, so you’re one of the luckier ones among your siblings. You probably have at least a couple of those; you may even have as many as six or seven, especially if you come from a well-to-do family with access to good healthcare. When you were little, your parents might have told you the tale of Zalpa, in which the queen of Neša gives birth to thirty sons then thirty daughters who marry each other, but you know this only happens in the stories - not to normal people.

When you were born, your parents rejoiced regardless of your sex, as sons and daughters are equally valued in your society (albeit for different reasons). Your father took you on his knee and gave you a good Hittite name: maybe Armawiya, Ḫarapšili, Kilušḫepa or Šiwanaḫšušar for a girl, or Anuwanza, Kantuzili, Muwaziti or Tarḫuzalma for a boy. Gender-neutral names, such as Anna, Muwa and Šummiri, would also have been an option. Many people around you have Hurrian or Luwian names, even if they are not ethnically Hurrian or Luwian themselves. (This is comparable to the modern popularity of Hispanic names like Diego, or French names like Isabelle.)

It’s hard to say what you would have done during childhood. While your earliest years would have been spent playing and babbling in grammatically incorrect Hittite, by the age of six or seven you may well have already started training in the family profession. If a girl, you would have been taught to weave by your mother; if a boy, you might have helped your father out on the farm, tried your hand at making pottery, or spent long hours learning cuneiform. (There may have been careers requiring gender non-conformity, as there was in Mesopotamia, but as far as I am aware this has not been proven.) You know that even the noblest children are given responsibilities - king Ḫattušili himself was once a stable boy.

Now, as an adult, you are a working professional contributing directly to Hittite society. You look the very portrait of a Hittite: as a woman, you have long, dark hair that you probably keep veiled, and as a man, your hair is around shoulder-length and your face clean-shaven. Ethnically, though, you are likely a mixture of Hittite, Luwian, Hurrian, Hattian, and depending on when and where exactly you live, maybe Assyrian, Canaanite or even Greek. There’s a fair chance Hittite might not actually be your native language. Still, you consider yourself a Hittite, and a subject of the Hittite king.

Well, now you know who you are, let’s get along with your day!

Your home and environment

Your day begins the way most people’s days do: you wake up at home, in your bed. As an average Hittite, you probably sleep on the floor rather than on elevated furniture. Your floor is either paved or of beaten earth, and your house itself has stone foundations and mud brick walls, with a flat roof supported by timber beams. Windows are scarce and small, to keep the indoor temperature stable.

Outside, the rest of the settlement is waking up too. Statistically, you live in a village or small town, surrounded by forest and mountains. Summers here are hot and dry, and winters cold and snowy, with spring and autumn being marked by thunderstorms. Most inhabitants work as farmers, relying on the weather for their survival. Contagious illnesses are a constant threat - under king Muršili II, the land suffered a deadly plague for twenty years - as are enemy invasions. If you live within the bend of the red river, in the Hittite heartland, consider yourself lucky; if not, your settlement could well be shifting from one kingdom’s property to another and falling prey to both sides’ raids on a yearly basis.

Admitting no enemy forces are in the area today, you take your time to get up. You might tiredly stumble to the outhouse to go pee. Eventually, you’ll want to get dressed.

Clothing

As a man, your clothes comprise of a kilt or sleeved tunic, with a belt of cloth or leather. As a woman, you wear a long dress and, if you are married, a veil. All clothing is made from wool or linen, and a variety of dyes exist: red, yellow, blue, green, black and white are all colours mentioned in texts. If you are rich enough, you may be able to import purple-dyed fabric from Lazpa (Greek Lesbos) or the Levant. You will also want to flaunt your wealth with jewellery, regardless of gender.

Of course, your shoes have upturned ends in the Hittite style. Historians will tease you for this. Don’t listen to them. You look awesome.

Mealtime!

It’s now time for one of your two daily meals (the other will take place in the evening, after your work for the day is done). This will be prepared at the hearth, a vital element of every home, and which is likely connected to an oven. The staple of your diet is bread; in fact, it is so common that “bread”, in cuneiform texts, is used as a general term for food. It is usually made from wheat or barley, but can also be made from beans or lentils.

Worried you’ll get bored of it? You needn’t be: your society has enough types of bread that you could eat a different one each day for a whole season. Fig bread, sour bread, flat bread and honey bread are just some of your options, along with spear bread and moon bread... yes, in other words, baguettes and croissants. (Something tells me the Hittites and the French would have a lot to talk about.)

You also have various fruits and vegetables available: cucumber, leek, carrots, peas, chickpeas, lentils, beans, olives, figs, dates, grapes, pomegranates, onions, garlic, and more. Your diet is completed by animal products, including cheese, milk, butter, and meat, mainly from sheep and goats but also cows and wild game. Honey, too, is common.

These ingredients can be combined into all sorts of dishes. Porridge is popular, as are stews, both vegetarian and meat-based. Meat can also be broiled and quite possibly skewered onto kebabs. And of course, food would be boring without spices, so you have a variety of those to choose from too: coriander are cumin are just two of them.

As for drinks, you can have beer, wine, beer-wine (good luck figuring out what that is), milk or water. If you’re well-to-do enough, you may own a rhyton, a drinking vessel shaped like an animal such as a stag or bull. Don’t forget to libate to the Gods before drinking your share.

Daily work

The next thing on your plate, after food, is work. What you do depends on your social status and gender, and most likely, you do the same work as your parents did before you. You could be something well-known like a king, priest, scribe, merchant, farmer or slave, but don’t assume those are all the possibilities; you could also be, for example, a gardener, doctor, ritual practitioner, potter, weaver, tavern keeper, or perfume maker.

It’s impossible to go into detail on every career option you would have in Hittite society, so for the sake of brevity, let’s just discuss four - two male-dominated, and two female-specific.

Farmer

As a farmer, you are the backbone of your society. You and your peers are responsible for putting food on the plates of Hittites everywhere, thus ensuring the survival of the empire.

Like many farmers, you live on a small estate, most likely with both crops (or an orchard) and livestock to take care of. You may own cows, sheep, goats, pigs, horses, donkeys, and/or ducks. Your daily routine and tools aren’t that different from other pre-industrial cultures, though you have it a little rougher than most due to the Anatolian mountain terrain. If you have the means, you hire seasonal workers - both male and female - to help out as farmhands, and you may own a few slaves.

You get up early to milk the cows, and at the onset of summer, you or a hired herdsman may lead your livestock up to mountain pastures to graze. Depending on the season and the work that needs to be done, you may spend your day ploughing the fields, harvesting grain or fruit, tending livestock, shearing sheep, birthing a calf, repairing the barn, or various other tasks. Make sure to take proper care of everything: new animals are expensive, and losing one could get you into a precarious situation. In particular, you’ll want to keep an eye out for bears, wolves, foxes, and even lions and leopards.

Scribe

Few people are literate in Hittite society, and you are one of the lucky ones. You have been learning to read and write in three languages (Sumerian, Akkadian and Hittite) since childhood, and after long years of copying lexical lists and ancient myths, your education is now complete.

As a scribe, you are the dreaded bureaucrat. In a small town, you likely work alongside the town administrator, recording tax collections and enemy sightings as well as corresponding with other towns, and with the capital. You and your peers are the go-to people for officialising marriage agreements and divorces, drawing up work contracts, and creating sales receipts. If not in the town administration, you could also work in a temple, recording the results of oracles, cross-checking the correct procedures for a ritual, and making sure everything necessary for a festival is available. If you are particularly lucky, you may be employed by the nobility or even the palace, and be entrusted with such confidential tasks as writing the king’s annals or drafting an international treaty.

Regardless of where you are, two things are essential to your job: a stylus and a tablet. You may be a “scribe of the clay tablets”, in which case you will need to carry around a bit of clay wherever you go (and some water to moisten it). Otherwise, you are a “scribe of the wooden tablets”, in which case you use a wax tablet in a wooden frame, which requires less maintenance. It’s unclear whether these types of tablet are used for different purposes.

Fun fact: you likely have a few pen pals around the Hittite empire. After corresponding with other scribes for so long, you’ve started writing each other messages at the bottom of your tablets, asking each other how you’re doing and to say hi to each other’s families. Your employers needn’t know.

Weaver

Weaving, to a Hittite like you, is the quintessential female activity, along with textile-making in general. Like farming, this is a backbone of your society: without weaving, there would be no clothes, and without clothes, well, you can’t do much.

As a weaver, you produce textiles for your family and in many cases also for sale. You work in an atelier within your home, along with the other women of the household, keeping an eye on your smallest children as they play nearby. While your husband, brothers or sons may transport and sell your handiwork, you are the head of your own business.

You are skilled in multiple weaving techniques, and can do embroidery and sew fabric into various shapes (including sleeves - take that, Classical Greeks). You create clothing for all sorts of occasions, including rituals and festivals, outdoor work, and winter weather, and if you are lucky enough to be commissioned by the nobility, you put your best efforts into clothing that will show off their status. Don’t try to cheat anyone out of their money, though; prices are fixed by law.

Old Woman

Contrary to what you might expect, you don’t need to be old to be an Old Woman - this is a career just like any other, though it probably does require a certain amount of life experience and earned respect. As an Old Woman, you are a trained ritual practitioner and active in all sorts of cultic, divinatory and magical ceremonies.

Most commonly, you are hired for rituals protecting against or removing evil. Your services may solve domestic quarrels, cure a sick child, or shield someone from sorcery (a constant threat in your society). This is done through symbolic acts like cutting pieces of string, breaking objects, and sacrificing and burning animals, which are of course accompanied by incantations - sometimes in Hittite, sometimes in other languages, like Hurrian.

Far from a village witch, you are high-placed in Hittite society and trusted by the royal family itself. You have taken part in major rituals and festivals, including funerals, and you perform divinatory oracles too. This last responsibility gives you a large amount of influence over the king and queen; if you establish that something should be done, then it almost certainly will be. Use this power well... or not.

Your loved ones

After a long day ploughing fields, writing tablets, weaving clothes or reciting incantations, it’s finally time to reunite with your loved ones. For adults, these likely - but not necessarily! - include a spouse and children. You may just live with your nuclear family, but living with extended family is also common, and there may be as many as twenty people in your household. Siblings, aunts and uncles, parents, grandparents, children and babies all share the evening meal with you, and some nights, you might gather afterwards to sing and dance, tell stories, and play games.

You also have relationships outside of home. Friendship is valued by Hittite society, with close friends calling each other “brother” and sister”. You might meet up with them regularly at the local tavern for a beer and a bit of fun. Someone there might even catch your eye... Interestingly, there are no laws against that person being of the same gender as you. So, same or different gender, why not try your luck tonight?

Greater powers

It’s impossible to spend a day in the Hittite empire without encountering religion. The Land of a Thousand Gods is aptly named: Gods are in everything, from the sun to the mountains to the stream at the back of your house to fire to a chair. You should always be conscious of their power, and treat them with respect. Though there are few traces of it, you may have a household shrine where you make libations or offer a portion of your meal. Your Gods may be represented by anthropomorphic statues, by animals such as a bull, by symbols such as gold disks, or even by a stone. Either way, treat these objects well; the divine is literally present in them.

You should also be wary of sorcery. Never make clay figures of someone, or kill a snake while speaking someone’s name, or you will face the death penalty. Likewise, always dispose of impurities carefully, especially those left over from a purification ritual (such as mud, ashes, or body hair). Never toss them onto someone else’s property. Has misfortune suddenly struck your household? Is your family or livestock getting sick and dying? These are signs that someone has bewitched you.

Some days are more sacred than others. You participate in over a hundred festivals every year, some lasting less than a day, some lasting a month, some local, some celebrated by the entire Hittite empire. The most important of these are the crocus festival and the purulli festival in spring, the festival of haste in autumn, and the gate-house festival, possibly also in autumn. The statues of the Gods are brought out of the temples, great feasts are held, and entertainment is provided through music, dance and sports contests. Depending on how important your town is, the king, queen or a prince might even be in attendance. All this excitement is a nice break from your regular work!

Sleep and dreams

Phew, what a busy day it’s been. The sun, snared in the trees’ branches, has set on the Hittite land, and you are ready for bed. Time to wrap yourself snugly in blankets and go to sleep.

You may dream, in which case, try to remember as much as you can. Dreams can be a vehicle for omens. Maybe, if the Gods are kind, you might catch a glimpse of what the next days, months and years hold in store for you.

Good night!

Bibliography

Beckman, Gary, “Birth and Motherhood among the Hittites”, in Budin, Stephanie Lynn, Macintosh Turfa, Jean, Women in Antiquity: Real Women across the Ancient World, Abingdon 2016 (pp. 319-328).

Bryce, Trevor, Life and Society in the Hittite World, Oxford 2002.

Bryce, Trevor, “The Role and Status of Women in Hittite Society”, in Budin, Stephanie Lynn, Macintosh Turfa, Jean, Women in Antiquity: Real Women across the Ancient World, Abingdon 2016 (pp. 303-318).

Golec-Islam, Joanna, The Food of Gods and Humans in the Hittite World, BA thesis, Warszawa 2016.

Hoffner, Harry A., “Birth and name-giving in Hittite texts”, Journal of Near Eastern Studies 27/3 (1968), pp. 198-203.

Hoffner, Harry A., “Daily life among the Hittites”, in Averbeck, Richard E., Chavalas, Marc W., Weisberg, David B., Life and Culture in the Ancient Near East, Bethesda 2003 (pp. 95-118).

Marcuson, Hannah, “Word of the Old Woman”: Studies in Female Ritual Practice in Hittite Anatolia, PhD thesis, Chicago 2016.

Wilhelm, Gernot, “Demographic Data from Hittite Land Donation Tablets”, in Pecchioli Daddi, Franca, Torri, Giulia, Corti, Carlo, Central-North Anatolia in the Hittite Period: New Perspectives in Light of Recent Research, Roma 2009 (pp. 223-233).

[sisterofiris]

I have to do a presentation on the historicity of the Trojan War and how the Iliad can be compared to Hittites sources, and it’s taking everything in me to not stand up in the middle of the library and just SCREAM.

I’ve been waiting for this moment for literally half my life. My classmates have no idea what level of enthusiasm is about to hit them.

[sisterofiris]

Greco-Anatolian contacts in Late Bronze Age texts, or: was there a historical Trojan War?

(This is the abridged - though still long - version of a presentation I gave during a seminar. If you’re interested in more details or sources, feel free to message me, or check out the bibliography.)

Did the Trojan War really happen? It’s a hot topic among Classicists, and has become even more so over the last 150 years. Archeological excavations in north-western Turkey, as well as the discovery of Hittite civilisation and decipherment of Hittite cuneiform tablets, have provided apparent support for the existence of Troy and the reality of a conflict over it between Greeks and Trojans. Anyone interested in the subject has probably heard the following evidence:

a large city, corresponding to Homer’s descriptions of Troy in the Iliad, was unearthed at Hisarlık; this city existed for over 3000 years and, most relevantly to our topic, suffered a major destruction around 1180 BC - a date corresponding to the traditional time frame given for the Trojan War (around 1250-1200 BC)

Hittite sources mention a city in the same region - north-western Anatolia - named Wiluša, which strongly parallels (W)ilios, another name for Troy in the Iliad

they also mention another city in the same area, Taruiša, which could be the Hittite equivalent of Greek Troia (Troy)

in a treaty Wiluša concluded with the Hittite empire around 1280 BC, an underground watercourse is mentioned; the archeological site also features an underground watercourse, therefore this site and Wiluša could be one and the same

in the same treaty, the king of Wiluša is identified as Alakšandu, the Hittite spelling of Alexander; this name has been linked to the Trojan prince Paris in the Iliad, who is also known as Alexander

the same treaty refers to a deity named Appaliuna, which can be read as Apollon, a major deity of Troy in the Iliad

Hittite texts speak regularly of the kingdom of Aḫḫiyawa, located in or beyond the Aegean Sea, a term which echoes the name for the Greeks in the Iliad, Akhai(w)oi (Achaeans)

a letter from the Hittite king to the king of Aḫḫiyawa mentions a conflict their lands had over Wiluša

Many people, from Classicists to archeologists to documentary makers, have sought to connect the dots between these elements and answer the question with a yes: there could have been a Trojan War. This is certainly an easy deduction to make. However, many of these argumentations (not all, of course; I’m not throwing everyone under the bus here, but it’s a common trend) present a serious methodological flaw. That is, they take what I like to call a “murder mystery” approach.

The “murder mystery” starts with a question: did the Trojan War happen? Arguments in favour of and against it are then sought out in the available sources. Since many arguments in favour of it are found, it’s assumed that the original question can be answered positively: the Trojan War could have happened (or, as less critical people affirm, did happen). The problem with this approach is that it treats a fictional account (Homer’s Iliad) as a hypothesis to be proven or disproven. But an epic isn’t a corpse in a mansion to be investigated until the culprit is found; it’s not even an eyewitness account. Even just treating it as something that can be proven is being biased in favour of it being at least somewhat trustworthy. Using the Iliad as a starting point also gives the central role to a narrative written 500 years after the supposed events, while sources contemporary to those events are treated as supporting evidence - not as the subject we should be delving into in the first place.

So what should be done? We cannot discuss the historicity of the Trojan War without tackling, well, the history surrounding it. In other words, and this may seem counter-productive: we need to forget about the Trojan War, to establish instead a general picture of Late Bronze Age contacts between Greeks and Anatolians along the Anatolian coast, and especially around Wiluša. Only once we have put the above “evidence” back into its context will we be able to discuss the Iliad.

So here we go - let’s use Hittite sources to find out how Greeks and Anatolians interacted in the Late Bronze Age. What kind of presence did the Greeks have on the Anatolian coast? Were western Anatolians always Hittite allies? What was the ethnicity of Wiluša’s inhabitants? Did Greeks and Hittites ever do battle? It’s all under the cut.

Setting the scene

Before we build our puzzle and see if the Trojan War piece fits into it, we need to confirm that we’ve actually got the right puzzle. This requires four proofs:

That the archeological site at Hisarlık was called Wiluša in Hittite sources;

That this site fits Homer’s description of Troy;

That Wiluša and Taruiša are the Hittite equivalents of (W)ilios and Troia;

And that the Hittites knew and interacted with the Greeks.

I won’t go into too much detail here, as these questions have been extensively discussed over the last century (if you’re curious to know more, see the bibliography). Nowadays, most experts agree that all four are likely true. While Hittite geography is still debated in many areas, the localisation of Wiluša is close to certain thanks to campaign routes detailed in royal annals, combined with archeological data from western Anatolia. Unfortunately, no written texts (except for one seal) were found at Hisarlık, which could have given definite proof of the site being Wiluša - but it’s still highly likely. Meanwhile, the Iliad contains enough geographical and topographical descriptions that its setting can be narrowed down to a very specific area, which also happens to coincide with the site at Hisarlık.

Linguistically, Wiluša being the equivalent of (W)ilios - attested in the Iliad as Ilios, but the presence of an initial digamma (w sound) is proven by the word’s metric rhythm - and Taruiša being the equivalent of Troia is perfectly plausible. So is Aḫḫiyawa for Akhai(w)oi (same as (W)ilios; the term is attested as Akhaioi but had to originally contain a digamma). The localisation of Aḫḫiyawa in or beyond the Aegean Sea, and its obvious might in Hittite texts echoing the mighty archeological sites of Late Bronze Age Greece, confirm this further. As one of my professors once said: either Aḫḫiyawa was not Greece, which would mean one powerful kingdom (Aḫḫiyawa) left traces in Hittite texts but none in the archeological record, while another (Greece) left archeological traces but no written ones... or Aḫḫiyawa was Greece, and therefore the Hittites knew the Greeks.

It should be pointed out that we don’t know if Aḫḫiyawa referred to all of Greece, or just to a part of it. Was it the Aegean islands? Pylos? Mycenae? The whole Peloponnese? Linear B texts found at Bronze Age archeological sites in Greece don’t give enough information about the political structure of the time for us to be sure. It’s clear that each city-state was governed by a king, or wanax, but we don’t know if the Hittites were only in contact with one of those kings (which would make Aḫḫiyawa a small, local kingdom) or if all city-states belonged, temporarily or permanently, to a coalition ruled by an overlord (who would be the “king of Aḫḫiyawa” mentioned in Hittite texts). Considering how uniform Late Bronze Age Greek culture was, how similar its archeological sites are and how the dialect in all Linear B tablets is identical, and considering how the king of Aḫḫiyawa was powerful enough for the Hittite king to view him as an equal, I would lean towards the coalition hypothesis - but this is yet to be proven.

The early 14th century: a Greek sword and a Hittite vassal

Let’s begin our study with the first text in which Wiluša is mentioned. This would be the Annals of Tudḫaliya I/II (we’re not sure if he was the first or the second Hittite king named Tudḫaliya), in which he describes a campaign he led against north-western Anatolia. Several city-states there, including Wiluša and Taruiša, had joined into an anti-Hittite coalition known as the Aššuwa coalition - Aššuwa being the name of the region. Tudḫaliya defeated them in battle and returned to the Hittite capital, Ḫattuša, along with spoils and captives. One of the spoils from this campaign was found in an archeological dig: it’s a sword in the Late Bronze Age Greek style.

It’s hard to determine whether the sword was forged and used by a Greek person, or whether it was an Anatolian imitation, but either way, it shows that north-western Anatolia was in contact with Greece. Moreover, it would imply that both peoples were on good terms. At the very least, they were trading partners; at most, Greeks and Anatolians - including Trojans - may have fought against Tudḫaliya together. The presence of Greeks in the area is confirmed by a much later letter, which mentions a marriage alliance between Greeks and Anatolians during this period. Could it have been in Wiluša? Did Greek and Trojan royalty intermarry? The letter in question is fragmentary, so we can’t know for certain, but as we will see later on, this hypothesis is not at all far-fetched.

But not all contact was positive. The Indictment of Madduwatta, a slightly later text, stars a Hittite vassal king named Madduwatta who ruled somewhere in south-western Anatolia (we’re not sure where, exactly) and who got into conflict with a Greek nobleman. This man, Attariššiya, tried to kill Madduwatta multiple times, to the point that Madduwatta had to ask the Hittite king for help. Most interesting is the mention of a battle between Attariššiya’s forces and the Hittite king’s, in which one general from each side was killed.

So here we have evidence of an actual, armed conflict between Greeks and Hittites. However, this was not part of an “official” Greek conquest. Attariššiya is only identified as a “man of Aḫḫiyawa”, not a king, so his interests in Anatolia were probably personal and had nothing to do with "official” policy (though he may have had unofficial support from the Greek king). He may have wanted to secure a trading post or even set up a colony; archeological evidence shows that Greeks had been present all along the coast of Anatolia since the 15th century at least, mostly trading but also settling permanently. Attariššiya’s strategy was also clearly opportunistic, as was Madduwatta’s, since they later put their past arguments aside to raid Cyprus together (much to the horror of the Hittite king).

These two instances show that Greeks were interested in Anatolia in the 14th century, and tried to secure a foothold there through whatever opportunities presented themselves - marriage alliances, raids, or battles. Likely aware of the threat the Hittites posed, they were vested in getting them out of the area. This meant that, on various occasions, Greeks allied themselves with western Anatolians... and, possibly, with Trojans.

The late 14th century: a Milesian war and a Greek deity

This strategy continued through the 14th century, leading us to a western Anatolian king named Uḫḫa-ziti. Uḫḫa-ziti ruled over Apaša, later known as Ephesus, but seems to have had power over a large area which also included Millawanda, later Miletus. In the early reign of the Hittite king Muršili II, Uḫḫa-ziti allied himself with the Greek king and handed Miletus over to him. Miletus already had a large Greek population - in fact, it was the most Greek city of western Anatolia - so this decision may well have been a welcome one for the Milesians. Muršili, however, wasn’t so pleased.

In his Annals, he describes how he sent his army against Miletus and utterly destroyed the city. (This destruction can also be seen in the archeological record.) Meanwhile, Uḫḫa-ziti had taken refuge in the Greek islands, likely under the protection of the Greek king, where he finally died. This may have been the extent of the Greek king’s help, since his official troops do not seem to have taken part in the war. While Milesian Greeks most likely fought the Hittites, and other Greeks may have independently joined the cause, the war in Miletus was ultimately between Hittites and western Anatolians.

Still, this was a major defeat for the Greeks, who saw the city with the strongest Greek presence, Miletus, conquered by the Hittites. The message was clear: western Anatolia belonged to the Hittites, so the Greeks duly suspended their expansion efforts in the area. This led to more positive interactions with the Hittites, to the point that, when Muršili fell sick, the statue of a deity from Lazpa (Lesbos) and another from Greece were brought in to heal him. Maybe Greeks and Hittites could get along after all?

The early 13th century: Wiluša takes centre stage

Muršili’s conquests in western Anatolia ushered in a new age, featuring more contacts with Greece than ever. Some of those are explicitly attested - the 13th century has more mentions of Greece in Hittite texts than any other - but others were implicit. This is the case for the aforementioned Hittite treaty with Alakšandu of Wiluša. In the historical introduction to the treaty, Wiluša is described as having always been favourable to the Hittites, taking their side and supporting them even when the city belonged officially to another kingdom. According to this treaty, Wiluša would have had stronger links with the Hittites than with anyone else.

And yet the king’s name was Alakšandu - very, very obviously the Greek name Alexander. For him to have a Greek name, there had to be a strong Greek presence in the area. Could this be the result of the 14th century marriage alliance? If so, then there had been Greek blood in the Trojan royal family for over a hundred years. And even if not, there was undoubtedly some kind of Greek element in Alakšandu’s family.

This is further confirmed by the appearance of the deity Appaliuna, probably Apollon, in the treaty. The origin of Apollon is debated, and many scholars view him as an originally Anatolian deity. Either way, for him to appear both in Bronze Age Anatolia and in later Greece, he had to have travelled either from East to West, or from West to East across the Aegean Sea - and this required contacts between Greeks and Anatolians. Hence the question: was Wiluša really closer to the Hittites than to Greece, or was this royal propaganda to minimise the Greek presence in the area?

The 13th century also saw the rise in power of Greece. Miletus may have been given back to them under Muršili II’s successor, maybe in an effort to pacify relations between Greeks and Hittites, now both among the greatest powers of the time. Ḫattušili III, who ruled in the mid-13th century, implies that Miletus belonged to Greece in a letter known as the Tawagalawa letter, concerned with a renegade who had taken refuge in Miletus. Since the city was owned by the Greek king, Ḫattušili had to write to him to ask for the renegade to be extradited. The same letter features the most famous quote about our topic:

The king of Ḫatti, regarding the matter of the city of Wiluša over which we became hostile, has convinced me regarding that matter. We have made peace. Now hostility is no longer right between us.

This is the only mention, in the entirety of Hittite sources, about a conflict that directly opposed the Greek king and the Hittite king. But was it a war - or just a political disagreement, solved through diplomacy? Other disagreements between both kings are recorded, including one over some Aegean islands and to which kingdom they belonged. And even if there was a war over Wiluša, did it really happen in the mid-13th century, or was Ḫattušili referring to a much earlier event?

Unfortunately we don’t have answers. What we can say is that this conflict parallels the treaty with Alakšandu: both the Hittites and the Greeks were interested in Wiluša, and both sides may well have believed the city belonged to them. They certainly had good reason to invest their efforts there. Wiluša, being located at the mouth of the Dardanelles, controlled the trade routes to the Black Sea, and for two expanding kingdoms, the prospect of trade in that area must have been very attractive indeed.

The late 13th and early 12th century: the end of an era

The return of Miletus to the Greeks gave them a foothold in western Anatolia and coincided with a rise in their power. But at the same time, the Hittite presence in the area was slowly becoming more permanent, and in the late 13th century, the Hittite king managed to acquire Miletus again. From then on, he no longer considered the Greek king as an equal.

It’s very hard to tell what happened afterwards. No mentions of Greece survive in Hittite texts from the turn of the 13th century, and Hittite civilisation was destroyed within the first decade of the 12th century. Our only source for these final years comes from Linear B tablets found in Greece. These tablets, preserved by fire when the palaces where they were stored burned down, were not meant to be permanent: they only recorded lists of goods and personnel that had entered the palaces in the last few months before their destruction. Several of these tablets listed women from western Anatolian localities, and one group specifically is identified as “women from Aswiya”. Aswiya has been interpreted as the Greek name for Aššuwa - the region where Wiluša was located. (Incidentally, it may also very well be the origin of our word “Asia”.)

This tablet would indicate that the Greeks were still active in the region, either participating in slave trade or conducting raids and bringing back captives. It also gives us an idea of what goods they might have sought out in western Anatolia. Very few Anatolian objects were found at Late Bronze Age Greek sites, but the Linear B tablets could point towards imported goods being of a more perishable nature - that is, human workers, and since the women were most likely involved in weaving, textiles. These imports seem to have been ongoing right up until Greek civilisation itself came to an end, in the first couple of decades of the 12th century.

Back to the Trojan War

That was a lot of information, so let’s summarise. Greeks and Hittites interacted over the course of three centuries in the Late Bronze Age, as both civilisations were interested in securing a foothold in western Anatolia. While Hittite sources paint the region as always having been favourable towards the Hittites, reading between the lines shows that western Anatolians also had strong, often positive links to Greece. This was the case in Miletus, which had a sizeable Greek population, as well as in Troy, where the royal family itself had Greek ties.

The Greek strategy in western Anatolia was clearly opportunistic. Footholds were gained through raids and alliances with local kings - whatever suited the Greeks best at that moment - and outright war with the Hittites seems to have been avoided, for the most part. Once the Greek king acquired Miletus, he was considered equal to the Hittite king, but this changed with the Hittite re-conquest of Miletus after which Greco-Hittite relations ended abruptly and negatively. The Greeks, however, did not give up on western Anatolia until their own civilisation collapsed, at the end of the Bronze Age.

So what about the Trojan War in all this? It’s clear that the Iliad preserves the memory of the Late Bronze Age, between its city named (W)ilios/Troy, its Greeks wearing boar’s tusk helmets (discovered in Bronze Age Greek graves), its Trojan prince named Alexander, and its Greek kings using the ancient title wanax. Could the war itself have been based on a real event, too?

Currently, scholars are divided between two main hypotheses. The first is that there truly was a war over Troy opposing Greeks and Anatolians. This may have been the conflict that Ḫattušili III mentions in his letter to the Greek king, which would place the war at around 1250 BC. Alternatively, one could attribute the violent destruction of Troy around 1180 BC, attested in the archeological record, to the Greeks - perhaps as a last resort after having lost Miletus. The problem with this latter theory is that Greek civilisation itself was being destroyed by 1180: both Mycenae and Pylos, two major sites, went up in flames between 1190 and 1180. If the Greeks did attack Troy around that time, it would have been part of a migration seeking to establish themselves elsewhere, not as a concerted, strategic effort to expand an already dying kingdom.

The second main hypothesis is that the Iliad was inspired not by a single event, but by the many conflicts that opposed Greeks and Anatolians along the coast during the Late Bronze Age. The Trojan War may even have been a cross-cultural trope: a Hittite text quotes a song in Luwian (one of the languages of western Anatolia) about Wiluša. So both Greeks and western Anatolians may well have sung stories about Troy, and about wars against each other, eventually combining them into a single epic we know as the Iliad.

Conclusion: war... and peace?

The possibility of a cross-cultural Iliad, shaped by centuries of Greco-Anatolian contacts, leads us to the question of positive interactions between those peoples. This topic is just as significant as it is under-studied. Since most people are interested in the historicity of the Trojan War, many studies have focused on conflicts in the area, but as we have seen, Greeks and western Anatolians didn’t just fight; they were often trading partners, and even allies. Hittite sources depict western Anatolians, including Trojans, as having always been on the Hittite side, but this may not reflect reality so much as a pro-Hittite, anti-Greek bias - since Hittite relations with Greece were often tense.

(Side note: our bias towards viewing Greeks and Anatolians as enemies is also due to the way we’ve opposed Western civilisations to Eastern ones ever since Herodotus’ Histories. Most of my current research focuses on how Greeks and Anatolians interacted and saw each other before the Persian Wars, and it turns out relations were a lot more positive than you’d expect. Even in Archaic times, Lydians, Lycians, Carians and the rest weren’t “Eastern barbarians” - they were major trading partners, fashionable ladies, neighbours across the street, and even, in some cases, Mum or Dad. But I digress. Back to the Bronze Age.)

These positive interactions between Greeks and western Anatolians are also reflected in the Iliad. The Trojans aren’t depicted as barbarian foreigners, but as a people strikingly similar to the Greeks, who speak the same language and worship the same Gods. Many Greek heroes also have links to Anatolia, and vice versa: see, for example, the exchange between Diomedes and Glaucus in Book 6. The Iliad may even contain echoes of Hittite culture, such as Patroclus’ funeral which is strikingly similar to royal Hittite burial rites, or the name of king Telephos which has been linked to the Hittite name Telepinu.

In fact, Greek mythology in general is rife with Anatolian elements. There is enough material on the topic to write an entire book, so I won’t delve into it here, but suffice to say that Greek culture soaked up external influences like a sponge. Until recently, this was thought to be the result of the Orientalising period (8th-6th century BC), but it seems more and more likely that this cultural exchange dates back to a far earlier time.

So was there a Trojan War? There could have been - but maybe that’s not the right question to ask. Maybe we should be looking, instead, into a Trojan Ambiguous Relationship motivated by several centuries of shifting political alliances along the western Anatolian coast, and leading to significant cultural exchange. Or even - who knows - a Trojan Peace.

Bibliography

Bachvarova M., From Hittite to Homer: The Anatolian Background of Ancient Greek Epic, Cambridge 2016.

Beckman G., Hittite Diplomatic Texts, Atlanta 1996.

Beckman G., Bryce T., Cline E., The Ahhiyawa Texts, Atlanta 2011.

Bryce T., « The Nature of Mycenaean Involvement in Western Anatolia », Historia: Zeitschrift für Alte Geschichte 38 (1989), 1-21.

Bryce T., The Kingdom of the Hittites, Oxford 2005.

Cline E., The Trojan War: A Very Short Introduction, Oxford 2013.

Cline E., 1177 B.C.: The Year Civilisation Collapsed, Princeton 2014.

Collins B. J., Bachvarova M., Rutherford I. (ed.), Anatolian Interfaces: Hittites, Greeks and their Neighbours, Oxford 2008.

Güterbock H., « The Hittites and the Aegean World: Part 1. The Ahhiyawa problem reconsidered », American Journal of Archeology 87 (1983), 133-138.

Kraft J., Rapp G., Kayan İ., J. Luce, « Harbor areas at ancient Troy: sedimentology and geomorphology complement Homer’s Iliad », Geology 31/2 (2003), pp. 163-166.

Kraft J., Kayan İ., Brückner H., Rapp G., « Sedimentary facies patterns and the interpretation of paleogeographies of ancient Troia », in: Wagner G., Pernicka E., Uerpmann H. P. (ed.), Troia and the Troad. Natural Science in Archaeology, Berlin/Heidelberg 2003, pp. 361-377.

Latacz J., Troia und Homer: Der Weg zur Lösung eines alten Rätsels, Stuttgart 2001.

Mellink M., « The Hittites and the Aegean World: Part 2. Archeological comments on Ahhiyawa-Achaians », American Journal of Archeology 87 (1983), 138-141.

[sisterofiris]

Muršili II’s Plague Prayers

The Hittite king Muršili II is special to me for many reasons, and due to current events, one of those stands out. In the late 14th century BC, the Hittite empire was afflicted by a deadly epidemic* brought into the land by Egyptian prisoners,  lasting over twenty years and possibly killing Muršili’s father and brother, his predecessors on the throne. To the Hittites, such an event was a sign of divine anger; the population was being punished for the king’s sins. King Muršili took this to heart and devoted much energy to finding out what he or his family had done wrong, and in the process, wrote at least six prayers begging the Gods to forgive him and have mercy on the Hittite land.

As someone living in one of the countries most affected by COVID-19, re-reading these prayers has been particularly meaningful as of late. It’s comforting to know that others have been through this - or, when it comes to Muršili, far worse - before. Below is a selection of my favourite passages from these texts.

Enjoy, stay safe, and here’s to hoping this pandemic lets up sooner than Muršili’s plague.

Prayer to the Sungoddess of Arinna (CTH 376.A)

Kī šiwanneš kuit iyatten nu ḫinkan tarnatten nu utne Ḫattušaš ḫūmanpat akkiš nammašmaš ḫaršin išpanduziya natta kuiški iyazi (LÚ.MEŠ)APIN.LAL A.ŠÀ I₇(ḪI.A) šiunaš kuiēš anniešker nat ekir nu namma A.ŠÀ I₇(ḪI.A) šiunaš natta aniyanzi wāraššanzi natta kuiški MUNUS.MEŠ (NA₄)ARÀ šiunaš ḫaršin kuiēš eššer nat ekir nu namma šiunaš ḫaršin natta iyanzi.

Auliuškan GU₄(ḪI.A) UDU(ḪI.A) ḫāliyaz ašaunaz kuezzaš karšker nu (LÚ.MEŠ)SIPA.GU₄ (LÚ.MEŠ)SIPA.UDU akir ḫaliya ašauwan karšker nu uizzi šiunaš ḫaršin išpanduzi auliuša karšantari nunnaš uwatteni šiwanneš apēdaniya uddani wašduli ḫarteni našta ANA DUMU.LÚ.ULU(LU) ḫattatašummit ḫarkta nu kunnan kuit iyaeni nat NU.GÁL nu šiwanneš kuit wašdul uškatteni nu naššu šiuniyanza uiddu nat mēmau našmat (MUNUS.MEŠ)ŠU.GI (LÚ.MEŠ)AZU (LÚ.MEŠ)MUŠEN.DÙ ḫandandu našmat zašhiyaz DUMU.LÚ.ULU(LU) uwandu.

Gods, what is this that you have done? You have allowed a plague in, and the whole of the land of Ḫattuša is dying! Nobody prepares thick bread and libations for you anymore. The farmers who worked the fields of the Gods have died, so they do not work or reap the fields of the Gods. The miller women who made the thick bread have died, so they do not make the thick bread of the Gods anymore.

The cowherds and shepherds of the pens and enclosures from which they used to select sacrificial cattle and sheep have died, so the pens and enclosures are neglected. So it is that the thick bread, the libations and the sacrificial animals are neglected. And you, Gods, come and hold the sin against us in that matter! Humanity’s wisdom is lost, and whatever we do right, it comes to nothing. Gods, whatever sin you see, may a man of the God come and state it, or may an Old Woman or a diviner or an augur establish it, or may humans see it in a dream.

Prayer to the Stormgod of Ḫattuša (CTH 378.2)

Tarḫuntaš Ḫattušaš išḫāmi šiwanneš išḫēšmiš kikkištari apēniššan wašteškanzi nu attašmiš waštaš nukan Tarḫunnaš Ḫattušaš memian zāiš ammukma natta kuitki waštaḫḫun nu kikkištari apēniššan attaškan waštul ANA DUMU-ŠU ari nukan ammukka attašmaš waštul āraš natzakan kāša Tarḫunni Ḫattušaš išḫimi šiunaš išḫāšmaš piran tarnan ḫarmi ēšziyat iyauenat nuzakan attašmaš kuit waštul tarnan ḫarmi nu Tarḫunni Ḫattušaš išḫimi šiunaš išḫāšmaš ištanza namma waršigaddu numu ginza namma datten nukan utneyaz Ḫattušaš ḫingan arḫa uiyatten.

Stormgod of Ḫattuša, my lord! Gods, my lords! So it is: people always sin. My father sinned, and he transgressed the word of the Stormgod of Ḫattuša. But I did not sin at all. And so it is: the sin of the father comes upon his son. My own father’s sin came upon me. But look! I have confessed it before the Stormgod of Ḫattuša, my lord, and the Gods, my lords. It is so. We have done it. Because I have confessed the sin of my father, may the soul of the Stormgod of Ḫattuša, my lord, and the Gods, my lords, be satisfied. Moreover, have mercy on me, and send the plague out of the land of Ḫattuša!

First prayer to the assembly of Gods and Goddesses (CTH 378.1)

Utnī Ḫattušašma ginzu datten nu ḫinkan anda lazziyattaru namma ammukkašmaškan šankunniššmaš ÌR-KUNU kuit uwaḫḫari numu genzu datten numukan kartaz laḫlaḫḫiman arḫa ueyatten tuekkazmakan pittuliyan datten.

Have mercy on the land of Ḫattuša! May the plague be alleviated! Moreover, because I, your priest, your servant, elicit your pity, may you have mercy on me! Send away the agitation from my heart, take away the anxiety from my soul!

All translations are my own.

*The epidemic is usually referred to as a “plague”, but the word used in Muršili’s prayers, ḫinkan, simply means “death”. The exact nature of the illness is unknown - it could have been anything, from the bubonic plague to a particularly lethal strain of flu.

[sisterofiris]

hey my brother is a budding archaeologist do you have any more hittite memes I can send to him when he's sad

My meme game isn’t very strong, but as you wish, have some more extremely niche memes:

Bonus:

[sisterofiris]

Do you have some favorite examples of the Greek and Near East worlds colliding in ancient history? I know there was a lot of cultural and religious ideas that moved back and forth between the two but I'm sure all sorts of stuff was going on on the personal day-to-day average person level too

This touches on the subject of my MA thesis, so yes, I have a lot of favourites! That said, before giving some examples, a central question needs to be raised: where does the Greek world end and the Near Eastern world begin? To us, it seems obvious, but in ancient times, the boundaries were a lot more blurred - and they changed depending on the period. Were the Lydians Near Eastern, despite being a short boat trip away from Sappho? What were the Luwians, who adopted about as much from the Mesopotamians as they transferred to the Greeks? All in all, any clearly drawn line between “East” and “West” is artificial and modern (before Herodotus, at least), and doesn’t account for the multiple civilisations straddling both definitions while also being their own, unique thing.

For the sake of this post, I’ll be defining these cross-cultural contacts as an Aegean, Anatolian or Near Eastern civilisation interacting with another civilisation from that area, with both treating each other as separate entities. And on that note, let’s delve into my three favourite instances.

1. The Graeco-Babyloniaca are one of the more famous examples of everyday contact between Greece and the Near East. They are a series of cuneiform tablets found in Mesopotamia and dating to the Hellenistic era (323-31 BC). At the time, Mesopotamia was under Greek rule, and Greek was the governmental and administrative language (the most widely spoken language by locals was Aramaic). Little scribes, however, still had to study Sumerian and Akkadian at school. Imagine that - you’re six or eight or ten years old, and not only you have to learn hundreds of cuneiform signs, you have to do it in two dead languages! You’re not even sure how to pronounce them. So what do you do? You write your homework on one side of the tablet, and on the other side, you transcribe it into the Greek alphabet:

(source: CDLI)

This was probably used as a learning method, since it has been found on a dozen tablet fragments. It’s also really useful to us - it helps us understand how Sumerian, Akkadian and Greek were pronounced at the time!

2. Madduwatta was a vassal of the Hittite kingdom, who ruled the land of Mount Zippašla (probably in south-western Anatolia) in the 14th century BC. Madduwatta was an interesting character, to say the least: he repeatedly betrayed the Hittite king, found an excuse for it every single time, and yet for some reason, the king kept on forgiving him. The document that tells us about him, the Indictment of Madduwatta, starts with the story of his quarrel with Attaršiya, a “man of Aḫḫiya”. You may know Aḫḫiya better as Achaea - that is, Mycenaean Greece (or part of it).

So Madduwatta got into trouble with Attaršiya, who tried to kill him. The Hittite king came to the rescue and offered Madduwatta two kingdoms and royal protection in exchange for Madduwatta’s loyalty; weirdly enough, Madduwatta only accepted one of the kingdoms, and he settled there happy and safe from Attaršiya. Things went just fine for a while, and by fine I mean that Madduwatta managed to get himself captured by an enemy, married his daughter off to the same enemy, got into trouble with Attaršiya again, and tricked Hittite soldiers into being ambushed and killed and, I quote, “laughed about it”. But the real kicker came when Madduwatta started raiding Cyprus. At some point, old enmities had been laid aside and he was now ransacking the island… with Attaršiya.

Madduwatta’s excuse was, of course, that he didn’t know Cyprus belonged to the Hittite king, but the text doesn’t say anything about why he allied himself with Attaršiya. Either way, the story paints an extremely vivid and interesting picture of political opportunism, and how Mycenaean Greeks and Anatolians could get into each other’s business in the Bronze Age.

Also, I want a slowburn enemies-to-lovers fic of it.

3. There was a little girl who lived in Greece, in the 12th century BC. She died before the age of six, and she was buried with her head turned towards the sea. Around her neck hung a bead necklace, in the middle of which was a red hematite seal with a few written signs. Some scholars have identified them as a mixture of Luwian, Linear A or B, and Cypro-Minoan scripts; others understand it as a typical Hittite seal and read the name Šummiri. Either way, the object was probably imported over the Aegean Sea from Anatolia. Who can say what its history was? Maybe it was a real seal that had once belonged to a Hittite named Šummiri. Maybe it was an adaptation by some craftsman who couldn’t read, but who had seen Anatolian seals and did his best to imitate one. Maybe it was viewed by the Greeks as exotic and ancient, and sold as an amulet.

We don’t know - but somehow or other, it travelled across the sea to the coast of Attica. There it made its way into the hands of a small child, who threaded it onto a necklace as children do, and who found it precious enough that, when her parents laid her down to rest, they laid it down with her, for ever.

[sisterofiris]

Unusual laws from the Ancient Near East

Think of two things that sound extremely boring. How about “law” and “old texts in a dead language”? Combine them and you’re bound to be snoring within five minutes. There’s no way Bronze Age laws can be fun, right?

Surprisingly, there is. To prove it, here are a few of my favourite laws from Isin (Neo-Sumerian, 20th century BC), Babylon (Old Babylonian, 18th century BC), Aššur (Middle Assyrian, 15th-11th century BC) and Ḫattuša (Old Hittite, 17th-16th century BC):

If a man saves a child from a well, he will [take his] feet [and seal a tablet with their size.] / tukum-bi lú-ù dumu túl-ta šu ba-ra-an-kar ĝiri₃-[na šu bi-in-ti...] (Laws of Lipit-Ishtar #20**)

If a fire breaks out in a man’s house, and a man who came to extinguish it envies and steals the house owner’s furniture, that man will be thrown into that same fire. / šumma ina bīt awīlim išātum innapiḫma awīlum ša ana bullîm illuku ana numāt bēl bītim īnšu iššīma numāt bēl bītim ilteqe awīlum šū ana išātim šuāti innaddi (Laws of Hammurabi #25)

If a woman injures a man’s testicle in a fight, one of her fingers will be cut off. / šumma sinniltu ina ṣalte iška ša a’īle taḫtepi 1 ubānša inakkisu (Middle Assyrian Laws #8)

If someone bites off the nose of a free person, he will pay 30 minas of silver. / takku antuḫšan arawan KIR₁₄-šet kuiški wāki 30 MA.NA KÙ.BABBAR pāi (Hittite Laws #13)

If a person is crossing a river with his ox, and another person pushes him and grabs the tail of the ox and crosses the river, and the river carries away the owner of the ox, (the owner’s heirs) will seize the person who pushed him. / takku antuḫšaš GU₄-ŠU ḫapan zīnuškizzi tamaišan šūezzi nu KUN GU₄ ēpzi ta ḫapan zāi nu išḫan GU₄ ḫapaš pēdai šuwayaziman kuiš nuza apunpat danzi (Hittite Laws #43)

If oxen enter a field and the field’s owner finds them, he can hitch them up for the day. But when the stars come out, he will drive them back to their owner. / takku GU₄.ḪI.A kuerani pānzi nu kueraš išḫaš wemiyazi šiwattan tūriezzi mānašta ḫaštereš wenzi nuš āppa išḫišši pennai (Hittite Laws #79)

If someone steals a door in a fight, he will replace anything that may get lost in the house and he will pay a mina of silver. / takku (ĝiš)IG šullannaz kuiški tayēzzi kuit kuit peri andan ḫarkzi tat šarnikzi nu 1 MA.NA KÙ.BABBAR pāi (Hittite Laws #127)

Makes you wonder how often this sort of thing happened - and if anything, if door-stealing needed to be regulated, it shows that the ancient world can’t have been a boring place.

**All translations are my own.