The Hittite military oath (CTH 427) is a Hittite text on two cuneiform tablets.
The first tablet is only preserved in fragments (KBo XXI 10, KUB XL 13, and minor fragments), the second tablet survives in three copies, and can be restituted almost completely. The oldest copy (KUB XL 13) is fragmentary, but two younger copies (KUB XL 16, KBo VI 34) are well preserved.
The text is in Old Hittite, with some scribal errors of the later copyists, and prescribes the oath to be taken by military commanders. More precisely, it describes a series of symbolic actions intended to represent the afflictions that should befall the oath-takers should they break their word. [1]
On one occasion, for example, women's clothing, a spindle and an arrow is brought before those swearing their allegiance. The arrow is broken, and they are told that should they break their oath, their weapons should likewise be broken, and they should be made women and given women's tasks. Then, a blind and deaf woman is brought before them, and they are told that if they break their word, they will be made blind and deaf women like this one.
Then, a figurine of a person suffering from ascites is brought before them, and they are told that should they break their word, their bellies should swell with water, and the deities of the oath should eat their offspring (seed) within their bellies.
The deities of the oath repeatedly invoked with the Akkado-Sumerian spelling NIŠ DINGIR (representing Hittite lengai-) are identified with the goddess of treaties Išḫara and the moon god Kušuḫ.
To these similes, those swearing agree, saying "so be it". Oath-taking as conditional self-cursing in the event of oath-breaking is typical of other early Indo-European cultures. [2]
The Hittite compositions known as the 'Military Oaths' are also closely related to texts such as "Loyalty Oath of Town Commanders to Arnuwanda I, Ašmunikkal, and Tudḫaliya." Also, "Tudḫaliya IV's Instructions and Oath Imposition for Courtiers" fall in the same category. [3]
Such parallels are evident in the following text, for example, in which a priest performs the rites, and articulates future punishments, while the soldiers express their consent.
There is another, younger text (CTH 428) with similar content, termed the 'second military oath'. It is more fragmentary, and its main difference is that the oath-takers are promised well-being in case they keep their word, as well as being threatened by extinction should they break it. In comparison to the older oath, the younger text shows that the Hittite pantheon was increasingly influenced by Hurrian gods. [6]
The Hittites were an Anatolian Indo-European people who formed one of the first major civilizations of Bronze Age West Asia. Possibly originating from beyond the Black Sea, they settled in modern-day Turkey in the early 2nd millennium BC. The Hittites formed a series of polities in north-central Anatolia, including the kingdom of Kussara, the Kanesh or Nesha kingdom, and an empire centered on Hattusa. Known in modern times as the Hittite Empire, it reached its peak during the mid-14th century BC under Šuppiluliuma I, when it encompassed most of Anatolia and parts of the northern Levant and Upper Mesopotamia, bordering the rival empires of the Hurri-Mitanni and Assyrians.
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Assuwa was a region of Bronze Age Anatolia located west of the Kızılırmak River. It was mentioned in Aegean, Anatolian and Egyptian inscriptions but is best known from Hittite records describing a league of 22 towns or states that rebelled against Hittite authority. It disappears from history during the thirteenth century BC.
Studien zu den Bogazköy-Texten edited by the German Akademie der Wissenschaften und der Literatur, Mainz, since 1965, is a series of editions of Hittite texts and monographs on topics of the Anatolian languages. The series was intended to publish the Hittite texts that were excavated at Hattusa.
The corpus of texts written in the Hittite language consists of more than 30,000 tablets or fragments that have been excavated from the royal archives of the capital of the Hittite Kingdom Hattusa, close to the modern Turkish town of Boğazkale or Boğazköy. While Hattusa has yielded the majority of tablets, other sites where they have been found include: Maşat Höyük, Ortaköy, Kuşaklı or Kayalıpınar in Turkey, Alalakh, Ougarit and Emar in Syria, Amarna in Egypt.
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Aruna was the god of the sea in Hittite religion. His name is identical with the Hittite word for the sea, which could also refer to bodies of water, treated as numina rather than personified deities. His worship was not widespread, and most of the known attestations of it come exclusively from the southeast of Anatolia. He was celebrated in cities such as Ḫubešna and Tuwanuwa.
Kadašman-Enlil II, typically rendered dka-dáš-man-dEN.LÍL in contemporary inscriptions, meaning “he believes in Enlil” was the 25th king of the Kassite or 3rd dynasty of Babylon.
The King of Battle is an ancient Mesopotamian epic tale of Sargon of Akkad and his campaign against the city of Purušḫanda in the Anatolian highlands and its king, Nur-Daggal or Nur-Dagan, in aid of his merchants. It is extant in five manuscripts: two from Amarna in Egypt, six fragments of one from the Hittite capital Ḫattuša from the middle Babylonian period and one each from Aššur and Nineveh, probably from the Neo-Assyrian period. Of the twenty-three tales composed of the Kings of Akkad, this was one of only three, along with the Birth Legend of Sargon and the Cuthean Legend of Naram-Sin, to continue to circulate in the Neo-Assyrian and Neo-Babylonian periods, some 1,500 years after the events they describe. It is thought to have been committed to writing during the first half of the second millennium, perhaps following a lengthy oral tradition, although the circumstances of its composition are hotly debated.
The Sun goddess of Arinna, also sometimes identified as Arinniti or as Wuru(n)šemu, is the chief Goddess of Hittite mythology. Her companion is the weather god Tarḫunna. She protected the Hittite kingdom and was called the "Queen of all lands." Her cult centre was the sacred city of Arinna.
Hapalla, also written as Haballa, was a kingdom in central-western Anatolia during the Late Bronze Age. As one of the Arzawa states, it was a sometime vassal and sometime enemy of the Hittite Empire.
Iyarri, also known as Yarri, was a god worshiped by Hittites and Luwians in Anatolia in the Bronze Age. He was associated with plague and war, and was portrayed as an archer whose arrows inflicted people with illnesses. While it is generally assumed that Iyarri was male, a female form of this deity is mentioned in a single text. It has been proposed that Iyarri might have developed from the Mesopotamian god Erra, or that he was influenced by him. A different proposal considers his name a cognate of that of Greek Ares, though the evidence in favor of this view is not conclusive.
Pišaišapḫi was a Hurrian mountain god. His name was derived from that of the associated mountain, Pišaiša, which was most likely located next the Mediterranean coast. He is attested in Hurrian and Hittite ritual texts from cities such as Hattusa, Šapinuwa and Ugarit. A Hittite literary text known as Myth of Pišaiša is focused on him, though its origin and the reading of the names of other deities who play roles in it remains a matter of debate among researchers.
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