In the Old Hittite period, Anatolian culture was strongly influenced by its prolonged contact with Syrian and Upper Mesopotamian culture and, through them, with the culture of Lower Mesopotamia. Consequently, the Sumero-Akkadian tradition and particularly its scribal culture became an integral part of the culture of the Old Hittite palace, though with considerable Hurrian and Amorite influences. These cultural links underwent several changes and were modified and integrated with considerable originality. A good example of this is writing. At the time of the Assyrian colonies in Anatolia, documents and letters between local kings were written in an Old Assyrian dialect. A century later, in the archives of Hattusa, the texts whose writing style can be dated to the Old Hittite kingdom used a type of writing of clear North Syrian and North Mesopotamian tradition. Moreover, the texts from Hattusa written in Akkadian were not written in the Assyrian dialect, but in the Babylonian one. Hattusa was thus the most distant ramification of the Syro-Mesopotamian culture of the Amorite period.
However, the Old Hittite civilisation’s greatest innovation, which was not achieved by the Amorite and Hurrian centres, was the use of the Babylonian syllabary to write the local Hittite language. This was a clear indication of the active reception of the Mesopotamian writing system in Anatolia and of the ability to distinguish writing and language, utilising an already existing system to deal with new requirements. This development may seem banal, but it was an innovation that did not appear elsewhere. Old Hittite formulas and prologues and the structure of Hittite documents were equally original. The scribal tradition of sign lists, word lists and literary texts, was reformulated in response to local needs. Therefore, word lists were bilingual, providing a translation of each word in Hittite, and literary texts were translated.
Among the Mesopotamian literary texts, the most popular ones in the Old Hittite period were the ones linked to Anatolia or, more generally, with the lands west of Mesopotamia. This seemingly Hittite preference could, alternatively, have been pre-filtered by north Syrian scribes. Consequently, the Epic of Gilgamesh was copied and translated, especially the episode concerned with the expedition to the cedar forest and the battle against Humbaba. Also the pseudo-historical tales concerning Sargon and Naram-Sin were copied, in particular Sargon’s expedition in Anatolia (the sar tamhdri), or the battles of Naram-Sin against Syro-Anatolian coalitions. However, there is no identification of the Hittites with the Anatolian enemies of the kings of Akkad. On the contrary, the Hittites identified with the latter, at least to compete with the kings of Akkad, using them as a model worth imitating and surpassing.
In terms of city plans, architecture and craftsmanship (metallurgy, pottery and so on) it is clear that Old Hittite culture was connected to the contemporary cultures of the Syrian and Upper Mesopotamian Middle Bronze Age. However, many elements of local continuity from the Anatolian Early Bronze Age are even more visible, possibly due to the geographical position of Anatolia, close to rich natural resources (timber, stone, metals and so on). Consequently, the walled cities of the Anatolian Middle Bronze Age were different from their contemporary counterparts in Syria and Upper Mesopotamia. In particular, the structure of the Old Hittite acropolis (Buyukkale) in Hattusa was very different from the ones in other important centres, such as Mari and Alalah. The entire acropolis of Hattusa was used as the administrative centre of the Old Hittite state. The many functions of the palace as royal residence, and cultic and administrative centre were not included into one large building. Its archives, storehouses and open spaces for audiences were here subdivided into many free-standing buildings.
Old Hittite architecture mainly used timber and stone, not only for foundations, but also for the walls themselves. The local pottery (first Cappadocian and then properly ‘Hittite’) and seals show the originality of Anatolian culture, especially if compared to the contemporary developments in the Syro-Anatolian area (such as the Khabur pottery and the Old Syrian seals). The originality of Old Hittite culture was the consequence of the survival of the local tradition. However, Hittite literature emphasises the ethno-linguistic distinction between the Hattic element (that is, the pre-Hittite Anatolian element) and the Indo-European one.
In the realms of religion, mythology, literature, society, kingship, the military and historiography, great emphasis is placed on the Hattic tradition, characterised by strong feminine elements (such as the chthonic nature of Hattic religion, centred on the worship of the Great Mother) and Indo-European patriarchal and military contributions. In other words, the Hattic tradition was considered to be matriarchal (a legitimate heir is the son of one’s sister), while the Indo-European one was patriarchal (one’s son is his legitimate heir). This Hittite worldview desperately tried to find a compromise between the two traditions. Therefore, it is possible that the vast majority of litigations and disputes over the rightful heir to the throne derived from these two very distinct traditions. This theory has some important implications for the study of Hittite history, but it cannot be the only explanation for the troubles surrounding the Hittite throne.
In the formation phase of the Old Hittite state, the symbiosis of Hattic and Indo-European elements in the local culture had already existed for centuries, perhaps even longer than is generally believed. The two elements were never explicitly placed in opposition to each other, neither in conflicts between cities, nor as opposing traditions or customs. For instance, the interpretation of Nesha’s conflicts against Zalpa or Hattusa as essentially conflicts between Indo-Europeans and Pre-Hittites constitutes an arbitrary and erroneous interpretation of the historical context of the time. Similarly, seeing the competition between a son and a son-in-law over the Hittite throne as an ethnic conflict between a Hattic and Indo-European tradition is an interpretation that is not supported by the available evidence.
An even worse misinterpretation of Hittite culture is the understanding of some of its characteristic traits as more or less linked to an Indo-European tradition. If we accept that the Indo-European linguistic groups derived from the third millennium ‘Kurgan IV’ culture from southern Russia (thus preferring a ‘lower’ interpretation, implying a better survival of this cultural heritage), this culture was nonetheless made of Chalcolithic shepherds and warriors. The latter did not live in cities, were not organised into states and had far less complex modes of production and inheritance systems than the ones that developed in Anatolia over the millennia. For instance, how is it possible to attribute to the Indo-Europeans a specific historical value for the Old Hittite period? This historical value is already closely linked to the legal and political system of Middle Bronze Age Anatolia, in which it had a specific purpose. Similarly, if the Hittites were indeed more belligerent than their neighbours, how is it possible to attribute the seemingly belligerent nature of the Hittites to an Indo-European heritage? The wars of the Syro-Anatolian Middle Bronze Age were fought in political and technological contexts that could not have existed in the ‘primitive seat’ of the Indo-Europeans. This strongly ‘ethnical’ view of the cultural development of the Hittites is therefore outdated. It is the result of a historiography that produced and emphasised the myth of the Indo-Europeans, influencing the reconstruction of the history of the Hittites.
Unlike the Mesopotamian and Syrian contexts, which have been considered in the previous chapters, Old Hittite kingship and power were characterised by three main aspects: the instability and contentiousness surrounding the transmission of power; the role of institutional bodies; and the pre-eminent role of the female element. The rivalries surrounding the palace over the succession to the Hittite throne are clear not only from the retrospective descriptions provided by Telipinu. They can already be detected in Hat-tusili’s and Mursili’s texts, in particular the testament of the former in favour of the latter. It is clear that the murderous plots described in the sources, which paradoxically saw the succession system as one requiring the son-in-law to kill the son of the previous king, were not the norm. They were violations that were severely punished.
The constant reappearance of these murder plots and violations began to form a system de facto and Hit-tite kingship continued to be exposed to the ambitions of others. These issues, however, did not appear simply because the system of succession was not strong enough or exclusive enough. It was also because of the survival within the Hittite court of that fragmentation and competition typical of Anatolian culture. The political unification may have begun to eliminate this fragmentation in the rest of Anatolia, but it continued to exist in the capital. The political use of marriages by the Hittite royal family, then, made this a constant problem throughout Hittite history.
The role of institutional bodies should not be overemphasised, but it does remain an important aspect of the Hittite state. The testament of Hattusili and other texts from the period mention a general assembly (pankus) that acted as a kind of guarantor of the king’s decisions and a court (tuliyas) acting as a juridical assembly. However, it is not clear whether the latter’s decisions were applicable to the royal family. The pankus had nothing to do with the problem of the Indo-European aristocracy (military in particular). On the contrary, it was the opposite of those functionaries working for the state’s administration on its highest levels, who were mainly related with the royal family. The pankus was an assembly embracing more than just the aristocracy, and, together with the king, was able to stop the ambitions and abuses of the most powerful Hittite families.
The king was not ‘first among equals’ and his alleged ‘equals’ were certainly not part of the pankus. The king was one and held absolute power. However, access to kingship remained highly desirable for a large portion of the royal family. Consequently, the ‘assembly’ and the ‘tribunal’, the former influencing the public opinion and the latter having a more juridical role, could limit abuses of power and potential damages to the unity of the Hittite state. However, the pankus would eventually disappear. This was not because the alleged Indo-European heritage was dying out, but because the aristocracy, which was both military and administrative, and largely coincided with the many relatives of the king, managed to rise above it.
Finally, the importance of the feminine element was expressed through the role of the tawananna, which was the counterpart of the tabarna. The tawananna was not just the king’s wife, since she held the title until her death. Therefore, there was normally a tawananna older than the queen, namely, the mother of the king, and the two were in competition with each other. The tabarna/tawananna couple mainly had a cultic role, probably as a human representation of a divine couple, envisioned as the Storm-god (male) and the Sun-goddess (female). The king, just like the queen or queen mother, was neither deified nor identified with a deity, and it was only after his death that it was said that he had ‘become a god’. In this regard, the Hittites dedicated an entire cult to their royal ancestors, who were paired into couples of tabarna and tawananna. These cults are attested in later inventories and ritual texts, which provide diachronic sequences of these pairs, updated after each generation. Therefore, the royal couple was frequently involved in cultic ceremonies, and descriptions of rituals are some of the most widespread types of texts in the archives from Hattusa. These rituals mainly took place in the capital, where many temples and various cults could be found. However, there were also many ceremonial peregrinations to the sanctuaries of the land of Hatti.
The persistence of local cults was deeply rooted in Hittite culture, and the royal family took charge of
Them. In this way, the royal family was able to present itself to its subjects as the heir of the previous local monarchies and as an intermediary between the human and the divine spheres. The ‘thousand gods of the land of Hatti’ were extremely similar in type. Each city had a storm-god, always called with the same name or, better, with the same writing, but specified for each city. In terms of function and types of gods,
Then, there were many similarities among the many gods of Hatti. However, the maintenance of their local identity and temple organisation was equally strong. The divine couple that took on the official role of state couple was made of the solar goddess of Arinna, a city near Hattusa and the Storm-god of Hatti. Oddly enough, this choice does not provide a privileged position to the capital of the Hittite state. It was rather based on the selection of the most common types of deities, rather than the pre-eminence of a specific couple over the others. Therefore, the main problem of the Old Hittite monarchy was to keep united a region that in its historical and cultural tradition, as well as geographically and ethnically, was prone to disintegrate into smaller autonomous states and communities.
World History
