Rethinking the Hittite System of Subordinate Countries from the Legal Point of View

Bibliographic Data

ID3966337
AuthorsAmnon Altman (corresponding author)
Year2003
Volume123
Issue4
Pages741
Publication date2003-10-01
Peer ReviewedYes
Open AccessNo
TypeARTICLE
VenueJournal of the American Oriental Society (JOURNAL)
Journal identifiersISSN: 0003-0279 • E-ISSN: 2169-2289
PublisherJSTOR (PUBLISHER)
DOI10.2307/3589966
OpenAlexW2069619039
LanguageEN
Citations received6

The Hittite system of subordinate countries is better known to us than any other similar system that existed in the ancient Near East. Thanks to the relatively rich corpus of Hittite subordination treaties and related documents, we have a fairly good general picture of the rights and obligations of vassal kings toward their Hittite overlords and vice versa. This picture also discloses significant differences among these vassal kings2 in terms of rights and obligations, suggesting different levels of subordination. There are, however, still some serious gaps in this picture, and the available data allow only a partial reconstruction of the Hittite system of grading the subordinate countries. Many questions pertaining to the differences in the legal status of these countries are still unanswered, either because of the lack of sufficient relevant cases or because almost all the treaties available are copies made on clay tablets that have reached us in various states of preservation. These lacunae in our knowledge can for the time being only be filled to a certain extent by logical reasoning. The present paper presents a summary of what is known or may be assumed, and of what is still unknown, and suggests some criteria for grading the Hittite subordinate countries, as well as definitions of their legal status.3

Ancient history · Geometry · Hittite language · Point (geometry) · Political science · Ancient Near East History · History · Linguistics and language evolution · Mathematics

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