Hittite Royal Prayers

An important kind of texts among the many religious texts found at the German excavations in BogazkiSy-Hattusas, the capital, are the royal prayers. In his Catalogue des Textes E. Laroche has given an enumeration of these compositions under the more general heading of Hymnes et Pribres. 1) The same author published an excellent study of the prayer in general called La Pridre hittite: vocabulaire et typologie. 2) Nevertheless the royal prayers form an interesting subject for further study, because they constitute a special genre of great importance for the religious feeling and way of thinking of the Hittites and also because next to purely historical texts they are of great significance for the history of the New Empire (1450-12oo00 B.C.). This study aims only at a short evaluation of the contemporary achievements in this interesting field. Many of these royal prayers have already been published in a philological edition. The prayers of devoted to the Plague which ravaged the country for no less than twenty years and also dealing with external difficulties are available in two large studies, Die Pestgebete des Mursilis by A. Gdtze 3) and ,,Hittite Prayers of Mursili II by O.R. Gurney. 4) In Ancient Near Eastern Texts relating to the Old Testament A. GStze presented a nunmber of translation in the chapter Hittite Prayers. 5)

Ancient history · Art · Empire · History of religions · Hittite language · Literature · Philology · Pilgrimage · Prayer · Sociology · Subject (documents) · Ancient Egypt and Archaeology · Ancient Near East History · Classics · Historical, Religious, and Philosophical Studies · History · Linguistics and language evolution · Philosophy · Religious studies

• An Addition to the Prayer of Muršili to the Sungoddess and its implications

  Open Access•Hans G Güterbock•Anatolian Studies•1980

  Add to list