By
Juan Antonio Belmonte (author)
Summary
Within the framework of the project Orientatio ad Sidera II, of the Spanish MICINN, the geographical, historical and anthropological context of a possible interest on the heavens by the ancient Hittites has been scrutinized (González García and Belmonte, 2011). Special care is devoted to analysing ancient Hittite religion within its Anatolian context, notably the solar cults and the festival calendar. Contemporaneous with the Egyptian New Kingdom, the inhabitants of the Hittite Empire and their masters, the Kings of the Land of Hatti, produced a most sophisticated society, heir to a long Anatolian cultural tradition lasting several millennia. However, to our knowledge, cultural astronomy studies in this area and particular period have been practically non-existent although preliminary analyses of some Hittite sites, such as Yazilikaya (Belmonte 2000: 89, Krupp 2005: 413) or Sarissa (Müller-Karpe, Müller-Karpe and Schrimpf 2009: 141), and of a few written sources had shown certain clues to a possible interest in the sky. It is not the intention of this short essay to produce a review on ancient Hittite religion but rather to concentrate instead on those aspects of the cult that could be of interest to our work. These are the solar, and other astral, divinities, the sacred space and its administrators, the calendar of festivals -i.e. Hittite sacred time- and, finally, the dead cult and related spaces and topography. To our knowledge, this is the first project dedicated to cultural astronomy studies of the Hittite civilization. In this respect, we have analysed in depth the bibliographical sources, including some original texts. The importance of solar cults has been clearly emphasized and certain hints on the ancient Hittite sacred time have been established with a certain degree of certitude. This will be useful for a later comparison with the data provided by the archaeoastronomical research.