Charles W. Steitler

Introduction | List of Festival Names | Search Database

Introduction

The critical index of festival ritual names endeavors to make all terms for “festival” (especially EZEN₄) accessible, as well as names of festivals attested in the Hittite texts, in the form of a searchable database. It also endeavors to classify the evidence typologically as far as possible. The collection of records is based on the lexical note collection of the Hethitologie-Archiv der Akademie der Wissenschaften und der Literatur | Mainz. In addition, the HFR basic corpus, as well as more recent text publications, were searched for EZEN₄ records.

All records have the following information associated with them:

• the transliteration of the word or phrase in question,
• the publication/inventory number of the text with line number,
• the CTH number of the respective text (via its connection with the Konkordanz der hethitischen Keilschrifttafeln).

In addition, the names of festivals are accompanied by:

• the translation of the feast name,
• the central term of the festival name,
• the assignment to a name category,
• the relation of the feast to an area of society or the environment
• and - if available - the emic type designation of the feast (as used by the Hittites themselves).

The rubric “name category” is a semantic category - such as “state” or “property” as contrasted with “action” - that simply refers to the name of a feast without further describing or categorizing its meaning or content.

Similarly, the identification of the “festival reference” aims to establish, on the basis of the festival name, the relationship to an area of human society (“cult” or “agriculture”) or the natural environment (“weather” or “flora and fauna”).

Under the “emic type”, categories are listed that were used in the Hittite cuneiform texts. The meaning of those emic designations is not necessarily known to today’s research, but they seem to be relevant for the overarching categorization of festivals on the part of the Hittites themselves.

When using the database search, at least one search field must be filled in or one search criterion must be selected; however, multiple search fields and criteria can be used simultaneously. Under “Name category”, “Fixed reference” and “Emic type”, multiple selections can also be made in each case. In the “Transliteration” field, the use of hyphens between characters is provided for; the use of special characters, such as “š”, “ḫ” or “í” is possible, but not required.

The alphabetically sorted list of festival names can be used to access the relevant entries in the database by clicking on a festival name.