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According to the outline tablets of the nuntarriyašḫa- festival, the celebrations of DAY 12 were organized into two major components:
1. The king departs from Ḫattuša through the Zippalanda Gate and travels to Ḫarranašši, where he takes part in the local festival. This marks the first occasion on which the ruler leaves the capital since his return there on DAY 6.
2. The second component has been interpreted differently in previous scholarship, largely owing to the fragmentary nature of the relevant passages. These refer to the NIN.DINGIR priestess leaving a building, to dancing in the House of the Chariot Fighters (É LÚKUŠ₇), to the performance of offering rounds, and to the provision of food and drink by the three filiae (called “palaces”) associated with the regional centers of Ḫupišna, Nenašša, and Tuwanuwa.
The controversy concerns the identification of the subject of these actions: whether they are to be attributed to the priestess or to the king. If one assumes that the king is the subject of the clauses referring to dancing and offerings – as seems to have been the case in the interpretations of Güterbock and Houwink ten Cate – then the NIN.DINGIR priestess must be understood as accompanying the king on his journey to Ḫarranašši, with all events of DAY 12 taking place there. Such a reading, however, results in an awkward syntactic insertion of the reference to the priestess among clauses concerned with the king, while simultaneously failing to specify the destination of her movement.
It seems therefore more likely to accept Nakamura's proposition (Nakamura M. 2002a: 102), according to which all clauses following the mention of the NIN.DINGIR priestess refer to her actions. On this reading, it is the priestess who dances in the House of the Chariot Fighters, performs the offering rounds, and receives provisions. In this case, these rites would most likely have taken place in Ḫattuša, while the king was absent.
Despite the relative importance of DAY 12 within the festival sequence, no day-tablets for this day have so far been identified. Although two fragments mentioning the Zippalanda Gate are known (KBo 22.209 obv. 1 and KUB 44.33 i 10; both CTH 635), they do not provide sufficient evidence to assign them specifically to the nuntarriyašḫa- festival, rather than to the AN.DAḪ.ŠUM festival – during which a similar journey from Ḫattuša to Ḫarranašši also occurred – or to a different festival altogether.
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