Cult inventory

(CTH 527.45)

Textual tradition

Basis of the edition

The present edition is based on the photographs available at the Mainzer Photoarchiv of the Hethitologie Portal Mainz, as well as the available hand-copies and relevant secondary literature up to 2019. When the original manuscripts have been collated, this is noted in the commentary.

Commentary

KUB 12.36 + KUB 60.9

Previous editions: Hazenbos 2003: 142-43.

This tablet is exceptional both because it is written in pre-NS script (van den Hout 1994: 121, Košak 1994: 288) and because it has a duplicate in the late manuscript KUB 30.37. The tablet begins with the deposition of a certain Tarḫini, “man of Tamarmara,” on the cult image and festivals of the god Šulinkatte. Although Tarḫini is native of Tamarmara, the inventory must not necessarily refer to this town; the preserved part of the colophon (KUB 30.37 iv 1′) mentions the Storm god of Nerik. This fact may be the very reason for the recopying of the text, a circumstance with very few parallels in the corpus (see Cammarosano 2013: 93 for a discussion of this case).

Apart from the detailed description of the cult image (obv. 3-9), an element of special interest is the fact that a winter festival (and not as usual an autumn festival) is paired to the spring festival (obv. 10-12). This was interpreted by Hazenbos (2003: 142) as a hint at the “general revision of the local festivals under Tudḫaliyaš IV (and possibly already Ḫattušiliš III),” but in my opinion the text reflects a genuine variant, which is attested in other late cult inventories as well (Cammarosano 2018: 117, 136).

Palaeography and orthography: Clear, non-cursive script with slanted heads of the vertical wedges and deep impressions. Pre-NS, see the signs TAR (l. 1), LI (l. 2, 7), KÙ (l. 3), SAG (l. 8); note however that IT does not present the characteristically MS stepped form (l. 6).

obv. 2: See commentary on KUB 30.37 i 2.

KUB 30.37

Previous editions: Hazenbos 2003: 142-43.

The fragment preserves in the first column a duplicate text of the pre-NS tablet KUB 12.36+ (q.v.). The colophon is partially preserved.

Palaeography and orthography: Clear, non-cursive script with slanted heads of the vertical wedges and deep impressions.

i 2: It is not necessary to restore the verbal form ēšzi at the end of the line (contra Hazenbos 2003: 142), and there is hardy enough space in the gap to accommodate such a restoration.

CC BY-SA 4.0 Michele Cammarosano | Produced as part of the research project Critical edition, digital publication, and systematic analysis of the Hittite cult-inventories (CTH 501-530), funded by the Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG) – project number 298302760, 2016–2020.