Local Versus General History in Old Hittite Historiography

LOCAL VERSUS GENERAL HISTORY IN OLD HITTITE HISTORIOGRAPHY

Alexander Uchitel

Several definitions of 'historiography' are currently in use. According to a minimalist approach, only followers of the Greek concept of historia, that is, a rational historical research, are credited with this title. A maximalist definition, on the contrary, includes any narrative dealing with past events, regardless of its original purpose. A compro• mise view which treats as 'historiography' proper only those composi• tions whose purpose is purely historical, without any indication of some other more practical aim, will be adopted in the present study. Hittites are often credited as those who 'invented' the genre of historiography in this last sense. 1 Indeed, the earliest known com• position bearing a title 'Tablet of Manly Deeds' (DUB LV-na-an-na• af)2 was written already during the reign of Hattusili I, one of the early kings of the Hittite Old Kingdom period, in the 17th century. In contrast to the later Assyrian royal annals which preserved their original connection to royal building inscriptions in the form of the so-called Baubericht (an account of royal building activity, written as a postscript), this Hittite genre of 'manly deeds' (pesnatar), conven• tionally also called 'royal annals,' shows no signs of any purpose other than recording the past events. The realization that the Hittite version of the annals of Hattusili I was originally inscribed upon the king's golden statue dedicated to the Sun-goddess of Arinna3 did not transform this text into a 'votive inscription,' thereby revealing its true purpose. Royal annals or their parts could be inscribed upon statues. later without any change in identification of their genre, such as the annals of Tuthaliya IV (13th century), which were also orig• inally inscribed upon the king's statue.4

1 Gi.iterbock ( 1983) 21-35. 2 CTH 4. Critical edition with Italian translation: lmparati and Saporetti (1965) 40-85; English translation: Kuhrt (1995) 241-2; Russian: Ivanov (1977) 66-70; Hebrew: Kempinski ( 1980) 13-20. 3 See Otten ( 1968) 11 I . i Gi.iterbock (I 967) I 39-56. All dates are BCE. 56 ALEXANDER UCHITEL

The origins of this genre are disputed. On the one hand, an ear• lier historical inscription of Anitta5 was proposed as a possible pro• totype of Hittite royal annals; on the other hand, the existence of an Akkadian version of the annals of Hattusili I seems to point to• wards some Mesopotamian prototype. Both views are problematic. Anitta's text is clearly a building inscription, as is evident from the text itself: 'These words [I put] on my gate with a tablet' (I. 33). Although no genuine Hittite monumental inscription written in a cuneiform script has ever been found, this genre of real or fictitious building inscriptions continued to exist during the Old Hittite period alongside the genre of royal annals, being represented by such texts as an account of the campaigns of Mursili I (including the famous sack of Babylon) written by his successor, Hantili 1. 6 Like Anitta's text, this is a clay tablet bearing clearly recognizable signs of a build• ing inscription, i.e., an account of royal building activity and a curse against erasing the inscription (II. 12-15). Several Old Assyrian and Syrian historical texts proposed by H. Tadmor as possible alternative prototypes of Hattusili l's annals are building inscriptions as well. 7 Some of them could serve as a prototype of Anitta's inscription, especially an inscription of Zimri• Lim, king of Mari,8 a clay tablet claiming to be a monumental inscription. However, as Giiterbock has pointed out,9 it is irrelevant for the problem of the genre's origin whether Hattusili's scribes were inspired by these inscriptions or by Anitta's text, because in either case the radical break with the building inscriptions' tradition should be assumed as taking place during Hattusili's reign. This assumption, however, faces another difficulty: if the 'inven• tion' of a new genre of 'manly deeds' is attributed to Hattusili I, it should also be assumed that it was 'invented' simultaneously in two languages, Hittite and Akkadian. The most disturbing consequence of this presumption is the use of two different expressions, which cannot be regarded as exact translations of each other, for the intro-

5 cm I. Critical edition with German translation: Neu (1974); English: Gtiterbock (1983) 23-4; Russian: Ivanov (1977) 37-9; Hebrew: Kempinski (1980) 4-6. 6 cm 11. Transliteration with a partial German translation: Forrer ( 1926) II. 20, IO; Hebrew: Kempinski ( 1980) 45-6. 7 Tadmor (1977) 213. 8 Dossin (1971) 1-6. " Gtiterbock ( 1983) 26.