201 BOEKBESPREKINGEN — HETTITOLOGIE 202 HETTITOLOGIE HOUT, Th. van den — The Elements of Hittite. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, 2011. (24,5 cm, XIII, 204). ISBN 978-0-521-13300-5 (paperback; hardback: ISBN 978-0-521-11564-3). £ 24,99 (paperback; hard- back: £ 60,-). When I began the study of Hittite in 1970, there was only one remotely acceptable published grammar available for classroom use: Johannes Friedrich, HethitischesElemen- tarbuch, second ed. (Munich: Carl Winter, 1960; first ed. 1940).1) Its drawbacks were many: As a “collapsed gram- mar” it was dry, opaque, and alienating to a linguistically unsophisticated learner like myself, and it perforce took no account of the rapid advances in our knowledge of the evolu- tion of the language over time made possible by the develop- ment in the years following its appearance of paleographic methods for dating Hittite manuscripts. Consequently, my teacher Harry Hoffner supplemented his teaching with grad- uated instructional materials of his own devising, and as a young instructor I followed suit. Thankfully, in the past decade several new teaching gram- mars2) have been published,3) including Harry A. Hoffner Jr. and H. Craig Melchert, AGrammaroftheHittiteLanguage, Part 1: Reference Grammar; Part 2: Tutorial (Winona Lake: Eisenbrauns, 2008), Sylvie Vanséveren, Nisili:Manuelde langueHittite (Leuven: Peeters, 2006), and now the book under review. Van den Hout’s grammar grew out of a self-published vol- ume originally created for his classes in Amsterdam and developed during his early years at Chicago’s Oriental Insti- tute. Hence it has benefited from the questions and criticisms of several generations of students and is most definitely user- friendly. TheElementsofHittite is divided into ten lessons, each of which provides digestible portions of Hittite morphology and syntax, ideally suited for a week’s work in an introductory course. Also treated are the basics of the cuneiform writing system as employed in Anatolia, as well as just enough 1) Edgar H. Sturtevant, AComparativeGrammaroftheHittiteLan- guage, second ed. (New Haven, Yale University Press, 1951; first ed. 1933) was by then hopelessly out of date. 2) Heinrich Wagner, DasHethitischevomStandpunktedertypolo- gischenSprachgeographie (Pisa: Giardini, 1985) and Silvia Luraghi, Hit- tite (Munich: Lincom Europa, 1997) were not intended as primers. 3) Unfortunately, an early entry into this market, Warren H. Held Jr., William R. Schmalstieg, Janet E. Gertz, BeginningHittite (Columbus: Slavica, 1988), cannot be recommended. See my review, JAOS (1991): 658-59. 203 BIBLIOTHECA ORIENTALIS LXXI N° 1-2, januari-april 2014 204 information about Akkadian and Sumerian to allow the stu- MARIZZA, M. — Lettere ittite di re e dignitari. La corri- dent to understand the use of heterograms in Hatti. Every spondenza interna del Medio Regno e dell’Età Impe- unit closes with exercises pitched at the appropriate level for riale. (Testi del Vicino Oriente Antico, 4 Letterature the reader’s current stage of enlightenment into Hittite gram- dell’Asia Minore, 3). Paideia Editrice, Brescia, 2009. mar, composed of (sometimes slightly modified) sentences (21 cm, 227). ISBN 978-88-394-0766-5. € 26,20 extracted from actual Hittite texts. Finally, the cuneiform text of The Ten-Year Annals of Muršili II (KBo 3.4 + KUB Marco Marizza, who completed his dottore di ricerca 23.125, CTH 61.I.A) is provided for practice in reading degree in 2008 at the University in Trieste, presents with this cuneiform. volume the first collection of translations into Italian of Hit- Having now employed both this textbook and the Gram- tite epistolary texts, which is for this reason alone a very mar of Hoffner and Melchert in my own classroom, I can valuable contribution, since only a small selection from this attest that each is an excellent tool, with its own strengths. important corpus had been available until now in Italian, I recommend van den Hout’s more accessible Elements to scattered in specialist literature. anyone teaching a one-term introduction to Hittite for those The volume opens with a 21-page introduction, in which students not planning to specialize in Anatolian philology— numerous aspects of these letters and their Sitz im Leben are say Indo-Europeanists or Classicists—while Hoffner and briefly discussed, beginning with their archaeological prove- Melchert’s more comprehensive work, along with its Tuto- nience and archival context, before succinctly addressing the rial, should be utilized when instructing those who will con- sometimes difficult issue of their chronological ordering. tinue to pursue the study of Hittitology. Marizza continues with brief notes on the general contents of the letters, the messengers who delivered them and a some- what longer section on the formulaic aspects found in them. * * * On his insightful discussion of duwaddu and uwadduwaddu In addition to the relatively few typos and missing or mis- cf. now the further attestations of possibly related addu in placed diacritics in TheElementsofHittite, note the follow- KUB 14.17++ ii 9’, 14’, 17’ (Miller, Fs. Košak, 522-526). ing errors and suggestions for correction in coming editions: The presentation of the letters themselves is divided P. 13: In §8 the third example given of cuneiform signs chronologically into those from the Middle Hittite Period and with the value /u/ is actually drawn as AK. those from the Empire Age. Each of these two chapters is P. 24: In 1.4.1 it should be noted that the allative case separated further into thematic sections, such as letters from never appears with persons. or to the king or members of the royal family, correspond- P. 44: The first seven lines of the cuneiform copy have ence among dignitaries, those of a military nature, those con- been erroneously repeated from the previous lesson. cerned with religious matters, and so forth. The sub-sections P. 54: Under Cuneiform Signs, Determinatives (3.7), the begin with a few introductory paragraphs, and each letter is sign GADA is drawn rather as PA. preceeded by a bibliography of the principal philological P. 55: The sentence in exercise 3.8.17 has already been treatments and editions and is provided with helpful foot- presented, with translation, on p. 52. The only difference is notes of various nature. Unlike Hoffner’s volume of letters that the earlier instance features the particle -wa. (Letters from the Hittite Kingdom, WAW 15, 2009; cf. my P. 56: In the vocabulary list (3.8.4), lexical items and their review in BiOr 69, 2012, 309ff.), which appeared in the same translations, due to the relative length of the latter, have year as this one, Marizza’s treatment provides only transla- sometimes been knocked out of alignment. Thus DUGišnura- tions, not transliterations, in keeping with the long-standing and laḫlaḫḫima- have not been translated. See also p. 93, format of the Testi del Vicino Oriente antico series. where dMaliyanneš lacks a definition. The volume ends with a chronological table of Hittite rul- P. 61: In 4.2.1 the translation “behold!” for kāšaand ers, a map of Hittite Anatolia and Syria, a list of abbrevia- kāšma should be abandoned. tions, a bibliography, a concordance of the texts and finally, P. 62: In 4.3.1 Pret. sing. 2 of ed- should be ezzatta(2x z). indices of personal, divine and place names. It is thus very Pp. 83f.: The Luwian form:guršauwananza in line 32 of user friendly and well structured. The map could be improved passage 5.8.3 should be explained. by differentiating between ancient and modern toponyms P. 104: To the observations concerning the weak articula- (e.g. Yalburt and Kizildağ [correct, Kızıldağ] beside Purush- tion of /r/ (7.5.1), add the fact that this sound never begins a anda and Tuwanuwa) and by a consistent use of question word in Hittite. marks with uncertain localizations, e.g. Lawazantiya? and P. 118: Among the cuneiform signs (8.7), KUM is missing Urshu? vis-à-vis Tegarama and Hahhum, all equally unclear. its final two Winkelhaken. As with Hoffner’s volume (with three exceptions), Marizza P. 146: The word waššiya- ‘to clothe’, which appears in translates only letters in the Hittite language, excluding those exercise 10.6.6, is not to be found in the glossary. in Akkadian, perfectly understandable for the given format of the volume, but necessarily leading to a skewed view of Ann Arbor, December 2013 Gary BECKMAN Hittite correspondence in general. He also chose not to trans- late most of the longest, best-preserved and historically most important letters of the Hittite corpus, probably because of * their having been extensively treated elsewhere, such as the * * letter from a Hittite king (probably Ḫattusili III) to a king of Aḫḫiyawa (CTH 181, the so-called Tawalagawa letter), the missive known as the Milawata Letter (CTH 182) and the letter of Manapa-Tarḫunta to a Hittite king (CTH 191), to name only a few. The following paragraphs will comment on 205 BOEKBESPREKINGEN — HETTITOLOGIE 206 a number of select details from just four of Marizza’s treat- I do not think the uncertainty expressed by Marizza ments. (p. 105f.) concerning the identities of the sender and the No. 61 (HKM 19): Unknown to Marizza, since published addressee, and thus who the augurs who carried out the bird in the same year, was the paper by E. Rieken (Hethitisch oracles were, is warranted. In my view it is clear that kaša,kašma,kašat(t)a: Drei verkannte deiktische Partikeln, Ḫandapi, the palace official of l. 5, had commissioned Ḫalpa- in E. Rieken – P. Widmer, eds., Pragmatische Kategorien. ziti, the writer of KuT 50, with carrying out personally Form, Funktion und Diachronie, 2009, 265-273), in which (zikila, l. 9) the investigation. In other words, the entire mes- she was able to show that kasa functions as a near deixis sage of ll.