Hittite Religion

doi:10.1017/CHO9781139600507.006

3 - Hittite Religion

from Part I - Mesopotamia and the Near East

Published online by Cambridge University Press: 05 October 2013

Gary Beckman

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Michele Renee Salzman

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Gary Beckman: Affiliation:
University of Michigan
Michele Renee Salzman: Affiliation:
University of California, Riverside

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Summary

The term “religion” is employed here in reference to the complex of conceptions concerning the character of parahuman elements in the cosmos and the relationship of men and women to these beings and forces, as well as to the practices by which humans interact with them. Because the Hittites of second-millennium-bce Anatolia, like all the peoples of the ancient Near East, perceived deities, demons, and the spirits of the dead to be involved in the most mundane aspects of existence, religion was for them an integral part of daily life.

As something so imbricated in the quotidian and self-evident to societal contemporaries, religion was seldom the subject of self-conscious reflection or examination in Hatti (as the Hittites referred to their nation and its territory; see Map 2). Accordingly, the Hittites bequeathed to posterity no theological treatises or surveys of their beliefs, and it is therefore necessary for the modern student to reconstruct their religious life from scattered evidence of the most diverse nature.

Type: Chapter
Information: The Cambridge History of Religions in the Ancient World , pp. 84 - 101

DOI: https://doi.org/10.1017/CHO9781139600507.006 [Opens in a new window]

Publisher: Cambridge University Press

Print publication year: 2013

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