Hethitische Texte in Transkription, KBo 48.

• Author: Kapelus, Magdalena
• Position: Book review

Hethitische Texte in Transkription, KBo 48. By Detlev Groddek. Dresdner Beitrage zur Hethitologie, vol. 38. Wiesbaden: Harrassowitz Verlag, 2012. Pp. xvii + 193. 62 [euro] (paper).

The project of publishing transliterations of Hittite cuneiform texts, edited already in their cuneiform facsimiles, in order to give non-cuneiform-scholars access to these texts has been underway since 2002. The present volume (DBH 38) contains the texts published in their cuneiform version in 2007 by Heinrich Otten, Christel Ruster, and Gemot Wilhelm as Texte aus der Unterstadt, Texte ohne Herkunftsangabe und Texte aus der Oberstadt (Berlin: Gebr. Mann Verlag) in the forty-eighth volume of the series Keilschrift-texte aus Bogazkby. The transliterations in this volume follow, as usual, the order of the cuneiform edition. The volume consists of 289 small and very small fragments of tablets found at Hattusa, arranged in both editions under Laroche's numbers in Catalogue des textes hittites (1972) (CTH).

Because pieces of different provenience--most indeed of unknown source--were published in KBo 48, the fragments belong to various genres. The texts are mainly tiny bits of rituals and festivals; many have been assigned to the miscellaneous entries CTH 470 and CTH 670, as well as to CTH 832 (which contains thousands of very small items, mostly the remnants of the unidentified ceremonies).

Four fragments of colophons (No. 33: the fragment of a long tablet mentioning the queen, No. 176: the fourth tablet of a ritual, No. 177: a long tablet of a ritual performed by a lady named Su-[, and No. 184: a long tablet attributed to CTH 825) cannot yet be joined to their appropriate tablets.

The volume also encompasses other kinds of texts, starting from various lists and Kultinventare, an instruction for functionaries, and fragments of mythology and prayers. A few fragments of rituals (among them some from Kizzuwatna), many of festivals (including the great spring AN.TAH.SUM-festival, the autumn nuntarriyasha-festival, and the KI.LAM-festival), and a number of oracles are included. There are a few texts (festivals and rituals) concerning the deities Tesub and Hebat as well as Istar of Samuha. Rituals related to Hattie as well as to Palaic and Luwian deities can also be found.

The Einleitung (pp. xiii-xvii) contains useful abbreviations supplementing those of the Chicago Hittite Dictionary and the volume dedicated to Prof. Silvin Kosak (DBH 25).

The volume is completed with a...