Hittite Studies in Honor of Harry A. Hoffner Jr. on the Occasion of His 65th Birthday.

• Author: Miller, Jared
• Position: Book review

Hittite Studies in Honor of Harry A. Hoffner Jr. on the Occasion of His 65th Birthday. Edited by GARY BECKMAN, RICHARD BEAL, and GREGORY MCMAHON. Winona Lake, Indiana: EISENBRAUNS, 2003. Pp. xxiv + 406, illus. $59.50.

This volume is a collection of studies from thirty-four leading Hittitologists, primarily in English, but also in German, French, and Italian, dedicated to Harry A. Hoffner, Jr., himself a prominent Hittitologist, longtime professor at the University of Chicago, and for many years editor, along with H. G. Guterbock, of the Chicago Hittite Dictionary. It includes a full bibliography of Harry Hoffner's publications, as well as comprehensive indices. The volume appeared some four years after the articles were submitted (see, e.g., p. 348). Only selected articles will be commented upon here.

1. Archi brings out the importance of not confusing the Old, Middle, and Neo-Hittite linguistic and paleographic scheme with the historical situation, which does not lend itself to the term Middle Kingdom. He would rather designate the period from Hattusili I through the predecessors of Tudhaliya I (I/II) as the Old Kingdom, and the period from Tudhaliya I to Suppiluliuma I as the Early Empire period. He emphasizes Tudhaliya's military successes, which laid the groundwork for the Empire period, as well as the massive influx of Hurrian cultural elements at around the same time.

18. Beal presents a thorough discussion of the complex issue of the predecessors of Hattusili I, mercifully providing genealogical charts for what he considers the two most likely alternative reconstructions. (1) Among other points that should find acceptance are Beal's rejection of the claim that Hattusili I's self-legitimation through the Tawananna in the incipit of his Annals indicates a remnant of matriarchy, his rejection of the suggestion that this titulary is a late Empire insertion; his acceptance that the oft-debated section of the list of offerings to deceased royalty in which Huzziya, Kantuzzili, PU-Sarruma, Tudhaliya, Papahdilmah, and Labarna (= Hattusili I) appear indeed refers to the beginnings of the Old Kingdom, despite the occurrence of a Hurrian name; perhaps also his dating of the Zalpa legend to the time of Hattusili I, and his alternative identifications of the king, the grandfather of the king, the "old king," and the "father of the old king," all Hittite rulers; and that there is no compelling reason to assume that Labarna (II) changed his name to Hattusili (I) upon re-establishing the city of Hattusa.

    Central to Beal's paradigm is his suggestion concerning how Hattusili could have been a son of Papahdilmah, who would have lost his struggle with Labarna (I) for the throne: "Perhaps after a bloody civil war both sides were tired of fighting and reached a compromise by which Papahdilmah and his followers agreed to recognize Labarna in return for the succession passing to Papahdilmah's son upon Labarna's death, by-passing any children of Labarna and Tawananna" (pp. 25-26). This suggestion, of course, is purely speculative, and finds no explicit support in the textual evidence, forcing Beal to refer to a similar deal made between England's Matilda and Stephen.

7. Beckman (2) seeks to address primarily the question of "When during the second half of the second millennium B.C.E. was something approximating the standard, or 'canonical,' form of the [Gilgamesh] narrative achieved?" (p. 41), a question for which the Bogazkoy material has special relevance, being practically the only Kassite-period source. He points out a number of interesting variants found only in the Bogazkoy texts, such as the fact that Gilgamesh was created "by committee" rather than born to King Lugalbanda and the goddess Ninsun (p. 43), and discusses elements lacking in the Bogazkoy tablets as compared to the Mesopotamian and vice-versa. He then compares the orthography of the various personal names found in the Mesopotamian and Bogazkoy texts, finding that "the Hittite version seldom employs the onomastic renderings found in the edition of Sin-leqe-unninni." The structural comparison and the onomastic evidence leads Beckman to suggest that the twelve-tablet canonical version had not yet been compiled by the thirteenth century, and that the Bogazkoy material was based on precanonical texts. One might have expected some discussion of the fact that the Hittite texts seem to be at least in part reliant on the Hurrian material (p. 51), even though the Akkadian was also available to the scribes at Hattusa. (3)

20. R. Bryce first takes issue with E. Cline's assumption, presented in Sailing the Wine-Dark Sea, that one should expect that the Ahhiyawans, i.e., the Myceneans, and the Hittites...