Keilschrifttexte aus Boghazkoy im Vorderasiatischen Museum.

• Author: MELCHERT, H. CRAIG
• Position: Review

Keilschrifttexte aus Boghazkoy im Vorderasiatischen Museum. By LIANE JAKOB-ROST. Vorderasiatische Schriftdenkmaler der Staatlichen Museen zu Berlin, neue Folge, vol. 12 (vol. 28). Mainz: PHILIPP VON ZABERN, 1997. Pp. 17 + 56 lables. DM 50.

This volume contains the last remaining Hittite texts from the collection of the Vorderasiatisches Museum in Berlin. It appears under the above title and not as the expected volume 61 of Keilschrifturkunden aus Boghazkoi. The text fragments belong to all genres, but festivals and rituals predominate. The autographs are by the experienced Liane Jakob-Rost and are of her usual high quality. The volume is provided with the now standard lists of personal, divine, and geographic names.

It will be inconvenient for citation purposes that this final volume of Berlin texts is not part of the established KUB series, but we should be grateful for its appearance. Most of the fragments are predictably small and of limited interest, aside from the occasional unusual vocabulary or orthography. There are several significant exceptions, however, on which I will focus my remarks. No. 7 is an unusual ritual text for the king, who is designated as armantalliya- (i 15', iv 15'). This epithet, unique to my knowledge, confirms the unity of the text, despite the author's remarks (p. 7). More remarkably, the prayer-like direct speech in column iv is apparently introduced by n=an=si Kissan [...hu-w]a-ar-ta-an-zi "they curse him for him as follows." The lines following name Suppiluliuma and Mursili. Are we to infer a ritual employed against a specific enemy of some subsequent Neo-Hittite king? In no. 11 par-du-uh-ha-as ta-pl-sa na-an "a pitcher of p." (iii 15') can hardly be separated from...