Onomasticon of the Hittite Pantheon.

• Author: DEL MONTE, GIUSEPPE F.
• Position: Review

Onomasticon of the Hittite Pantheon By BEN H. L. AN GESSEL, Two volumes. Handbook of Oriental Studies: The Near and Midle East, vol. I.33. Leiden: E. J. BRILL, 1998. Pp. xxiii + xv + 1069. HF1 434.50. $256.

This expensive two-volume set is a complete dictionary of divine names attested in Hittite cuneiform texts. In the first volume are listed in alphabetical order the syllabically written names. In the second volume are listed the names that are written logographically, first the Sumerograms (pp. 605-915), then the Akkadograms (pp. 916-69), and these are followed by "Deities not mentioned by a proper name" (that is, the Sumerogram DINGIR[sup(MES)] with various epithets, pp. 970-1032), by unclassifiable fragments of names (pp. 1033-58), and by an eclectic collection of Human divine epithets. Under each entry spellings and references are followed by additional information and selected text quotations according to a fixed pattern (cf. pp. x--xi: family relations, other connections, epithets, temples and shrines, priests and servants, divine name followed by a geographical name, cult places, attributes, feasts, miscellanea), all arranged according to the linguistic affiliation of the name (such as Hittite, Hurrian, Luwian) and, when available, the secondary literature. The author has consulted all texts and fragments published or cited up to the first months of 1997, but Sumerian and Akkadian literary texts, the letters in Akkadian, and the Old Assyrian and Hieroglyphic Luwian texts are, surprisingly, not included.

The enormous amount of underlying work is impressive: the author has personally checked every textual and bibliographic reference, as shown first of all by the absence in the list of phantom deities whose names occur now and then in the indexes of some text editions. A pair of examples will clarify this point: in the Index of KUB 58 (Hethitische Rituale und Festbeschreibungen [Berlin: Akademie-Verlag], 1988), M. Popko includes a deity Hupigala, and is followed by J. Tischler in his review of this volume in AfO 36-37 (1989-90): 175. Actually Hupigala was just a temple functionary (see, most recently, E Pecchioli Daddi, Mestieri e Professioni [Rome, 1982], 581; and the reviews of Popko by G. F. del Monte, Oriens Antiquus 28 [1989]: 165; S. Kosak, Zeitschrift fur Assyriologie 80 [1990]: 148; Th. P. J. van den Hout, Bibliotheca Orientalis 48 [1991]: 582) and she is not listed as a goddess by van Gessel (p. 158). A further example is the...