Religions of Asia Minor.

• Author: van den Hout, Theo
• Position: Review

By MACIEJ POPKO. Translated by IWONA ZYCH. Warsaw: ACADEMIC PUBLICATIONS DIALOG, 1995. Pp. 230 (paper).

Recent years have seen a significant increase in Hittite religious studies, culminating in two handbooks on Anatolian religions: the monumental Geschichte der hethitischen Religion (Leiden: E. J. Brill,. 1994) by Volkert Haas, in the Handbook of Oriental Studies (sect. 1, vol. 15), and the book under review by the well-known Polish Hittitologist Maciej Popko. According to its opening sentence, it is the first real "attempt at a synthesis of the religions of Asia Minor from the oldest times to the conquest by Alexander the Great" (p. 7) and thus explicitly focuses on giving a history of these religions. This is not reflected in the title of the book, Religions of Asia Minor, which is rather vague - as opposed to Haas's book that, in spite of its title and wealth of detail, is not a "history" in the true sense of the word. (For an earlier comparable work of Popko's in Polish, the reader is referred to V. Soucek and J. Siegelova, Systematische Bibliographie der Hethitologie 1915-1995 [Prague, 1997], 3: 162, no. 8.2:51.) On the whole both works are highly welcome contributions in a field where beginning students easily lose themselves amid the dazzling quantity of articles and small publications. Popko's book can be considered as supplementing Haas's Geschichte in providing a well-balanced historical overview of the development of ancient Anatolian religions, the details of which can be found in Haas's book. It admirably combines textual and nontextual data and Popko very frequently refers to archaeological sites and artifacts. It is therefore lamentable that the book does not have a single map, illustration, photograph, or line drawing.

In the introduction, the geography of Anatolia, the use of archaeological and textual sources, and the problems met in writing a history of Anatolian religions are briefly touched upon. A short history of archaeological investigations in Turkey is also given. The development of the religions is then sketched in three chapters, covering, serially, the prehistoric period, the second millennium, and the first, up to Alexander the Great. As is to be expected from the general availability of sources, the chapter on the second millennium, from the Old Assyrian trading colonies to the end of the Hittite empire, is the main body of the book. One might object to the role assigned to the Sea Peoples in the heading of...