Reves hittites: Contribution a une histoire et une anthropologie du reve en Anatolie ancienne.

• Author: Beal, Richard
• Position: Book review

Reves hittites: Contribution a une histoire et une anthropologie du reve en Anatolie ancienne. By Alice Mouton. Culture & History of the Ancient Near East, vol. 28. Leiden: Brill, 2007. Pp. xxix + 344. $125.

This study has two objectives: to make available to the reader the most representative corpus possible of Hittite material pertaining to dreams and to bring some anthropological perspective to the study of dreams among the Hittites. Modern psychoanalytical theory is not employed since it is considered to be too embedded in modern Western conceptions. Other comparable material from the ancient Near East exists (pp. xxv-xxvi) and the published portions of this corpus are given as comparanda.

The study seeks to answer: What was a dream in the eyes of the Hittites? What was the origin of dreams? How important were dreams in their daily life? How and why? Although practically all of our tablets come from the palace or the temple, and thus represent the beliefs of the elite, the author believes, correctly in my opinion, that there is no reason to suppose that ordinary people's beliefs were much different.

The first section (pp. 1-28) seeks to define terms and to deal with the contexts in which dreams play a role. It begins with definitions. Mouton examines the various Indo-European etymologies suggested for the two Hittite words for "dream" tesha- and zashai-. The former is used for both "sleep" and "dream" and the latter only for "dream." Would this not indicate, pace Mouton, that the Hittites did indeed distinguish between a "dream" (tesha-) and a nocturnal vision (zashai-)? Mouton points out that in Hittite as well as in the other ancient Near Eastern languages, one does not "dream," but rather "sees a dream"; that is, the person is not the active originator of the dream but rather the passive spectator of it. This point is emphasized by the mention that a particular deity appeared to a person in a dream or "held out" (para ep-) a dream to a person.

Dreams are mentioned in historical texts, where a deity is recorded as having given a politically significant message to a ruler or potential ruler. In myths and legends, dreams appear only in Hittite translations of foreign compositions. Dreams, both requested (i.e., incubation) and unrequested, are mentioned in prayers as one of the ways in which the will of the gods can be ascertained. However, there are no Hittite treatises on dream interpretation; the only one found at the Hittite capital...