Die Ritualtradition der Ambazzi: Eine philologische Bearbeitung und entstehungsgeschichtliche Analyse der Ritualtexte CTH 391, CTH 429 und CTH 463.

• Author: Beckman, Gary

Die Ritualtradition der Ambazzi: Eine philologische Bearbeitung und entstehungsgeschichtliche Analyse der Ritualtexte CTH 391, CTH 429 und CTH 463. By BIRGIT CHRISTIANSEN. Studien zu den Bogazkoy-Texten. vol. 48. Wiesbaden: HARRASSOWITZ VERLAG, 2(K)6. Pp. xix + 449, [euro]48.

This volume, the revision of a Magisterarbeit written under Volkert Haas and submitted to the Freie Universitat in Berlin in 2003, participates in a recent trend in studies of Hittite religion, the comparative examination of a group of rituals. Other examples include J. L. Miller, Studies in the Origins, Development and Interpretation of the Kizzuwatna Rituals (Wiesbaden, 2004); D. Bawanypeck, Die Rituale der Auguren (Heidelberg, 2005); and R. StrauB, Reinigungsrituale aus Kizzuwatna (Berlin, 2006). The body of material studied here is constituted by the ceremonies introduced by the sentence, "Thus says (the woman) Ambazzi."

Christiansen's primary concern, beyond providing standard editions of the three compositions involved, is applying historical-critical methodology as it has grown up primarily in biblical studies along with the techniques developed by Hittitologists for dating texts (p. 1). To this end, she stresses the important distinction between a ritual and a ritual text (p. 7). The former is, of course, the ceremony carried out by a practitioner of magic, while the latter is a description of a ritual procedure contained in a text created by a scribe. Since only one or two of those persons named as "authors" of a rite are also attested as scribes, it is clear that ritual and ritual text belonged to distinct settings in Hittite culture.

The question naturally arises: what was the relationship between the undertakings described in a ritual text and the actual ritual praxis of the individual whose name it bears? Various answers have been posed, from the text being a straightforward transcript of a ceremony observed by the scribe to the view that the attribution to an "author" was an act of pseudonymity intended to appropriate the prestige of a famous ritualist for the work of a later scribe. The alternatives are discussed thoroughly by Miller in the work mentioned above, but in her exegesis of CTH 463 here (pp. 303f.) Christiansen demonstrates conclusively that Ambazzi cannot have composed this ritual text, at least as it stands. Most of the circumstances calling for the implementation of this rite, as described in its initial paragraph, have certainly been drawn...