Early Hittite Literature and the Emergence of the Annalistic Style

Abstract

The “annalistic style”—or elements thereof—is found in numerous textual traditions of the ancient Near East, including in the royal inscriptions of the Achaemenid kings (Harmatta 1982: 86–7; Schmitt 1991: 22, i.a.). This paper is concerned with the emergence of this style, which will be explored by way of a case study in Hittite. It is well-established that the earliest Hittite exemplars of this style—in particular, “the Anitta text” (CTH 1; Neu 1974) and the “Annals of Hattušili I” (CTH 4; Imparati and Saporetti 1965; deMartino 2003)—differ in form and in substance from later annalistic texts (Hoffner 1980; Collins 1998, i.a.). I examine these divergences as a window into the purpose of these texts, created at a stage before the annalistic style attained a relatively fixed form. To what extent do they draw on earlier (Akkadian) models, and what did their authors aim to accomplish by deploying stylistic elements characteristic of them? What else informs the choices about language and content evident in these texts? More generally, this paper aims to determine what the development of the annalistic style in Hittite literature in particular can reveal about how it is used in later (Near Eastern) traditions.