Harry A. Hoffner

Piotr Michalowski

Martha Tobi Roth

The law collections presented in this volume are compilations, varying in legal and literary sophistication, recorded by scribes in the schools and the royal centers of ancient Mesopotamia and Asia Minor from the end of the third millennium through the middle of the first millennium B.C.E. Sumerian, Babylonian, Assyrian, and Hittite texts, with accompanying English translations, are included. Some of the collections, like the famous Laws of Hammurabi, achieved a wide audience; others, like the Laws about Rented Oxen, were scribal exercises limited to a local school center. All, however, reflected contemporary legal practice in the scribes' recordings of contracts, administrative documents, and court cases and also provide historians with evidence of abstractions of legal rules from specific cases.

Law Collections from Mesopotamia and Asia Minor

Orient and Occident

Hans Gustav Güterbock

T. P. J. Van Den Hout

The Hittite Dictionary of the Oriental Institute of the University of Chicago

University of Chicago. Oriental Institute

Theo P. J. Van Den Hout

The Hittite language is the earliest preserved member of the Indo-European family of languages. It was written on clay tablets in central Asia Minor over a five hundred year span (ca. 1650-1180 B.C.) which witnessed the rise, the floruit, and the decline of many political powers in the Near East. It is studied today for a wide variety of reasons. Historical linguists seek information in Hittite texts to elucidate the relationships between the various member languages of the Indo-European family, as well as the probable structure of their common parent, Proto-Indo-European. Historians find in Hittite annals, treaties, royal edicts, and political correspondence information of great value in reconstructing the sequence of events on the international scene of mid-second-millennium Western Asia. Anthropologists, mythographers, and students of comparative religion mine the riches of Hittite religious texts: myth, magic rituals to cure ailments, festivals to worship the gods of the empire. Students of the history of law discover ancient precedents for legal procedures which have survived to this day. All of these interested researchers share a dependence upon the written texts. None can penetrate further than our limited understanding of this language allows. [From the Preface, CHD L-N, p. ix].

The thirty-three articles in this collection (originally published between 1948 and 1992) were chosen from the corpus of bibliographical items authored by Hans Gustav Gueterbock over a span of more than sixty years. They give a rich and varied picture of ancient Hittite culture by one who literally grew up with the new discipline and experienced firsthand its most dramatic discoveries. Both the choice of articles and their sequence in this volume were selected by Professor Gueterbock. Articles deal with almost every conceivable aspect of ancient Hittite culture: history, literature, divination, mythology/theology, religious ceremonies, architecture, ethnic diversity, law, diplomacy, social structure, and administration. This diversity demonstrates Gueterbock's proficiency in all areas of Hittitological research.

Selected Writings of Hans Gustav Güterbock

Perspectives on Hittite Civilization

Gary M. Beckman

This is the first book-length collection in English of letters from the ancient kingdom of the Hittites. All known well-preserved examples, including the important corpus of letters from the provincial capital of Tapikka, are reproduced here in romanized transcription and English translation, accompanied by introductory essays, explanatory notes on the text and its translation, and a complete description of the rules of Hittite correspondence compared with that of other ancient Middle Eastern states. Letters containing correspondence between kings and their foreign peers, between kings and their officials in the provinces, and between these officials themselves reveal rich details of provincial administration, the relationships and duties of the officials, and tantalizing glimpses of their private lives. Matters discussed include oversight of agriculture, tax liabilities, litigation, inheritance rights, defense against hostile groups on the kingdom's periphery, and consulting the gods by means of oracular procedures.

Letters from the Hittite Kingdom

A complete tool for understanding this oldest collection (about 1650 BC) of laws made by an Indo-European people. Incorporating many tablets published since the 1959 edition, and utilizing the latest lexical and grammatical insights, the author presents the text in the "score" format with translation, commentary, glossary, indexes, plates and bibliography.

A Critical Edition

The Laws of the Hittites

This work contains the first English translations of a collection of Hittite myths. The translations are based on the original tablets on which the myths were written, and take into account recent textual discoveries and published studies on the texts. Revised and augmented, this second edition includes additional introductions to each myth and a newly published Hurrian myth, "The Song of Release," dealing with legal and social institutions in ancient Babylonia and Israel. Accessible to nonspecialists, the translations also preserve column and line count for the convenience of scholars.

Hittite Myths

Theo P. J. van den Hout

Hans G. Guterbock

This is the fourth and final fascicle of the letter S (-sma/i- A. to suu). The CHD is a comprehensive, bilingual Hittite-English dictionary. The CHD is not just a list of words and their meanings, but rather an encyclopedic dictionary that reflects and illustrates the ideas and material world of Hittite society through its lexicon. Published letter by letter, the CHD is a long-term project and the result of a painstaking process of cultural, historical, and lexical investigation for all those interested in Hittite culture and history. The CHD is the only such project in the English speaking world.

Fascicle 4: Sma/i- A. to Suu-

A tribute to America's preeminent scholar of Hittite language and culture, Professor Harry A. Hoffner, Jr., of the Oriental Institute of the University of Chicago. The thirty-four contributors, students, and colleagues treat topics as diverse as Hittite contacts with the Mycenaean Greeks, the topography of the Hittite capital, and various aspects of Hittite grammar and etymology.

Harry A. Hoffner

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