The Prince, the KAR.KID Women and the arzana-house: A Hittite Royal festival to the goddess Kataḫḫa (CTH 633)
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Ada Taggar-Cohen
Abstract
CTH 633 is a Hittite text including a prescribed ritual of a festival to be performed by a prince. Its first publisher read the text as a rite of passage, initiating a young prince into adulthood, based on assumptions of the meaning of three key terms in the text: the verbal noun ḫaššumaš which is the name of the festival, the location where the rite takes place, which is the arzana-house, and the participation of KAR.KID women, recognized in Mesopotamian scholarship as “prostitutes”. This article offers an alternative understanding of this text based on reexamination of these terms. While setting the ritual in the context of Hittite royal state religion, the ritual is interpreted from a methodological point of view as a political rite, part of the religious activities aimed at conferring royal legitimacy on the prince, who is the next in line to become the Great King of Ḫatti. The role of the KAR.KID women in the cultic activity is explained, and the arzana-house is identified as a place of cult.
© by Akademie Verlag, Kamigyo-ku,Kyoto, Germany
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Articles in the same Issue
- Die Anschaffungspolitik beim Erwerb vorderasiatischer und ägyptischer Altertümer für die Museen zu Berlin im Jahre 1885/86 anhand der Briefe von Otto Puchstein an Adolf Erman
- A New Fragment of Nisaba A
- Das Ritual in Enḫeduanas Lied „Königin der zahlreichen Me“
- The Meaning and Significance of the Old Assyrian sikkātum
- Nochmals zu den Gerste-Qualitäten šiḫṭu und ḫiṣnu in mittelassyrischen Texten
- The Palermo Stone: the Earliest Royal Inscription from Ancient Egypt
- Zur Bedeutung von „mrgn“ als semitisches Fremdwort im Ägyptischen
- Die Etymologie von tekri-, einem hapax legomenon in den ,Mannestaten Suppiluliumas‘
- Mythologische Fragmente
- Zum hethitischen Personenrecht: § 34 HES
- The Prince, the KAR.KID Women and the arzana-house: A Hittite Royal festival to the goddess Kataḫḫa (CTH 633)
- Community and Individuals at Emar
- Urartäisch barzani zelde
- Ein Täfelchen über Gerstenrationen aus Tigunānu(?)
