Comparing Pantheons

The Greeks associated a number of their deities with Anatolia, and there are many general resemblances between the two pantheons, and some types of deity seem to be common to both – e.g. fate goddesses, goddesses of springs. However, there are very few Greek theonyms which have close Hittite parallels, and examination of the evidence leads to the conclusion that there was no significant Hittite influence on the Greek pantheon, which is surprising, given that there was contact between Hittites and Greeks. Perhaps any interaction there was with Anatolia was with the West, i.e. Arzawa and earlier Assuwa, about whose religious traditions we are less well informed.

Greek Religion in the LBA and EIA

Chapter 3, which is aimed primary at those who are not experts in Greek religion, presents a survey of Greek and Aegean religion, covering Minoan religion, Mycenaean religion and Greek religion of the 1st millennium BC. Ione issue I address throughout is that continuity. The final section looks at the evidence for Greek religion in Anatolia in the 1st millennium BC

Festivals, Amphictiones, and the Calendar

This chapter examines the relation between the richly attested festival culture of Hittite Anatolia and Greece. The closest to Greek festivals are the local Hittite festivals described in cult inventories, where we get a sense of communal celebration. The big state festivals seem less close, though, paradoxically, these are the ones visiting foreign delegates from place like Greece might have witnessed. The Hittites texts also attest the operation of religious network, whch have been compared to Greek amphictonies. One of the striking differences is that unlike Greek festivals and those of some parts of the Ancient Near East, Hittite festivals do not seem to be celebrated on a fixed monthly calendar, but motivated by the seasons.

Working with Comparative Data

Chapter 4 develops further the methodological principles sketched in this introduction. The foundation of the subject is comparison of religious practices in different geographical areas, which alows us to chart patterns of both similarities and variations. Ths may sometimes allow to infer influence, though it is much harder to prove borrowing than has sometimes been assumed. In fact, comparison has other functions as well, not least that it allows us to understand what is distinctive about different cultures. In the last section I illustrate my approach with some examples from the history of the subject.

Animal Sacrifice

This chapter looks at animal sacrifice in the two cultures. In Greece, animal sacrifice is often presented as the single most important religious ritual and an action of great political symbolism, which can define a social group. In Hittite Anatolia, animal sacrifice was regarded as one of three types of offering, alongside libation and bread, the latter being less stressed in Greece; and there is much less emphasis on social significance, though there is some. Hittite texts are unusual in the detail with which they describe animal sacrifice, and this gives us lots of opportunities to compare and contrast it with Greek practice. Some things seem very similar, such as the distinction between modes of offering aimed at upper and lower deities. But there are also differences; for example, the form of offering with the highest prestige is not aninaml sacrifice at all, but ‘god drinking’, a form of libation in which the participants imbibed the spirit of the deity by drinking from a vessel that was supposed in some way to embody him.

War-Rituals

Chapter 10 compares Hittite military rituals with those of Greece, setting them in the context of other religious traditons of the Ancient Near East and the Mediterranean. The hypothesis that one culture might adopt another’s military rituals is plausible because we know that techniques of warfare and military technology themselves tended in some cases to migrate. Hittite military rituals and Greek military rituals of the 1st millennium do not seem particularly close, but Greek poets and writers seem to have knowledge of some rituals which resemble Hittite ones, so it seems there may be some memory of an historical reality here.

Becoming Cybele

This chapter examines a third major contact zone in NW Turkey around the 7th-century BC. Here Greek colonists established themselves and will have come into contact with the Phrygian population, who took over the area previously occupied by the Hittites in the early Iron Age. Links between Phrygians and Greeks could be much older, perhaps going back to a time before the Phrygians migrated into Anatolia. NW Turkey is the most likely context for the transmission to Greece of the cult of the goddess whom the Greeks knew as Phrygian Cybele, although her divine personality may in fact owe a good deal to Greek ideas of the Great Mother. The question arises whether or not Phrygian Cybele owes something to the Hittite religion of five centuries before.

Epilogue

The problem I started with was the relationship between the amply documented archives of Hittite religion and ancient Greek religion. How can historians of Greek religion make use this material, if at all? Any conclusions are bound to be provisional when there are such large gaps in our knowledge—ignorance of Mycenaean religion, and of the religion of W. Anatolia in the LBA, and limited information about EIA religious traditions in Anatolia. And ignorance too about what was going on before the first written records, i.e. in the first part of the 2nd millennium BC and earlier....

The West Anatolian Contact Zone

Chapter 6 looks at the religious traditon of the W. Anatolia state of Arzawa and its religon to Greek religion. The main evidence for Arzawan religious is a group of plague- and purufcation- rituals, many of them designed for military use. The authors of the rituals are said to be augurs, which shows that augury/bird-oracles were part of the procedure. In the chapter I explore parallels with Greek religion, e.g. a plague ritual in Homer, the scapegoat- (pharmakos-) rituals of Ionia and Greek bird-oracles.

Anatolian–Greek Religious Interaction in the LBA

Chapter 5 looks at contact between the Hittites and Mycenaean Greece and between states of W. Anatolia (e.g. Arzawa) and Mycenaean Greeece in the Late Bronze Age. Evidence for this is limited but significant, e.g. a Hittite text which mentions the presence of gods of Mycenaean greece/Ahhiyawa and Lazpa/Lesbos at the Hittite court, and a treaty between the Hittites and the state of Wilusa (Troy?) which seems to ention a deity Apaliuna, i.e. Apollo. I argue that religious ideas might have moved in either direction as the result of political alliances and diplomatic exchanges, and perhaps participation in common sanctuaries.