Literature

From about the seventeenth to the early twelfth century BCE, the Hittite kingdom and empire used writing to manage affairs of state, conduct diplomacy, preserve religious practices, and tell stories. Its core lay in central Anatolia, but its power and cultural contacts extended into northern Syria. Most surviving Hittite-language texts come from the royal archives at Hattusa, the capital. The written record includes myths and prayers as well as histories, treaties, ritual directions, and administrative documents. These categories overlap: a text could be both a practical guide to a ceremony and a vehicle for religious ideas.

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Clay tablets and a multilingual scribal tradition

Hittite writing survives chiefly on clay tablets. More than 30,000 tablets and fragments have been excavated, most of them at Hattusa. Texts have also been found at other Anatolian centers and at sites in Syria and Egypt. This distribution reflects the reach of Hittite political and cultural connections, though the royal archive at the capital remains the largest source for the written record.

Hittite scribes used a form of cuneiform adapted from the Old Babylonian tradition through contact with Syria. Pressing a stylus into soft clay produced the wedges from which signs were built. The tablet could then be dried and stored, and an older text recopied when another version was needed.

Cuneiform signs could represent syllables or whole words. Some signs retained their Sumerian or Akkadian word values as written conventions, even when the surrounding text was Hittite. A sign could also act as a determinative, an unpronounced marker indicating the kind of word that followed. For example, a city marker could precede a place name. These mixed practices let scribes draw on an established written tradition while recording Hittite speech, but they also mean that a written sign does not always reveal how a word was pronounced.

Hattusa’s collection included writing in Hattic, Hurrian, Luwian, Palaic, Akkadian, and Sumerian, among other languages. Some texts preserve more than one language, while others are translations or adaptations. Akkadian, a major language of international correspondence, also appears in diplomatic documents and treaties. Hurrian and other traditions supplied material for myths and epics. The archive therefore records more than one literary culture: it shows scribes working across languages and selecting older or foreign works for Hittite settings.

History, kingship, and political argument

Hittite historical writing could take the form of annals, which arranged events in chronological order, or accounts of a ruler’s deeds organized around a person, place, or theme. Such texts recount campaigns and royal actions, but they are not detached records of events. Royal narratives presented success in relation to divine support and could make a political case about a ruler’s conduct or right to rule. Texts looking back to earlier central Anatolian rulers, including the Anitta text, also show that material preserved in later archives could refer to a time before the imperial institutions that copied and kept it.

The Proclamation of Telipinu is an example of history used to address a political problem. It recounts earlier events as a lesson about the dangers of conflict within the royal family and sets out principles for succession to the throne. Later royal accounts likewise joined personal history to public claims. The Apology of Hattusili III presents the king’s life and actions in a form that defends his rule. In such writing, the past was not merely a sequence of events: it could be used to explain why a particular order should be accepted.

Diplomatic treaties also combined practical obligations with political rhetoric. Some opened with a historical account of the relationship between the Hittite ruler and a subordinate king. That account could remind the other party of past conflict or assistance before setting out the terms of the agreement. The historical prologue helped frame the treaty’s demands as part of an existing relationship, rather than as isolated instructions.

Myths carried into ritual

Many myths in the Hittite collections were linked to ceremonies rather than preserved as stories apart from religious practice. Hittite versions drew on traditions from Anatolia and neighbouring regions, including Hattic and Hurrian material, and could be translated or reshaped for a new setting. The archive also preserves versions of works from farther afield, including the Epic of Gilgamesh.

The myth of Illuyanka, in which the Storm God fights a serpent or dragon, was associated with a spring festival at Nerik. The story describes the god’s defeat and his eventual recovery of power with human help. Its place in a festival connected the myth to a public religious observance: telling the story helped give meaning to ritual action and to the relationship between gods and people.

Stories about the disappearance of a god worked in a similar way. In one familiar version, Telipinu vanishes and disorder spreads; the other gods fail to find him until a bee does so. The goddess Kamrusepa then helps calm his anger through ritual. The story links a divine absence to disruption in the world and presents ritual as part of the means by which order can be restored. Such narratives show why myth and ceremony often appear together in the written record.

Prayers and appeals to the gods

Hittite prayers could praise a deity, ask for help, or explain why the speaker believed the gods had become angry. A prayer was not always a simple request: it could set out the circumstances of a crisis and argue for a response. One form of appeal, called an arkuwar, presented a case or justification before a deity, seeking to explain a person’s conduct and lessen divine punishment.

The prayers associated with Muršili II during a plague show how royal responsibility shaped religious writing. The king addresses the gods about the disaster and seeks to understand its cause. In this setting, a crisis could be treated as a sign of divine displeasure, and the king’s task included seeking a remedy on behalf of the kingdom. Other prayers turn to more personal concerns, including illness and human mortality. Together they reveal both the public responsibilities of a ruler and the more intimate language of appeal to a personal god.

Instructions and the work of religious institutions

Not all texts were narratives or appeals. Tablets also recorded instructions for court conduct, rituals, festivals, and other institutional activities. Their purpose was practical: to preserve what a ceremony or official duty required. A ritual text might combine directions with words to be spoken or a story that explained the rite. These documents make clear that writing helped organize repeated acts, as well as preserve accounts of them.

Scribes added a colophon, a closing note identifying the text and its production. It could give the tablet’s number in a series, state whether the composition was complete and name the scribe and supervisor. These notes helped users retrieve a sequence and recognise a copy’s place within it. Longer compositions occupied several numbered tablets, making the order of the stored pieces part of the practical work of preserving literature.

Hittite cuneiform and Anatolian hieroglyphs

Anatolian hieroglyphs, sometimes called Luwian hieroglyphic, formed a separate writing system alongside cuneiform. The latter has about 500 signs and could represent words or syllables. Although early personal seals may carry names, titles, or auspicious signs, the language of most surviving hieroglyphic texts is Luwian, not Hittite. Confirmed Luwian inscriptions in the script date to the fourteenth and thirteenth centuries BCE, and include monumental writing in stone.

Cuneiform tablet collections preserved Hittite-language compositions alongside Akkadian, Hurrian and other works. Anatolian hieroglyphs served a separate tradition of seals and public inscriptions, chiefly in Luwian. After the Bronze Age empire ended, Luwian-speaking regional rulers continued to use monumental hieroglyphic writing on gates, statues and stelae.

For the wider setting, see Hittite historical context.