By Rev. Michael J Dangler

Originally Published in Oak Leaves # 35

Communication with the deities is a constant among all societies and religions. How we establish that communication, though, can be radically different between cultures and religions, or it can be remarkably similar.

The Hittites are an Indo-European culture whose origins are somewhat clouded. Located in Asia Minor and forming a major empire in the middle of the second millennium BC, other Indo- European peoples eventually invaded them and the Assyrians eclipsed their power. They borrowed liberally from the non-Indo-European Hattians who lived in the area before they did, and many of the Hittite deities are actually Hattian deities. The Hittites also borrowed from their neighbors in Mesopotamia, particularly the Akkadians and the Sumerians. They called their pantheon “the Thousand Gods,” and today’s scholars don’t dispute that claim: indeed, it may be a low number.

The Encyclopedia of Religion (Second Edition) indicates that Hittite prayer was of a character that Neo-Pagans are unlikely to have an interest in, but it defines a good starting point for how this culture saw its relationship with the divine:

The premise underlying all Hittite prayer is that gods thought like mortals and could be influenced by pleasant words and gifts. The paradigm for the divine-human relationship was a master-slave one. A human could expect from his divine lord or lady just what a slave could from his master.1

This does not, of course, mean that the Hittites felt themselves to be degraded by this relationship. Rather, we have a specific word for prayer that was adulatory and offered praise: walliyatar.

The Hittites both understood and expected that their deities would speak with them on a regular basis. Revelation and divination were not uncommon, and this forms the basis of this article.

The oldest form of divination that we have record for is prophetic divination. In Old Hittite, the Telepinu Proclamation is a warning from “the men of the gods” about serious offenses. Unfortunately, the record is not as strong as we would like, and there is some disagreement among scholars who these “men of the gods” were.

Oracular divination is our most attested source of divination. These involve long lists of questions, where answers would be given in a specified divine language. The answers were always “yes” or “no,” meaning that the lists of questions would become quite long before the actual solution was found.2

Some seven hundred tablets and fragments survive of these lists. They are listed as question and answer combinations. In his article, “Hittite Oracles,” Richard Beal describes the character of this method:

The vast majority of these texts consist of inquiries intended to discover why something bad has happened. For instance, perhaps the king was sick. It was then necessary to discover whether this illness was due to divine anger. If so, it was necessary to determine which of the thousand gods of the Hittites was angry. When the cause was narrowed down to a particular deity or maybe to several, then it was necessary to find out why each deity was angry. All kinds of omissions, derelictions and problems were placed before each deity with this question “is this why you are angry?”

If the deity indicated that he/she was not angry at a particular infraction, then another infraction would be presented. When the deity indicated that he/she was indeed angry because of this particular infraction, the question would be followed up by “Is this all—there is nothing else?” A negative answer would mean that more testimony was called for. An affirmative answer would end this phase of the inquiry. Questions would then be posed to discover what sort of restitution, compensation, punitive damages, prayers, and so on where required to satisfy he deity and quiet his/her anger. Only when each answer had been taken through the entire process was the inquiry finished.3

You can understand that this method might take some time. With a thousand deities who might be angered with you, determining which it is and how to make amends is difficult. Fortunately, the Hittites seemed to enjoy this sort of divination, because they took meticulous records.

The Hittites also practiced extispicy, where an animal (usually a sheep) was sacrificed, and the exta were examined for various blemishes, creases, etc. This job fell to a priest called a barû, who was a diviner-exorcist. This practice appears to have originated with the Babylonians by way of the Hurrians, as the terms for various parts were Hurrian. The divinatory system here is a complicated play, where double negatives are extremely important. The right is the “good” side, and the left the “bad” side (this will occur again later, with bird divination). If a bad sign, such as “beating” occurred on the right (favorable) side, it was bad; if, however, it occurred on the left (unfavorable) side, then it was good. Two bad omens could become a favorable omen, though this is not so much rule as it is convention.4

On the way to the sacrifice, the sheep would be observed by the barû, and the behaviors, including which pen it is in, where it beds down, and whether it sticks out its tongue (and to which side), would determine the omen read.5

Bird oracles and augury seem to be uniquely Hittite in the region and area, rather than from Hurrian or Mesopotamian influence. A bird watcher would describe the bird, starting when it enters the field of vision and ending when it leaves. The bird is said to “come” initially, indicating that it “comes” into the field of vision of the watcher. It will then be described as “coming left” or “coming right” or “coming away”. If the bird crosses the “river” or “road” (the mid-line of the field of vision), it may be said to “go across”, but never to “go” unless it leaves the field of vision. It may “go” and “come back”, but it never “goes” anywhere and then “goes” another place. The bird, if it goes to ground, may be described as “hiding” or “sitting” rather than “going.”

Some texts describe the field that the bird flies through as a rectangular field, usually with a river or a road that runs down the center. The bird does not give a “favorable” or “unfavorable” response, but rather “confirms” or “throws away” the statement. The wording here prevents the bird watcher from asking a “yes/no” sort of question. A good statement that is “thrown away” is generally considered unfavorable, while a bad statement that is “thrown away” is favorable. Instead of “Do you approve, O Gods?” the query is more, “let the birds confirm this.” They will then either throw away or confirm the statement. 6

Another method of divination was the snake divination. A water snake was put into a basin and given a name that fit the query, such as “the snake of the land of Hatti.” It was then assigned to another symbol, possibly indicating where it would enter the basin from (areas around the edge of the basin were given symbolic names, some favorable and some unfavorable). It would then be released into the basin to find its way around, and places it stopped would be noted, as would actions it did. If there were fish or other snakes in the basin, it would be described in relation to the other animal, or, should the snake bite the other animal, the record would show where on the animal it bit. Finally, a determination would be made from all these various stops, bites, and starting points about whether the divination was favorable or not.7

Most often, once a divination had been done, it would be checked against a different kind of oracle, ensuring that there was no failure.8 This is very different from our modern conception of divination, where nearly every book on the subject insists that you should never ask a question twice from the same divination set.

Divination by dreams, a standby for many cultures, is surprisingly only attested to late in the Hittite timeline, not appearing until the New Kingdom.9 This brings up interesting questions about the use of dream divination in Indo- European cultures and whether it is attested as an actual Indo-European practice, but those questions are best left for another article. There is a ritual, though, where a man suffering from impotency is instructed to sleep in a holy place and report his dreams.10

It is interesting to look at these divinatory practices and see how they are or might be reflected in our own. The implication that a very simple “yes/no” might be the extent of the answer from the gods alone is very different than what we often do in ritual, and implies that we have a lot more work to do before we can satisfactorily state that we “know the will of the gods.”

Bibliography:

• Beal, Richard H. “Hittite Oracles.” Magic and Divination in the Ancient World. Ed. Ciraolo and Seidel. Styx/Brill : Leiden, Netherlands. 2002
• Hoffner, Harry A. “Hittite Religion.” Encyclopedia of Religion, Second Edition. Ed. Lindsay Jones. 2005
• Huber, Peter J. “The Solar Omen of Mursili II.” Journal of the American Oriental Society. Vol. 121 No. 4. Oct. – Dec. 2001. pp. 640-644
• 8. entry on Hittite Religion, p. 4072 
• 2. entry on Hittite Religion, p. 4072 
• 3. Beal, p. 58
• 4. Beal, p. 59-60
• 5. Beal, p. 64
• 6. Beal, p. 65-70
• 7. Beal, p. 74-76
• 8. Beal, p. 80
• 9. entry on Hittite Religion, p. 4072 
• 10. entry on Hittite Religion, p. 4072