Project description

German Research Foundation (DFG) - Project number 394841501 

The proposed project intends to investigate Hittite society, its power structures and acting persons as well as aspects of the administrative system relevant to the overall research question.

The aims of the proposed research programme are in particular:

1) the definition of explicit and implicit agents in Hittite society.

2) the collection of relevant cuneiform texts and evaluation of their specific meaning with regard to the research question

3) a lexical analysis of the titles for professions, offices and social status

4) an investigation of hieroglyphic-Luwish titles in seal inscriptions.

The work programme of the project is divided into three independent, interrelated work packages (WP):

WP 1: Collection of relevant text sources and analysis of key passages.

WP 2: Compilation of relevant lemmas (titles) and lexical analysis

WP 3: Systematic interpretation of the text sources, comprehensive analysis of the evidence from the seal inscriptions.

The core of the study is primarily the study of the relevant text sources from Hittite tablet collections. It uses the methods of philological analysis and historical interpretation of texts. The Hittite Archive of the Academy of Sciences and Literature [Akademie der Wissenschaften und der Literatur] in Mainz, where the project is located, is home to one of the most complete lexical archives in Hittite studies as well as a comprehensive collection of photographs of Hittite cuneiform texts. The results of the project will be presented as a handbook on the social history of the Hittites. The aim of the project is to provide the reader with a detailed analysis of Hittite society as well as the organisation of power in the Hittite Empire, from its beginnings to the end of the Hittite Empire.