Luwili: Luwian Religious Discourse Between Anatolia and Syria
Final Report Abstract
The main result of the Luwili project is the edition of Hittite rituals with Luwian insertions, which are attributed to Puriyanni, Kuwattalla, and Šilalluḫi. The Luwian incantations embedded in these rituals constitute more than one half of the known Luwian texts in cuneiform transmission. The lack of their previous philological editions was due to the lingering difficulties in understanding the Luwian grammar, and particularly Luwian lexicon. A breakthrough in their understanding was made possible by the rigid application of the combinatorial method. In as much as possible, every Luwian incantation was studied in the context of the matching ritual performance, the description of which was transmitted in the Hittite language. The cooperation between Ilya Yakubovich, as specialist in the Luwian Language, and Alice Mouton, a Hittitologist with a background in social anthropology, ensured a necessary combination of qualifications for the success of this endeavour. The efforts of other team members placed the new findings within a broader context of Anatolian religious discourse. Among the collateral results of the same project, one can mention new advances in the linguistic interpretation of Luwian and the elaboration of a methodology for classifying scribal hands in a given corpus of cuneiform fragments. The linguistic progress will obviously facilitate the interpretation of other Luwian texts. The immediate consequence of comparative palaeographic analysis was the identification of numerous new joins between cuneiform fragments, while its broader application has a potential to improve the overall classification of cuneiform texts found at Boğazköy. The most surprising result of the Luwili project is arguably the structural unity of rituals attributed to Kuwattalla and Šilalluḫi. The composition with different titles that belong to this corpus apparently do not correlate with different performances by the respective ritualists but rather represent a result of scribal cut-and-paste. While the hypothesis that the Anatolian rituals were frequently modified by scholar-scribes is in itself not new, the published fragments illustrate this phenomenon on a heretofore unprecedented scale. Another surprise concerns the external parallels: the religious formulae found in the incantations find their closest counterparts in the Hittite rituals attributed to Tunnawiya, while the set and sequence of rites resemble the structure of Mastigga’s ritual against domestic quarrels. The suggested explanation is that Kuwattalla shared regional background with Tunnawiya but her performance was conducted “in the Mastigga style”, which perhaps reflected her customers’ taste.
Publications
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Internal or external evil: a merism in Luwian incantations. Bulletin of the School of Oriental and African Studies, 82(2), 209-231.
Mouton, Alice & Yakubovich, Ilya
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“Doing Things Reverently Among the Luwians”. Les Études Classiques 88: 465-489
Yakubovich, Ilya
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The Anatolian Connections of the Greek God Enyalius. Linguistic and Cultural Interactions between Greece and Anatolia, 233-245. BRILL.
Yakubovich, Ilya
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Where did one speak luwili? Geographic and linguistic diversity of Luwian cuneiform texts. Journal of Language Relationship, 19(1-2), 25-53.
Mouton, Alice & Yakubovich, Ilya
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Binding and Smiting. Journal of the American Oriental Society, 142(2).
Melchert, H. Craig & Yakubovich, Ilya
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Luwili: Hittite-Luwian Rituals attributed to Puriyanni, Kuwattalla, and Šilalluḫi. Volume 1: Edition and Commentary. Studien zu den Boğazköy Texten 72. Wiesbaden: Harrassowitz.
Yakubovich, Ilya & Alice Mouton
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Luwili: Hittite-Luwian Rituals attributed to Puriyanni, Kuwattalla, and Šilalluḫi. Volume 2: Discussion and Glossary. Studien zu den Boğazköy Texten 73. Wiesbaden: Harrassowitz.
Yakubovich, Ilya & Alice Mouton
