Actors and Power Structures in Hittite Society
Final Report Abstract
The project proposed to the DFG aimed to be a study of Hittite society, its power structures and characters, along with interrelated aspects of the administrative system, based on a comprehensive evaluation of the textual sources. The analysis and interpretation of texts was meant to be complemented as much as possible by the scrutiny of seal impressions of royal functionaries. The individual objectives of the proposed research programme were: 1) Definition of explicit and implicit agents in Hittite society 2) Collection of relevant cuneiform texts and evaluation of their specific significance 3) Lexical analysis of titles indicating professions, offices and social status 4) Investigation of the Hieroglyphic Luwian titles in seal inscriptions. The work programme of the research project was initially subdivided into three selfcontained but interrelated work packages (WP): WP 1: Collection of textual documentation and analysis of key passages WP 2: Collection of word entries and lexical analysis of lemmata WP 3: Systematic interpretation of texts, and analysis of sphragistic evidence The investigation was based primarily on the study of relevant textual sources from the Hittite tablet collection. The methods applied consisted of the philological analysis and historical interpretation of texts.
