A REVIEW ON THE TERM OF HEARTH IN HITTITE MYTHOLOGICAL DOCUMENTS: ANATOLIAN HEARTH BELIEF

Abstract

In order to find out how the concept of “hearth” has come to Anatolia, it is inevitable to travel in time towards the prehistoric ages. It would not be wrong to indicate that the most important period of this journey has been the period of Hittite State. With their cuneiform documents, Hittites, who have the first Anatolian written documents, provide the earliest records of Anatolian cultural history. In these records, various rituals such as sacrificial rites, festivals, sorcery and fortune telling carried out around the hearth were depicted in detail. It is simply understood that the Hittites have highly valued the concept of hearth. Hittite mythological documents, which consist of a substantial part of these records, reflect the religious beliefs of Hittites. These documents point out that with its various new meanings, the term of hearth which has been considered very important since the settled life in Anatolia, becomes the inseparable part of Hittite religion. These documents that reflect the belief system including the fears, angers and hopes of the Hittites are regarded as the first records of Anatolian mythology related to the term of hearth. Among the studies on mythological documents of Hittites, there is a scarcity of the ones related to the hearth term. The lack of the studies carried out on the hearth term in mythological texts has been the reason of this study. This study aims to identify the hearth in Hittite mythological documents and to determine the relationship between this identification and Anatolian hearth belief.