The Timing of Ritual Performance in Hittite Texts: The “Morning” Rites

Abstract

Hittite rituals can be defined as religious practices that are meant to activate supernatural powers for the sake of a human being. These systematic practices were enacted under the supervision of ritual practitioners in case of any negative situations namely illness, black magic, epidemic and evil. Considering Hittite texts, it is noticeable that a ritual was carried out on any day of the year on the request of the ritual patron. Although there is not a pre-determined time for performing a ritual, it is intrinsic for these religious practices that they have their own sense of time. Furthermore, the concepts of time are applied in an extremely systematic fashion and “ritual time” is a phenomenon, which plays an important role in regulating the course of the rites. Although the perception of time in Hittite rituals has been previously studied, there is not yet any systematic research focusing merely on the morning period. Therefore, this article aims at contributing the significance of time by investigating Hittite magical ritual texts with regard to the terms used for the morning period and the typical rites performed in that part of the day by comparing the data obtained from ritual texts listed under CTH 390-500.