The Corpus of Hittite Divinatory Texts (HDivT)

Digital Edition and Cultural Historical Analysis

Joseph Barber (Hrsg.)

Citatio: Joseph Barber (Hrsg.), hethiter.net/: CTH 577.8 (INTR 2026-05-04)


CTH 577.8

Oracles concerning the wellbeing of the king

introductio



Kurzbeschreibung

The oracular inquries contained in this text relate in various respects to the wellbeing of the king. It is first determined that he will recover from an illness, before the text turns to some sort of bloodshed. Many of these questions are not well preserved, but several inquiries seek to find out who will commit this murder. Many of the remaining intelligible oracles aim at confirming the nature of various future events previously confirmed by oracles, such as some kind of evil and the killing of a man.

Texte

Exemplar AA₁KBo 41.23061/gBk. D
+ A₂+ KUB 6.12+ Bo 734---
+ A₃+ KUB 16.19+ Bo 2136---
+ A₄+ KUB 18.10+ Bo 5336---
+ Bo 6071---

Inhaltsübersicht

Abschnitt 1ID=1Oracles concerning the wellbeing of the king
Abschnitt 2ID=2Oracles concerning bloodshed, oracles of unclear content
Abschnitt 3ID=3Oracles concerning who will commit murder
Abschnitt 4ID=4
Abschnitt 5ID=5Oracles concerning an evil
Abschnitt 6ID=6Oracles concerning the coming evil
Abschnitt 7ID=7Oracles concerning the coming good
Abschnitt 8ID=8Oracles concerning the killing of a man
Abschnitt 9ID=9

History of publication

Handcopies: Otten H. − Rüster C. 1999a; Walther A. – Weber O. 1923A; Walther A. 1926a; Walther A. 1927a

Tablet characteristics

This text contains most of the left-hand column of a two-column tablet, with only a small portion of the right-hand column. The text is laid out very spaciously, with rulings between most lines.

Palaeography and handwriting

New Hittite script (diagnostic signs include ID, DA, IG, LI, RU). The script is somewhat slanted and some signs are not fully or very carefully formed (e.g. E and A, in which the last doubled verticals are often not discernable as separate). This, combined with the very spacious ductus and high percentage of logograms gives the impression of a draft or shorthand.

Linguistic characteristics

The text uses a large number of logograms, often without making grammatical cases etc explicit. The text displays some other grammatical oddities, such as the often redundant use of KI.MIN, and the reduntant double use of the conditional conjunction mān/BAD-an in both relative clauses and their resumptive main clauses.

Editio ultima: 2026-05-04