CTH 450 – HITTITE FUNERARY RITUAL ŠALLIŠ WAŠTAIŠ

Abstract

Hittite texts of funeral ritual, reached to us, mainly refer to the manner of upper-class representatives’ burial. The article presents the first Georgian translation and comments of the text of the Hittite funeral ritual CTH 450. The royal burial ritual is known today as the šalliš waštaiš ritual. It is difficult to convey the content of the ritual texts in detail, because some plates are not well read due to damage, and some places are completely incomprehensible. These are basically incantation formulas, magical words spoken during a ritual, which had a divine, magical power for the Hittites and were not meant to be understood by ordinary mortals. We also meet some philological difficulties: Hittite words with still undetermined meaning, expressions exact translation of which is difficult, etc. Nevertheless, it is still possible to restore the general content of the ritual. The Hittite funeral ritual lasted 13 or 14 days, which included different ceremonies each day. Generally, Hittite funeral rituals are noteworthy a lot, as they preserve many important moments, to which can be found proper parallels with different regions of the ancient world, including the territory of old Kartvelian tribes’ settlement.

Keywords: Assyriology, Hittites, Ritual, King, funeral, šalliš waštaiš.