The Ritual of Aštu, a text found at the Hittite Capital of Hattuša, shows strong influence from southern Anatolia and describes a Hurrian-Hittite ritual against witchcraft and sorcery. The following study provides detailed philological treatment of the 13th-century fragments found at Hattuša, from which the ritual is known, including transcription, translation, and commentary of all manuscripts, as well as special emphasis on the Hurrian passages of the ritual. Reconstruction of the more fragmentary sections is undertaken through comparison to other rituals. The study concludes with an analysis of Anatolian, Luwian, and Kizzuwatnaian influences evident in the ritual, and affords, in sum, valuable additions to the study of the nature of Hittite archives, and the development of ritual texts. “I firmly believe that works like this are essential to creating the dialogue that is necessary for the progress of our understanding of Hurrian. Görke’s treatment of the various texts and her discussions of many aspects of the ritual will prove very useful to scholars working on Hurro-Hittite religion.” Dennis R.M. Campbell, San Francisco State University

The fifth meeting of the Edinburgh prophecy network focussed on the presence of prophets and prophecy in narrative texts. The papers in this volume scrutinize the image of prophecy through the analysis of narrative processes. The papers deal with a great time span: from the Hittite Empire, via the Hebrew Bible, Judaism and Islam, up to the early Modern Period. Although all sorts of variations could be detected - especially due to the variety of temporal contexts, some features are recurring especially in view of the anthropological phenomenon of prophecy and its function in narratives.

This book is a new study of the ancient Egyptian poem known in English as The Man Who Was Tired of Life or The Dialogue of a Man and His Ba (or Soul). The composition is universally regarded as one of the masterpieces of ancient Egyptian literature. It is also one of the most difficult and continually debated, as well as being the subject of more than one hundred books and articles. The present study offers new readings and translations, along with an analysis of the text’s grammar and versification, and a complete philological apparatus.

The Hittite ritual for the Ancient Gods (CTH 446) is one of the most interesting and complex in the Hittite ritual corpus. It describes a series of ritual procedures and recitations to be performed over two days with the goal of cleansing a house contaminated by impurity resulting from bloodshed. Summoned for the task are the Ancient Gods, Netherworld deities of the Hurrian-Hittite tradition. The present study provides an updated critical edition of this remarkable ritual, which is complemented with philological notes and commentary. Additionally, the volume investigates the nature and origins of the composition against the broader background of the Hittite ritual corpus.

In How to Kill a Dragon Calvert Watkins follows the continuum of poetic formulae in Indo-European languages, from Old Hittite to medieval Irish. He uses the comparative method to reconstruct traditional poetic formulae of considerable complexity that stretch as far back as the original common language. Thus, Watkins reveals the antiquity and tenacity of the Indo-European poetic tradition. Watkins begins this study with an introduction to the field of comparative Indo-European poetics; he explores the Saussurian notions of synchrony and diachrony, and locates the various Indo-European traditions and ideologies of the spoken word. Further, his overview presents case studies on the forms of verbal art, with selected texts drawn from Indic, Iranian, Greek, Latin, Hittite, Armenian, Celtic, and Germanic languages. In the remainder of the book, Watkins examines in detail the structure of the dragon/serpent-slaying myths, which recur in various guises throughout the Indo-European poetic tradition. He finds the "signature" formula for the myth--the divine hero who slays the serpent or overcomes adversaries--occurs in the same linguistic form in a wide range of sources and over millennia, including Old and Middle Iranian holy books, Greek epic, Celtic and Germanic sagas, down to Armenian oral folk epic of the last century. Watkins argues that this formula is the vehicle for the central theme of a proto-text, and a central part of the symbolic culture of speakers of the Proto-Indo-European language: the relation of humans to their universe, the values and expectations of their society. Therefore, he further argues, poetry was a social necessity for Indo- European society, where the poet could confer on patrons what they and their culture valued above all else: "imperishable fame."

Theatrum Arbitri is a literary study dealing with the possible influence of Roman comic drama (comedies of Plautus and Terence, theatre of the Greek and Roman mimes, and fabula Atellana) on the surviving fragments of Petronius' Satyrica. The theatrical assessment of this novel is carried out at the levels of plot-construction, characterization, language, and reading of the text as if it were the narrative equivalent of a farcical staged piece with the theatrical structure of a play produced before an audience. The analysis follows the order of each of the scenes in the novel. The reader will also find a brief general commentary on the less discussed scenes of the Satyrica, and a comprehensive account of the theatre of the mimes and its main features.

This volume reflects the influence of Chuck Fillmore’s ground-breaking work in the fields of semantics and pragmatics. The papers in the volume pay tribute to his pioneering research into the deepest realms of the nature of ‘meaning’.

Classical Sanskrit text on Lokāyata, with English English translation.