Life and Society in the Hittite World

In dealing with a wide range of aspects of the life activities and customs of the Late Bronze Age Hittite world this book complements the treatment of Hittite military and political history presented by the author in The Kingdom of the Hittites (OUP 1998). It aims to convey to the reader a sense of what it was like to live amongst the people of the Hittite world to participate in their celebrations to share their crises to meet them in the streets of the capital or in their homes to experience the sights sounds and smells of a healing ritual to attend an audience with the Great King and to follow his progress in festival processions to the holy places of the Hittite land. Through quotations from the original sources and through the word pictures to which these give rise the book aims at recreating as far as is possible the daily lives and experiences of a people who for a time became the supreme political and military power in the ancient Near East.