But this one-off text may be unduly negative. Archaeological
evidence gives a slightly more positive impression. We haven’t
found any royal tombs, but wehavediscovered a number of burial
grounds, outside the cities (and dating mostly to the early Hittite
period), containing the remains of mortals of lesser status.
Cremation and inhumation were both used to dispose of bodies,
sometimes in the same burial ground. Ceramic vessels stored the
ashes of the cremated, and earth-graves in which the bodies were
laid out intact were dug for those who preferred inhumation.
Simple grave-gifts, like small pots, were interred with the bodies,
sometimes along with the bones of animals, such as cattle, sheep,
pigs, dogs and sometimes also horses and donkeys. Maybe these
were intended purely as sacrificial offerings, maybe their purpose
was to serve the dead in the next life. If the latter, then the
Underworld may not have been quite as bad a place as the texts that
refer to it would have us believe.
And as we have noted, the king and no doubt his family (or
selected members of it) could apparently look forward to an
afterlife of pleasurable ease, where they were endowed with
meadowlands stocked with cattle and sheep, horses and mules, in
something perhaps resembling the Elysian fields of Classical
tradition, where Greek heroes, like their gods, could while away
eternity in blissful ease. Indeed, Hittite kings actually joined the
ranks of the gods after departing this life. This we learn when a
king’s son and heir refers to his father’s death by saying:‘When
my father became a god [...]’. Words meant quite literally–but
with a qualification. Deceased kings didn’t make it into the divine
pantheon of the Hittite world. They were gods of a lesser order. But
statues were made in their honour and set up in the temples of the
Great Gods. Their spirits could enter these statues so that they
continued to receive homage and tribute from all their subjects, not
just their own family members. Ancestor cults were, as we’ve noted,
common at all levels of society. But royal ancestor cults operated on
a national scale.
Incidentally, the expression‘becoming a god’finds an echo in a
much later age. Emperors of the Roman imperial period
customarily had divinity bestowed upon them on their death. But
INTERMEDIARIES OF THE GODS:THE GREAT KINGS OF HATTI 101