wasn’t some sort of sex initiation ceremony but rather what has
been called a‘dream incubation’.^5
So we must, alas,finish on a negative note. We have no evidence
of the robust sexual activities in which Hittite soldiers, like
other soldiers, must have engaged at every available opportunity.
We cannot evenfind a single identifiable reference to prostitution
in our texts. But this simply illustrates one of the big gaps in our
information about daily life in the Hittite world which neither
textual nor archaeological evidence canfill. It is a classic example of
the old adage that absence of evidence is not evidence of absence.
The discovery of a building that could be clearly identified as a
brothel, perhaps in a Hittite city yet to be unearthed, along
with some tablets relevant to the building’s use, would be a most
welcome addition to our information about the seamier side of the
world of the Hittites.
NO SEX PLEASE,WE’RE HITTITE 143