included. Indeed these texts served as instruction manuals for the
conduct of the festivals, with detailed accounts of all the procedures
to be followed, the rituals to be enacted, the equipment to be used,
the robes to be worn and the foods to be consumed by both the
gods and their worshippers. Instructions had to be followed to the
last detail, for to get something wrong was likely to invalidate the
whole process and incur the fury of the god or gods in whose
honour the festival was being held.
Indeed the gods themselves directly participated in the
ceremonies and celebrations, for they literally inhabited their statues
when they were taken from the innermost recesses of their temples
and carried in procession to the various festival venues. Parts of the
celebrations may have taken place within the courtyards of their
temples, parts in other sacred places, in open areas and in rock
sanctuaries. Let us imagine the gods, resplendent in their gleaming
statues, sheeted with gold or other polished metals and bedecked
with jewels being conveyed along the processional route. They are
followed by the king and the queen mounted in their chariots,
and the priests and other dignitaries of the land, and the armed
escort, and all other participants in the festival including the
musicians and other entertainers– acrobats, singers and dancers.
Crowds must have assembled at every available vantage spot to enjoy
the splendour and pageantry of the occasion.
To be honest, the festival texts don’t make rivetting reading, for
they are full of tedious repetitious minutiae, which don’t vary much
from one text to another. But they do provide us with detailed
descriptions of the rites, the liturgies, the ritual paraphernalia used
in the ceremonies, the menus of the banquets enjoyed by both their
human and their divine participants, and the entertainments
provided by the singers and dancers and contenders in the sports
contests which were part of the festival programme. They give us a
taste of Hittite religion in practice, in its most tangible form.
You might well ask how the gods actually joined in the
banquets. Perhaps as in other religions they were discreetly
screened off from the rest of the participants as they consumed the
food set before them. Certain privileged members of the priesthood
were allowed tofinish off what they left on their plates.
HATTI’S DIVINE OVERLORDS 249