#maybe Ill post it here early if I can clean up some of the rougher portions first

[bunnieswithknives]

Good lord how does my nature au animatic art already look old

[sisterofiris]

Everyday life in the Hittite empire

Have you ever wondered what your life would have been like if you had been born in central Anatolia 3500 years ago? No? Now that I’ve brought it up, are you curious to find out?

Well you’re in luck, because that’s just what this post is about. So sit back, close your eyes, and imagine yourself in Anatolia - that is, modern Turkey. Are you ready? Can you see the mountains, the red river and the towering buildings of your capital, Ḫattuša? Can you hear the chariots driving up the road? Can you feel the electric brewing of a storm in the distance?

Then let’s go.

(With a brief disclaimer: while I study Hittitology, this is not intended as an academic-level post. It was written to give general, approachable insights into Hittite culture and can be used as writing inspiration or to titillate curious history nerds around you, but if you’re writing an academic paper on the subject, I would recommend you check out the bibliography instead.)

About you

First things first, are you older than five? If so, congratulations on being alive. Child mortality in this place and time is very high, so you’re one of the luckier ones among your siblings. You probably have at least a couple of those; you may even have as many as six or seven, especially if you come from a well-to-do family with access to good healthcare. When you were little, your parents might have told you the tale of Zalpa, in which the queen of Neša gives birth to thirty sons then thirty daughters who marry each other, but you know this only happens in the stories - not to normal people.

When you were born, your parents rejoiced regardless of your sex, as sons and daughters are equally valued in your society (albeit for different reasons). Your father took you on his knee and gave you a good Hittite name: maybe Armawiya, Ḫarapšili, Kilušḫepa or Šiwanaḫšušar for a girl, or Anuwanza, Kantuzili, Muwaziti or Tarḫuzalma for a boy. Gender-neutral names, such as Anna, Muwa and Šummiri, would also have been an option. Many people around you have Hurrian or Luwian names, even if they are not ethnically Hurrian or Luwian themselves. (This is comparable to the modern popularity of Hispanic names like Diego, or French names like Isabelle.)

It’s hard to say what you would have done during childhood. While your earliest years would have been spent playing and babbling in grammatically incorrect Hittite, by the age of six or seven you may well have already started training in the family profession. If a girl, you would have been taught to weave by your mother; if a boy, you might have helped your father out on the farm, tried your hand at making pottery, or spent long hours learning cuneiform. (There may have been careers requiring gender non-conformity, as there was in Mesopotamia, but as far as I am aware this has not been proven.) You know that even the noblest children are given responsibilities - king Ḫattušili himself was once a stable boy.

Now, as an adult, you are a working professional contributing directly to Hittite society. You look the very portrait of a Hittite: as a woman, you have long, dark hair that you probably keep veiled, and as a man, your hair is around shoulder-length and your face clean-shaven. Ethnically, though, you are likely a mixture of Hittite, Luwian, Hurrian, Hattian, and depending on when and where exactly you live, maybe Assyrian, Canaanite or even Greek. There’s a fair chance Hittite might not actually be your native language. Still, you consider yourself a Hittite, and a subject of the Hittite king.

Well, now you know who you are, let’s get along with your day!

Your home and environment

Your day begins the way most people’s days do: you wake up at home, in your bed. As an average Hittite, you probably sleep on the floor rather than on elevated furniture. Your floor is either paved or of beaten earth, and your house itself has stone foundations and mud brick walls, with a flat roof supported by timber beams. Windows are scarce and small, to keep the indoor temperature stable.

Outside, the rest of the settlement is waking up too. Statistically, you live in a village or small town, surrounded by forest and mountains. Summers here are hot and dry, and winters cold and snowy, with spring and autumn being marked by thunderstorms. Most inhabitants work as farmers, relying on the weather for their survival. Contagious illnesses are a constant threat - under king Muršili II, the land suffered a deadly plague for twenty years - as are enemy invasions. If you live within the bend of the red river, in the Hittite heartland, consider yourself lucky; if not, your settlement could well be shifting from one kingdom’s property to another and falling prey to both sides’ raids on a yearly basis.

Admitting no enemy forces are in the area today, you take your time to get up. You might tiredly stumble to the outhouse to go pee. Eventually, you’ll want to get dressed.

Clothing

As a man, your clothes comprise of a kilt or sleeved tunic, with a belt of cloth or leather. As a woman, you wear a long dress and, if you are married, a veil. All clothing is made from wool or linen, and a variety of dyes exist: red, yellow, blue, green, black and white are all colours mentioned in texts. If you are rich enough, you may be able to import purple-dyed fabric from Lazpa (Greek Lesbos) or the Levant. You will also want to flaunt your wealth with jewellery, regardless of gender.

Of course, your shoes have upturned ends in the Hittite style. Historians will tease you for this. Don’t listen to them. You look awesome.

Mealtime!

It’s now time for one of your two daily meals (the other will take place in the evening, after your work for the day is done). This will be prepared at the hearth, a vital element of every home, and which is likely connected to an oven. The staple of your diet is bread; in fact, it is so common that “bread”, in cuneiform texts, is used as a general term for food. It is usually made from wheat or barley, but can also be made from beans or lentils.

Worried you’ll get bored of it? You needn’t be: your society has enough types of bread that you could eat a different one each day for a whole season. Fig bread, sour bread, flat bread and honey bread are just some of your options, along with spear bread and moon bread... yes, in other words, baguettes and croissants. (Something tells me the Hittites and the French would have a lot to talk about.)

You also have various fruits and vegetables available: cucumber, leek, carrots, peas, chickpeas, lentils, beans, olives, figs, dates, grapes, pomegranates, onions, garlic, and more. Your diet is completed by animal products, including cheese, milk, butter, and meat, mainly from sheep and goats but also cows and wild game. Honey, too, is common.

These ingredients can be combined into all sorts of dishes. Porridge is popular, as are stews, both vegetarian and meat-based. Meat can also be broiled and quite possibly skewered onto kebabs. And of course, food would be boring without spices, so you have a variety of those to choose from too: coriander are cumin are just two of them.

As for drinks, you can have beer, wine, beer-wine (good luck figuring out what that is), milk or water. If you’re well-to-do enough, you may own a rhyton, a drinking vessel shaped like an animal such as a stag or bull. Don’t forget to libate to the Gods before drinking your share.

Daily work

The next thing on your plate, after food, is work. What you do depends on your social status and gender, and most likely, you do the same work as your parents did before you. You could be something well-known like a king, priest, scribe, merchant, farmer or slave, but don’t assume those are all the possibilities; you could also be, for example, a gardener, doctor, ritual practitioner, potter, weaver, tavern keeper, or perfume maker.

It’s impossible to go into detail on every career option you would have in Hittite society, so for the sake of brevity, let’s just discuss four - two male-dominated, and two female-specific.

Farmer

As a farmer, you are the backbone of your society. You and your peers are responsible for putting food on the plates of Hittites everywhere, thus ensuring the survival of the empire.

Like many farmers, you live on a small estate, most likely with both crops (or an orchard) and livestock to take care of. You may own cows, sheep, goats, pigs, horses, donkeys, and/or ducks. Your daily routine and tools aren’t that different from other pre-industrial cultures, though you have it a little rougher than most due to the Anatolian mountain terrain. If you have the means, you hire seasonal workers - both male and female - to help out as farmhands, and you may own a few slaves.

You get up early to milk the cows, and at the onset of summer, you or a hired herdsman may lead your livestock up to mountain pastures to graze. Depending on the season and the work that needs to be done, you may spend your day ploughing the fields, harvesting grain or fruit, tending livestock, shearing sheep, birthing a calf, repairing the barn, or various other tasks. Make sure to take proper care of everything: new animals are expensive, and losing one could get you into a precarious situation. In particular, you’ll want to keep an eye out for bears, wolves, foxes, and even lions and leopards.

Scribe

Few people are literate in Hittite society, and you are one of the lucky ones. You have been learning to read and write in three languages (Sumerian, Akkadian and Hittite) since childhood, and after long years of copying lexical lists and ancient myths, your education is now complete.

As a scribe, you are the dreaded bureaucrat. In a small town, you likely work alongside the town administrator, recording tax collections and enemy sightings as well as corresponding with other towns, and with the capital. You and your peers are the go-to people for officialising marriage agreements and divorces, drawing up work contracts, and creating sales receipts. If not in the town administration, you could also work in a temple, recording the results of oracles, cross-checking the correct procedures for a ritual, and making sure everything necessary for a festival is available. If you are particularly lucky, you may be employed by the nobility or even the palace, and be entrusted with such confidential tasks as writing the king’s annals or drafting an international treaty.

Regardless of where you are, two things are essential to your job: a stylus and a tablet. You may be a “scribe of the clay tablets”, in which case you will need to carry around a bit of clay wherever you go (and some water to moisten it). Otherwise, you are a “scribe of the wooden tablets”, in which case you use a wax tablet in a wooden frame, which requires less maintenance. It’s unclear whether these types of tablet are used for different purposes.

Fun fact: you likely have a few pen pals around the Hittite empire. After corresponding with other scribes for so long, you’ve started writing each other messages at the bottom of your tablets, asking each other how you’re doing and to say hi to each other’s families. Your employers needn’t know.

Weaver

Weaving, to a Hittite like you, is the quintessential female activity, along with textile-making in general. Like farming, this is a backbone of your society: without weaving, there would be no clothes, and without clothes, well, you can’t do much.

As a weaver, you produce textiles for your family and in many cases also for sale. You work in an atelier within your home, along with the other women of the household, keeping an eye on your smallest children as they play nearby. While your husband, brothers or sons may transport and sell your handiwork, you are the head of your own business.

You are skilled in multiple weaving techniques, and can do embroidery and sew fabric into various shapes (including sleeves - take that, Classical Greeks). You create clothing for all sorts of occasions, including rituals and festivals, outdoor work, and winter weather, and if you are lucky enough to be commissioned by the nobility, you put your best efforts into clothing that will show off their status. Don’t try to cheat anyone out of their money, though; prices are fixed by law.

Old Woman

Contrary to what you might expect, you don’t need to be old to be an Old Woman - this is a career just like any other, though it probably does require a certain amount of life experience and earned respect. As an Old Woman, you are a trained ritual practitioner and active in all sorts of cultic, divinatory and magical ceremonies.

Most commonly, you are hired for rituals protecting against or removing evil. Your services may solve domestic quarrels, cure a sick child, or shield someone from sorcery (a constant threat in your society). This is done through symbolic acts like cutting pieces of string, breaking objects, and sacrificing and burning animals, which are of course accompanied by incantations - sometimes in Hittite, sometimes in other languages, like Hurrian.

Far from a village witch, you are high-placed in Hittite society and trusted by the royal family itself. You have taken part in major rituals and festivals, including funerals, and you perform divinatory oracles too. This last responsibility gives you a large amount of influence over the king and queen; if you establish that something should be done, then it almost certainly will be. Use this power well... or not.

Your loved ones

After a long day ploughing fields, writing tablets, weaving clothes or reciting incantations, it’s finally time to reunite with your loved ones. For adults, these likely - but not necessarily! - include a spouse and children. You may just live with your nuclear family, but living with extended family is also common, and there may be as many as twenty people in your household. Siblings, aunts and uncles, parents, grandparents, children and babies all share the evening meal with you, and some nights, you might gather afterwards to sing and dance, tell stories, and play games.

You also have relationships outside of home. Friendship is valued by Hittite society, with close friends calling each other “brother” and sister”. You might meet up with them regularly at the local tavern for a beer and a bit of fun. Someone there might even catch your eye... Interestingly, there are no laws against that person being of the same gender as you. So, same or different gender, why not try your luck tonight?

Greater powers

It’s impossible to spend a day in the Hittite empire without encountering religion. The Land of a Thousand Gods is aptly named: Gods are in everything, from the sun to the mountains to the stream at the back of your house to fire to a chair. You should always be conscious of their power, and treat them with respect. Though there are few traces of it, you may have a household shrine where you make libations or offer a portion of your meal. Your Gods may be represented by anthropomorphic statues, by animals such as a bull, by symbols such as gold disks, or even by a stone. Either way, treat these objects well; the divine is literally present in them.

You should also be wary of sorcery. Never make clay figures of someone, or kill a snake while speaking someone’s name, or you will face the death penalty. Likewise, always dispose of impurities carefully, especially those left over from a purification ritual (such as mud, ashes, or body hair). Never toss them onto someone else’s property. Has misfortune suddenly struck your household? Is your family or livestock getting sick and dying? These are signs that someone has bewitched you.

Some days are more sacred than others. You participate in over a hundred festivals every year, some lasting less than a day, some lasting a month, some local, some celebrated by the entire Hittite empire. The most important of these are the crocus festival and the purulli festival in spring, the festival of haste in autumn, and the gate-house festival, possibly also in autumn. The statues of the Gods are brought out of the temples, great feasts are held, and entertainment is provided through music, dance and sports contests. Depending on how important your town is, the king, queen or a prince might even be in attendance. All this excitement is a nice break from your regular work!

Sleep and dreams

Phew, what a busy day it’s been. The sun, snared in the trees’ branches, has set on the Hittite land, and you are ready for bed. Time to wrap yourself snugly in blankets and go to sleep.

You may dream, in which case, try to remember as much as you can. Dreams can be a vehicle for omens. Maybe, if the Gods are kind, you might catch a glimpse of what the next days, months and years hold in store for you.

Good night!

Bibliography

Beckman, Gary, “Birth and Motherhood among the Hittites”, in Budin, Stephanie Lynn, Macintosh Turfa, Jean, Women in Antiquity: Real Women across the Ancient World, Abingdon 2016 (pp. 319-328).

Bryce, Trevor, Life and Society in the Hittite World, Oxford 2002.

Bryce, Trevor, “The Role and Status of Women in Hittite Society”, in Budin, Stephanie Lynn, Macintosh Turfa, Jean, Women in Antiquity: Real Women across the Ancient World, Abingdon 2016 (pp. 303-318).

Golec-Islam, Joanna, The Food of Gods and Humans in the Hittite World, BA thesis, Warszawa 2016.

Hoffner, Harry A., “Birth and name-giving in Hittite texts”, Journal of Near Eastern Studies 27/3 (1968), pp. 198-203.

Hoffner, Harry A., “Daily life among the Hittites”, in Averbeck, Richard E., Chavalas, Marc W., Weisberg, David B., Life and Culture in the Ancient Near East, Bethesda 2003 (pp. 95-118).

Marcuson, Hannah, “Word of the Old Woman”: Studies in Female Ritual Practice in Hittite Anatolia, PhD thesis, Chicago 2016.

Wilhelm, Gernot, “Demographic Data from Hittite Land Donation Tablets”, in Pecchioli Daddi, Franca, Torri, Giulia, Corti, Carlo, Central-North Anatolia in the Hittite Period: New Perspectives in Light of Recent Research, Roma 2009 (pp. 223-233).