Diverse Remarks on the Hittite Instructions

Abstract

The designation ‘obligation and oath’ for the genre in question is intended to highlight an understanding of these compositions according to which the ‘instructions’ or ‘prescriptions of obligations’, the isḫiul-, are part and parcel of one text genre together with the ‘oaths’, the lingai- see briefly Miller in press . These two elements jointly make up what can be understood as a ‘contract’ or ‘treaty’, in which the sovereign lays out the obligations being imposed upon the subject and the subject swears before the gods his commitment to them.