Music in Hittites in the light of descriptive works and written resources

Master?s Thesis Music in Hittites in the light of Descriptive Works and Written ResourcesHittites, a people of thousand gods, attributed their powerful military and political structure to the religious worships they performed flawlessly for their gods. The most important of these worships were religious festivals. The festival texts, which constituted the eighty percent of more than thirty thousand cuneiform tablets, were important documents that explained how religious activities took place. When those texts are examined, one comes across musical instruments, musicians, and singers and dancers that accompany them. The mention of music during festivals shows its importance in terms of religion. Unfortunately, we can?t access the typological characteristics of the instruments from written Hittite sources. For this reason, encountering musical instruments in studies that are made on works describing Hittites is an important resource that allows us to learn typological information.In our study called ?Music in Hittites in the light of Descriptive Works and Written Resources?, descriptive works and written documents were two important points. These two headings were precious sources of information that supported and fed each other. By using the Hittite festival texts as a reference, we tried to analyze the flow of the scene which were described, the duties of the partaking figures, cult materials and the existence of the music. While the existence of music was documented on texts and descriptions, it was not clear what it represented in daily Hittite life.Hittites played their music flawlessly. Music was one of the ways of pleasing gods; gods in turn enabled them to win wars, give them abundance and fertility as a reward.Keywords: Hittite Music Culture, Musical İnstruments, Wall Reliefs, Archeological Sources, Hittite texts.