New Light on Hittite Verse and Meter? Francia (2004) has offered a

New Light on Hittite Verse and Meter?
Francia (2004) has offered a new analysis of a difficult passage from the Hittite
purification ritual of Iriya. Following Carruba (1995 and alibi), she argues persuasively
that the recitations found there reflect a popular and originally oral tradition in both their
content and form. She cites a number of features that suggest the recitations are not only
“poetic” but also versified: alliteration, assonance, parallel grammatical structure, and
above all a strikingly regular number of accented words per clause. She fails, however, to
appreciate the nature of the “proverbial” elements in the recitation or to exploit fully her
insights into the metrics of the text.
I will show that a proper understanding of the syntax reveals the common
denominator of the “proverbs”: they all refer to examples in nature where paradoxically
something that is subordinate to something else (as part to whole or as product to source)
turns on and harms or destroys the latter. These truisms are cited not merely as part of the
widely shared principle of similia similibus evocantur, as suggested by Francia. They
reflect the belief widely attested in Indogermania that recitation of established truths
compels fulfillment of the wish of the reciter—in Hittite context that of the ritual
practitioner that evils afflicting the ritual client be destroyed.
I will argue further that with application of the established feature of phrasal stress in
Hittite verse (see Melchert 1998 following Durnford 1971 and McNeil 1963) the
passages in Iriya can be shown to form regular lines of four stresses divided into two
equal cola, just as in the Hurro-Hittite epics of the Kumarbi Cycle and the “Song of
Nesa”. The presence of this structure in ritual recitations based on a popular oral tradition
increases the chances that such a verse pattern is native to Hittite and was not borrowed
from elsewhere in the ancient Near East or developed solely for translation literature. Its
relationship to the versification systems of other ancient Indo-European traditions thus
deserves further investigation.
References
Carruba, Onofrio. 1995. Poesia e metrica in Anatolia. In: Studia classica Iohanni Tarditi
oblate (ed. L. Belloni), 567-602. Milano : Vita e pensiero.
Durnford, Stephen. 1971. Some Evidence for Syntactic Stress in Hittite. Anatolian
Studies 21.69-75.
Francia, Rita. 2004. “Montagne grandi (e) piccolo, (sapete) perchè sono venuto?” (in
margine a due recitative del Rituale di Iriya CTH 400-401). Orientalia NS 73.390408.
McNeil, Ian. 1963. The Metre of the Hittite Epic. Anatolian Studies 13.237-242.
Melchert, H. Craig. 1998. Poetic Meter and Phrasal Stress in Hittite. In: Mír Curad.
Studies in Honor of Calvert Watkins (ed. J. Jasanoff et al.), 483-494. Innsbruck: IBS.