Politics and Propaganda in the Negative Historiography of the Hittite Old Kingdom

Abstract

Hattušili I faced a formidable threat to his throne from his aunt, Tawananna, who was based in Hurma. Realizing the inherent power of political propaganda, he commissioned a unique Hittite genre that Beckman has termed “negative historiography” to mitigate this threat. This genre highlighted the incompetence of various Hurmean figures in a comical way, thereby engineering a widespread negative Hurmean stereotype throughout the kingdom and preventing Tawananna from gathering any significant “grassroots” following. This paper demonstrates that once the threat was neutralized, the literary genre lost its raison d’être and disappeared from the scene.

Keywords

• hattušili i
• royal family conflicts
• hittite military campaigns
• depictions of incompetence
• hittite narrative techniques
• hittite capital transition