Dance in Hittite Culture: Choreography and Setting

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DC Field	Value
dc.identifier	ECF_chapter_19207
dc.contributor.author	de Martino Stefano
dc.title	Dance in Hittite Culture: Choreography and Setting
dc.type	Chapter
dc.language.iso	en
dc.description.abstract	Dance played a significant role in the performance of Hittite cult festivals. Evidence on dance comes from the cuneiform tablets discovered in Anatolia, but also from images depicted on some cult-vases. After having very briefly presented the main characters of Hittite dancing, we will deal with the so-called narrative dances, and with a dance that accompanies the movements of an acrobat who leaps on a bull. Narrative dances, which mostly occur in Old Hittite texts, stage mimetic representations of hunting scenes. The bull-leaping performance is documented from the frieze on a decorated vase and possibly from two Hittite tablets. In both cases, the performed actions, which are manifestations of the oldest intangible heritage of Anatolia and the Mediterranean regions, likely symbolize the superiority of humans over the wild animals.
dc.relation.ispartof	Antiquity Studies
dc.relation.ispartof	Studi orientali
dc.publisher	Edizioni Ca’ Foscari - Venice University Press, Fondazione Università Ca’ Foscari
dc.issued	2023-11-30
dc.dateSubmitted	2023-11-07
dc.identifier.uri	http://edizionicafoscari.it/en/edizioni4/libri/978-88-6969-776-0/dance-in-hittite-culture-choreography-and-setting/
dc.identifier.issn	2610-8828
dc.identifier.eissn	2610-9344
dc.identifier.isbn	978-88-6969-777-7
dc.identifier.eisbn	978-88-6969-776-0
dc.rights	Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International Public License
dc.rights.uri	http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/
item.fulltext	with fulltext
item.grantfulltext	open
dc.peer-review	yes
dc.subject	Bull-Leaping
dc.subject	Cult Festivals
dc.subject	Dance
dc.subject	Hittites
dc.subject	Narrative Dances

Chapter
open access peer reviewed

Dance in Hittite Culture: Choreography and Setting

Stefano de Martino Università degli Studi di Torino, Italia

abstract

Dance played a significant role in the performance of Hittite cult festivals. Evidence on dance comes from the cuneiform tablets discovered in Anatolia, but also from images depicted on some cult-vases. After having very briefly presented the main characters of Hittite dancing, we will deal with the so-called narrative dances, and with a dance that accompanies the movements of an acrobat who leaps on a bull. Narrative dances, which mostly occur in Old Hittite texts, stage mimetic representations of hunting scenes. The bull-leaping performance is documented from the frieze on a decorated vase and possibly from two Hittite tablets. In both cases, the performed actions, which are manifestations of the oldest intangible heritage of Anatolia and the Mediterranean regions, likely symbolize the superiority of humans over the wild animals.

Published

Nov. 30, 2023

Submitted

Nov. 7, 2023

Language

ISBN (PRINT)

978-88-6969-777-7

ISBN (EBOOK)

978-88-6969-776-0

Keywords: Dance • Bull-Leaping • Narrative Dances • Cult Festivals • Hittites

Copyright: © 2023 Stefano de Martino. This is an open-access work distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction is permitted, provided that the original author(s) and the copyright owner(s) are credited and that the original publication is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. The license allows for commercial use. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.

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