Comparison between the Two Corpora
Ilan Peled · 2025
This chapter offers a comparison between the Hittite and Mesopotamian corpora, following the same criteria of the previous chapters: ritual aims, practitioners, beneficiaries, and ritual performance and liminality. Ritual aims: the Hittite corpus reveals diverse aims, not necessarily related to any architectural element, while the Mesopotamian corpus shows a division between the aims of rituals using makeshift structures and those focusing on house doors. Practitioners: the Hittite corpus exhibits several professional designations, many of whom are known by name, while the Mesopotamian corpus details only one designation of practitioners, who always remain anonymous. Beneficiaries: the Hittite corpus had royalty and anonymous individuals roughly evenly represented as ritual beneficiaries, while the beneficiaries in the Mesopotamian corpus were almost only private individuals. Performance and liminality: the function and liminal traits of each architectural element in both corpora are discussed, as well as additional modes of ritual performance and liminality.