Hittite Divine Names (HDN) is an open, collaborative, flexible, and in-progress digital database of the divine names attested in the Hittite written sources. The database pursues two goals. On the one side, it aims at providing an update to van Gessel’s Onomasticon of the Hittite Pantheon (1998, 2001). On the other side, it is conceived as a tool for quantitative analysis in the frame of a broader study on selected aspects of Hittite religion. Together with the related database Hittite Personal Names, HDN has been conceived and initiated by M. Cammarosano in 2016 within the DFG-funded research project Hittite Local Cults.
The database is based on the existing collections, expanded and integrated by an independent review of the secondary literature as well as by own research. The catalogue of text occurrences bases primarily on the indices of the published collections of sources.
The online html database (https://cuneiform.neocities.org/HDN/start.html) can be sorted and searched by publication, by epithet, or by divine name (normalized or not). The pdf version (https://osf.io/8xcjz/?show=view) reproduces the list of occurrences, sorted by normalized DN. A complete list of attested Hittite divine names is provided as a separate tool both in the html and pdf version.
For effectively retrieving relevant occurrences, the attested writings and variant spellings are complemented by normalized forms. The normalized form of a name mostly coincides with that given in van Gessel's Onomasticon, and is given in brackets if not identical with the transliterated/transcripted occurrence. Hittite is alphabetised according to the usual conventions.
In referring to texts, information on ‘obverse’ and ‘reverse’ is given only when necessary (tablets are assumed to be two-columned by default, so ‘KBo 43.218 iii 2’, but ‘KBo 58.128 obv. iii 5’, ‘KBo 43.227 rev. 5’ etc).
The list of attestations includes the following cuneiform texts: KBo 42-70, ABoT 2, CHDS 2, DBH 43 (Bo 8264-8485), DBH 46 (Bo 4658-Bo 5000), UBT (Bo 8486-8694), Bo 3891 (R. Akdoğan, Kubaba 13/25, 2016); DNs from Emar: G.M. Beckman, The Pantheon of Emar, in Fs Popko, 2002.
The general list includes the DNs treated in van Gessel’s OHP as well as in the update.
The database is updated at regular intervals. Besides expanding the corpus, it is planned to provide tools for performing queries and network analysis as well as up-to-date literature. A cooperation with F. Giusfredi (Verona University, PALaC project) has been started with a focus on the linguistic analysis of Hittite DNs.