Ritos que se dictan: oralidad y escritura de los textos mágicos hititas

Abstract

Many of the reports of healing rituals based on the principle of analogical magic preserved in the Boğazkoy archives are attributed to female magicians, many of whom are of foreign origin and of Luvite or Hurrian languages. They were illiterate, so the first written record of the ritual had to be based on a dictation by the maga. In this article we will analyze the evidence for such dictation, which includes: features of orality that have been reflected in the writing of the resulting text; interferences between the ritual specialist author of the ritual, the translator and the scribe; and evidence of the bilingual nature of the relationship between the transmitter and the scribe.