Politics and Propaganda in the Negative Historiography of the Hittite Old Kingdom
Year: 2024
Type: article
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.
Author: Javier Martínez
Language: English
Topic: Ancient Near East History
Subfield: Archeology
Field: Arts and Humanities
Domain: Social Sciences
Open Access status: diamond
OpenAlex ID: W4406529289