A demanding goddess: the ritual use of food in the Hittite cult of Istar

The cult of the goddess Ištar occupies a significant place in Hittite official religion at least since the time of king Tutḫaliya I, as testified by the great number of festivals and rituals performed for the hyposthases of the deity and currently collected under numbers 711-721 of the Catalogue des Textes Hittites. Alongside with standard sequences of offerings and libations that represent a common feature of all Hittite festivals, some tablets belonging to this corpus of texts, such as KUB 27.16 and KBo 19.142, present descriptions of food offerings that clearly stand out as particularly rich and complex. Special treatments of the sacrificial meat and the cultic use of fruits, in particular of pomegranate, diverge from the traditional Anatolian cult practice and seem to reflect a Kizzuwatnean provenance. The present article will address some of these descriptions, analyzing their significance whithin the larger organization of the festivals, in the broader context represented by the Hurrian influence o n the cult of the Hittite court.