The book under review is the revised version of Tayfun Bilgin's PhD dissertation submitted in 2015 at the University of Michigan. This monumental book is well written, very informative, and provides Hittitologists with the most recent information on the Hittite administration. The main goal of the research is to offer a clear view of the administrative organization of the Hittite Kingdom through a prosopographical investigation of top-level officials over five centuries.
Bilgin shows considerable mastery of the topic. The outcomes of the vast amount of research have been structured as follows: an introduction which sets the research goals, gives an overview of the state of the art in the field, and explains the methodological approach within the general research frame. The author describes in chapters 1–2 the roles of royal family members and provincial administrators. Chapter 3 represents the core of the investigation: here the author investigates prosopographically the top-level officials of the Hittite administration in a diachronic perspective. A general discussion of the office follows and summarizes the prosopography. Chapter 4 briefly presents the corpus investigationis (mainly administrative documents). Chapter 5 offers a theoretical discussion about specific issues: continuity and discontinuity of offices over the centuries, hierarchy at the Hittite court, and a very balanced interpretation of the Hittite administration as a patrimonial organization. Chapter 6 closes the book with summary conclusions. The book also offers five useful Appendices with lists of witnesses (i.e. officials) in land donations, state treaties and tribute lists. Frequently mentioned titles/designations, book indexes and bibliography are extremely well edited.
The prosopographical enquiry greatly benefits from the examination of the cache of seal impressions of functionaries excavated in Nişantepe at Boğazköy in 1990 and 1991. Bilgin has to be praised because in this case he brings together glyptic and epigraphic sources in a very profitable way, which represents a bonus in terms of research impact. We also appreciate Bilgin's professionalism in consulting secondary literature in languages other than English.
There are, however, a few specific problems and issues. The palaeographic distribution of offices (Table 23, p. 411) does not make much sense, as the research question would be: when an office was instituted and when active; not when it was attested (i.e. mostly in [L]NS texts): e.g. the LÚuri(y)anni- and LÚABUBĪTU were two officials (or the same?) active especially during the Old Hittite Kingdom, as we can infer from the Landschenkungsurkunden (Late Old–Middle Hittite Period), as well as from later copies of political and festival texts of old Hittite tradition. In this respect Bilgin's table is rather misleading; he seems, however, to be aware of the problem (p. 407).
Though Bilgin affirms that “this is not a philological work” (p. 14), he often reports passages of Hittite texts in translation, probably relying only on secondary literature. While enormously time consuming, it would always be preferable to double-check original documents or their photos (e.g. p. 402: KUB 30.39++ i 23: ⸢ḫi!-ik⸣-zi must be read ḫu-ek-zi “he (the LÚABUBĪTU) slaughters an animal(?)”; p. 190: «…no “men” or “palace” have been connected with the uriyanni office». But see e.g. KBo 59.176 v 6’: ⸢LÚ.⸣MEŠ É LÚu-ri-ia-an-ni).
Nonetheless, Bilgin does not merely record information, he also proposes very balanced and objective opinions. The reviewer fully agrees with the majority of the ideas put forward in the book, yet some need to be reconsidered or sustained by sounder evidence: e.g. the idea that the dual office designations (“of the Right/of the Left”) cannot refer to topography, not even when associated with estate(s) or palace(s) (pp. 401 ff.)).
The book is more a prosopographical study of the high-level administrators than an investigation of power structures in the Hittite administration: it focuses on the research question “who” rather than “what” and “how”. The documentation under study could be augmented by other, newer, texts and seal impressions from Kuşaklı/Šarissa and Kayalıpınar/Šamuḫa than those seldom cited (e.g. p. 283, n. 956; p. 311, n. 1130). See, for instance, the publication of archaeological findings scattered in the Mitteilungen der Deutschen Orient-Gesellschaft. The theoretical chapter 5.5 does not explain how the provincial communities and lower classes were integrated into the patrimonial society. Some offices could be better explained in the light of contemporary or previous offices in other ancient Near Eastern societies. Analogously the author does not investigate systematically the social differentiation between GAL.MEŠ, BĒLU ḪI.A and UGULA.MEŠ. Neither does he explain in chapter 5 (or elsewhere) the difference between offices and titles (i.e. Berufsbezeichnungen vs. Amtsbezeichnungen), an important research goal for the study of the Hittite administration. The main research question of the book was whether officials had power rather than what kind of power they had (i.e. agency of power). We believe that more information could be gleaned through a closer investigation into single offices. The work is marred by just a few minor errors and typos.
We should be grateful to Bilgin for having included in an excellent book so much extremely useful information for future research on the officials of the Hittite administration, as well as for other studies related to Hittite society and power structures. It represents a valuable research tool for all Hittitologists and scholars of ancient Near Eastern civilizations, to be consulted in every library. As the author hopes (p. 13), this book will pave the way for further in-depth studies into the administration and society of the Hittites.
