Water boundaries in the Hittite literature and some Mesopotamian comparisons

Although the Hittites are rightly called “the civilization of the rocks”, the concept of water boundaries is not alien to this society. This is due to the incisiveness of their international policy, especially during the fourteenth and thirteenth centuries BC. The perception of water spaces as boundaries is undoubtedly universal, no less very logical; as such, it does not necessarily require any direct influence from a specific culture Nonetheless, in the present paper, we try to show that the conception of water spaces, such as rivers, and seas descripted in the Hittite literature might trace its origin back to an immense repertoire offered by Mesopotamian literature. In the contribution, we also evaluate to what extent Hattian and Hurrian traditions contributed to mediating this process, and how water was conceived as a world limit regulated by gods and set by Hittite kings indirectly ‘streamed’ across the centuries in the Ancient Near Eastern literature