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Two Prayers, Two Registers

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Two Prayers, Two Registers

This heading already catalogues Puduhepa's prayer to the Sun Goddess of Arinna, composed by a Hittite queen on behalf of her husband King Hattusili III's health, addressed to a single named deity in intimate, personal terms. Set beside Muwatalli II's prayer to the full assembly of gods, the pairing shows how differently Hittite royal petition could be pitched depending on circumstance and reign. Puduhepa's prayer, though still a matter of state given the political stakes of a king's health, narrows its address to the one deity most closely tied to the royal house at Arinna, asking with a directness that reads, in translation, as genuinely personal.

Muwatalli's prayer, composed roughly a generation earlier, takes the opposite approach to what appears to be a comparably serious royal affliction, addressing the entire assembled pantheon rather than narrowing the appeal to a single patron. Whether this reflects a difference in the specific crisis each prayer responds to, a difference in royal religious style between the two reigns, or simply the greater length and formality expected of a text meant for wider ritual use, both prayers share the underlying conviction that a king's wellbeing was itself a matter of state religion, requiring the correct divine address, however that address was pitched, to secure the outcome the kingdom needed.

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