Sanctifying the State: The Priesthood in Hittite Foreign Policy and Imperial Ideology

This paper refers to that the Hittite priesthood served as a pivotal political institute deeply embedded in the empire's foreign relations mechanisms and administration system. Rather than viewing the priesthood solely through a religious mirror, the study shed light its substantial diplomatic, military, and juridical duties with in the Hittite theocratic system. Three points refer to the intervention of the Hittite priesthood. First, priests served as an agent of the state authority in regional and diplomatic contexts, actively reinforcing imperial presence in frontier centers. Second, they played a crucial ideological role in military campaigns, using ritual practice to sanctify warfare, justify royal invasion as divinely mandated. Third, and most important, priests constructed and maintained the sacro-legal authority governing Hittite international foreign policy, they supervised treaty formulation, invoked divine witnesses, administered oaths, and safeguard treaty tablets in archives of the temples, thus, transferring this political agreements as binding religious acts enforced through divine sanctions. Despite typically aligned with royal authority power, documented conflicts demonstrate the independence of priesthood political agency and capacity to confirm institutional interests. Lastly, the paper concludes that the priesthood was absolutely necessary to empire legitimacy, territorial governance, and diplomatic strategy, affirming its pivotal role within the Hittite state.