Votive texts or vows were already a well known religious phenomenon in the 13th century BC, but at that time the Hittites started to expand the genre into an interesting administrative process. Both the temple and the palace sent each other reminders when a promised object had not yet been received or when the god had not yet fulfilled a wish.
Vows are a genre of Hittite literature that has hitherto not been
treated extensively.
This publication contains
transcriptions and translations of nearly all votive texts and text
fragments that have been published as text copies (ca. 80 texts), as
well as fifteen hitherto unpublished text fragments. The general
introduction (70 pp.) contains paragraphs on gods and mortals, the
places where the vow or dream occur, the gods invoked and the dating of
the votive texts. The second part of the volume contains the text
transliterations, translations and commentary, arranged according to CTH
583, 584 and 590.