That’s about 150 million more than in 1960, the first time my mom was a census taker. While the number is still uncertain because census reports are still being processed through Hugo Chavez’s voting machines, somewhere around 331 million people-give or take a couple dozen at any given moment either coming over the wall or fleeing our politics to move to Canada-live in this country. 5 A Criminal Waste of Space: Third Rock From the Sun In this connection, worthy of note is the political career of H˘attusili III, who had chosen his patron deities, the Storm-god of Nerik and Sˇausˇka of Samuh˘a, long before his accession to the Great Kingship of H˘atti.OC Lawyer - May 2021, Vol. Mursili II and Muwattalli II conceived a number of hypostases of Tesˇsˇub with various Luwian and Hurrian epithets as their divine protectors, perceived to be identical with the supreme god of the state and dynasty. Hence, it was Tesˇsˇub and not the Sun-god who was a natural choice for the patron god of Hittite kings. Yet, the Hurrianized dynasty of the Empire Period had the Storm-god Tesˇsˇub as its divine protector. This new ideology is to be attributed to Mesopotamian ideas relating to concepts of royal legitimacy based on the authority of the Sun-god as a guardian of the cosmic order. Changes in Hittite ‘political religion’ during the Empire Period resulted in a change of royal ideology. Furthermore, the War-god and the Throne-goddess were connected in particular with the ideology of kingship in the original Hattian tradition. In the Old Hittite Period, the king was empowered to rule by contract with the Storm-god of H˘atti and the Sun-goddess of Arinna, the supreme deities of the state pantheon. The manner in which Hittite kings chose the supreme deities of the state or the dynastic pantheon to be their divine patrons must be considered in terms of ‘political religion’. A group of seals used by some Emariotes, however, presents the same iconographies as Hittite seals, with gods of the Hittite pantheon, an evidence of adhesion to the Hittite rule. Apparently, Hittite religion never deeply penetrated Emar society. This was not a superimposition of a theological organized pantheon over the local gods, but personal gods of the king their cult was committed to the local family of diviners in charge of the cults of the city, with which the Hittites maintained close relations. A reorganization of cults promoted by Tuthaliya iv was at the origin of the introduction in Emar of a liturgy for some Hittite gods. The king of Karkamiš, who exercised Hittite control over Emar, sent there one of his diviners to enquire through oracles if the local gods were in favour of his travelling to the city. He did not refrain from calling to his court priests from Emar in order to celebrate the proper rites to the goddess in an emergency. Hittite rule did not exercise any religious imperialism, on the contrary, it was Mursili ii who transferred to Hattusa some Aštata cults for the Syrian goddess Išḫara. The Hittite documentation concerning the Land of Aštata on the Euphrates, with Emar as capital, can now be better evaluated thanks to a more precise chronological order of the documentation from Emar (1400–1180 b.c.). Damaging the image, an indexical sign that served as a portal to its referent, meant disconnecting the image from its referent, thereby making the referent invisible and powerless."" In the absence of profound shifts in society however, small scale and isolated mutilation of images such as attested in Hittite society, may serve a different purpose: it tries to convince the addressee of the image that part of the message of the image has become de-activated. We tend to think of iconoclasm in terms of political or religious upheavals. The near absence of destruction might be coincidence, but the combination of the famous Hittite religious “tolerance” (out of political opportunity, not piety) with the late appearance of images of power is not favorable to the occurrence of iconoclasm. The image of either Urhi-Tessub or Kuruntiya at Sirkeli was defaced and 'denamed', and the title of Kuruntiya on the Hatip relief was changed. The Bronze Tablet, a treaty between Tudhaliya IV (1239-1209 BCE) and his cousin Kuruntiya of Tarhuntassa, was found buried under the pavement near the Sphinx Gate rather than melted down, presumably after Kuruntiya had temporarily usurped the throne in Hattusa. Hittite texts only once mention the intentional destruction of images. The non-survival of especially larger scale statuary makes an archaeological and iconographic approach very difficult, but textually there is not much evidence either. ""There is almost no evidence for iconoclasm in Hittite society.
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