Hittite Open-Air Cult Places and their Relation to the Community During Festivals Ana Arroyo 1 1. Introduction There are only two sites in ancient Ḫatti that can be confidently identified as open- air cult places and that are, directly or indirectly, related to festivals (EZEN [4] ): 2 Yazılıkaya and the Šuppitaššu complex. 3 Eflatun Pınar might also be included in this group on the basis of its characteristics, iconography, pottery finds and indi- rect textual evidence. The three of them are located close to a settlement and are linked to it by means of a road, but who was allowed access to these cult places? Was it possible to enter them on a specific occasion, such as during a festival? If that is the case, was the community allowed to participate in the festival? This article organizes the available archaeological, iconographical and textual data to explore to what extent these questions can be answered at the present state of the research. These issues are not only important in their own right. They are related to a wider theoretical context in which, in general terms, scholars seek to determine the limits of common people’s involvement in religious ceremonies that are per- formed outside the private, intimate, sphere. The belief that a given community participated in religious festivals – also named “rituals” – come from some an- thropological theorical frames that interpret festivals as a mode of social cohesion – also as a form to resolve sociopolitical tensions –, which, for their success, re- quires the presence of the community. It entails the notion of “public,” 4 and thus, 1 I would like to thank the reviewers of this article for their valuable comments, sugges- tions and criticism that helped me to improve these pages. 2 For the distinction between EZEN[4], “festival,” and SISKUR/SÍSKUR, “(magical) rit- ual,” see McMahon, 2003: 279; Marcuson / Hout, 2015: 145. 3 Some scholars interpret rock reliefs and other Hittite structures with hieroglyphic inscrip- tions – such as dams or fountains – as cult places. In my opinion, neither an inscription, nor the type of structure, nor its visibility, nor its relation to water, nor even the presence of “cup-marks” are sufficient, taken alone or in combination, to label reliefs and structures as a “cult-place”; see Arroyo, 2020: 102–103, with references. The Emirgazi altars were discovered inside a town, one of them probably in situ, the other two in a secondary place. To my knowledge, no further excavations have been made on the site, so it cannot be stated whether they were in an open space: see Sayce, 1905: 21; Callander, 1906: 178–180, Pl. IX–XI. Yazılıkaya and the Šuppitaššu complex are open-air cult places beyond doubt: both of them are related to a temple and have no roof; see §§3.1–3.2. 4 On the diachronic meaning of “public” and its use for ancient societies see Klinger, 2013b: 94, n. 7. See also a broad definition in Inomata / Coben, 2006: 5.