ABSTRACT
The adoption of terms and the analytical apparatus of ‘propaganda’, applied to certain manifestations of royal ideology, in the case of the Hittites or in the case of their Egyptian and Assyrian neighbours, is by now an accomplished fact. It seems clear that the precedent propagandistic use of the motif of the dowry must have induced Hattusili to protest or to demand a different attitude. But it seems equally clear that the ‘counter-move’ of the Ramesside propaganda aimed at enhancing, on the celebrative level, the opposite motif, that of the ‘non-dowry’, leaving, however, no place for the ambitions of parity from the Hittite side. A master of political propaganda, Hattusili had therefore to face repeatedly external propaganda based on cultural principles foreign to him, very strong and very difficult to counter. His resistance aimed at achieving some small corrections yet not at countering the mighty Ramesside celebrative apparatus.
