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237 with some evil motive, ordered that his brother Hattusilis be subjected to a trial "by the sacred wheel" (a procedure or torture whose nature is uncertain). "However," the intended victim's report states, "my Lady Ishtar appeared to me in a dream; in the dream she said to me as follows: ‘Shall I abandon you to a hostile deity? Be not afraid!’ And with the help of the goddess I was acquitted; because the goddess, my Lady, held me by the hand; she never abandoned me to a hostile deity or an evil judgment." According to the various Hittite royal annals from that time, the goddess Ishtar announced her support of Hattusilis Ill in his struggle for the throne with his brother Mutawallis in several oracle dreams. In one report the claim was made that the goddess promised the Hittite throne to Hattusilis in a dream by his wife—a wife, according to another dream- record, espoused by him "upon the command of the goddess Ishtar; the goddess entrusted her to me in a dream." In a third dream report, Ishtar is said to have appeared to Urhi- Teshub, the heir appointed by Mutawallis to succeed him, and told him in a dream that all his efforts to thwart Hattusilis were in vain: "Aimlessly you have tired yourselves out, for I, Ishtar, all the lands of the Hittites to Hattusilis have turned over." Hittite dream reports, at least to the extent that they have been found, reflect the importance that was attached there to the proper observance of the rites and requirements of wor- ship. In one discovered text "a dream of his majesty the king" is reported thus: In the dream, the Lady Hebat Who Judges (the spouse of Teshub) said again and again to his majesty, "When the Storm God comes from heaven, he should not find you to be stingy.' While dreaming, the king re- sponded that he had made a golden ritual object for the god. But the goddess said, "It is not enough!" Then anouier king, the king of Hakmish, entered the dream-conversation, saying to his majesty: "Why have you not given the Huhupal-instru- ments and the lapis-lazuli stones which you have promised 4. T.-L. When the Hittite king awoke from this trialogued dream, he reported it to the priestess Hebatsum. And she said the Royal Dreams, Fateful Oracles to Teshub?"