Re: The Odyssey - question for all!
Some background information of compelling interest is found in Trevor Bryce's book on the Hittites, "Life and Society in the Hittite World", (Oxford, 2002). There are 2 chapters that discuss the possible links between the Hittites and the Greek world so I'll just give them to ya'll whole. They are both pretty short.
While reading, keep in mind cosmic catastrophe, a giant comet (god) in the solar system making the rounds, terrifying people, breaking up and showering destruction (fighting gods) at periodic intervals, the effects on climate, the emergence of psychopathy, and so on.
First, some background on the Hittites.
Most people only know about the Hittites because of a few references to them in the Bible, as though they were just some other tribe. Uriah the Hittite was the cuckolded husband of Bathsheba and Ephron, who sold his field to Abraham, was a Hittite. Abraham has even been conjectured to have been a Hittite (I favor this view myself).
Up to the end of the 19th century, the ONLY things known about the Hittites were from the Bible. In 1876, Archibald Sayce gave a lecture to the Society of Biblical Archaeology explaining what 40 years of research had revealed: that far from being an insignificant Canaanite tribe, the Hittites had been masters of an extensive empire.
In the early years of the 20th century, a whole slew of tablets were found in Turkey in the Akkadian language. There was an Akkadian version of a treaty between pharaoh Ramesses II and the Hittite king, Hattusili. The site was later determined to be the Hittite capital, Hattusa and most of the tablets there were in the Hittite language which were not deciphered until later. It proved to be an Indo-European language.
The "Biblical Hittites" apparently had about nothing to do with the real ones. What a surprise. They occupied Central Anatolia during the Late Bronze Age (which, came crashing down when Thera blew in 1628 BC or thereabouts) and were, apparently, of mixed ethnic origins - Indo-European, native Hattian, Hurrian, Luwian.
It is said that the Hittite capital Hattusa was destroyed early in the 12th century BC, but I'm still thinking that the dating is all off because they haven't pegged it to Thera. Anyway, that was the end of the kingdom though elements of the civilization persisted in southern Anatolia and Syria, at Carchemish and Aleppo. In these regions, collateral branches of the royal dynasty survived the upheavals which marked the end of the Bronze Age and held some influence for a few more centuries. There is marked Hittite influence in Syria with Hittite-type monuments and sculptures and "Hittite" hieroblyphics at Carchemish and elsewhere. The traditions of Hittite civilization sort of blended with those of Syria and this gave rise to the Neo-Hittite or Syro-Hittite kingdoms.
We aren't concerned with these latter-day Hittites, but with those whose kingdom spanned a period of some 500 years or so prior to (my date) 1628 BC. The "accepted" dates (based on Biblical chronology, not any secure anchor such as Thera) are 17th to 12th centuries BC.
The Hittites were, apparently, warlike - or that may just be because a lot of annals are concerned with war and peaceful things didn't get recorded. Military annals list the peoples taken from subject territories in the aftermath of conquest and resettled in the Hittite homeland Hundreds, sometimes thousands, of man, women and children were uprooted from their homes and forced to walk hundreds of kilometers to become slaves and workers in Hittite land.
The Hittites appear to be rather eclectic, borrowing freely from previous and contemporary civilizations around them. Similarities can be found between Hittite and Greek traditions and customs as we will soon see - and ritual practices as well, including methods of "communicating" with the gods. It is thought that perhaps some things "Greek" came to them by way of the Hittite world but it is also just as likely that what the Hittites and Greeks had in common was adopted by each of them independently from some other source.
Enough of that, on to the chapters:
__________________________________
CHAPTER 12
Myth
The god Telipinu has flown into a rage. He puts on his shoes and departs the land. Crops wither and die, sheep and cattle reject their young and become barren, men and gods starve. In great alarm the Storm God, father of Telipinu, dispatches an eagle to search for his wayward son. The search is in vain. The Storm God himself attempts to seek him out. Again to no avail. No god, great or small, can determine his whereabouts. In desperation the Storm God sends a bee to look for him. The bee searches on high mountains, in deep valleys, in the blue deep. Finally, in a meadow, it discovers Telipinu. It stings his hands and feet, bringing him smartly upright, and then soothes the pain of his stings by smearing wax on the affected parts. But the god's anger remains unabated. Indeed his fury is increased by his rude and painful awakening. In an orgy of destruction, he unleashes thunder and lightning and great floods, knocking down houses and wreaking havoc on human beings, livestock, and crops. Then Kamrusepa, goddess of magic, is sent to pacify him and bring him back. She conducts a ritual for this purpose. By the process of ritual analogy Telipinu's body is cleansed of its anger. The god's way home is made smooth by spreading oil and honey upon it. Telipinu returns and once more cares for his land. All is restored to normal. The land once more becomes fruitful.
The story of
the Vanishing God is part of a small body of native Anatolian mythological tradition which has come down to us via the Hittite archives,1 Remnants of a number of versions of the story have survived, featuring different gods (including the great Storm God himself), though it is generally the god Telipinu who has the starring role. Even his story appears in several different versions. We have parts of at least three of these, and although none are complete we can piece together from their fragments a number of elements which are probably common to all of them. Telipinu was a Hattic god in origin who retained some prominence throughout the period of the Hittite kingdom. Sired by the Storm God, he too sometimes displayed formidable Storm God characteristics, as illustrated by the destructive elemental forces unleashed by him in the Vanishing God tradition.
The tradition almost certainly dates back to the early Old Kingdom, or even earlier to pre-Hittite times, though it survives only in Middle and Late Hittite texts (that is, texts of the New Kingdom).
A story recited, a tale told. This in essence is what a myth is. The notion of something spoken is in fact inherent in the word.
'Myth' is derived from Greek mythos whose prime meaning 'utterance, a thing said*, was extended to refer to anything spoken or recited, particularly a story. The Vanishing God myth has all the elements of a story recited. But not merely this. In its written form it provides a script for a full-scale dramatic performance. There is a cast of characters who deliver short speeches linked by narrative:
NARRATOR: The pastures and the springs dried up, so that famine broke out in the land. Humans and gods were dying of hunger. The Great Sun God made a feast and invited the Thousand Gods. They ate but could not get enough. They drank but could not quench their thirst. The Storm God remembered his son Telipinu:
STORM GOD: My son Telipinu is not there. He became enraged and removed everything good.
NARRATOR; The great and small gods began to search for Telipinu. The Sun God sent the swift eagle:
SUN GOD: Go search the high mountains! Search the deep valleys! Search the Blue Deep!
NARRATOR: The eagle went, but did not find him. He reported back to the Sun God:
EAGLE: I could not find Telipinu, the noble god.
STORM GOD (to Hannahanna): How shall we act? We are going to die of hunger!
HANNAHANNA2: DO something, Storm God. Go search for Telipinu yourself!3
Stage directions are inserted in the script, as much for the guidance of the actors as for their audience:
NARRATOR: Telipinu came in anger.
STAGE DIRECTION: He thunders together with lightning. Below he strikes the Dark Earth.
NARRATOR: Kamrusepa saw him and moved for herself [with(?)] the eagle's wing. She stopped it, namely anger. She stopped it, the wrath. She stopped sin. She stopped sullenness.
Props to be used in the performance are also indicated by stage directions:
Before Telipinu there stands an eyan-tree (or pole?).4 From the eyan is suspended a hunting bag made from the skin of a sheep.
The lines spoken by narrator and actors provide but one element of a performance in which sight and sound are blended in dramatic presentation. The performance is visually enhanced by the actions and costumes of the actors, garbed as animals or gods, decked out with all their appropriate insignia and symbols, moving rhythmically in ever- changing patterns and tableaus as they mime the actions conveyed by the narrator's words, as they react and respond through gesture, facial expression, and bodily movement to each stage of the unfolding drama. There is music throughout the performance. The actors accompany their movements with singing and chanting, sometimes in unison, sometimes individually. There is also instrumental music—the rumble of drums and the clash of cymbals in the more violent scenes as the angry, wayward god vents his wrath by unleashing thunder and lightning; the soothing tones of the lute in the quieter, more solemn scenes as the god's anger is drained from him and he is finally enticed home.
At least in theory, the performance was not intended primarily for the entertainment of an assembled audience. If the audience were in fact entertained, that was a perfectly acceptable by-product; no god could take exception to that. But
the myth itself merely provided the context for the performance's essential purpose—a ritual designed to induce a delinquent god through analogic magic to abandon his wrath and return to his responsibilities. The ritual passages, in their phraseology and content, and particularly in their application of analogic magic, recall many of the purificatory rituals of the Hittite land. And the leading ritual practitioner in the myth, Kamrusepa, goddess of magic, served as the divine counterpart of the Old Women', speaking and acting very much as they did:
Kamrusepa says to the gods:.. Telipinu is angry. His soul and essence were stifled like burning brushwood. Just as they burned these sticks of brushwood, may the anger, wrath, sin and sullenness of Telipinu likewise burn up. And just as malt is ineffective, so that they don't carry it to the field and use it as seed, as they don't make it into bread and deposit it in the Seal House, so may the anger, wrath, sin and sullenness of Telipinu likewise become ineffective....'
The Myth-Ritual Nexus
The fact that myth and ritual have so frequently been associated through the ages has led to a widespread and long-held assumption that the two are invariably linked. This assumption goes too far, and exceptions to it can readily be found. Nevertheless, there are clearly many instances in many civilizations where a close nexus between myth and ritual does exist, as in the case of our Vanishing God. Which raises a further question.
Does myth give rise to ritual, or ritual to myth? Arguably, it is possible to find examples of both. But in cases like the Vanishing God, myth almost certainly preceded ritual.
The Hittite land fell frequent victim to a range of natural disasters—devastating storms, drought, plague, famine—occurring at unpredictable intervals and attributable to malevolent supernatural powers. While humankind had no practical means of controlling these powers, it could seek to influence them through other means. But in order to do so, one needed first to understand how they operated, how they behaved, how they thought. This in effect meant reducing them to human terms, and putting them into the context of human behaviour and experience. A superhuman power with human desires, failings, and vulnerabilities can more readily be dealt with than vague impersonal forces which lie beyond human conceptualization.
{Notice here no mention of cosmic, cometary events... it really is frustrating to read such things and realize that the scholars are so totally clueless about the most important factor that would open their whole field up to understanding!}
The land is afflicted by a prolonged drought. There is some being responsible for this. It must be a being who has power over life-sustaining elements, fertility of soil and livestock, growth- inducing rain. Why has it withheld these elements? Reasons are given in terms of human emotions—and the rudiments of a myth are created. How can things be set right? By seeking to drive from the being the negative human emotions which have led to its malevolence, in this case its wrath and sullenness, as one would seek to drive out the wrath from a feuding household. How does one do this? Through the process of analogic magic. If a human being can thus be purified, so too can a god—if a god is but a human on a superhuman scale.
At first sight the Vanishing God tradition appears similar in concept to traditions from other civilizations which concern the disappearance of fertility deities and the consequent withering of life on earth. Thus in Mesopotamian tradition the abduction of the shepherd-god Dumuzi to the Underworld. In Greek tradition Persephone's abduction to the same region has similar consequences, because of the grief of her mother, the earth goddess Demeter. The Mesopotamian and Greek myths serve to explain the regularly recurring cycle of seasons, with growth and new life heralding Dumuzi's and Persephone's return to the upper world for six months in every twelve.
But the Vanishing God tradition is of a different order. There is no sense here of a predictable recurrent pattern. Rather the emphasis is on the god's whimsical behaviour. Without warning, it seems, he abandons the land in a fit of pique—for reasons which the fragmentary texts have not preserved and which in any case are probably quite incidental—and his disappearance and prolonged absence are quite beyond the normal order of things, causing as much concern to his fellow gods as to his mortal worshippers.
The myth and the ritual which it incorporates have very much a reactive character. There is no sense of looking forward to the future. Rather
the impression is of a response to a crisis which has already happened, is still current, and falls outside the natural cycle of the seasons. It is possible that the myth was routinely acted out at the annual purulli festival at the beginning of spring (as an anticipatory or precautionary measure?). But in addition, if not alternatively, it
may have been performed at other times as well, in response to a critical situation, and particularly at times of imminent serious shortfalls in the land's food production, whether due to drought, or crop- destroying storms, or a decline in soil and livestock fertility. Such crises may have become ever more frequent during the kingdom's last decades.
{Oh, if only this guy had a clue! He should read Clube and Napier!}
The Illuyanka Myth
This is the text of the Purulli Festival....
When they speak thus: 'Let the land prosper and thrive, and let the land be protected'—and when it prospers and thrives, they perform the Purulli Festival.
So begins the earlier of two versions of the myth of Illuyanka,5 a serpent (that is what his name means) who crawls from the bowels of the earth to engage in mortal combat with the Storm God. The myth tells of the combat, which ends with the triumph of the Storm God and the death of Illuyanka. But victory does not come easily. Initially the serpent gains the upper hand, inflicting a resounding defeat on the god, who is forced to call in outside assistance, both divine (in the earlier version) and human (in both versions). Only then, and even then only through trickery, does he succeed in overcoming his adversary and killing him.
This much do the two versions of the myth have in common. Both versions were written on a single tablet by a scribe at the dictation of a priest called Kella,
Like the myths which belong to the Vanishing God tradition, the story of Illuyanka comes from native Hattic tradition. Indeed the place-names mentioned in the story, Ziggaratta and Nerik, place it firmly in the once predominantly Hattic region of central Anatolia, lying north of Hattusa and extending towards the Pontic coast.
Like the Vanishing God tradition, it was probably first committed to writing during the Old Hittite period," though all surviving copies date to the New Kingdom.
As the official cult-myth of the purulli festival, the story of Illuyanka was no doubt acted out on one or more occasions during the course of the festival—almost certainly at Nerik, where the celebrations reached their climax, and perhaps at other venues on the festival route as well. Its purpose must have been to strengthen through ritual enactment the process of regeneration of life at the year's beginning, symbolized by the Storm God's triumph over Illuyanka, who represents the forces of darkness and evil. Yet though he is vanquished and slaughtered Illuyanka will rise again to do battle, his life renewed as a snake renews itself by sloughing its skin. L
ike the Babylonian Marduk, who vanquishes and dismembers Tiamat but must do battle afresh with her every year, the Hittite Storm God will forever have to renew his combat with his adversary. That is in the nature of things. The struggle is a constant one; Illuyanka is never completely overthrown and the Storm God's battle with him must be fought year after year. It is appropriate that the ritual enacted to represent this is performed at the most crucial time of the year, to reactivate through sympathetic magic the powers that hold in check the destructive elemental forces hostile to civilized existence.
Constant vigilance and effort are needed, by man and god alike, for whenever the dark forces represented by Illuyanka gain the upper hand, the crops will not grow, the rain will not fall.
The theme of a hero, human or divine, pitted in a fight to the death against a monster (often a serpent or dragon, or with reptilian body- parts) representing the forces of evil is typical of the mythology of many civilizations. The myths of the ancient Greeks abound in examples—Zeus and Typhon, Apollo and Python, Bellerophon and Chimaera. Perseus and Medusa, Herakles and the Hydra—with derivatives like St George and the Dragon in more recent times.
Sometimes even when the hero is a god, and despite all the weapons in his armoury, his success can only be achieved with the assistance of a mortal, in Greek tradition it was only through the services of a mortal, Herakles, that Zeus and his fellow gods finally triumphed over the Giants, the monstrous sons of the Earth sprung from the blood of the mutilated Ouranos (see below). So too in both versions of the Illuyanka myth, which differ quite markedly in many of their details,
a mortal is pressed into service to help rescue the god from total and irreversible defeat. In the first version his name is Hupasiya. The Storm God's daughter seeks him out and asks him to join forces with her. He agrees to do so on condition that she sleeps with him. Which she does. The plan is put into effect:
Inara led Hupasiya away and hid him. She dressed herself up and called the serpent up from its hole, (saying:) 'I'm preparing a feast. Come eat and drink.' So up came the serpent and his children, and they ate and drank. They drained every vessel and became drunk. Now they do not want to go back down into their hole again. Hupasiya came and bound the serpent with a rope. Then the Storm God came and slew the serpent, and the gods that were with him.7
In the second version of the myth, we are at the point where the serpent has defeated the Storm God and taken his heart and eyes. Again subterfuge is called for.
The Storm God sires a son by a poor mortal woman, and on reaching manhood the son marries Illuyanka's daughter and becomes a member of his father-in-law's household. This is in accordance with the Storm God's plan, who now instructs his son: 'When you go and live in your wife's house, demand from them my heart and eyes (as a brideprice).' The son's new family voluntarily hands over to him the requested items, without suspecting, apparently, who the real author of the request is. The plan has worked. With his bodily parts all back in place, the Storm God once more does battle with his adversary, and this time kills him.
The tradition has a number of curious features which set it quite apart from most other monster-slaying myths. In the first place
the hero can hardly be said to cover himself in glory. In both versions of the tale he is ignominiously defeated by his opponent. In the first version his ultimate success comes only after his daughter has taken the initiative and rendered the serpent utterly helpless with the aid of her mortal assistant.
In both versions deception and trickery are used where the god's physical prowess has failed.
Not that deception and trickery were necessarily bad things in themselves if the end warranted such means (as exemplified also in the Homeric code of heroic conduct).
But the Storm God's behaviour raises other moral questions. In the first version the slaughter of the serpent and his sons grossly violates the obligations of hospitality which codes of social behaviour in almost all civilizations, ancient and modern, insist on being scrupulously observed.
If, as Professor Hoffner notes, a man gives shelter and food to another, he is bound by the time-honoured obligations of a host to ensure that his guest is protected from all harm.8 Illuyanka and his sons have been guests at the table of the Storm God's daughter and are still under her protection, according to the laws of hospitality, when they meet their deaths at the hands of her father. In the second version the Storm God's victory depends on another deliberately engineered act of betrayal. The god has produced a son for the purpose of marrying into the serpent's household, in effect becoming a member of his family. It reflects a situation familiar enough
in Hittite society, where matrilocal marriages were apparently not uncommon (see Chapter 7).
In such a situation the husband's first loyalty was clearly due to his new family. Yet the marriage of the Storm God's son is a perversion of this. It is to be used as a means of bringing about his father-in-law's destruction.
The involvement of a mortal in both versions of the myth has been seen as a kind of statement of the need for joint effort between god and man in ensuring that the cosmos functions properly and that evil destructive forces are kept at bay; each has his own contribution to make to the process. Given the actual role played by man and god in the myth, that interpretation is not easy to sustain.
In both versions the mortals end up as the victims of their actions. In the first, Hupayasa finds himself a prisoner of the goddess to whose service he has given himself, forever denied the right of returning to his wife and children for whom he passionately longs. A punishment for his hubris, his arrogance, in demanding that the goddess sleep with him as a reward for his services? That is often assumed, but is certainly not evident from the text itself. Nor do we know his ultimate fate, for the text is broken at the point where it was apparently narrated. In the second version there is no doubt about the mortal's fate. The moral dilemma he faces is an understandable one; his loyalties to his natural father are in conflict with those he owes to his new family. It is the latter whom he ultimately betrays. Wracked with guilt at this betrayal and because of his part in his father-in-law's death, he begs the Storm God to kill him too. Whether as an act of mercy, an act of wrath at his son's remorse, or as an act of sheer indifference now that his son has served his purpose, the Storm God promptly obliges.
The myth may lack the sophistication of the more developed literary products of Hurrian culture. Yet the issues which it raises seem to go well beyond a simple, clear-cut conflict between the forces of good and evil.
Why is the Storm God portrayed in such a negative, lacklustre way, especially in a text which was acted out in a festival in which he played a starring role? The contrast with the portrayal of Marduk in the Babylonian creation myth, to take but one example for comparison purposes, is striking. There is of course a risk of our reading more into the tale, in both its versions, than was originally intended or was apparent to those who recorded, read, or heard it, or participated in its performance. And for all we know the apparent complexities of the tale may have simply been due to its being cobbled together from several early and originally independent folk tales now lost to us. On the other hand it is difficult to believe that in a society which was closely attuned to a range of social and moral issues there were not some who pondered on the tale's moral implications.
Or was the only important thing that the Storm God eventually triumphed, regardless of how his victory was achieved or who fell victim in the process? Even if this were the case, those who saw the performance must have had some sensitivity to the pathos of the mortal's plight in both versions. 'It is not too much to claim', comments Professor Hoffner, 'that the author intended the audience to feel the tragedy. Such a plot may not be "literary" in the strict sense, but it is surely evidence for good story-telling technique!'9
Other Anatolian Myths
The Vanishing God group of myths and the two versions of the Illuyanka myth are the most prominent examples of the small corpus of Anatolian myths and folk tales surviving in the Hattusa archives. They owe their survival in large measure to the fact that many were incorporated into rituals which were collected throughout the kingdom by royal scribes. But they can be no more than a tiny sample of what was probably a rich body of native mythological tradition, typical of pre-literate societies, extending well back before the Hittite period. Much may never have been recorded in written form. Much else may initially have been recorded during the Old Hittite period, but unlike the Vanishing God and Illuyanka tales failed to survive in the texts beyond that period.
Some tales that do survive are frustratingly incomplete, like the Hattic myth which recounts how the moon (Hattic Kasku) fell from the sky, was pursued by the Storm God and other deities and finally, we may conclude (though the text is broken at this point), restored to his original place. A ritual text, also very fragmentary, accompanies the myth, thus providing the reason for its preservation in written form. Unfortunately not enough remains of either myth or ritual to indicate their full significance.
Native themes occasionally find echoes in Classical Greek tradition. The Sun God's lust for a beautiful cow whom he impregnates after turning himself into a handsome youth recalls that group of Greek tales which present variations on
the theme of human-bovine couplings, Zeus and Europa, Zeus and fo, Pasiphae and the bull. (One is tempted to remark that in the Hittite context, it is somewhat surprising to find that a sexual act which is strictly forbidden in Hittite law is committed by the supreme god of justice.) In the sequel to the Hittite story the cow is horrified at the two-legged offspring, a human male child, which results from her coupling, and is only prevented from eating the child by his sire's intervention. What follows is obscured by the text's very fragmentary state at this point, and the complete loss of a passage about seventeen lines in length. When the text resumes, there is a fragmentary reference to great rivers, and apparently to some measures taken by the god for the protection of the child. Finally the god leads a fisherman, himself childless, to where the child, an apparent foundling, lies. Gathering him up, the fisherman takes him home to his wife and persuades her to feign labour pains. She does so, deluding the villagers into believing that she is delivered of a child of her own. The story ends abruptly here, but we know that it continued on another tablet now lost to us.10
Incomplete though it is, enough of the story survives to suggest that it may be an early example of a well known and widespread narrative tradition: A child is born in secret; its father is often (though not invariably) a god. The mother cannot rear it as her own, either because of the disgrace associated with its birth, or because reports of its birth would put it in great danger. The child is therefore entrusted to destiny by being set adrift on a river or in the sea until it is discovered, safe and sound, and reared, generally by a childless couple of humble circumstances. This in essence is the story of the origins of the Akkadian king Sargon, of the Hebrew Moses, of the Persian king Darius, of the Greek hero Perseus, of Romulus, founder of Rome,"
In each of these cases the foundling grows to manhood and achieves great things, generally as a leader of his people and often at the expense of a king from whom his birth has been kept secret—a king forewarned that just such a person would one day overthrow him, or liberate his people from him. In the Hittite story, the role of the fisherman and references to 'great rivers' raise the possibility that in this case too the rejected infant had been set adrift on water until, under his real father's guidance, he was found and reared by his adoptive parents. If so, perhaps like his counterparts in similar stories, he grew to manhood and became a great leader of his people. Perhaps this was narrated in the final missing tablet of the story. That would make it one of the earliest surviving examples of a tradition which was to resurface constantly in a number of civilizations over at least the next thousand years.
The motif of exposing babies by setting them adrift on a river occurs again in a Hittite context in the so-called legend of Zalpa.12 The queen of Kanesh, so the story goes, gave birth to thirty sons in a single year. Horrified by this enormous brood she placed them in reed baskets caulked with mud and set them on a river (the Hittite Marassantiya, Classical Halys, and now the Kizil Irmak), which carried them to Zalpa on the Black Sea. After growing to manhood the sons returned to Kanesh/Nesa, where their mother had subsequently given birth to thirty daughters. Unaware of the family relationship, the brothers were on the point of marrying their sisters when the youngest brother suddenly found out the truth.
Realizing that they were all about to commit incest, he urgently called upon his brothers to halt proceedings. At this point the text becomes unclear and we cannot be sure whether or not his advice was taken, though the story does serve to provide a further instance of the Hittites' abhorrence of incest. With the resumption of the text, the story takes on more of a historical cast, with an account of hostilities between Hattus E and Za Ipa in the reign of King Hattusili I, ending in Zalpa's destruction.
The events narrated in the first part of the tale serve to explain and justify the historical events with which the tale ends, just as the fourth book of Virgil's
Aeneid, the Dido-Aeneas love story, provides an explanation for the eventual historical conflict between Rome and Carthage which ends in the letter's destruction. The Zalpa story's hybrid character, beginning as myth or legend, ending as genuine history, makes it virtually unique in Hittite literature. But even in the legendary-mythical episode, some scholars have seen a kernel of historical truth, with the journey of the brothers from Zalpa on the Black Sea to Kanesh being a supposed reminiscence of an actual historical immigration from the north.13 Although
the earliest surviving text of the story dates to no earlier than the sixteenth or fifteenth century, it is possible that the story itself originated long before this, perhaps dating to the arrival of Indo-European elements in eastern Anatolia towards the end of the third millennium. The connection which some have sought to make between the Zalpa tradition, with its exposure of male and retention of female babies, and the Amazon tradition of Greek mythology is rather more fanciful.
Another Hittite tale which may have faint echoes elsewhere concerns the two sons of the wealthy and hitherto childless Appu. The sons are called 'Evil' and 'Just' by their father, and they live up to their names. 'Evil' attempts to cheat his brother in the division of their father's estate, just as the wastrel Perses sought to cheat his brother Hesiod of his share of their father's patrimony.14 In both biblical and Egyptian literature we find instances of pairs of good and evil brothers, with the latter attempting to swindle the former, and as often as not receiving their come-uppance from a just god.
{In the case of the OT, the scheming brother always seems to win and the just brother to lose. Interesting.}
The Kumarbi Epic Cycle
We have noted that much of what is left of native Anatolian mythological tradition has survived because of its incorporation in rituals preserved as integral components of religious festivals.
Myths of foreign origin, on the other hand, were of a somewhat different nature, and owe their preservation in Hittite texts to rather different reasons. In their written form they were introduced into the Hittite world from the culturally more sophisticated civilizations lying to their south-east, notably from Babylon and the Hurrian cultural sphere. They entered the Hittite land through the agency of professional scribes, and their preservation was in large measure due to the use made of them within the milieu of the scribal schools. Scribes learnt the skills of their profession partly by copying and recopying the 'classics' of cuneiform literature; and foreign scribes who were imported into the Hittite world brought with them and passed on not only their literacy skills but also a knowledge of the major literary traditions of their own and neighbouring lands.
These traditions are called 'literary' in the sense that they appear to have been composed and recorded primarily for their own sake, not as mere adjuncts to rituals. They obviously had entertainment value, and in the context of the extensive religious reform programme of the thirteenth century may have had a broader educative purpose which went well beyond their use as scribal school exercises.
{Note this "religious reform programme" in the thirteenth century... just prior to the destruction of the Bronze Age civilizations (according to standard chronology which I would adjust backward a couple/three hundred years or so.) This suggests that during this time something very unsettling was happening and could be cross-referenced with the turmoil occurring in Egypt, including the Amarna Age.}
They have been described as 'rich in theological instruction needed for the Hittites to better comprehend the personalities of the gods and the organization of a pantheon that was growing increasingly complex'.15 Yet in their earlier stages they may not have been as completely divorced from the world of ritual and analogic magic as they later appeared to be. Their world too is one of forces in conflict, of
gods doing battle with and finally prevailing over monsters. And although in the form in which we find them in the Hittite texts they may lend themselves less readily to dramatic re-enactment, this would not have been impossible with effective use of symbols and conventions. It is not inconceivable that in their original form they did have ritualistic functions and were acted out accordingly. In terms of complexity of plot and structure and range of characters
they may be considered more sophisticated than the homegrown Anatolian products. Yet as we have seen, the latter are not without their complexities, in terms of the questions which they raise and the issues with which they deal, even if this is sometimes belied by the relative naivety of their expression.
The most substantial and most important body of imported mythological tradition is the Hurrian cycle of myths featuring Kumarbi. 'father of the gods'."1 The cycle consists of a series of 'songs', episodes in verse form, of which two are particularly prominent, the
Song of Kingship in Heaven and the
Song of Ullikummi.17 The first relates the struggle between successive generations of gods for sovereignty in heaven: Alalu is overcome by Anu, Anu by Alalu's son Kumarbi, who bites off and swallows Anu's genitals and thereby becomes impregnated with three deities—the Storm God Teshub, the Tigris River, and Tasmisu (Hittite Suwaliyat). The precise details of what followed these events remain uncertain because of the fragmentary state of the text. But presumably the song went on to tell of the birth of Teshub (by one means or another), an ensuing struggle with his surrogate parent Kumarbi. and his eventual triumph.
The song of divine conflict is sometimes referred to as the Theogony, 'the Birth of the Gods', because of its similarities to the Greek poet Hesiod's poem of that name. The title is rather more apt in the latter ease since like the Babylonian Myth of Creation it does deal with the procreation of gods as well as with their subsequent conflicts, whereas what we have of the Hurrian-derived composition launches almost immediately into the generation conflicts and confines its account of procreational matters to the peculiar pre-natal history of Teshub and his two siblings: 'Stop rejoicing within yourself!', the emasculated Anu tells his conqueror. I have placed inside you a burden. First I have impregnated you with the noble Storm God. Second I have impregnated you with the irresistible Tigris River. Third I have impregnated you with the noble Tasmisu. Three terrible gods I have placed inside you as burdens. In the future you will end up striking the boulders of Mount Tassa with your head!'18
It is this bizarre detail that provides one of
several points of comparison with the Hesiodic composition. The gods of three successive generations in the Kumarbi myth—Anu (heaven), Kumarbi (father of the gods), and Teshub—correspond precisely to Ouranos (heaven), Kronos (Phoenician El), and Zeus in Hesiod's poem. Just as Kumarbi emasculates Anu, so too does Kronos mutilate his father Ouranos. In both cases, the dismembered genitals produce further offspring—in the Kumarbi tradition three deities who rise up against the mutilator, in the Hesiodic a race of Furies and monstrous giants who are produced when the blood of the severed parts seeps into the earth; the latter rise up against all the gods but are defeated and imprisoned in the earth. Kumarbi and Kronos are both forewarned of the threats they face—-Kumarbi from the offspring, now growing within him, of his mutilated predecessor, and Kronos from one of his own conventionally produced offspring. In spite of measures taken by Kronos and presumably also by Kumarbi to forestall this (the relevant passage of the Hittite text is lost), the prophecy comes to pass. Kumarbi is overthrown and replaced by Teshub, Kronos by Teshub's Greek counterpart Zeus.
In each case this marks the beginning of a new era, the Teshub-led pantheon of the Hurrian-Hittite world, the Zeus-led Olympian pantheon of the Greek world.
One difference between the Near Eastern and Greek traditions is that the former begins one generation earlier, at least as far as the male gods are concerned. Alalu has no counterpart in Hesiod's Theogony, which begins with Ouranos, the counterpart to Alalu's successor Anu.19 There is
a further difference. In Hesiod's version, the successive generations of gods all belong to the one family: Gaea is the mother and wife of Ouranos, who sires all her children including Kronos, later to become the father of Zeus. In the Near Eastern tradition on the other hand, the warring gods come from two separate families and appear in alternate generations: Alalu and Kumarbi represent one family line, Anu and Teshub the other.20 Professor Hoffner remarks that these opposing families are from opposite spheres: 'Kumarbi is a netherworld god, whereas Teshub is a celestial god ... Kumarbi's father Alalu is driven from the throne by Anu and takes refuge from Anu in the netherworld. Later, when Anu flees from Kumarbi, he heads for the sky. When one assembles a list of the deities in these myths who give allegiance to one side or the other, the opposition of netherworld and sky is confirmed.'21
Does this provide an indication of the myth's original purpose? In its earliest form it might have been associated with a ritual depicting a contest between forces of netherworld and upper world, and the ultimate triumph of the latter. However, with the myth's progressive development and elaboration in literary form, its links with its original ritual context became increasingly tenuous, though even by the time it reached the Hittite world these links were still detectable in the conflicts between gods from opposing families representing opposing forces or spheres of nature.
When the tradition surfaced in the Greek world, it retained the account of struggles between successive generations of gods. But a key element was now missing. No longer was the battle arena occupied by members of opposing families representing opposing forces of nature. The contestants all belonged to a single family line. That reflects a major shift in the tradition, and a major narrowing of its limits, from a cosmogonically to a generationally based conflict.
{Is that necessarily true? If Clube is right, all the "gods" were born from a single giant comet... So perhaps claiming two families is the corruption?}
It was the end of any last vestige of the tradition's ritual origins. Hesiod's poem has nothing to do with ritual. It tells a story, and in the process establishes a genealogical framework for the early generations of gods and provides a context for the emergence and triumph of the Olympians. The poet himself, Herodotos tells us, was largely responsible for the arrangement of his material, and presumably also for its selection. He may well have been aware that there were two competing divine genealogies in the original tradition on which he drew. But once the tradition had been cut adrift from its ritual origins, this became an extraneous detail. There was no longer any point in cluttering the genealogical scheme of things with two separate family lines.
A common feature of many theomachias is that no matter how thoroughly and comprehensively the losers are defeated, sometimes to the point of total dismemberment, they re-emerge to fight the victor another day, or else find or create a formidable monster to do this for them. From the rest of the songs in the Kumarbi cycle, fragmentary though they are, it is clear that the Storm God's ascendancy after his triumph over Kumarbi is far from secure. He may even have been replaced for a time by another god, LAMMA,22 but he was in any case subject to further challenges from Kumarbi. These come to a head in the second major text of the song cycle, the so-called 'Song of Ullikummi', Seeking to create a champion to act on his behalf for a final showdown with Teshub, Kumarbi mates with a mountain peak. A diorite monster results from the union. 'Henceforth let Ullikummi be his name,' says Kumarbi. 'Let him go up to heaven to kingship. Let him suppress the fine city of Kummiya (the Storm God's city). Let him strike Teshub. Let him chop him up fine like chaff. Let him grind him under foot like an ant. Let him snap off Tasmisu like a brittle reed.
Let him scatter all the gods down from the sky like flour. Let him smash them like empty pottery bowls.'23
At Kumarbi's bidding, his son is secretly conveyed to the netherworld after his birth by the Irsirra deities and placed on the right shoulder of Ubelluri, whose feet are in the netherworld but who supports heaven and earth like the Greek Atlas.
'Let him grow higher each month, each day,' Kumarbi orders. And so it comes to pass. When he has grown so large that the sea comes only to his middle, the Sun God sees him and is greatly alarmed. He reports the news to Teshub, who resolves to do battle with the monster. But when he sees him he is filled with dismay: 'Teshub sat down on the ground and his tears flowed like streams. Tearfully Teshub said, "Who can any longer behold the struggle of such a one? Who go on fighting? Who can behold the terrors of such a one any longer?"'
Teshub is powerless against such an opponent. His sister Shaushka volunteers to approach Ullikummi and attempt to win him over by her songs and her charms.To no avail. 'For whose benefit are you singing?' a great sea-wave asks of her. 'For whose benefit are you filling your mouth with wind? Ullikummi is deaf; he cannot hear. He is blind in his eyes; he cannot see. He has no compassion. So go away, Shaushka, and find your brother before Ullikummi becomes really valiant,
before the skull of his head becomes really terrifying.'
Teshub engages, unsuccessfully, in a first battle with Ullikummi.
The monster continues to grow until it reaches the very gates of Teshub's city Kummiya. In desperation, and at the suggestion of his brother Tasmisu, Teshub makes a final appeal to Ea, the Mesopotamian god of wisdom, formerly a supporter of Kumarbi. Ea resolves to bring the conflict to an end. He calls for the cutting tool originally used to sever heaven from earth and uses it to cut Ullikummi from Ubelluri's shoulder. The monster's power is destroyed, and Ea urges the gods to do battle with him. They respond with alacrity,'
bellowing like cattle at Ullikummi'. Teshub mounts his war-wagon and charges to the sea. Though the end of the story is lost, Teshub must have confronted Ullikummi and perhaps also Kumarbi in a final showdown, and defeated them. Once more his sovereignty is secure.
Again, a number of parallels to the song can be found in Greek, more specifically Hesiodic, mythological tradition, in which the serpent monster Typhoeus rises up against Zeus after the letter's defeat of the Titans and tries to seize his throne from him. Closer still is the parallel between Ullikummi and Typhoeus/Typhon preserved in
a later Greek tradition in which Typhon like Ullikummi grows to such a towering height that he reaches the heavens.24 And most significantly the Teshub Ullikummi and Zeus Typhon conflicts are fought out in the same location, Mt Hazzi/Kasios on the coast of northern Syria.
Though clearly Hurrian in origin we cannot, in the absence of the original Hurrian text, determine how closely the Hittite version of the Kumarbi song cycle followed the original. The possibilities range from an actual translation to an essentially new composition based on an imported Hurrian tradition.
The Hurrian tradition itself had clearly drawn on earlier Mesopotamian traditions, as evidenced by the Babylonian names of the deities Alalu, Anu, Enlil, Ea, and also by the very notion of gods from successive generations competing for divine sovereignty, and of vanquished gods rising up to do battle once more with their victors. In the original Mesopotamian context myth and ritual were in all probability closely integrated.
This gives rise to an obvious question. Once the myth was cut adrift from a ritual context, why was it preserved, firstly in a Hurrian milieu, then in a Hittite? Hardly because it was seen as providing a repository of spiritual or moral guidance like the canonical scriptures of a number of other religions.
With the best will in the world it is very difficult to see anything at all spiritually or morally uplifting in the Kumarbi tradition. Perhaps it served to celebrate Teshub's ultimate triumph, although like his Storm God counterpart in the Illuyanka myth Teshub's own role in achieving this triumph was quite a secondary and none too glorious one; he gives way to despondency and tears on first seeing the monster, progress towards the monster's defeat is made only through the initiative of other deities, and his final victory comes only after Ea has virtually handed it to him on a plate, so to speak. None the less the song cycle had clearly become an integral part of Hurrian cultural tradition and it was this no doubt which ensured its preservation in a Hittite milieu within the context of the progressive Hurrianization of Hittite culture. Professor Lebrun comments on the educative value of the Hurrian myths:
'[TheyJ offered the Hittites a basic religious framework and defined the function as well as the kinship of certain gods; at the same time they gave explanatory shape for the hierarchy among the gods.'25
All this implies that the myths were not simply put on tablets and then buried away in palace archives. Rather they must often have been dusted off and recited before appropriate company. This may well have been a regular feature of the court activities of Hattusili 111 and probably also that of his son and successor Tudhaliya IV. The common factor in both cases was the Hurrian- originating
queen Puduhepa, wife of one king, mother of the other, and a leading figure in the religious reform programme. Recitations of works like the Kumarbi song cycle may well have played a significant part in this programme, very likely with mandatory attendance at the performances by appropriate officials in the palace and temple bureaucracy. This was probably no great burden. After all the songs were not tedious litanies of repetitive formulaic phrases but exciting stories worth hearing over and over again. They had considerable entertainment value with their parade of monsters, battles, and other violent deeds, and their bizarre sexual unions, described in explicit detail—features which probably also ensured that tales from the cycle had wide currency on a popular level throughout the kingdom. Reciters of such tales were no doubt as common in the village communities of the Hittite world as they have been in non-literate communities of all ages.
. Proci, or suitors, cames from latin procus - procor that means to crave for, after, or to aspire. This one alone stands as a quite strong epithet by itself! Their behavior is evil at its highest, the way they occupy Ulysses home while any other being around clearly sees it as unthinkable, lack of respect to the Gods themselves. Then they smear and joke also when Zeus sends the two eagles fighting each other after Telemachus speech announcing his departure from Ithaca, they won't read the signs of the Gods, nor there's any theoxeny within them. Then Antinous trying to persuade Telemachus to eat with them as to buy his soul, forgetting to 'fight' as if nothing happened, and Telemachus 'No' just follows as a truly STO act.
