BEYOND HATTI

Gary M. Beckman

BEYOND HATTI
A Tribute to Gary Beckman

edited by
Billie Jean Collins
and
Piotr Michalowski

LOCKWOOD PRESS
ATLANTA

All rights reserved. No part of this work may be reproduced or transmitted

in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including
photocopying and recording, or by means of any information storage
or retrieval system, except as may be expressly permitted by the 1976
Copyright Act or in writing from the publisher. Requests for permission
should be addressed in writing to Lockwood Press, P.O. Box 133289,
Atlanta, GA 30333, USA.
2013 by Lockwood Press
ISBN: 978-1-937040-11-6
Library of Congress Control Number: Number: 2013901050

This paper meets the requirements of ANSI/NISO Z39.48-1992

(Permanence of Paper).

contents
Publications of Gary Beckman

vii

Preface

xvii

Abbreviations

xix

Alfonso Archi
The West Hurrian Pantheon and Its Background

Mary R. Bachvarova
Adapting Mesopotamian Myth in Hurro-Hittite Rituals at Hattua:
ITAR, the Underworld, and the Legendary Kings

23

Joel P. Brereton
The Rgvedic Ghos Hymns and the Atirtra

45

Billie Jean Collins

The Place of KBo 13.145 in the Hantitau Text Tradition

63

Marjorie Fisher
A Diplomatic Marriage in the Ramesside Period:
Maathorneferure, Daughter of the Great Ruler of Hatti

75

Benjamin R. Foster
Albert T. Clay and His Babylonian Collection

121

Harry A. Hoffner, Jr.

The Kings Speech: Royal Rhetorical Language

137

Stephanie W. Jamison
A Sanskrit Riddle in Three Movements Rig Veda V.84

155

H. Craig Melchert
Luvian Language in Luvian Rituals in Hattua 159
v

vi

Beyond Hatti: A Tribute to Gary Beckman

Piotr Michalowski
The Steward of Divine Gudea and His Family in Ur III Girsu

173

Alice Mouton
Le rituel dAll dArzawa contre un ensorcellement(CTH 402):
une nouvelle dition

195

Elizabeth E. Payne
Accounting for Gold in a Period of Unrest

231

Carole Roche-Hawley and Robert Hawley

An Essay on Scribal Families, Tradition, and Innovation in
Thirteenth-Century Ugarit

241

Jack M. Sasson
Prologues and Poets: On the Opening Lines of the Gilgamesh Epic

265

Brian B. Schmidt
The Social Matrix of Early Judean Magic and Divination:
From Top Down or Bottom Up?

279

Piotr Steinkeller
The Umma Field Ugida and the Question of GARanas Location

295

Claudia E. Suter
The Divine Gudea on Ur III Seal Images

309

Terry G. Wilfong
Dig Dogs and Camp Cats at Karanis: The Animals of the 19241935
University of Michigan Expedition to Egypt
325
Gernot Wilhelm
Texts and Royal Seals of the Middle Hittite Period from the
House of the Chief of the Guards at Hattua

343

Index of Ancient Sources 355

The West Hurrian Pantheon and Its

Background
Alfonso Archi

. The Hittite versions of Hurrian poems and epics, together with

poorly preserved fragments (with the exception of the Epic of Freeing)
in the original language, reveal the great debt owed by the Hurrians to
Babylonian culture. The ability to create lengthy compositions in free verse
is a literary form that they acquired by adapting certain written Akkadian
epics to their own tastes (e.g., Gilgame), and possibly also by listening
to bards singing in the Mesopotamian language. Certain themes in these
poems, such as the separation of Heaven and Earth and the succession of
various generations of gods, derive from Babylonia, as do the tasks of the
god Ea. The logogram .A does not, therefore, translate the name of a
Hurrian god. On the contrary, Enlil (the name of the supreme Sumerian
god) corresponds to Kumarbi according to a Syro-Hurrian theological
equation, since both have the title of father of the gods; it is for this
reason that Kumarbi resides at Nippur (according to Kingship in Heaven).1

2.There are numerous cases of cultures that were profoundly

influenced by contact with other societies. There was a remarkable
exchange between the Sumerian and Akkadian lexicons, resulting from
contact between and superimposition of the two ethnic elements. The fact
that the East Semites acquired cuneiform writing from the Sumerians,
together with the tools required for learning this complex system of
writing (lexical lists, literary works used as school texts), had a profound
impact on Akkadian literary texts.
It is impossible to propose an overall evaluation of Hurrian culture
and its relations with that of Babylonia. The Hurrian documentation
1. Alfonso Archi, Translations of Gods: Kumarpi, Enlil, DAGAN/NISABA, Halki,
OrNS 73 (2004) 31936.

Beyond Hatti: A Tribute to Gary Beckman

resembles a landscape convulsed by a cataclysm, from which only islands

of different geological strata emerge.2
The administrative documents from the region of Nuzi (northern
Mesopotamia; fifteenthfourteenth centuries), where the Hurrian
language was in use, were drawn up in an Akkadian that was influenced
by the spoken vernacular.3 As early as the start of the nineteenth century,
in the area stretching from northern Mesopotamia to eastern Anatolia,
as far as Kane, part of population was already Hurrian-speaking. In
an eighteenth-century treaty between Till-abn, king of ehna (Tell
Leilan), and Aur, the deities invoked by name are followed by the
gods of Amurru and Subartu (d i ng i r MAR.TU u-ba-ri-im), that is,
the Amorite and Hurrian deities, intending all the other gods (T.L.-5 I
21).4 In Amorite Mari a woman of the harem writes to king Zimri-lim,
I will pray for you before Teup (? dIKUR) and Hebat (ARM 10.92,
2223). From Tikunani (south of Samosata) we have a prism of king
Tunib-Teub (a contemporary of Hattuili I of Hatti) with roughly three
hundred personal names, the vast majority of which are Hurrian.5 The
court of Mittani, at Waukanni (near one of the sources of the Habur
river; fifteenthfourteenth centuries), like all the other eastern courts used
Akkadian as the language of diplomacy, as shown by the letters of Turatta,
a contemporary of Amenhotep III and Amenhotep IV. A princess of
Mitanni, however, arrived to the Egyptian court proudly introduced by
a long letter in Hurrian (EA 24). Religious texts from Aleppo and Muki

2. A general presentation of the spread of Hurrian-speaking peoples has been

given by Thomas Richter, Die Ausbreitung der Hurriter bis zur altbabylonischen Zeit:
Eine kurze Zwischenbilanz, in 2000 v. Chr. Politische, wirtschaftliche und kulturelle
Entwicklung im Zeichen einer Jahrtausenwende, ed. J.-W. Meyer and W. Sommerfeld.
Colloquium der Deutschen Orient-Gesellschaft 4 (Saarbrcken: Saarbrcker Druckerei, 2004), 263311.
3. See Gernot Wilhelm, Untersuchungen zum Hurro-Akkadischen von Nuzi, AOAT
9 (Kevelaer: Butzon & Bercker, 1970). Previous important studies are A. Leo Oppenheim, Zur Landessprache von Arrapha-Nuzi, AfO 11 (1936/37) 5665; Albrecht
Goetze, Some Observations on Nuzu Akkadian, Language 14 (1938) 13443.
4. Jesper Eidem, The Royal Archives from Tell Leilan. Old Babylonian Letters and
Treaties from the Lower Town Palace East (Leiden: Nederlands Instituut voor het Nabije Oosten, 2011), 417, 425.
5. Mirjo Salvini, The Habiru Prism of King Tunip-Teub (Roma: Istituti Editoriali e
Poligrafici Internazionali, 1996). Also a small administrative tablet, probably from the
same unknown place, presents only Hurrian personal names (Gernot Wilhelm and
R. Akdoan, Ein Tfelchen ber Gerstenrationen aus Tigunnu(?), AoF 37 (2010)
15962.

Alfonso Archi

(the region of Alalah) are only known from secondary sources in the
Hittite archives. Roughly half of the population of Alalah VII (second half
of the seventeenth century) had Hurrian names;6 at Alalah IV (fifteenth
fourteenth centuries) this proportion rises to around three-quarters.7
Confirmation of this is provided by tablets from Tell Afis (55 km south
of Aleppo), from the period of Hattuili III.8 Some letters found at Qatna
sent by various individuals, including Takuwa, king of Niya, and Hannutti,
a Hittite general, to King Idadda, a contemporary of uppiluliuma I, are in
Akkadian. They include, however, terms explained by Hurrian glosses and
wordseven verb formsas elements in Akkadian phrases.9 Niya lies in
the Ghab, near Apamea, and this shows that in inner Syria, between the
coast and the valley of the Euphrates, the spoken language was Hurrian.10

6. Anne Draffkorn Kilmer, Hurrians and Hurrian at Alalah: An Ethno-Linguistic

Analysis (Ph.D. diss.: University of Pennsylvania, 1959).
7. For the use of the Hurrian language in Muki, notice that the whole ritual of
Allaiturahhi the woman from Muki (CTH 780; Volkert Haas and Hans Jochen Thiel,
Die Beschwrungsrituale der Allaiturah(h)i und verwandte Texte, AOAT 31 [Kevelaer:
Butzon & Bercker; Neukirchen-Vluyn: Neukirchener Verlag, 1978]; Volkert Haas and
Ilse Wegner, Die Rituale der Beschwrerinnen SALU.GI, ChS I/5 [Rome: Multigrafica,
1988), nos 139]) had to be originally in Hurrian.
8. Alfonso Archi, The Cuneiform Tablets of Afis, OrNS 81 (2012) 3255.
9. For the Hurrian glosses in the Alalah IV tablets, see Ignacio Mrquez Rowe,
Notes on the Hurro-Akkadian of Alalah in the Mid-Second Millennium B.C.E., in
Past Links: Studies in the Languages and Cultures of the Ancient Near East, ed. Shlomo
Izreel, Itamar Singer and Ran Zadok (Winona Lake, IN: Eisenbrauns, 1998), 67 (with
previous bibliography).
10.Thomas Richter, Kleine Beitrge zum hurritischen Wrterbuch, AoF 32
(2005): 2344; idem, Hurriter und Hurritisch im Bronzezeitlichen Syrien, in Motivation und Mechanismen des Kulturkontaktes in der Spten Bronzezeit, ed. Doris Prechel
(Florence: LoGisma, 2005), 14578; idem, uppiluliuma I. in Syrien. Der Einjhrige
Feldzug und seine Folgen, in Hattua - Bogazky. Das Hethiterreich im Spannungsfeld
des Alten Orients, ed. Gernot Wilhelm, Colloquium der Deutschen Orient-Gesellschaft
6 (Wiesbaden: Harrassowitz, 2008), 197203. Richter (Hurriter und Hurritisch im
Bronzezeitlichen Syrien, 147) writes: (Verschiedene berlegungen machen es deutlich,) da das Hurritische in weiten Teilen der heutigen Republik Syrien gesprochene Sprache war und als Erstsprache (Muttersprache) zu gelten hat, wenngleich man
gegenwrtig davon wird ausgehen mssen, da es stets neben anderen (semitischen)
Sprachen existierte, denen vermtlich ebenfalls der Status einer Umgamgssprache zugebilligt werden mu.

Beyond Hatti: A Tribute to Gary Beckman

3. Although our knowledge of the Hurrian lexicon is incomplete, and

is, moreover, gleaned from different areas and periods, this does sketch
out the priviliged relations enjoyed with Babylonian culture.11
Some loanwords are not of much significance since they are:
a) only attested in vocabulary lists: kurum(m)ati food allowance (RS
94-2939); b) technical terms: in(n)iperuhhe of ivory (< inni pri);
c) Kulturwrter: kzi (< ksu) cup (Bil.); d) names of animals and trees:
kunkalle (< kukkallu) (a breed of sheep) and nli (< nlu) deer (Bil.),
erminhi (< urmnu) cypress; e) units of measure: iklate (< iqlu)
shekel, parizzate (< parsu; a measure of capacity).12
The few terms relating to the exercise of power do not reveal any
cultural dependency. The Hurrian word for lord, king is ewri, allai being
its feminine counterpart.13 Hurrian endan qualifies Ti-atal of Urki (in a
Hurrian inscription), while Atal-en is LUGAL of Urki and Nawar (in an
Akkadian inscription). For Tupki of Urki both the titles of endan and
LUGAL are attested.14 Endan has been interpreted as a profession name:
en+dan, from Sum. e n , Akk. enu(m), considering also that the logogram
for king in the texts from Ebla and Nabada (Tell Beydar) was e n .15 In
essence en was the Sumerian word for king in Uruk, while lu g a l was
the term in Ur, and e ns i 2 was the term in Girsu. The scribes of Ebla (and
Nabada) chose e n as the logogram for malkum (their word for king),
because they knew that lu g a l was already equated to arrum in other
Semitic speaking centers (e.g., Mari).16 The scribes of Naram-Sin had to
11.Erich Neu, Das hurritische Epos der Freilassung I, StBoT 32 (Wiesbaden:
Harrassowitz, 1996) (= Bil.); idem, Das Hurritische: Eine altorientalische Sprache in
neuem Licht (Wiesbaden: Steiner, 1988), with a useful index. GLH: Emmanuel Laroche,
Glossaire de la langue hourrite, RHA 3435 (197677) 1323. RS 94.2939: Batrice
Andr-Salvini and Mirjo Salvini Un nouveau vocabulaire trilingue sumrienakkadien-hourrite de Ras Shamra, SCCNH 9 (1998) 340; Addition and Corrections
to SCCNH 9 (1998) 340, SCCNH 10 (1999) 43435. For terms without quotation, see
Laroche, Glossaire de la langue hourrite.
12.Neu, Das Hurritische: eine altorientalische Sprache in neuem Licht, 16, notes
4142.
13.Laroche, Glossaire de la langue hourrite, 8586, 4243.
14. Giorgio Buccellati and Marilyn Kelly-Buccellati, berlegungen zur funktion
ellen und historischen Bestimmung des Knigspalastes AP in Urke, MDOG 133
(2001) 91.
15. Gernot Wilhelm, Die Inschrift des Tiatal von Urke, in Urkesh and the Hurrians. Studies in Honor of Lloyd Cotsen, ed. Giorgio Buccellati and Marilyn KellyBuccellati, Bibliotheca Mesopotamica 26 (Malibu: Undena, 1998), 12123.
16. Alfonso Archi, Les titres EN et LUGAL Ebla et des cadeaux pour le roi de
Kish, MARI 5 (1987) 3752.

Alfonso Archi

face the same problem when they had to report the campaigns of their
king in Upper Mesopotamia, from the Transtigris to the Jezirah. The local
rulers could not be compared with the Akkadian king. The scribes chose,
therefore the logogram e n ; RIME 2, E2.1.4.25 3336 and E2.1.4.2: The
governors (NSI.NSI) of Subartum and the lords of the Upper <Lands>
(EN.EN a-l-a-tim). That en-dan would be a neologism created in the
scriptorium of Urki and in the northern regions by Hurrian scribes aware
of the use of e n by the Akkadian scribes in their royal inscriptions is
possible, but not so evident.
The Hurrians received few words related to the administrative
organization: Akk. akallu (< Sum - g a l ) palace;17 halzi (< halsu)
fortress; district, see also halzuhlu commandant of a h.; to the echange
activity: tamkari (< tamkru) merchant, tamkarai profits; puhukaru
(< phu) replacement.18
Concerning religion, instead, there is a strong Akkadian influence. The
ritual KUB 27.38 (ChS I/5)19 (probably a ceremony concerning kingship)
includes material from three different periods.20 In the first column there
is a Hurrian song related to the preparation of wool figures representing
divinized kings, arrna (I 23). The names of these kings are listed in
I 17. The first names are missing; it follows (the images) of the divine
kings, Darri=n(a)==e, of Atal-en (king of Urki and Nawar), of the
Sea, of a mysterious Immar, of the Mountains, of the Rivers (all with the
divine determinative). The god list in col. II belongs in general to a more
recent period than the section of the divinized kings. In III 13 a list begins
with famous wise kings (arrna) of the ancient time, opened by NaramSin (with divine determinative, according to the Akkadian tradition!) and
Sargon of Akkad (here the text breaks off). In IV 911 there is Audalumma
king (ewri) of Elam, followed by Iammaku king (ewri) of Lullu and
Kiglipadalli king of Tukri (IV 1314); then Man-ituu king (ewri), the
older son of Sargon and ar-kali-arri (IV 2225). The preceding section
(IV1921) introduces two divine kings: Silver, king (ewri), as king (arra)

17. Wilhelm, Die Inschrift des Tiatal von Urke, 12930.

18.Jeanette Fincke, Beitrge zum Lexicon des Hurritischen von Nuzi, SCCNH 7
(1995) 1719.
19. For a general treatment of this ritual, see Stefano de Martino, KUB XXVII
38: Ein Beispiel kultureller und linguistischer berlagerung in einem Text aus dem
Archiv von Bogazky, SMEA 31 (1993) 12134.
20. Annelies Kammenhuber, Orakelpraxis, Trume und Vorzeichenschau bei den
Hethitern, THeth 7 (Heidelberg: Winter, 1976), 89.

Beyond Hatti: A Tribute to Gary Beckman

; Hedam(mu), king (ewri), Kumarbi created you as king (arra).21

arre(na) are the divine kings, while ewri is the earthly king.22 arri is
the common epithet for Teub,23 while Hadda of Halab, on whom Teub
had been superimposed, was blu lord (of Halab). His spouse Hepat was
allai lady,24 not arratu; already from the Ebla period the female partners
of the gods were called baltum lady (not maliktum or the feminine of
arru!).25 There was a ceremony of kingship, arrai concerning Teub,
and of ladyship, allai, for Hebat.26 A Song of Kingship, arraya
SRRU, KBo 8.88 obv. 89, was recited, together with the Song of the Sea,
on the occasion of a festival for Mt. Hazzi (CTH 785). As Howink ten Cate
writes: It is attractive to assume that the Song of Kingship of the festival
description was identical with either the Hurrian original, the preferable
option perhaps, or with the Hittite redaction of the Song of Kingship in
Heaven.27
Other Akkadian loanwords relating to the sphere of religion are
ankunni (< ang) priest; ukkalli (< ukkallu) vizier (of gods); arni
(< arnu) guilt; the epithet hazzizzi (< hassi) understanding.
4. M.-Cl. Trmouille has noted a tendency to mention varying gods
with epithets:28 Allani the Lady (of the Netherworld); Hutena (Those)

21. Gernot Wilhelm, Knig Silber und Knig Hidam, in Hittite Studies in Honor
of Harry A. Hoffner Jr. on the Occasion of His 65th Birthday, ed. Gary Beckman, Richard
H. Beal, and Gregory McMahon. (Winona Lake, IN: Eisenbrauns, 2003), 39395.
22.Kammenhuber, Orakelpraxis, Trume und Vorzeichenschau, 89.
23.Laroche, Glossaire de la langue hourrite, 217.
24. Emmanual Laroche, Panthon national et Panthons locaux chez les Hourrites, OrNS 45 (1976), 98; idem, Glossaire de la langue hourrite, 42.
25. Francesco Pomponio and Paolo Xella, Les dieux dEbla, AOAT 245 (Mnster:
Ugarit-Verlag, 1997), 11121.
26.Laroche, Glossaire de la langue hourrite, 21617; Hans Martin Kmmel, Ersatzrituale fr den hethitischen Knig, StBoT 3 (Wiesbaden: Harrassowitz, 1967), 4749.
27. Philo Howink ten Cate, The Hittite Storm God: His Role and His Rule According to Hittite Cuneiform Sources, in Natural Phenomena. Their Meaning, Depiction
and Description in the Ancient Near East, ed. Diederik J. W. Meijer (Amsterdam: Royal
Netherlands Academy of Arts and Sciences, 1992), 117.
28.Marie-Claude Trmouille, La religion des Hourrites: tat actuel de nos
connaissances, SCCNH 10 (1999) 28889. Volkert Haas (Geschichte der hethitischen
Religion [Leiden: Brill, 1994], 309) adds Pairra die Bauenden and Irirra die
Sugenden(?), formed with the suffix -iri-.

Alfonso Archi

of favoring;29 Hutelluri midwife;30 Muuni (She) of justice;31 Ebrimua

the Lord of justice;32 a(w)uka the Great;33 Tiyabenti (he/she) who
speaks favorably.34 The names of two of the principal deities are ethnic
indicators: Kumarbi (He) of Kumar;35 Nabarbi (She) of Nawar.36
This situation is not peculiar to Hurrian. Among the Hittite gods,
there are the Storm God Tarhun(t) the Victorious; the Tutelary God(s)
Innara / Innarawantes, Annari / Annarumenzi the Forceful(s); Ihaara
the Lady.37
5. Pan-Hurrian gods38 were Kumarbi; Teub (in the inscription of
Tiatal of Urki: IM; one of his major sanctuaries was in Kumme, east
of the Upper Tigris, attested in documents of the OB period),39 Urartian
Teieba (of Qumenu);40 imeki (imeka(-n) in Tiatals inscription); the

29. Haas, Geschichte der hethitischen Religion, 309.

30. Ibid., 483 with note 131.
31. Gernot Wilhelm, Muun(n)i, Muni, RLA 8 (199397), 49899. Originally
an independent goddess, Muuni forms usually a dyad together with Hebat already
according to MH texts.
32. Heinrich Otten, Ibrimua, RLA 5 (197680) 23.
33. Ilse Wegner, Der Name des a(w)uka, SCCNH 7 (1995) 11720.
34. Ilse Wegner, Grammatikalische und lexicalische Untersuchungen hurritischer
Beschwrungen aus Bogazky, in Hurriter und Hurritisch, ed. Volkert Haas, Xenia 21
(Konstanz: Universittsverlag Konstanz, 1988), 152.
35. The name has to be derived from kum- tower, as well as Kumme, the cult-place
of Teub, to be placed east to the Tigris (Gernot Wilhelm, Kumme und *Kumar:
Zur hurritischen Ortsnamenbildung, in Beitrge zur altorientalischen Archologie und
Altertumskunde. Festschrift fr Barthel Hrouda zum 65. Geburtstag, ed. Peter Calmeyer,
Karl Hecker, Liane Jakob-Rost and C. B. F. Walker [Wiesbaden: Harrassowitz, 1994],
31519.
36.Volkert Haas, Nabarbi, RLA 9 (19982001) 12. The Lady of the pasture
land (naw-) was orginally a goddess of the Upper Habur. Although nawar cannot be
related with Nagar (contra Michael Guichard, Zimr-Lm Nagar, MARI 8: 33437),
it is probable that this goddess has to be identified with the Lady of Nagar and the
Haburtum of the Ur III texts.
37. On the name-giving of the gods, see Haas, Geschichte der hethitischen Religion,
30811.
38. In general, see Gernot Wilhelm, The Hurrians (Warminster: Aris & Phillips,
1989), 4957.
39. Wolfgang Rllig, Kumme, RLA 6 (198083), 33637.
40. It is probable that Teub was the dominant god already from the end of the
third millennium; see Daniel Schwemer, Die Wettergottgestalten Mesopotamiens und
Nordsyriens im Zeitalter der Keilschrifkulturen (Wiesbaden: Harrassowitz, 2001), 444
50.

Beyond Hatti: A Tribute to Gary Beckman

Sun God (in the inscription of Atalen: Utu); Kuuh, the Moon God;41
Nubadig (Tiatal: Lubadag);42 awuka (Atalen: INANNA); Nergal of the
Sumerian-Akkadian tradition (Tiatal, Atalen: a Hurrian god equated to
him, e.g., Atabi?);43 the Lady (NIN) of Nagar (Tiatal)
That of the kingdom of Arraphe (sixteenth and fifteenth centuries
b.c.e.) is an example of a pantheon in an eastern region formed by panHurrian and local gods.44 The bowl of Hasanlu (ca. eleventh century),
with three male deities in the topmost register: the Moon and the Sun
Gods each in a chariot drawn by mules, the Storm God in a chariot
drawn by a bull; in the lower registers: a hero fighting a monster with
human head and its lower body enclosed in a mountain (the Storm God
and Ullikummi); Itar/awuka on two rams, exposing her nude body;
the presentation of a newborn child by a female figure (a midwife) to an
enthroned god (Ullikummi presented to Kumarbi), shows (according to
the fascinating interpretation by Edith Porada45) the persistence of the cult
of pan-Hurrian gods and mythical motives in the east until the beginning
of the first millennium b.c.e.
A goddess of eastern origin who occupied a position of a certain
importance in the West Hurrian pantheon is the Elamite Pirinki/ar: a type
of Itar.46
The pantheon of Mittani listed in the treaty of attiwaza with
uppiluliuma I responded to political needs, different from those of a
cultic pantheon. It opens with Teub of Heaven and Earth; Moon (Kuuh)

41. Heinrich Otten, Kuuh, RLA 6 (19801983), 38283.

42.Laroche, Glossaire de la langue hourrite, 18687; Gernot Wilhelm, Lupatik,
Nubatik, RLA 7 (198790), 17374.
43. The name is written dKI.GAL in Tiatals inscription, dKI.UNU.GAL in that by
Atal-en, see recently Wilhelm, Die Inschrift des Tiatal von Urke, 12425. Giorgio
Buccellati (review of La civilt dei Hurriti. La Parola del Passato 55. WO 34 [2004] 212)
has suggested that this logogram should be red Kumarbi. In favor of the identification
with Nergal is the presence of dU.GUR (who was also the major god at Hayaa) in later
documents, Haas, Geschichte der hethitischen Religion, 36768.
44. Karlheinz Deller, Materialien zu den Lokalpanthea des Knigreiches Arraphe,
OrNS 45 (1976) 3345; the data are epitomized in Haas, Geschichte der hethitischen
Religion, 54445.
45. Edith Porada, The Art of Ancient Iran (New York: Crown, 1965), 97101; the
interpretation of the two following figures on chariots as the Sun and the Moon Gods,
was suggested by Pouran Diba, Le vase en or de Hasanlu, le dfil du cortge divin,
Iran 3 (1965) 12732.
46. Gary Beckman, The Goddess Pirinkir and Her Ritual from Hattua (CTH
664), Ktema 24 (1999) 2539; Piotr Taracha, Pirengir, RLA 10 (20035) 57071.

Alfonso Archi

and Sun (imeki), the local Moon of Harran; some local form of Teub;
Ea lord of wisdom; Sumuqan of Gurta; Anu and Antum; Enlil and Ninlil;
the Indo-Aryan deities Mitra-il, (W)aruna-il, Indra, Naattiyana; the
subterranean watercourse of amanminu (the Balih-river?); some local
forms of Teub (e.g., of Irrite); Pardahi of uda; Nabarbi; uruhhi; ItarVenus-star; ala; Belet-ekalli; Damkina; Ihara.47
Teubs epithet of Heaven and Earth is derived perhaps from the
Syrian milieu (the beginning of the Ugaritic god list is also organized
according to cosmological principles48). The several hypostases of Teub
and other local deities define approximately the core of the kingdom,
therefore having a political function. Ea lord of wisdom, the two couples
Anu-Antum and Enlil-Ninlil, as well as Belt-ekalli and Damkina are
derived directly from the Babylonian theology. ala and Ihara were
instead Syrian goddesses. The Indo-Aryan deities concerned the cults of
the Mittanian aristocracy.
6. The cult lists of the Hurrian gods known to us come from the
western regions. Their origin lies in the canon established in Aleppo
before uppiluliuma I, transmitted to Kizzuwatna and Hatti. The less
extensive lists of Ugarit also reflect the Aleppo ordo.
E. Laroche reconstructed the lists from Aleppo (1948), published
those of Ugarit (1968), and, with insight, interpreted this data (1976).49 At
the head of the pantheon are Teub and his consort Hebat, each of whom
is followed by a court (kaluti) of deities, respectively male and female. The
Hurrians received Hebat from the local cult: she had been the consort of
the Storm God Hadda of Halab at least from the twenty-seventh century.50
This division by gender was an innovation introduced by the Hurrians
residing at Aleppo (there is no evidence to suggest that it derives, instead,
from Amorite or pre-Amorite tradition). This probably reflects the
positioning of images and symbols of the gods in the temple of Aleppo.
According to KUB 29.8 (ChS I/5 no. 9) I 37, 5057, the gods were aligned
47. This list is given in Haas, Geschichte der hethitischen Religion, 54243.
48. For an edition of the list, see Dennis Pardee, Ritual and Cult at Ugarit, WAW 10
(Atlanta: Society of Biblical Literature, 2002), 1921.
49. Emmanuel Laroche, Teub, Hebat et leur cour, JCS 2 (1948) 11336; idem,
Textes hourrites en cuniformes alphabtiques, in Ugaritica V, ed. J. Nougayrol, E.
Laroche, Ch. Virolleaud and Cl. F. A. Schaeffer (Paris: Geuthner), 497533; idem,
Panthon national et Panthons locaux chez les Hourrites, 9499.
50. The name Hebat is a later form of dHa-a-ba-du, /ha(l)abjtu/, She of Halab, the
paredra of Hadda of Halab in the Ebla period (Alfonso Archi, Studies in the Pantheon
of Ebla, OrNS 63 [1994] 24951).

10

Beyond Hatti: A Tribute to Gary Beckman

along the right side, the goddesses on the left.51 The two processions of
Hurrian gods at Yazilikaya, instead, portray the male and female gods
moving respectively from the left and the right towards the center.
Teub is followed by six major gods: Tamiu (his pure brother),
Kumarbi, Kuuh, imeki, Atabi, Nubadig. A third group of male gods
follows, in varying order. The goddesses who come immediately after
Hebat enjoy these positions because they are the consorts of the male gods
in the second group (phonetic writings reproducing the Akkadian names
alternate with logograms). It is only after these that the goddesses of great
importance in the cult appear: awuka, Ihara, Allani.
Teub / IM / U
~ Hebat
Tamiu / Hitt. uwaliyat
Kumarbi / NISABA (= Dagan) / EN.LL ~ NIN.LL
.A (Hayya)
~ Damkina (DAM.KI.NA)
Kuuh / 30 / EN.ZU (Sn)
~ Nikkal (NIN.GAL)
imegi / UTU
~ Aya (A.A) (- Ekaldu)52
Atabi / NIN.URTA
Nubadig
Ea (Hayya) is a Babylonian god. Hurrian texts attribute to this god the
Akkadian epithet: lord of wisdom, bl hassi (attested in the Turatta
treaty), Hurr. mti-ni, Hitt. hattannas LUGAL-u (the epithets may be
divinized: dMati dHazzizzi). Also received along with him are his spouse
Damkina and his vizier Izzummi (Akk. Isimud/Um). The fact that,
in Hurrian songs Ea plays a role similar to that attributed to him in
the Babylonian myths, shows that the god was received directly from
Babylonia. The cult of the god had reached Mari as early as the first
centuries of the second millennium.53
51.Volkert Haas, Die Serien itkahi und itkalzi des AZU-Priesters, Rituale fr
Tamiarri und Tatuhepa sowie weitere Texte mit Bezug auf Tamiarri, ChS I/1 (Roma:
Multigrafica, 1984), 89.
52. The sequence dAya dE/Ikalti / dE/Ikaldun is a Syrian misinterpretation of Aya
kalltu Aya the spouse (of the Sun), the usual epithet of this goddess, see Laroche
Teub, Hebat et leur cour, 133. Notice that the most aberrant forms occur in Hurrian
texts, probably because the Hittite scribe was not acquainted with this name, KUB
45.41 II 10: dA-ya e-ni-kal-d[u(-); 23.13 I 19: dA-ya-ni-kn-du.
53. The most recent presentation of this local pantheon is in J.-M. Durand, La
religion amorrite en Syrie lpoque des archives de Mari, in Mythologie et religion
des Smites occidentaux I, bla, Mari, ed. Gregorio del Olmo Lete (Leuven: Peeters,
2008), 198.

Alfonso Archi

11

The other male gods are Hurrian. Lubadag is attested already in the
Tiatals inscription (dLu-ba-da-ga); the texts from Hattua offer the forms
Lubadig/Nubadig (in Ugarit: Nbdg).54 It is possible that the natures of
imeki (the Sun)55 and Kuuh (the Moon) were influenced, in part, by
contact with Babylonia.
The frequent use of logograms in writing the names of these gods
and the fact that their spouses are just Babylonian names added to the
list of male gods to provide symmetry (only Nikkal appears outside
this list), must not, however, mislead us. The grouping of the gods is
not a stereotyped reproduction of a Babylonian model,56 even though
the Hurrians were already aware of the Mesopotamian pantheon from
the Late Akkadian period on. Apart from Ea (Hayya), included in the
Hurrian theology because of his particular personality, the gods of the
second group already appear individually in the earliest commemorative
inscriptions. The choice of gods in the inscriptions of Tiatal and Atalen
does not appear to have been influenced by literary models, even though
some names are written with logograms. (Nergal = Atabi?).57 The use
of logograms, favored by the cuneiform writing, meant that, already in
that period, a correspondence had to be established between the major
Hurrian gods and those from Babylonia with similar functions. Without
such a comparison, we would know very little about the nature of certain
Hurrian gods.
Nikkal (NIN.GAL) holds an important position in the Hurrian
pantheon,58 since her cult was already widespread in Syria. It reached Mari
as early as the last century of the third millennium,59 and, further, Ugarit.
54.Initial lu- and nu- alternate also in Sumerian (D. O. Edzard, Sumerian Grammar
(Leiden: Brill, 2003), 18. Note the OB misinterpretation: dNu-ba-an-da-ag (ARM 26/1
581, n. 281, 8: a god of Karkamish).
55. imegis vizier was the Hurrian Lipparu; Ilse Wegner, Hurritische Opferlisten aus
hethitischen Festbeschreibungen. Teil I: Texte fr ITAR-a(w)uka, ChS I/3.1 (Rome:
Bonsignori, 1995), no. 1 obv. II 21.
56. Wilfred Lambert (The Mesopotamian Background of the Hurrian Pantheon,
RHA 36 [1978], 12934) suggested instead that the Hurrian pantheon was modelled
on a Mesopotamian pantheon, possibly an archaic Sumerian one.
57. The influence of a literary model may be in some cases quite marked in writing
a commemorative document. A good example is given by the foundation inscription of
Yahdun-Lim of Mari, which presents some formulas inspired by Babylonian models,
e.g., ll. 137147: Enlil, judge of the gods, Sin, the elder brother among the gods,
Nergal, the god of the weapon, Ea, king of destiny.
58. Fiorella Imparati, RLA 9 (19982001), 35657.
59. Durand, La religion amorrite en Syrie, 198, 211.

12

Beyond Hatti: A Tribute to Gary Beckman

The goddess was the spouse of Yarih; a Ugaritic hymn is dedicated to her.
The Hurrian documents from Ugarit have not only the couple Kuuh
Nikkal, but also Umbu (Ib)Nikkal, as in the Hurrian-Hittite texts.60
Umbu is another name for the moon received by the Hurrians.61
7. Teub received some traits from the Syrian Hadda. The Mountaingods Hazzi (> Gr. Kasion, the Jebel al-Aqra; Sapuna, the mountain of the
Ugaritic Bal, was the Kasion: ks)62 and Namni (the Anti-Cassius?) are
associated with him.63 It is quite possible that these two mountains were
included in the cult of Teub at Aleppo, although there is no evidence for
it.64 The Hurrians gave the names erri() and Hurri to the two bulls who
drew the chariot of the Storm God; an attribute of Hadda of Halab already
attested by the Eblaite documentation.65 Teub inherited also Hebat, the
spouse of Hadda of Halab from the third millennium.66
Kumarbi was equated with Enlil (the Sumero-Akkadian father of the
gods) and Dagan, the Syrian god of the Middle Euphrates region.67 In
the Hedammu and Ullikummi myths (as well as in other fragmentary
documents of the Kumarbi cycle) his vizier is Mukianu, whose name is
derived from Muki, the region of the city of Alalah.68
a(w)uka and Itar were equated already in the last centuries of the
third millennium.
8. Several gods were received from the Syrian milieu. NIN..GAL,
Blet-ekallim, appears together with NIN.GAL, Nikkal, already in the old
pantheon of Mari;69 therefore, she was introduced to Syria from Babylonia
already in the Ur III period. In the cult of Teub of Halab (CTH 698) she
is associated to Pithanu, KBo 14.142 I 16, dupl. KUB 27.13 I 10: dPithanu
ANA dNIN..GAL A dU uruHalap. She is qualified as concubine of

60. Manfred Weippert, dNINGAL/Nikkal, RLA 9 (19982001) 35759.

61. Durand (La religion amorrite en Syrie, 21112) suggests that this name was
diffused in Northern Jezirah.
62.Schwemer, Wettergottgestalten, 516 note 4194.
63. For a text in Hurrian where both mountain gods are mentioned, see ChS I/5
no. 97 rev. 9.
64.Schwemer, Wettergottgestalten, 229.
65. Alfonso Archi, Hadda of Halab and His Temple in the Ebla Period, Iraq 72
(2010) 11 with n. 44.
66. See note 50.
67. Archi, Translations of Gods: Kumarpi, Enlil, DAGAN/NISABA, Halki.
68. Wilhelm, Muun(n)i, Muni.
69. Durand, La religion amorrite en Syrie, 198.

Alfonso Archi

13

Teub, KBo 14.142 I 14, dupl. KUB 27.13 I 9: dNIN..GAL na-ar-ta-aa / na-ar-ti-ya A dIM/U;70 KBo 35.155 IV 5 (ChS I/3.2 no. 151):71 [ANA] E-E-ER-TI dU-ub-bi-na. For Pithanu, see also KUB 45.28+39.97(+)
I 5: GAM gi.A dU dPithanu ezi down at Teubs throne sits Pithanu.
NIN..GAL had to be represented in a particular fashion because a statue
of her (ALAM, zalmi, dZalmi) is mentioned in the cult of Itar of amuha
(KUB 27.1 II 54; 47.64 III [2]) and Hattarina (KUB 45.37 III 12, 38, 11), in
the (h)iuwa festival (KBo 15.37 II 38; 33.181 obv. 12; KUB 40.102 II 13).72
The Hurrian writing is dP-en-ti-kal-li, KUB 27.13 I 20; Ug. pdg.73
(d)
Ur/r-u-u/-i/e / (d)U-ur-u-u/-i/e, followed always by (d)I-kal-li,
belongs to the court of Hebat. Very few passages have only (d)Ikalli.74 A
Hurrian passage of the (h)iuwa festival, KBo 17.98 V 1516 (dupl. KUB
40.103 I 12) (ChS I/3.2 nos. 140, 141) has: dUrui dIkalli dHu-u[-ur-ni(?)]
/ a-am-ma-na (d)Ikalli, where mmana could be an epithet of Ikalli.
The Hurrianized ritual aux dieux antiques CTH 492 qualifies Ikalli as
witness of the goddess, KUB 17.20 II 1314: EGIR-U-ma dHu-ur-nii e-e-zi GAM-ma dI-ha-a-ha-ar-na I-PU / DINGIRME L ME e-e-zi
EGIR-U-ma I-kal-li I-PU DINGIRME MUNUSME e-e!<-zi> behind
sits Huurni, next sits Ihaharna witness of the male gods; behind sits
Ikalli witness of the goddess (in III 1011: dIkalli kutrua Ikalli
witness).75 This term could be derived from Akk. egallu great temple
(also a name of the nether world) (the gods listed in the ritual KUB
17.20 are the Anunnakk), and attributed to Urui (/Uru=e/), therefore:
the great temple (of the nether world deities) of the city of Uru(m); its
original meaning must soon have been lost.
An element received from literary tradition (perhaps in Syria) is dHi-inkal-lu-u (KUB 17.20 II 8), dHe-en-kal-li (KUB 60.153:11): the phonetic
writing of Sum. h - g l abundance, divinized in the Hurrianized ritual
aux dieux antiques CTH 492.76

70.Laroche, Glossaire de la langue hourrite, 179.

71. Ilse Wegner, Hurritische Opferlisten aus hethitischen Festbeschreibungen. Teil II:
Texte fr Teub, Hebat und weitere Gottheiten, ChS I/3.2 (Rome: Bonsignori, 2002).
72.Haas, Geschichte der hethitischen Religion, 38283; Ben H. L. van Gessel, Onomasticon of the Hittite Pantheon (Leiden: Brill, 1998), 363, 73537.
73. Albrecht Goetze, The Ugaritic Deities pdgl and ibnkl, OrNS 9 (1940), 22328;
Laroche, Glossaire de la langue hourrite, 200.
74. Van Gessel, Onomasticon of the Hittite Pantheon, 2034, 54142
75. Laroche, Teub, Hebat et leur cour, 12829.
76. Volkert Haas, Hingallu, RLA 4 (197275), 416.

14

Beyond Hatti: A Tribute to Gary Beckman

Hatni is followed by Pia(i)aphi, an adjective (-hi) which refers to the

name of a mountain god, who, in the Hurro-Canaanite myth KUB 33.108,
rapes Itar/awuka.77 Mount Piaia appears in the lists of the oath deities
following Mt. Lebanon and Mt. ariyana (Hermon); it was therefore close
to the coast.78
9. Some deities already belonged to the pantheon of people of Semitic
language settled in Syria already in the third millennium b.c.e., as the
documents from Ebla have revealed.79 Among them there are Adamma;
Atabi(l); Hebat;80 Ihara; Raap, who received a prothetic vowel before
r-: dArappa, dIrappa,81 in the Hurrian pantheon of Ugarit: erp.82 He
appears among the male gods in Hurrian cults celebrated at Hattusa (CTH
704, 705) sometimes with the epithet: dam-gr-ra-(a-)i, dam-ki-ra-a-i
(tutelary god) of the market, KUB 34.102 II 13; KBo 33.208 II 11 (ChS
I/3.2 no. 5); KBo 35.144 I 18 (ChS I/3.2 no. 23), as well as in the cult of
awuka of amuha, KUB 27.1 II 23.
In the third millennium, ala was the consort of Wadaanu and also
of Dagan of Tuttul.83 At Mari LUGAL / Bl mtim (Dagan) is followed
by ala (written also NIN.H URSAGA). According to the Hurrian-Hittite
77. The texts KBo 14.142 I 10 and KUB 27.13 I 7 list Itar followed by dPia(i)aphi,
reflecting the connection between the two deities.
78. Jared L. Miller, Pia(i)aphi, RLA 10 (20035), 57677.
79. Haas (in a study written before the publication of the Ebla documents: Volkert
Haas, Substratgottheiten des westhurrischen Pantheons, RHA 36 (1978) 5969) was
the first to consider the influence of a substrate in the formation of the West-Hurrian
pantheon. He attributed to the Syrian substrate the following deities: Ihara, Hebat,
Lilluri, Kubaba, and Adamma. I have reconsidered several times this problem at the
light of the Eblaite documentation: Alfonso Archi, Substrate: Some Remarks on the
Formation of the West Hurrian Pantheon, in Hittite and Other Anatolian and Near
Eastern Studies in Honour of Sedat Alp, ed. Heinrich Otten, Ekrem Akurgal, Hayri
Ertem and Aygl Sel (Ankara: Trk Tarih Kurumu Basmevi, 1992), 714; The
Former History of Some Hurrian Gods, in Acts of the IIIrd International Congress
of Hittitology, ed. Sedat Alp and Aygl Sel (Ankara: Uyum Ajans, 1998), 3944;
Formations of the West Hurrian Pantheon: The Case of Ihara, in Recent Development
in Hittite Archaeology and History, ed. K. Aslihan Yener and Harry A. Hoffner Jr.
(Winona Lake, IN: Eisenbrauns, 2002), 2133.
80. See above note 50.
81. Van Gessel, Onomasticon of the Hittite Pantheon, 4748.
82. Emmanuel Laroche, Textes hourrites en cuniformes alphabtiques, in Ugaritica V, ed. Jean Nougayrol, Emmanuel Laroche, Charles Virolleaud and Claude F. A.
Schaeffer (Paris: Geuthner, 1968), 521.
83.Archi, ala Consort of Dagan and Kumarbi, in Studio Historiae Ardens.
Ancient Near Easten Studies Presented to Philo H. J. Howink ten Cate on the Occasion

Alfonso Archi

15

tradition, alu/ala became the consort of Kumarbi because he had been

equated with Dagan.84 ala receives the epithet (d)Pitinhi of Bitin and
follows Kumarbi, for example, ChS I/1 no. 9 I 1618.85 This epithet: bidi-en-hi-(ni-da) is attested to already in an OB Hurrian document from
Mari.86 Bitin is a city attested to in the Alalah tablets.87
It is in general difficult to attribute a divine name to a linguistic family.
Names such as Adamma, Atabil, Kubaba, and ala are in any case hardly
Semitic.
According to the texts from Ebla, Adamma was the spouse of Raap,
while in the Hurrian pantheon from Kizzuwatna she forms a dyad with
Kubaba, sometimes enlarged to include Hauntarhi. Adamma gave the
the name to the ninth month of the local calendar: dA-dam-ma-(um).88
Kubaba does not appear, instead, in the Ebla text, although she is attested
as the goddess of Karkami already from the eighteenth century.
The cult of d/A-da-bl was fairly widespread in the period of Ebla.
This name is written dA-ta/da-(a)-bi at Hattua and Alalah (a month
name), Atb in the Hurrian god lists of Ugarit. In the Hurro-Hittite texts
he is considered a warrior god. The writing dA-ta-b-il, attested in three
documents from eighteenth-century Mari, confirms that the name ended
originally in -l, even though it tended to disappear at this time as it is

of His 65th Birthday, ed. Theo P. J. van den Hout and Johan de Roos (Nederlands
Historisch-Archaeologisch Instituut te Istanbul, 1995), 16.
84. Notice that the list of the deities invoked in the treaty from Tell Leilan L.T.-5
opens with [AN] / [dEN-LL] / [LUGA]L ma-t-in /[dD]a-gn (Eidem, The Royal
Archive from Tell Leylan, 329, 417): three denomination of the same god, because
LUGAL mtim was the epithet of Dagan of Tuttul, and in Syria Dagan was equated to
Enlil. According to a contract from Hana, the king unuhrammu offered a sacrifice
to Dagan of the Hurrians (i.e., Kumarbi: dDa-gan a Hur-ri) (Ignace J. Gelb, Hurrians
and Subarians [Chicago, IL: The University of Chicago, 1944], 63).
85. Ilse Wegner, Gestalt und Kult der Itar-awuka in Kleinasien, AOAT 36 (Kevelaer: Butzon & Bercker; Neukirchen-Vluyn: Neukirchener Verlag, 1981), 8687; Daniel Schwemer, alu, ala, RLA 11 (20068) 590.
86. Fr. Thureau-Dangin, Tablettes Hurrites provenant de Mri, RA 36 (1939) 17,
no 5, 3.
87. J. A. Belmonte Marn, Die Orts- und Gewssernamen der Texte aus Syrien im 2.
Jt. v. Chr. RGTC 12/2 (Wiesbaden: Reichert, 2001), 5960.
88. Alfonso Archi, Studies in the Ebla Pantheon, II, OrNS 66 (1997) 41617.
Adam(ma) was a month name also at Emar; the pantheon of Emar included
Adam(m)atera (Gary Beckman, The Pantheon of Emar, in Silva Anatolica. Anatolian
Studies Presented to Maciej Popko on the Occasion of His 65th Birthday, ed. Piotr
Taracha (Warsaw: AGADE, 2002), 40.

16

Beyond Hatti: A Tribute to Gary Beckman

demonstrated by I-bal-a-ta-bi, the name of a man from the northern

Habur region.89
These gods of the Ebla period, who later did not belong to the
Amorite pantheon, were, so to say, free to be included in the pantheon
of newcomers, as the Hurrians.90 Among them there was also a great
goddess, Ihara, who reached Babylonia from western Syria already in
the Late Akkadian period. She was the tutelary goddess of the Eblaite
kingship. Even the Hurrians were aware of this tradition, because in
the Epic of Freeing she tries to protect Ebla against Teub; moreover, a
Hurrian document from Emar mentions Ihara of Ebla.91 A local god from
the time of Ebla was instead Ammarik, whose name appears in a text in
Hurrian listing mountains of Syria (including Piaia), and also in a Hittite
document where the border of Karkami towards Muki are defined. After
having conquered Haum (a city north of Aleppo), Hattuili I brought
from there to Hattua the statuette of the Storm God lord of Armaruk
(a corrupted form for Ammarik). The Hurrians had therefore inherited
cult of a divinized mountain, which went back at least to the middle of the
third millennium.92
10. Interference between Hurrian and West Semitic resulted in the
concept the god the father, eni attanni; the gods of the father, enna
attanni=wena (GLH, 6364). The Hurrians, in becoming aware of
Mesopotamian mythical narratives, acquired the idea of a succession of
earlier generations of the gods, the former, primeval gods, ammatina
enna, Hit. karuile iune. The most elaborate Akkadian writings on
these former gods are to be found in later works such as the Epic of
Creation (Enma eli) or the god list An = Anu a amli.93 The proem of
Kingship in Heaven, which narrates the succession of kingship from Alalu
to Anu, Kumarbi, and Teub, invokes these gods: [] Let the primeval
89. Some not convincing Semitic etymologies of this divine name are listed in
Pomponio and Xella, Les dieux dEbla, 7576, included the bold one (pace Xella) by J.
M. Durand: /yatabi-il/ El/The god has satisfied himself. At Ebla -BL is never used
to represent -il god.
90. Archi, The Former History of Some Hurrian Gods, 41.
91. Archi, Formations of the West Hurrian Pantheon, 2733.
92. Haas, Zwei Gottheiten aus Ebla in hethitischer berlieferung, OA 20 (1981)
25153.
93. The theme of an omniscent son of Enki destined by his father to be king of
the gods, found in the Old Babylonian Song of Bazi (Andrew R. George, Babylonian
Literary Texts in the Schyen Collection, CUSAS 10 [Bethesda, MD: CDL, 2009], 115)
finds an echo in the Hurrian poem of Ea and the Beast.

Alfonso Archi

17

gods, who [.....] mighty gods, listen! (it follows a list of these gods).
Let Ammezzadu, [Tuhui(?) ] the father (and) mother of [] listen!
Let [Enlil(?) and Apant]u, the father (and) mother of Ihara, listen. Let
Enlil [(and) Ninlil ], who are the mighty (and) firmly established gods,
listen!
Father (and) mother indicate the known (and unknown) ancestors
of a deity, invoked in order that all the gods may be present. In the kaluti of
Teub,94 the bulls erri and Hurri are followed by (nos. 1819): the gods
of the father of Teub; the gods of the father of the sacrificer (DINGIRMEna attanni=wena ahuikkunni=na); similarly, in the kaluti of Hebat,95 the
goddesses Adamma, Kubaba, Hauntarhi are followed by (nos. 1516):
the gods of the father of Hebat; the gods of the father of the sacrificer.
As well as for Teub and Hebat the gods of the father are attested for
other major deities: the Sun God imeki, NIN.GAL, awuka, Lilluri.
Exceptionally, the gods of the father of imeki are qualified as male,
and those of awuka as female: an irrational division by gender.96 A
list of the passages where the gods of the father occur is given by van
Gessel,97 ad/t-d/ta-a DINGIRME; 999: DINGIRMEA-BI; 10026: e-en-na /
DINGIRME at-ta-an-ni-bi/we-na).
A theological system can admit that a god has a father (and a mother).
The gods of the father of DN is, instead, an anomalous expression,
modeled on the gods of the father of the sacrificer. In Semitic Syria the
cult of the god(s) of the father was widespread from the third millennium.98
An echo of this can be found also in the Tale of Appu and the Romance of
Kei, which the Hurrians composed in Syria.99 Used to refer to the gods,
the god of the father is a misconception.

94. Reconstructed by Laroche, Teub, Hebat et leur cour, 11516.

95. Ibid., 12122.
96.Wegner, Gestalt und Kult der Itar-awuka, 4446.
97. Onomasticon of the Hittite Pantheon, 98081.
98. In some Syrian milieu these gods included also the deified ancestors, according
to Karel van der Torn, The Domestic Cult at Emar, JCS 47 (1995) 39.
99. Jana Siegelov, Appu-Mrchen und Hedammu-Mythus, StBoT 14 (Wiesbaden:
Harrassowitz, 1971), 2324. Tale of Appu: atta-mi DINGIRME-a; Romance of Kei:
I
Kiiya atta DINGIRME. The Month-festival KUB 2.13 VI 2224 (Jrg Klinger,
Untersuchungen zur Rekonstruktion der hattischen Kultschicht, StBoT 37 [Wiesbaden:
Harrassowitz, 1996], 56869) has: The king drinks once in standing position the
god of his father (DINGIRME A-BI-U) from a cup. The singer sings in Hattian. This
(in origin) old text has some interpolations, e.g., two forms of Itar in the preceding
passages.

18

Beyond Hatti: A Tribute to Gary Beckman

The Hurrian god lists from Ugarit, interpreting the respective lists in
Ugaritic, reveal that the Hurrian theology had no difficulty in placing a
god father at the head of its own pantheon, that is to say, an unnamed
entity at the origin of everything: eni attanni god father (RS 24.295,
24.254); attanni father (24.274) enna-(ta) attanna-(ta) gods fathers
(24.261), who were followed by El, Kumarbi, and Teub.100
In light of the Hurrian to Ugaritic equivalence: ilib - DINGIR a-bi of
the Akkadian pantheon, J. Nougayrol noted that Dieu (ou: dieu) du pre
reste la traduction la plus ingnue du texte accadien, et elle prsente aussi
lavantage de convenir tous les passages o ilib se rencontre. Cependant,
a-bi peut tre tenu galement pour un st. abs. = st. cstr. de abu, do Dieu
(ou dieu) pre, et, tant donn la place faite ce dieu dans les textes
rituels, il semble que cette interprtation soit prfrable.101
The Ugaritic pantheon opened with a genealogy, probably reflecting
a need to systemize resulting from the influence of Babylonian thology:
Ilib - El - Dagan - Bal. Dagan only played a marginal role in mythopoetic
thought (he usually appears in relation to his son, Bal: bn bl) or in the
Ugaritic cult; El is a figure created in the West Semitic milieu during
the second millennium. The god El did not exist in the earliest Semitic
pantheons: those of Ebla and Akkad.102 Still open to discussion is whether
Ilib was the god of the father, that is of the clan (which would fit in well
with West Semitic tradition), or (less probably) was an artificial figure,
god father.103
The Hurrian pantheon did not follow the genealogy described in
Kingship in Heaven. Following the Ugaritic order, Teub was preceded
first by Kumarbi (equated with Dagan); then El (entirely extraneous to the
Hurrians) and, lastly, a god father: a generic ancestor of the gods, since
the sense of the god of the clan was not fully understood.104
100. Laroche, Textes hourrites en cuniformes alphabtiques, 519); La syntaxe
du hourrite nautorise aucune hsitation: atta-nni le pre est une apposition en(n)i,
dieu ou le dieu (Laroche, Textes hourrites en cuniformes alphabtiques, 523).
101.Jean Nougayrol, Textes sumro-accadiens des archives et bibliothques
prives dUgarit, in Ugaritica V, 4446. For the Semitic lists of Ugarit, see also
Pardee Les textes rituels, Ras Shamra-Ougarit XII (Paris: ditions Recherche sur les
Civilisations, 2000), 292; idem, Ritual and Cult at Ugarit, 1224.
102. Alfonso Archi, Il in the Personal Names, OLZ 91 (1996) 13351.
103. See the long discussion in Pardee, Ritual and Cult at Ugarit, 187, 296300, who
interprets Ilib as /iluab/ > /iluib/.
104. According to van der Torn, Ilib (in general the deified ancestor) stands (in
this list) for a primeval deity whose reign has long since come to end (Ilib and the
God of the Father, UF 25 (1993) 385.

Alfonso Archi

19

11. It is possible that Hutena and Hutellura, who belong to the kaluti
of Hebat, have been modeled on the Syrian birth goddesses.105
E. Laroche has analyzed the name Hutellura as hute=ll=ur=na: plural
(-na), comitative (-ra-); Hutena as a nominal form, deriving both from
the verb hut(e/i). From their Hittite equivalent Gule, and the DINGIR.
MAHME, he deduced that they were female divinities, and suggested the
meaning to favor for the verb, in agreement with passages in the Mittani
letter. The goddesses who determined ones fate were seen as benevolent
entities, auguring well.106 Hutena is Those of favoring: hud=we=na. In
the Hurrian birth ritual KBo 27.1:10 (= ChS I/5, no. 98): MUNUSi-in-ti-maa-ni hu-ti-il-lu-r[i], hutilluri means midwife, being apposition of the
personal name indimani.107
The Ugaritic pantheon has ktrt (Kothart) translated dSa-s-ra-tum
in the Akkadian version (RS 20.24), and hdn hdlr (Hutena - Hutellura) in
the Hurrian lists.
The Sumero-Akkadian Mother Goddess was assisted by seven assistants
called wombs, assrtu, who, because also of their equivalences in the
Ugaritic lists, have to be identified with birth goddesses.108 The Kothart
were seven in number.109 The Kartum were known also in the region
of Mari.110
Proof of the interference between the Syrian and the Hurrian birth
goddesses is that hutilluri is the apposition to indimani in a Hurrian
birth ritual KBo 27.1 (= ChS I/5, no 98, 10: MUNUSi-in-ti-ma-a-ni hu-tiil-lu-r[i]) with the meaning of midwife. As Volkert Haas has remarked,
the first element of indimani is ind(i) seven, showing that the Hutena
Hutellura goddesses were a heptad,111 as well as the West Semitic Kothart.
12. While conquering Aleppo, uppiluliuma I was fully aware of the
extraordinary importance of the cult of the citys storm god in Syria and
eastern Anatolia. Thus he assigned religious functions to Telepinu, the
105.Alfonso Archi, The Anatolian Fate-Goddesses and Their Different Traditions, forthcoming.
106. Laroche, Teub, Hebat et leur cour, 12426.
107.Haas, Geschichte der hethitischen Religion, 483
108. Marten Stol, Birth in Babylonia and the Bible: Its Mediterranean Setting, CM 14
(Groningen: Styx, 2000), 8083.
109. Gregorio del Olmo Lete, Mythologie et religion de la Syrie au II millenaire av.
J.C. (15001200), in Mythologie et religion des Smites occidentaux, II: mar, Ougarit,
Isral, Phnicie, Aram, Arabic, ed. G. del Olmo Lete (Leuven: Peeters, 2008), 43.
110. Wilfred G. Lambert, The Pantheon of Mari, MARI 4 (1985) 52930.
111. Geschichte der hethitischen Religion, 37273.

20

Beyond Hatti: A Tribute to Gary Beckman

son he established as king in Aleppo, while the task of wielding Hittite

control over northern Syria was entrusted to another son, Piyaili/arrikuu, king of Karkami.112 Hurrian rituals had been celebrated at the
Hittite court since at least the time of Arnuwanda I and of Tuthaliya III
(father of uppiluliuma). A copy of the itkahi and itkalzi rituals for the
archives of Hattua (CTH 777) was made from manuscripts kept in the
palace of apinuwa. When Tuthaliya, the Great King, son of Arnuwanda,
[sat] on the throne of his father, on that occasion the king [perform(ed)]
the kingship ritual (SSKUR arraian[za]) for [Teub], and [then
celebrat(ed)] the queensheep ritual ([SSKUR] allaiyanza) for [Hebat],
KUB 11.31 VI 16 (CHD , 245, s.v. arrai- B; CTH 700).
The cults of some Syrian and Hurrian deities, such as Ihara (KUB
40.2), or Itar/Sawuka of Nineveh (ChS I/3.2, nos. 3550),113 reached
Anatolia directly. Other deities were introduced to Anatolia through the
canonical Hurrian pantheon established at Aleppo. It is probable that
it was uppiluliuma himself who introduced the cult of Teub and his
consort Hebat to Hattua in the form laid down in Aleppo.114 The ordo of
the deities in two kalutis, one for the gods and the other for the goddesses,
including deities of Hurrian and Syrian origin, marked a dramatic change
in the Semitic Syrian tradition, which we cannot, however, date with any
certainty. It is unlikely that this was promoted by the dynasty of Ilimilimma and his son Idrimi, king of Alalah who, at least in the name giving,
mantained the West Semitic tradition. It is, however, a matter of fact that
Alalah and (according to the cult lists) Halab became predominantly
Hurrian by at least between the fifteenth and fourteenth centuries.
Certain gods, such as the consorts of some major gods, had no
autonomy whatsoever and were only received as elements in the pantheon.
Akkadian names were distorted, as were also Hurrian names that the
Hittite scribes could not understand.
Although the itkahi and itkalzi rituals did not present god lists, the
fragmentary ritual that mentions a queen and the princes Mannini and
112. Horst Klengel, Nochmals zum Rolle der Herrscher von Halab und Karkami
in der hethitischen Groreichzeit, in Kulturgeschichten. Altorientalischen Studien fr
Volkert Haas zum 65. Geburstag, ed. Thomas Richter, Doris Prechel and Jrg Klinger
(Saarbrcken: Saarbrcker Druckerei), 2001.
113. Gary Beckman, Itar of Nineveh Reconsidered, JCS 50 (1998) 110.
114. The documents, listed in CTH 698, Cult de Teub et Hebat dAlep, attest a long
textual tradition; the only historical reference is, however, to Muwattalli II, KBo 14.142
III 34 (Vladimir Souek and Jana Siegelov, Der Kult des Wettergottes von Halap in
Hatti, ArOr 42 (1974) 3952.

Alfonso Archi

21

Pariawatra (to be dated therefore, to Arnuwanda I) includes already the

kaluti of Hebat (ChS I/3.2 nos. 7683). The ordo of Aleppo had, therefore,
already reached Kizzuwatna at least at the time of Tuthaliya I. A quite
different kaluti of the same period is that of NIN.GAL (no. 84). The usual
kalutis are attested for Teub and Hebat of Kizzuwatna (nos. 8999), for
Teub of Manuzzi (nos. 100106), Teub of apinuwa (nos. 107108),
and Teub of Durmitta (no. 126). The (h)iuwa-festival had instead a
different pantheon (ChS I/4, 14355, 3rd tablet).115
A shortened version of the Aleppo pantheon is that found in the
Hurrian texts from Ugarit.116 Emar was not influenced by the process of
Hurrianization of the Aleppo cult; the Hurrian eli, Tamiu, and Tenu
belong only to the Anatolian Ritual (Emar VI 471, 472), while the Syrian
Adammatera and uwala appear in some local rituals.117
Through the contacts with Kizzuwatna and then with the Hittite
conquest of Aleppo, the ordo of Aleppo found a more favorable expansion
towards the western than the eastern regions.

115.Ilse Wegner und Mirjo Salvini, Die hethitisch-hurritischen Ritualtafeln des

(H)iuwa-Festes (Rome: Multigrafica, 1991).
116. Laroche, Textes hourrites en cuniformes alphabtiques, 51827.
117.Schwemer, Wettergottgestalten, 409; Beckman, The Pantheon of Emar.