Though Greek mythology was not clear regarding the origins of mankind, the legends and traditions claimed descent from the gods for heroes and kings. These semi-gods formed the link between the human destiny - daily toil, dependence on the elements, plagues, illness, death - and a golden past, when only the gods roamed Earth. And although so many of the gods were born on Earth, the select Circle of Twelve Olympians represented the celestial aspect of the gods. The original Olympus was described by the Odyssey as lying in the "pure upper air." The original Twelve Great Gods were Gods of Heaven who had come down to Eearth; and they represented the twelve celestial bodies in the "vault of Heaven."
The Latin names of the Great Gods, given them when the Romans adopted the Greek pantheon, clarify their astral associations: Gaea was Earth; Hermes, Mercury; Aphrodite, Venus; Ares, Mars; Cronus, Saturn; and Zeus, Jupiter. Continuing the Greek tradition, the Romans envisaged Jupiter as a thundering god whose weapon was the lightning bolt; like the Greeks, the Romans
associated him with the bull.
There is now general agreement that the foundations of the distinct Greek civilization were laid on the island of Crete, where the Minoan culture flourished from circa 2700 B.C. to 1400 B.C. In Minoan myth and legend, the tale of the minotaur is prominent. This half-man, half-bull was the offspring of Pasiphae, the wife of King Minos, and a bull. Archaeological finds have confirmed the extensive Minoan worship of the bull, and some cylinder seals depict the bull as a divine being accompanied by a cross symbol, which stood for some unidentified star or planet. It has therefore been surmised that the bull worshiped by the Minoans was not the common earthly creature but the Celestial Bull - the constellation Taurus - in commemoration of some events that had occurred when the Sun's spring equinox appeared in that constellation, circa 4000 B.C.
By Greek tradition, Zeus arrived on the Greek mainland via Crete, whence he had fled (by swimming the Mediterranean) after abducting Europa, the beautiful daughter of the king of the Phoenician city of Tyre. Indeed, when the earliest Minoan script was finally deciphered by Cyrus H. Gordon, it was shown to be "a Semitic dialect from the shores of the Eastern Mediterranean." Gods came directly to Greece from the heavens. Zeus arrived from across the Mediterranean, via Crete. Aphrodite was said to have come by sea from the Near East, via Cyprus. Poseidon (Neptune to the Romans) brought the horse with him from Asia Minor. Athena brought "the olive, fertile and self-sown," to Greece from the lands of the Bible.
There is no doubt that the Greek traditions and religion arrived on the Greek mainland from the Near East, via Asia Minor and the Mediterranean islands. It is there that their pantheon had its roots; it is there that we should look for the origins of the Greek gods, and their astral relationship with the number twelve.
Hinduism, the ancient religion of India, considers the Vedas - compositions of hymns, sacrificial formulas, and other sayings pertaining to the gods - as sacred scriptures, "not of human origin:" The gods themselves composed them, the Hindu traditions say, in the age that preceded the present one. But, as time went on, more and more of the original 100,000 verses, passed from generation to generation orally, were lost and confused. In the end, a sage wrote down the remaining verses, dividing them into four books and trusting four of his principal disciples to preserve one Veda each.
When, in the nineteenth century, scholars began to decipher and understand forgotten languages and trace the connections between them, they realized that the Vedas were written in a very ancient Indo-European language, the predecessor of the Indian root-tongue Sanskrit, of Greek, Latin, and other European languages. When they were finally able to read and analyze the Vedas, they were surprised to see the uncanny similarity between the Vedic tales of the gods and the Greek ones. The gods, the Vedas told, were all members of one large, but not necessarily peaceful, family. Amid the tales of ascents to the heavens and descents to Earth, aerial battles, wondrous weapons, friendships and rivalries, marriages and infidelities, there appears to have existed a basic concern for genealogical record keeping - who fathered whom, and who was the firstborn of whom. The gods on Earth originated in the heavens; and the principal deities, even on Earth, continued to represent celestial bodies.
In primeval times, the Rishis ("primeval flowing ones") "flowed" celestially, possessed of irresistible powers. Of them, seven were
the Great Progenitors. The gods Rahu ("demon") and Ketu ("disconnected") were once a single celestial body that sought to join
the gods without permission; but the God of Storms hurled his flaming weapon at him, cutting him into two parts - Rahu, the
"Dragon's Head," which unceasingly traverses the heavens in search of vengeance, and Ketu, the "Dragon's Tail." Mar-Ishi, the
progenitor of the Solar Dynasty, gave birth to Kash-Yapa ("he who is the throne"). The Vedas describe him as having been quite
prolific; but the dynastic succession was continued only through his ten children by Prit-Hivi ("heavenly mother").
As dynastic head, Kash-Yapa was also chief of the devas ("shining ones") and bore the title Dyaus-Pitar ("shining father").
Together with his consort and ten children, the divine family made up the twelve Adityas, gods who were each assigned a sign
of the zodiac and a celestial body. Kash-Yapa's celestial body was "the shining star"; Prit-Hivi represented Earth. Then there
were the gods whose celestial counterparts included the Sun, the Moon, Mars, Mercury, Jupiter, Venus, and Saturn.
In time, the leadership of the pantheon of twelve passed lo Varuna, the God of the Heavenly Expanse. He was omnipresent and
all-seeing; one of the hymns to him reads almost like a biblical psalm:
It is he who makes the sun shine in the heavens,
And the winds that blow are his breath.
He has hollowed out the channels of the rivers;
They flow at his command.
He has made the depths of the sea.
His reign also came sooner or later to an end. Indra, the god who slew the celestial "Dragon," claimed the throne by slaying his father. He was the new Lord of the Skies and God of Storms. Lightning and thunder were his weapons, and his epithet was Lord of Hosts. He had, however, to share dominion with his two brothers. One was Vivashvat, who was the progenitor of Manu, the first Man. The other was Agni ("igniter"), who brought fire down to Earth from the heavens, so that Mankind could use it industrially.
The similarities between the Vedic and Greek pantheons are obvious. The tales concerning the principal deities, as well as the verses dealing with a multitude of other lesser deities - sons, wives, daughters, mistresses - are clearly duplicates (or originals?) of the Greek tales. There is no doubt that Dyaus came to mean Zeus; Dyaus-Pitar, Jupiter; Varuna, Uranus; and so on. And, in both instances, the Circle of the Great Gods always stood at twelve, no matter what changes took place in the divine succession.
How could such similarity arise in two areas so far apart, geographically and in time?
Scholars believe that sometime in the second millennium B.C. a people speaking an Indo-European language, and centered in northern Iran or the Caucasus area, embarked on great migrations. One group went southeast, to India. The Hindus called them Aryans ("noble men"). They brought with them the Vedas as oral tales, circa 1500 B.C. Another wave of this Indo-European migration went westward, to Europe. Some circled the Black Sea and arrived in Europe via the steppes of Russia. But the main route by which these people and their traditions and religion reached Greece was the shortest one: Asia Minor. Some of the most ancient Greek cities, in fact, lie not on the Greek mainland but at the western tip of Asia Minor.
But who were these Indo-Europeans who chose Anatolia as their abode? Little in Western knowledge shed light on the subject.
Once again, the only readily available - and reliable - source proved to be the Old Testament. There the scholars found several references to the "Hittites" as the people inhabiting the mountains of Anatolia. Unlike the enmity reflected in t
he Old Testament toward the Canaanites and other neighbors whose customs were considered an "abomination," the Hittites were regarded as friends and allies to Israel. Bathsheba, whom King David coveted, was the wife of Uriah the Hittite, an officer in King David's army. King Solomon, who forged alliances by marrying the daughters of foreign kings, took as wives the daughters both of an Egyptian pharaoh and of a Hittite king. At another time, an invading Syrian army fled upon hearing a rumor that "the king of Israel hath hired against us the kings of the Hittites and the kings of the Egyptians." These brief allusions to the Hittites reveal the high esteem in which their military abilities were held by other peoples of the ancient Near East. With the decipherment of the Egyptian hieroglyphs - and, later on, of the Mesopotamian inscriptions - scholars have come across numerous references to a "Land of Hatti" as a large and powerful kingdom in Anatolia. Could such an important power have left no trace?
Forearmed with the clues provided in the Egyptian and Mesopotamian texts, the scholars embarked on excavations of ancient sites in Anatolia's hilly regions. The efforts paid off: They found Hittite cities, palaces, royal treasures, royal tombs, temples, religious objects, tools, weapons, art objects. Above all, they found many inscriptions - both in a pictographic script and in cuneiform. The biblical Hittites had come to life.
A unique monument bequeathed to us by the ancient Near East is a rock carving outside the ancient Hittite capital (the site is nowadays called Yazilikaya, which in Turkish means "inscribed rock"). After passing through gateways and sanctuaries, the ancient worshiper came into an open-air gallery, an opening among a semicircle of rocks, on which all the gods of the Hittites were depicted in procession.
Marching in from the left is a long procession of primarily male deities, clearly organized in "companies" of twelve. At the extreme left, and thus last to march in this amazing parade, are twelve deities who look identical, all carrying the same weapon. The middle group of twelve marchers includes some deities who look older, some who bear diversified weapons, and two who are highlighted by a divine symbol.
The third (front) group of twelve is clearly made up of the more important male and female deities. Their weapons and emblems are more varied; four have the divine celestial symbol above them; two are winged. This group also includes nondivine participants: two bulls holding up a globe, and the king of the Hittites, wearing a skull cap and standing under the emblem of the Winged Disk.
Marching in from the right were two groups of female deities; the rock carvings are, however, too mutilated to ascertain their full original number. We will probably not be wrong in assuming that they, too, made up two "companies" of twelve each. The two processions from the left and from the right met at a central panel which clearly depicted Great Gods, for they were all shown elevated, standing atop mountains, animals, birds, or even on the shoulders of divine attendants. Much effort was invested by scholars (for example, E. Laroche, Le Pantheon de Yazilikaya) to determine from the depictions, the hieroglyphic symbols, as well as from partly legible texts and god names that were actually carved on the rocks, the names, titles, and roles of the deities included in the procession. But it is clear that the Hittite pantheon, too, was governed by the "Olympian" twelve. The lesser gods were organized in groups of twelve, and the Great Gods on Earth were associated with twelve celestial bodies.
That the pantheon was governed by the "sacred number" twelve is made additionally certain by yet another Hittite monument, a masonry shrine found near the present-day Beit-Zehir. It clearly depicts the divine couple, surrounded by ten other gods - making a total of twelve.
The archaeological finds showed conclusively that the Hittites worshiped gods that were "of Heaven and Earth," all interrelated and arranged into a genealogical hierarchy. Some were great and "olden" gods who were originally of the heavens. Their symbol - which in the Hittite pictographic writing meant "divine" or "heavenly god" - looked like a pair of eye goggles. It frequently appeared on round seals as part of a rocket-like object.
Other gods were actually present, not merely on Earth but among the Hittites, acting as supreme rulers of the land, appointing the human kings, and instructing the latter in matters of war, treaties, and other international affairs.
Heading the physically present Hittite gods was a deity named Teshub, which meant "wind blower." He was thus what scholars call a Storm God, associated with winds, thunder, and lightning. He was also nicknamed Taru ("bull"). Like the Greeks, the Hittites depicted bull worship; like Jupiter after him, Teshub was depicted as the God of Thunder and Lightning, mounted upon a bull.
Hittite texts, like later Greek legends, relate how then-chief deity had to battle a monster to consolidate his supremacy. A text named by the scholars "The Myth of the Slaying of the Dragon" identifies Teshub's adversary as the god Yanka. Failing to defeat him in battle, Teshub appealed to the other gods for help, but only one goddess came to his assistance, and disposed of Yanka by getting him drunk at a party.
Recognizing in such tales the origins of the legend of Saint George and the Dragon, scholars refer to the adversary smitten by the "good" god as "the dragon." But the fact is that Yanka meant "serpent," and that the ancient peoples depicted the "evil" god as such - as seen in this bas-relief from a Hittite site. Zeus, too, as we have shown, battled not a "dragon" but a serpent-god. As we shall show later on, there was deep meaning attached to these ancient traditions of a struggle between a god of winds and a serpent deity. Here, however, we can only stress that battles among the gods for the divine Kingship were reported in the ancient texts as events that had unquestionably taken place.
A long and well-preserved Hittite epic tale, entitled "Kingship in Heaven," deals with this very subject - the heavenly origin of the
gods. The recounter of those pre-mortal events first called upon twelve "mighty olden gods" to listen to his tale, and be
witnesses to its accuracy:
Let there listen the gods who are in Heaven,
And those who are upon the dark-hued Earth!
Let there listen, the mighty olden gods.
Thus establishing that the gods of old were both of Heaven and upon Earth, the epic lists the twelve "mighty olden ones," the
forebears of the gods; and assuring their attention, the recounter proceeded to tell how the god who was "king in Heaven" came to "dark-hued Earth":
Formerly, in the olden days, Alalu was king in Heaven;
He, Alalu, was seated on the throne.
Mighty Anu, the first among the gods, stood before him,
Bowed at his feet, set the drinking cup in his hand.
For nine counted periods, Alalu was king in Heaven.
In the ninth period, Anu gave battle against Alalu.
Alalu was defeated, he fled before Anu -
He descended to the dark-hued Earth.
Down to the dark-hued Earth he went;
On the throne sat Anu.
The epic thus attributed the arrival of a "king in Heaven" upon Earth to a usurpation of the throne: A god named Alalu was forcefully deposed from his throne (somewhere in the heavens), and, fleeing for his life, "descended to dark-hued Earth." But that was not the end. The text proceeded to recount how Anu, in turn, was also deposed by a god named Kumarbi (Anu's own brother, by some interpretations).
There is no doubt that this epic, written a thousand years before the Greek legends were composed, was the forerunner of the
tale of the deposing of Uranus by Cronus and of Cronus by Zeus. Even the detail pertaining to the castration of Cronus by Zeus
is found in the Hittite text, for that was exactly what Kumarbi did to Anu:
For nine counted periods Anu was king in Heaven;
In the ninth period, Anu had to do battle with Kumarbi.
Anu slipped out of Kumarbi's hold and fled -
Flee did Anu, rising up to the sky.
After him Kumarbi rushed, seized him by his feet;
He pulled him down from the skies.
He bit
his loins; and the "Manhood" of Anu
with the insides of Kumarbi combined, fused as bronze.
According to this ancient tale, the battle did not result in a total victory. Though emasculated, Anu managed to fly back to his Heavenly Abode, leaving Kumarbi in control of Earth. Meanwhile, Anu's "Manhood" produced several deities within Kumarbi's insides, which he (like Cronus in the Greek legends) was forced to release. One of these was Teshub, the chief Hittite deity. However, there was to be one more epic battle before Teshub could rule in peace.
Learning of the appearance of an heir to Anu in Kummiya ("heavenly abode"), Kumarbi devised a plan to "raise a rival to the God of Storms." "Into his hand he took his staff; upon his feet he put the shoes that are swift as winds"; and he went from his city Ur-Kish to the abode of the Lady of the Great Mountain. Reaching her,
His desire was aroused; He slept with Lady Mountain; His manhood flowed into her. Five times he took her. . . . Ten times he took her.
Was Kumarbi simply lustful? We have reason to believe that much more was involved. Our guess would be that the succession
rules of the gods were such that a son of Kumarbi by the Lady of the Great Mountain could have claimed to be the rightful heir to
the Heavenly Throne; and that Kumarbi "took" the goddess five and ten times in order to make sure that she conceived, as
indeed she did: she bore a son, whom Kumarbi symbolically named Ulli-Kummi ("suppressor of Kummiya" - Teshub's abode).
The 12th Planet Page 6