The battle for succession was foreseen by Kumarbi as one that would entail fighting in the heavens. Having destined his son to
suppress the incumbents at Kummiya, Kumarbi further proclaimed for his son:
Let him ascend to Heaven for kingship!
Let him vanquish Kummiya, the beautiful city!
Let him attack the God of Storms
And tear him to pieces, like a mortal!
Let him shoot down all the gods from the sky.
Did the particular battles fought by Teshub upon Earth and in the skies take place when the Age of Taurus commenced, circa
4000 B.C.? Was it for that reason that the winner was granted association with the bull? And were
the events in any way connected with the beginning, at the very same time, of the sudden civilization of Sumer?
There can be no doubt that the Hittite pantheon and tales of the gods indeed had their roots in Sumer, its civilization, and its
gods.
The tale of the challenge to the Divine Throne by Ulli-Kummi continues to relate heroic battles but of an indecisive nature. At one point, the failure of Teshub to defeat his adversary even caused his spouse, Hebat, to attempt suicide. Finally, an appeal was made to the gods to mediate the dispute, and an Assembly of the Gods was called. It was led by an "olden god" named Enlil, and another "olden god" named Ea, who was called upon to produce "the old tablets with the words of destiny" - some ancient records that could apparently help settle the dispute regarding the divine succession.
When these records failed to settle the dispute, Enlil advised another battle with the challenger, but with the help of some very
ancient weapons. "Listen, ye olden gods, ye who know the olden words," Enlil said to his followers:
Open ye the ancient storehouses
Of the fathers and the forefathers!
Bring forth the Olden Copper lance
With which Heaven was separated from Earth;
And let them sever the feet of Ulli-kummi.
Who were these "olden gods"? The answer is obvious, for all of them - Anu, Antu, Enlil, Ninlil, Ea, Ishkur - bear Sumerian names. Even the name of Teshub, as well as the names of other "Hittite" gods, were often written in Sumerian script to denote
their identities. Also, some of the places named in the action were those of ancient Sumerian sites.
It dawned on the scholars that the Hittites in fact worshipped a pantheon of Sumerian origins, and that the arena of the tales of the "olden gods" was Sumer. This, however, was only part of a much wider discovery. Not only was the Hittite language found to be based on several Indo-European dialects, but it was also found to be subject to substantial Akkadian influence, both in speech and more so in writing. Since Akkadian was the international language of the ancient world in the second millennium B.C., its influence on Hittite could somehow be rationalized.
But there was cause for true astonishment when scholars discovered in the course of deciphering Hittite that it extensively employed Sumerian pictographic signs, syllables, and even whole words! Moreover, it became obvious that Sumerian was their language of high learning. The Sumerian language, in the words of O. R. Gurney (The Hittites), "was intensively studied at Hattu-Shash [the capital city] and Sumerian-Hittite vocabularies were found there. . . . Many of the syllables associated with the cuneiform signs in the Hittite period are really Sumerian words of which the meaning had been forgotten [by the Hittites]. ... In the Hittite texts the scribes often replaced common Hittite words by the corresponding Sumerian or Babylonian word." Now, when the Hittites reached Babylon sometime after 1600 B.C., the Sumerians were already long gone from the Near Eastern scene. How was it, then, that their language, literature, and religion dominated another great kingdom in another millennium and in another part of Asia?
The bridge, scholars have recently discovered, were a people called the Hurrians.
Referred to in the Old Testament as the Horites ("free people"), they dominated the wide area between Sumer and Akkad in Mesopotamia and the Hittite kingdom in Anatolia. In the north their lands were the ancient "cedar lands" from which countries near and far obtained their best woods. In the east their centers embraced the present-day oil fields of Iraq; in one city alone, Nuzi, archaeologists found not only the usual structures and artifacts but also thousands of legal and social documents of great value. In the west, the Hurrians' rule and influence extended to the Mediterranean coast and encompassed such great ancient centers of trade, industry, and learning as Carchemish and Alalakh.
But the seats of their power, the main centers of the ancient trade routes, and the sites of the most venerated shrines were within the heartland that was "between the two rivers," the biblical Naharayim. Their most ancient capital (as yet undiscovered) was located somewhere on the Khabur River. Their greatest trading center, on the Balikh River, was the biblical Haran - the city where the family of the patriarch Abraham sojourned on their way from Ur in southern Mesopotamia to the Land of Canaan. Egyptian and Mesopotamian royal documents referred to the Human kingdom as Mitanni, and dealt with it on an equal footing - a strong power whose influence spread beyond its immediate borders. The Hittites called their Human neighbors "Hurri." Some scholars pointed out, however, that the word could also be read "Har," and (like G. Contenau in La Civilisation des Hittites et des Hurrites du Mitanni) have raised the possibility that, in the name "Harri," "one sees the name 'Ary' or Aryans for these people." There is no doubt that the Hurrians were Aryan or Indo-European in origin. Their inscriptions invoked several deities by their Vedic "Aryan" names, their kings bore Indo-European names, and their military and cavalry terminology derived from the Indo- European. B. Hrozny, who in the 1920s led an effort to unravel the Hittite and Human records, even went so far as to call the Hurrians "the oldest Hindus."
These Hurrians dominated the Hittites culturally and religiously. The Hittite mythological texts were found to be of Hurrian
provenance, and even epic tales of prehistoric, semidivine heroes were of Hurrian origin. There is no longer any doubt that the
Hittites acquired their cosmology, their "myths," their gods, and their pantheon of twelve from the Hurrians.
The triple connection - between Aryan origins, Hittite worship, and the Hurrian sources of these beliefs - is remarkably well
documented in a Hittite prayer by a woman for the life of her sick husband. Addressing her prayer to the goddess Hebat,
Teshub's spouse, the woman intoned:
Oh goddess of the Rising Disc of Arynna,
My Lady, Mistress of the Hatti Lands,
Queen of Heaven and Earth. . . .
In the Hatti country, thy name is
"Goddess of the Rising Disc of Arynna";
But in the land that thou madest,
In the Cedar Land,
Thou bearest the name "Hebat."
With all that, the culture and religion adopted and transmitted by the Hurrians were not Indo-European. Even their language was not really Indo-European. There were undoubtedly Akkadian elements in the Hurrian language, culture, and traditions. The name of their capital, Washugeni, was a variant of the Semitic resh-eni ("where the waters begin"). The Tigris River was called Aranzakh, which (we believe) stemmed from the Akkadian words for "river of the pure cedars." The gods Shamash and Tash- metum became the Hurrian Shimiki and Tashimmetish - and so on.
But since the Akkadian culture and religion were only a development of the original Sumerian traditions and beliefs, the Hurrians, in fact, absorbed and transmitted the religion of Sumer. That this was so was also evident from the frequent use of the original Sumerian divine names, epithets, and writing signs.
The epic tales, it has become clear, were the tales of Sumer; the "dwelling places" of the olden gods were Sumerian cities; the "olden language" was the language of Sumer. Even the Hurrian art duplicated Sumerian art - its form, its themes, and its symbols.
When and how were the Hurrians "mutated" by the Sumerian "gene"?
Evidence suggests that the Hurrians, who were the northern neighbors of Sumer and Akkad in the second millennium B.C., had actually commingled with the Sumerians in the previous millennium. It is an established fact that Hurrians were present and active in Sumer in the third millennium B.C., that they held important positions in Sumer during its last period of glory, that of the third dynasty of Ur. There is evidence showing that the Hurrians managed and manned the garment industry for which Sumer (and especially Ur) was known in antiquity. The renowned merchants of Ur were probably Hurrians for the most part. In the thirteenth century B.C., under the pressure of vast migrations and invasions (including the Israelite thrust from Egypt to
Canaan), the Hurrians retreated to the northeastern portion of their kingdom. Establishing their new capital near Lake Van, they called their kingdom Urartu ("Ararat"). There they worshiped a pantheon headed by Tesheba (Teshub), depicting him as a vigorous god wearing a horned cap and standing upon his cult symbol, the bull. They called their main shrine Bitanu ("house of Anu") and dedicated themselves to making their kingdom "the fortress of the valley of Anu." And Anu, as we shall see, was the Sumerian Father of the Gods.
What about the other avenue by which the tales and worship of the gods reached Greece - from the eastern shores of the Mediterranean, via Crete and Cyprus?
The lands that are today Israel, Lebanon, and southern Syria - which formed the southwestern band of the ancient Fertile Crescent - were then the habitat of peoples that can be grouped together as the Canaanites. Once again, all that was known of them until rather recently appeared in references (mostly adverse) in the Old Testament and scattered Phoenician inscriptions. Archaeologists were only beginning to understand the Canaanites when two discoveries came to light: certain Egyptian texts at Luxor and Saqqara, and, much more important, historical, literary, and religious texts unearthed at a major Canaanite center. The place, now called Ras Shamra, on the Syrian coast, was the ancient city of Ugarit.
The language of the Ugarit inscriptions, the Canaanite language, was what scholars call West Semitic, a branch of the group of languages that also includes the earliest Akkadian and present-day Hebrew. Indeed, anyone who knows Hebrew well can follow the Canaanite inscriptions with relative ease. The language, literary style, and terminology are reminiscent of the Old Testament. The pantheon that unfolds from the Canaanite texts bears many similarities to the later Greek one. At the head of the Canaanite pantheon, too, there was a supreme deity called El, a word that was both the personal name of the god and the generic term meaning "lofty deity." He was the final authority in all affairs, human or divine. Ab Adam ("father of man") was his title; the Kindly, the Merciful was his epithet. He was the "creator of things created, and the one who alone could bestow kingship." The Canaanite texts ("myths" to most scholars) depicted El as a sage, elderly deity who stayed away from daily affairs. His abode was remote, at the "headwaters of the two rivers" - the Tigris and Euphrates. There he would sit on his throne, receive emissaries, and contemplate the problems and disputes the other gods brought before him.
A stela found in Palestine depicts an elderly deity sitting on a throne and being served a beverage by a younger deity. The seated deity wears a conical headdress adorned with horns - a mark of the gods, as we have seen, from prehistoric times - and the scene is dominated by the symbol of a winged star - the ubiquitous emblem that we shall increasingly encounter. It is generally accepted by the scholars that this sculptured relief depicts El, the senior Canaanite deity.
El, however, was not always an olden lord. One of his epithets was Tor (meaning "bull"), signifying, scholars believe, his sexual prowess and his role as Father of the Gods. A Canaanite poem, called "Birth of the Gracious Gods," placed El at the seashore (probably naked), where two women were completely charmed by the size of his penis. While a bird was roasting on the beach, El had intercourse with the two women. Thus were the two gods Shahar ("dawn") and Shalem ("completion" or "dusk") born.
These were not his only children nor his principal sons (of which he had, apparently, seven). His principal son was Baal - again the personal name of the deity, as well as the general term for "lord." As the Greeks did in their tales, the Canaanites spoke of the challenges by the son to the authority and rule of his father. Like El his father, Baal was what the scholars call a Storm God, a God of Thunder and Lightning. A nickname for Baal was Hadad ("sharp one"). His weapons were the battle-ax and the lightning-spear; his cult animal, like El's, was the bull, and, like El, he was depicted wearing the conical headdress adorned with a pair of horns.
Baal was also called Elyon ("supreme"); that is, the acknowledged prince, the heir apparent. But he had not come by this title without a struggle, first with his brother Yam ("prince of the sea"), and then with his brother Mot. A long and touching poem, pieced together from numerous fragmented tablets, begins with the summoning of the "Master Craftsman" to El's abode "at the sources of the waters, in the midst of the headwaters of the two rivers": Through the fields of El he comes He enters the pavilion of the Father of Years. At El's feet he bows, falls down, Prostrates himself, paying homage.
The Master Craftsman is ordered to erect a palace for Yam as the mark of his rise to power. Emboldened by this, Yam sends his
messengers to the assembly of the gods, to ask for the surrender to him of Baal. Yam instructs his emissaries to be defiant, and
the assembled gods do yield. Even El accepts the new lineup among his sons. "Ba'al is thy slave, O Yam," he declares.
The supremacy of Yam, however, was short-lived. Armed with two "divine weapons," Baal struggled with Yam and defeated him
- only to be challenged by Mot (the name meant "smiter"). In this struggle, Baal was soon vanquished; but his sister Anat
refused to accept this demise of Baal as final. "She seized Mot, the son of El, and with a blade she cleaved him."
The obliteration of Mot led, according to the Canaanite tale, to the miraculous resurrection of Baal. Scholars have attempted to
rationalize the report by suggesting that the whole tale was only allegorical, representing no more than a tale of the annual
struggle in the Near East between the hot, rainless summers that dry out the vegetation, and the coming of the rainy season in
the autumn, which revives or "resurrects" the vegetation. But there is no doubt that the Canaanite tale intended no allegory, that
it related what were then believed to be the true events: how the sons of the chief deity fought among themselves, and how one
of them defied defeat to reappear and become the accepted heir, making El rejoice:
El, the kindly one, the merciful, rejoices.
His feet on the footstool he sets.
He opens his throat and laughs;
He raises his voice and cries out:
"I shall sit and take my ease,
The soul shall repose in my breast;
For Ba'al the mighty is alive,
For the Prince of Earth exists!"
Anat, according to Canaanite traditions, thus stood by her brother the Lord (Baal) in his life-and-death struggle with the evil Mot; and the parallel between this and the Greek tradition of the goddess Athena standing with the supreme god Zeus in his life-and- death struggle with Typhon is only too obvious. Athena, as we have seen, was called "the perfect maiden," yet had many illicit love affairs. Likewise, Canaanite traditions (which preceded the Greek ones) employed the epithet "the Maiden Anat," and, in spite of this, proceeded to report her various love affairs, especially with her own brother Baal. One text describes the arrival of Anat at Baal's abode on Mount Zaphon, and Baal's hurried dismissal of his wives. Then he sank by his sister's feet; they looked into each other's eyes; they anointed each other's "horns" - He seizes and holds her womb. . . . She seizes and holds his "stones.". . . The maiden Anat ... is made to conceive and bear.
No wonder, then, that Anat was often depicted completely naked, to emphasize her sexual attributes - as in this seal impre
ssion, which illustrates a helmeted Baal battling another god.
Like the Greek religion and its direct forerunners, the Canaanite pantheon included a Mother Goddess, official consort of the
chief deity. They called her Ashera; she paralleled the Greek Hera. Astarte (the biblical Ashtoreth) paralleled Aphrodite; her
frequent consort was Athtar, who was associated with a bright planet, and who probably paralleled Ares, Aphrodite's brother.
There were other young deities, male and female, whose astral or Greek parallels can easily be surmised.
But besides these young deities there were the "olden gods," aloof from mundane affairs but available when the gods
themselves ran into serious trouble. Some of their sculptures, even in a partly damaged state, show them with commanding
features, gods recognizable by their horned headgear.
Whence had the Canaanites, for their part, drawn their culture and religion?
The Old Testament considered them a part of the Hamitic family of nations, with roots in the hot (for that is what ham meant) lands of Africa, brothers of the Egyptians. The artifacts and written records unearthed by archaeologists confirm the close affinity between the two, as well as the many similarities between the Canaanite and Egyptian deities.
The many national and local gods, the multitude of their names and epithets, the diversity of their roles, emblems, and animal mascots at first cast the gods of Egypt as an unfathomable crowd of actors upon a strange stage. But a closer look reveals that they were essentially no different from those of the other lands of the ancient world.
The Egyptians believed in Gods of Heaven arid Earth, Great Gods that were clearly distinguished from the multitudes of lesser deities. G. A. Wainwright (The Sky-Religion in Egypt) summed up the evidence, showing that the Egyptian belief in Gods of Heaven who descended to Earth from the skies was "extremely ancient." Some of the epithets of these Great Gods - Greatest God, Bull of Heaven, Lord/Lady of the Mountains - sound familiar.
Although the Egyptians counted by the decimal system, their religious affairs were governed by the Sumerian sexagesimal sixty, and celestial matters were subject to the divine number twelve. The heavens were divided into three parts, each comprising twelve celestial bodies. The afterworld was divided into twelve parts. Day and night were each divided into twelve hours. And all these divisions were paralleled by "companies" of gods, which in turn consisted of twelve gods each.
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