Hittite Mythology

The first king in heaven in the Hurrian Song of Kumarbi, overthrown by his cup-bearer Anu after nine years and driven down to the Dark Earth; Kumarbi is called his offspring.

The primeval copper cutting tool with which heaven and earth were once separated, brought out of the ancient storehouses so that Ea can sever the stone giant Ullikummi from Upelluri's shoulder.

The Hittite mother goddess, 'the Grandmother', who when every other god has failed sends a bee to find the missing Telipinu.

A voracious sea-serpent, son of Kumarbi and the daughter of the Sea, whom the goddess Šauška draws out of the water with her beauty in the fragmentary Song of Hedammu.

The great serpent of Anatolian myth that defeats the Storm-god before it is tricked, bound, and killed; its name is simply the Hittite word for 'serpent' or 'dragon'.

A Hattian goddess of the wild who helps the Storm-god defeat the serpent Illuyanka by laying out a great feast and recruiting the mortal Hupašiya.

Goddess of magic and healing rites, who in the Telipinu myth performs the ritual that draws out the angry god's rage and sends it to the Dark Earth.

Hurrian father of the gods who seizes kingship in heaven by biting off the sky-god Anu's loins, unwittingly conceives the storm-god Teššub, and spends the rest of the Kumarbi cycle fathering monsters to overthrow him.

The hunting bag of sheep's fleece hung from an evergreen eya tree before the returned Telipinu, holding fat, grain, wine, cattle, sheep, long life, and offspring: a cult object as well as a mythic image.

Hurrian goddess of love and war and sister of the storm-god Teššub, who in the Kumarbi cycle tries to overcome her brother's monstrous enemies by seduction.

The Hattian sun-goddess of the holy city of Arinna, queen of the land of Hatti and, with the Storm-god, the highest deity of the Hittite state cult; Queen Puduhepa's prayer equates her with the Hurrian goddess Hebat.

The Hittite ruler of the underworld, the 'Dark Earth', identified with the Hurrian Allani and the Mesopotamian Ereškigal: the sun as it travels beneath the earth at night.

The chief god of the Hittite state: a storm-god of rain and thunder who gives the land its fertility, fights the serpent Illuyanka, and, under his Hurrian name Teššub, wins kingship in heaven in the Kumarbi cycle.

A Hattian god of farming and growth, son of the Storm-god, whose angry departure makes the whole land barren until a bee finds him asleep and a ritual soothes his rage.

A deaf and blind giant of basalt, fathered by Kumarbi on a great rock and grown on the shoulder of the world-bearing giant Upelluri until it reaches heaven, to destroy the storm-god's city of Kummiya.