Text
There are some striking similarities between Hurro-Hittite Song of Kumarbi and the Hesiod’s Theogony, which with the Babylonian Creation Epic form a bundle of myths with many similar motifs. The similarities between the former two are the following:
1. Assuming that Teššub is to be treated as the successor of Kumarbi and as the present king of the gods, we have a sequence Alalu, Anu, Kumarbi, Teššub. Alalu, apparently a god of the earth, has no counterpart in the Hesiodic succession, but the other three correspond to Ouranos, Kronos, and Zeus. Anu’s name, like Ouranos’, means Sky; he is a direct borrowing of the Mesopotamian An or Anu. Kumarbi was a Hurrian corn-god; and Kronos may have been a god of harvest. Teššub, like Zeus, is the storm-god.
2. Anu, like Ouranos, has his genitals cut off, and thereupon removes himself to heaven. From the genitals other divinities spring.
3. As Anu warns Kumarbi that there is trouble in store for him as a result of what he has done, so Ouranos (Th. 210) warns the Titans that they will have to pay later for their castration of him.
4. Kumarbi, like Kronos, has a number of gods in his belly for a time, including the storm-god. The Hittite and Greek accounts give different explanations of how the gods got there, but both involve deliberate acts of swallowing by the host god.
5. At one point Kumarbi actually does announce his intention of eating one of his children, and, like Kronos, he is provided with a stone instead. He takes it into his mouth and expels it again, after which it is set up as a cult object.
6. After this the storm-god becomes powerful, and there are hostilities between him and Kumarbi/ Kronos with their respective allies.
7. In the Hittite text Earth gives birth in the subterranean Apsu to two children, who presumably will pose a new threat to Teššub. According to Hesiod’s poem, Earth in union with Tartarus gives birth to Typhon, who poses a new threat to Zeus. Presumably Teššub successfully demolished his adversaries, as Zeus did his.
Bibliography
| West 1997, 279-280 | West, Martin L. The East Face of Helicon. West Asiatic Elements in Greek Poetry and Myth. Oxford: Clarendon Press 1997. |
Amar Annus
URL for this entry: http://www.aakkl.helsinki.fi/melammu/database/gen_html/a0001230.php
|
