Documente Academic
Documente Profesional
Documente Cultură
Hittites?
TBR
P. O . B O X 1 5 8 7 7 WA S H I N G T O N , D . C . 2 0 0 0 3
MARCH/APRIL 2012
B A R N E S R E V I E W. C O M
1-877-773-9077 ORDERING
P. O . B O X 1 5 8 7 7 WA S H I N G T O N , D . C . 2 0 0 0 3
people who were conquered and governed by an ArThis cult appears to have been a religion of pre-Mykemenian Indo-European minority, possibly one that
naean Minoan Crete, which has been traditionally asdrove them over the Caucasus Mountains and then subsigned as a branch of Semitic Phoenician culture, and
jugated them. The Hurrian religious form is firmly Indothe cult of the Great Mother may have represented an
Iranian, and likely a close cognate of the Vedas and
early subversion of an Aryan people by demonic Semitic
Zend Avesta. But the language of the Hurrian people is
gods. This was certainly the case with its derivative, the
almost an isolate, related only to Urartian, the language
Etruscans. To the Hittites, the Great Mother was known
of their successor state, Urartu. However, language isoas Kubaba, likely a term they adopted from the Hurrians
lates and the adoption of the languages of the Near and
during the interregnum, and it is by this nameGraeMiddle
Eastern masses by the Indo-European invaders
cized and then Latinized into Kybele or Cybelethat
are common, and the fact that the language of the Hurshe was known to the West [although many other female
rians is only influenced by the Indo-Iranian branch of
deities, of diverse names, have been subsumed into her
the Indo-European family is nowhere near as decisive
identity. For what it is worth, Kubaba is the only queen
as Soviet scholars have made it to be. [Some Russian
on the Sumerian king list.Ed.].
scholars maintain that Hurrian and Hattic are related to
But the first major rivals of the Hittites were their
the Northeast Caucasian language.Ed.]
fellow Indo-Europeans, whom the Hittites conquered
The Hurrians overran the Hittites in the 16th century,
and absorbed into the Old Kingdom of central, southern
and subjugated them for several
and southeastern Anatolia by the
decades, until Tudhaliya I [r. 1465early 18th century. They then ex1440] or his son Hattusili II [r. 1440panded west and vassalized the
The Hittites were very
1425], having overthrown foreign
kingdom of Arzawawhich, many
progressive
in
their
domination in his sub-kingdom of
believe, gave Asia its nameand
treatment
of
women,
Kizzuwatna [today, southeastern
conducted relations, some scholars
argue, with the city of Troy, known
giving them equal rights Turkey], was able to lead a revolution against the Hurrian empire and
to them as Wilusa, a form of Ilos.
under the law. Slaves
overthrow its dominance, uniting
In the east, the Hittites were
also
had
rights.
the other vassal kingdoms of the
competing with the Hurrians, and,
Hittites under him, and eventually
eventually, the Indo-European kingcreating the Hittite empire, which
dom of Mittani. The rise of the Hurexpanded to the Aegean in the west and upper
rians seems to have broken the links between the
Mesopotamia in the south.
pre-Old-Kingdom Hittites and the Assyrians, and the
An alternative version of this history makes TudHurrians appear to have eventually conquered and eshaliya I of Hurrian descent himself, and one of several
tablished a dynasty in northern Mesopotamiaand posHurrian
kings of the fractured Hittite lands, who rose
sibly the south as wellwhere Indo-European names
to prominence by uniting the Hurrian kinglets. [Both
come to predominate at several points in different areas
Kizzuwatna and Mitanni have also been described as
during the second millennium B.C. This early rise of the
Hurrians likely gave the Hittites the economic freedom Hurrian, although rival kingdoms.Ed.]
Regardless of his personal origins, his dynasty was
from their Semitic merchant colonies that they needed
certainly heavily intermarried with the Aryan Hurrians,
to establish their own cultural identity, and so it is ironic
that the force that allowed the growth of the Hittite Old and it is this that is the Hittite empire that confronted
the forces of the Pharaoh Akhenaten in the 14th cenKingdom eventually conquered it and subjected it to fortury, and that brought the Apiruthe Hebrewsinto
eign cultural rule.
Like the Hittites, the Hurrians have been the target of what became the kingdoms of Judea and Samaria. It is
also this empire that eventually smashed the Indo-Eurointense efforts by Communist and Soviet pseudo-scholpean kingdom of the Mittania nation whose kings had
ars, who have seen them as a weak link in the Indo-Eudefinite Indo-Iranian namesand blocked the expanropean migration theory. The Hurrians appear to be a
8
MARCH/APRIL 2012
B A R N E S R E V I E W. C O M
1-877-773-9077 ORDERING
This gate, the southwest entrance to the upper city of Hattusa, capital city of the Hittite empire, features two matching
lions (one now badly eroded) carved into arching stones. Back in their heyday, 1343-1200 B.C., the complete gate formed
a parabola, with towers on each sidea magnificent, daunting sight.
P. O . B O X 1 5 8 7 7 WA S H I N G T O N , D . C . 2 0 0 0 3
10
MARCH/APRIL 2012
B A R N E S R E V I E W. C O M
1-877-773-9077 ORDERING
P. O . B O X 1 5 8 7 7 WA S H I N G T O N , D . C . 2 0 0 0 3
11
winds and the airand he is one of the aspects of the prototype borrowed by the Hebrews in their story of the
multifaceted storm gods that were worshiped by the seduction of Eve by the serpent. Similarly, there is a rockgod created by Kumarbi to destroy Teshub, the storm
ancient Norsemen.
Hittite religion has been attacked as non-Indo- god, which resembles the story of Mokkikalfir in the
Eddas, and of the giant with the feet of clay in the Bible.
European because, in the late period, it was heavily influenced by the Hurrians, who adopted their religion
The Hurrian period is most notable, though, for the
from the Indo-Iranian cycles. Teshub, the storm god of character of Kumarbi himself, who castrates his father
the Hittites from the interregnal period onward, is defand then eats the children of Anu in order to prevent
initely a borrowing from their eastern neighbors, the their usurpation of his throne, and thus inspired the stoHurrians. But there is a cycle of Hittite stories known as
ries of Cronus, Uranus, Rhea and the birth of Zeus.
old Hittite myths, and these involve Telipinu, the son
In the Hittite imperial period, the Hittite religion was
of the storm god, who brings about the first winter by
heavily influenced by Egypt, and the Sun god came to
withdrawing from the world and ceasing his efforts in supplant the storm god as the central deity of the religion.
the preservation of life and its cycles. This deity, who The Hittite emperor, at this time, adopted the title of son
was perverted in Semitic cultures into the god of resurof the Sun and altered his name in Hittite writing to rerection, is likely an early cognate of the storm-god figflect the Egyptian style of displaying the Sun in the kings
ure that became Volund, and hints at an original unity
royal name. Very late Hittite religious writings show an
between the Indo-European storm
even heavier syncretization with
god and the Near Eastern god of resEgyptian myth.
urrection.
At a time in the Near
In the Hurrian and post-Hurrian
CONCLUSION
period, there is also a theme that deThe Hittites were an Indo-EuroEast when flaying and
velops which is cognate with a
pean people who achieved pre-emiimpaling enemies was the nence among the Indo-European
theme found in semi-mythical northern histories. This theme is the
invaders of Asia Minor and founded
rule, the Hittites were
brotherhood of the storm and the
an empire that spanned almost a milhumane & civilized.
Sun gods, and their relationships to
lennium. Their language and religion
the Great Mother and the Sun godtie them firmly into both the condesses. In the mythical history of
querors of Iran and India, and into
Saxo Grammaticus, for instance, one often finds Halfthe Nordic-Germanic stock in which those conquerors
dan and a figure related to the Indo-European fire god found their roots.
Agni pairedmuch as Belinus, as a storm god, and
Though Communist and Soviet scholars attacked the
Brennus are paired in the history of Geoffrey of Monorigins of the Hittites in an effort to dilute and obscure
mouth. Halfdan and Agni relate in many ways to Thor
the Indo-European origin of their society and culture,
and Heimdal (though it has been argued that Halfdan is
even a surface analysis of the Hittite culture shows it
the son of Thor, rather than Thor himself, as well as the
was one of the many expressions of the Aryan creative
son of HeimdalRydberg discusses this dual-fatherspirit found in the early portion of recorded history.
hood extensively in his Teutonic Mythology, though it
is, in this authors opinion, one of the weaknesses of RyWILLIAM WHITE is the former commander of the American National
Socialist Workers Party and is currently completing a degree focused on
dbergs theory). Halfdan and Agni reflect a legendary
classical and Near Eastern Studies. He is the author of Before Genesis:
euhemerization of the dyad of the storm god and the
The Aryan and the Hebrew in Ancient Egypt, which is being released by
Sun god.
THE BARNES REVIEW, and is working on a commentary on the first nine
books of Saxo Grammaticuss Gesta Danorum. You can write to Bill c/o
There is also a myth from the Hurrian period of the
TBR, PO Box 1877, Washington, D.C. 20003. He is under court order not
Great Mother, an adoption of Ishtar, seducing a serpent
to post on the Internet, so if you upload his material to the Net, please
god, a child of Kumarbi, the prototype of the Greek
make it clear to everyone that it is not he who is doing so.
Cronus, in her garden, and this story may have been a
12
MARCH/APRIL 2012
B A R N E S R E V I E W. C O M
1-877-773-9077 ORDERING