The 12th Planet (11 page)

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 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 worshiped 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
H
urrians.

Referred to in the Old Testament as the
H
orites ("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
H
urrians' 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
H
aran—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
H
urrian 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
H
urrian neighbors "
H
urri." 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
H
urrians 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
H
urrian records, even went so far as to call the
H
urrians "the oldest Hindus."

These
H
urrians dominated the Hittites culturally and religiously. The Hittite mythological texts were found to be of
H
urrian provenance, and even epic tales of prehistoric, semidivine heroes were of
H
urrian origin. There is no longer any doubt that the Hittites acquired their cosmology, their "myths," their gods, and their pantheon of twelve from the
H
urrians.

The triple connection—between Aryan origins, Hittite worship, and the
H
urrian 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
H
ebat, 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 "
H
ebat."

With all that, the culture and religion adopted and transmitted by the
H
urrians were not Indo-European. Even their language was not really Indo-European. There were undoubtedly Akkadian elements in the
H
urrian 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 Tashmeturn became the
H
urrian 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
H
urrians, 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
H
urrian art duplicated Sumerian art—its form, its themes, and its symbols.

When and how were the
H
urrians "mutated" by the Sumerian "gene"?

Evidence suggests that the
H
urrians, 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
H
urrians 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
H
urrians managed and manned the garment industry for which Sumer (and especially Ur) was known in antiquity. The renowned merchants of Ur were probably
H
urrians for the most part.