Teshub

Teshub was the Hurrian weather god, as well as the head of the Hurrian pantheon. The etymology of his name is uncertain, though it is agreed it can be classified as linguistically Hurrian. Both phonetic and logographic writings are attested. As a deity associated with the weather, Teshub could be portrayed both as destructive and protective. Individual weather phenomena, including winds, lightning, thunder and rain, could be described as his weapons. He was also believed to enable the growth of vegetation and create rivers and springs. His high position in Hurrian religion reflected the widespread importance of weather gods in northern Mesopotamia and nearby areas, where in contrast with the south agriculture relied primarily on rainfall rather than irrigation. It was believed that his authority extended to both mortal and other gods, both on earth and in heaven. However, the sea and the underworld were not under his control. Depictions of Teshub are rare, though it is agreed he was typically portrayed as an armed, bearded figure, sometimes holding a bundle of lightning. One such example is known from Yazılıkaya. In some cases, he was depicted driving in a chariot drawn by two sacred bulls.

According to Song of Emergence, Teshub was born from the split skull of Kumarbi after he bit off the genitals of Anu during a conflict over kingship. This tradition is also referenced in other sources, including a hymn from Aleppo and a Luwian inscription. A single isolated reference to the moon god Kušuḫ being his father instead is also known. In individual texts various deities could be referred to as his siblings, including Šauška, Tašmišu and Aranzaḫ. His wife was Ḫepat, a goddess originally worshipped in Aleppo at some point incorporated into the Hurrian pantheon. Their children were Šarruma, Allanzu and Kunzišalli. Other deities believed to belong to the court of Teshub included Tenu, Pentikalli, the bulls Šeri and Ḫurri and the mountain gods Namni and Ḫazzi. Members of his entourage were typically enumerated in so-called kaluti [de], Hurrian offering lists. God lists indicate that Teshub could be recognized as the equivalent of other weather gods worshipped in Mesopotamia and further west in Syria, including Adad and Ugaritic Baal. In Anatolia he also influenced Hittite Tarḫunna and Luwian Tarḫunz, though all of these gods were also worshipped separately from each other.

The worship of Teshub is first attested in the Ur III period, with the early evidence including Hurrian theophoric names and in a royal inscription from Urkesh. Later sources indicate that his main cult center was the city of Kumme, which has not yet been located with certainty. His other major sacred city was Arrapha, the capital of an eponymous kingdom located in the proximity of modern Kirkuk in Iraq. Both of these cities were regarded as religious centers of supraregional significance, and a number of references to Mesopotamian rulers occasionally sending offerings to them are known. In the Mitanni empire, the main site associated with him was Kaḫat in northern Syria. In Kizzuwatna in southeastern Turkey he was worshipped in Kummanni. Furthermore, due to Hurrian cultural influence he came to be viewed as the weather god of Aleppo [de]. He was also worshipped in many other Hurrian cities, and in the second half of the second millennium BCE he was the deity most commonly invoked in Hurrian theophoric names, with numerous examples identified in texts from Nuzi. He is also attested as a commonly worshipped deity in the Ugaritic texts, which indicate that Hurrian and local elements were interconnected in the religious practice of this city. Additionally, he was incorporated into Hittite religion and Luwian religion. His hypostasis associated with Aleppo attained particular importance in this context.

Multiple Hurrian myths focused on Teshub are known. Most of them are preserved in Hittite translations, though the events described in them reflect Hurrian, rather than Hittite, theology. Many of them focus on Teshub's rise to the position of the king of the gods and his conflict with Kumarbi and his allies, such as the sea monster Ḫedammu, the stone giant Ullikummi or the personified sea. These texts are conventionally referred to as the Kumarbi Cycle, though it has been pointed out that Teshub is effectively the main character in all of them, leading to occasional renaming proposals. Teshub is also a major character in the Song of Release, whose plot focuses on his efforts to secure the liberation of the inhabitants of Igingalliš from Ebla. Two of the preserved passages additionally deal with his meetings with Ishara, the tutelary goddess of the latter city, and Allani, the queen of the underworld. Interpretation of the narrative as a whole and its individual episodes remain matters of scholarly debate. Additional references to him have been identified in a number of literary texts focused on human heroes, including the tale of Appu and the Hurrian adaptation of the Epic of Gilgamesh.

Multiple romanizations of the name Teshub are in use in Assyriological and Hittitological literature, including Teššub, Tešub, Teššob and Teššop. The transcription of the voiceless sibilants is a modern convention which reflects the common cuneiform spellings of the name, but writings with not only š, but also s and ṯ are all attested in various scripts. Texts from Nuzi record multiple syllabic spellings, including the most common te-šub, as well as te-šu-ub, te-eš-šub and te-eš-šu-ub, and rare te₉-šub, te-eš₁₅-šu-ub and te-su-ub, the last of which is only attested once in the entire corpus. Additional shortened forms, such as Te, Tē, Teya or Tēya, were used in the writing of theophoric names. It has been suggested that their development can be compared to the possible derivation of the hypocoristic suffixes še and šeya from the word šēna, “brother”. In names from Alalakh it was rendered as te-eš-šu-ub. In Mitanni letters it is written as ^dte-eš-šu-ub-bá-. This form seemingly reflects the pronunciation /Teššob/. Attestations of uncommon variants with the suffix -a are limited to theophoric names from various sites. In the Ugaritic alphabetic script the name was consistently rendered as tṯb (𐎚𐎘𐎁), with only a single attestation of a different variant, tṯp (𐎚𐎘𐎔). Dennis Pardee vocalizes this form of the name as Teṯṯub. Multiple variants occur in the texts from the same city written in standard syllabic cuneiform, for example te-šab, te-šub, ^dIŠKUR-ub and ^d10-ub. In Luwian hieroglyphs, the name could be rendered as ti-su-pi (Yazılıkaya) or DEUSFORTIS-su-pa-sa (Tell Ahmar), with an additional shortened form, TONITRUS-pa-sá/ti-sa-pa, Tispa or Tisapa, attested in theophoric names from Carchemish.

The precise etymology of Teshub's name is unknown, but it is assumed it has Hurrian origin. Volkert Haas suggested it was derived from the adjective teššai, which he translates as “high” or “lordly”. However, Daniel Schwemer [de] points out that this proposal does not provide an explanation of the suffix, and that teššai is not an actually attested word. Marie Claude Trémouille notes that while a connection with the term tešš-, attested as an equivalent of the Sumerian title ugula (“overseer”), has been suggested, the evidence remains unconvincing.

In addition to phonetic syllabic spellings, Teshub's name could be represented in cuneiform by the sumerogram ^dIŠKUR. The same sign could also be read as /im/, “wind” or “storm”. Therefore, the sumerogram is sometimes rendered as ^dIM in Assyriological literature, though the transcription ^dIŠKUR is considered preferable. The use of logograms of Sumerian and Akkadian origin to represent the names of various deities was widespread across the ancient Near East. ^dIŠKUR is first documented as the representation of the name of a different weather god than Ishkur in the case of Adad in pre-Sargonic texts from Mari, though this scribal convention was unknown further west, in Ebla, in the same period. In some cases it is uncertain which deity was represented by ^dIŠKUR, for example a theophoric name from Alalakh, a-RI-^dIŠKUR, might invoke either Teshub or Adad. The identity of the weather god worshipped in Nuzi and other nearby cities is also ambiguous in some cases due to use of logograms and the presence of speakers of both Hurrian and Akkadian in the area. It has been noted that speakers of Semitic languages and Hurrians might have in some cases read the logogram differently. While in theophoric names it is generally advised to render it according to the linguistic affinity of the other component, the existence of unusual bilingual hybrid names have been noted, one example being Ikūn-Teššub.

A further attested logographic writing of Teshub's name is ^d10, though it started to be used later than ^dIŠKUR. This logogram is sometimes rendered as ^dU in modern literature due to the cuneiform sign having both of these values depending on context. However, Marie Claude Trémouille argues this transcription is erroneous in this case. The use of this numeral to render the names of weather gods is first documented for Adad in the fifteenth century BCE. This convention might have originated in Northern Mesopotamia or in Syria, but Daniel Schwemer argues that it also cannot be ruled out it was a Babylonian tradition in origin, and that at the very least it must have developed as an addition to the well attested system of using other numerals to represent Mesopotamian theonyms (30 for Sin, 20 for Shamash).