ANATOLIA & ELSEWHERE
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| Tarhund battles Illuyankas in this 9th century BC limestone carving |
With respect, once again,
to our long sought "red king," in O.R. Gurney's seminal
English-language study of The Hittites (1952) we are presented
with the vision of a great Anatolian melting pot wherein the various
beliefs of local Indo-European, Semitic, and anomalous cults
eventually coalesce into the wedded image of a supreme
weather/storm-god and sun-goddess, or daughter of a sun-god,
retaining certain undefined relations to the water, as well. As
Gurney writes of this situation:
It is indeed a curious
detail that one text describes the Sun-god as having fishes on his
head, and there was a distinct type of Sun-god known as the 'Sun-god
in the water'. There was also a Sun-god (or perhaps rather a
Sun-goddess) of the Underworld, through which the sun was supposed to
pass on its way from west to east during the hours of darkness.
It is theorized that this
solar/aquatic deification may, in fact, represent the movement of a
sun-god tradition from one of the nearby coastal/riparian cultures of
Egypt, Palestine, or Mesopotamia into the landlocked highlands of
Turkey. As such, the Sumerian Ea (Enki), of the E-abzu water temple
to the south, would be a likely contender for this role. So, too,
would the Egyptian Ra — and, perhaps, even more so; being encircled
by his protective ouroboros, Mehen, while he sails in from the west,
plying a solar barge through the underworld of night. Whatever the
case, as we've learned by now, where solar/storm-gods tend to go, so
too go serpent foes — and, of course, the Hittite landscape was no
exception as Gurney, here, explains:
One
of the major festivals of the Hittite calendar was that called
purulliyas, probably a Hattian word purulli, meaning
'of the earth', with Hittite genitival suffix. At this festival the
Myth of the Slaying of the Dragon, was apparently recited. ... Such a
spring festival, at which the combat of the Weather-god and the
Dragon Illuyankas was acted or recited, would seem to belong to a
well-known type of seasonal festival, the primitive purpose of which
was to re-invigorate the earth after the stagnation of winter, the
ritual combat symbolizing the triumph of life over death or good over
evil.
Two versions of this myth
are presented, both of which, as Gurney relates, "begin
baldly with the statement that at their first encounter the
Weather-god was worsted by the dragon." In one version the
weather-god (variously Taru, Teshub, or Tarhund) enlists the aid of
his daughter Inaras (goddess of wild game, and wilderness in
general), who in turn enlists the aid of a mortal lover named
Hupasiyas to engage in a second battle with Illuyankas. In short,
Inaras intoxicates the dragon with food and drink, allowing Hupasiyas
to tie him down, which then allows Tarhund to finally slay him. So
far, so familiar, as this myth appears to be a recapitulation of the
now common progression from a singular hero-god (Tarhund; Ea; Indra;
Hrwyfy), who embodies some divine duality in the form of a consort,
rival, or other relation (Tarhund/Inaras; Ea/Marduk; Indra/Sachi;
Horus/Seth), tripartially bolstered by an ally or helper
(Tarhund/Inaras+Hupasiyas; Ea/Marduk+Atrahasis; Indra/Sachi+Airavata;
Horus/Seth+Ra), and ultimately resolved in a great quadrumvirate by
contending with an inimical dragon (Tarhund/Inaras+Hupasiyas vs.
Illuyankas; Ea/Marduk/Atrahasis vs. Tiamat/Labbu;
Indra/Sachi+Airavata vs. Vritra; Horus/Seth+Ra vs. Apep). It would
also seem to echo Dumézil's Aryan conflict of
governing/priestly+warrior classes versus the agricultural peasantry,
represented in the mythological quartet of Mitra/Varuna+Indra vs. the
Nasatyas (and, perhaps, chromatically as gold/white+red vs. black).
The second version of the
tale has Illuyankas stealing Tarhund's heart and eyes during their
initial skirmish (another motif of now intimate recognition, at least
with respect to the latter). A chance at revenge comes some time
later when Tarhund begets a son with a mortal for the purpose of
marrying the daughter of Illuyankas (thus creating yet another
four-part structure, while oddly making the two main antagonists
in-laws). Upon their marriage Tarhund, by way of his son, obtains
from the daughter the return of his corporal belongings. Then, as the
legend succinctly goes, "when his body had thus been restored
to its former state he went off to the sea to do battle, and when
they came out to battle with him he succeeded in defeating the Dragon
Illuyankas." But the story does not quite end here. As
Gurney goes on:
Here again there
follows a curious episode. The son of the Weather-god happened to be
in the Dragon's house at the time. So he cried to his father: 'Smite
me too! Do not spare me!' Thereupon the Weather-god slew both the
Dragon and his own son.
"Here again,"
says Gurney, because the previous version also ends with the killing
of the mortal helper, Hupasiyas, this time at the hands of Inaras who
imprisons him in a "house on a rock" from which he's
forbidden to look out the window, lest he be punished by death (which
he does, then he is). Gurney expounds thusly:
It was evidently
thought necessary that the human agent should come to grief in the
end, and the two versions conclude, as we have seen, with different
accounts of how this was brought about. Both accounts require some
explanation. Dr. [Theodor] Gaster has suggested that in
the first account Hupasiyas acquired divine strength by the sexual
relations with the goddess, while his incarceration on an
inaccessible cliff and the prohibition against seeing his wife and
family were intended to prevent the transmission to mortals of this
divine essence. In the second version the same writer has suggested
that the son's appeal to his father to 'smite him too' is to be
explained by his belief that he had unwittingly betrayed the laws of
hospitality, a deadly sin after which he could not bear to remain
alive.
Reasonable enough
interpretations, but ultimately unsupported by any direct textual
evidence. As these stories stand, our mortal helpers would seem
little more than sacrificial pawns in a much greater game — and
there would also seem much greater significance behind certain of our
players. For one, Inaras shows obvious linguistic affinities
with the Sumerian Inanna, and her Babylonian counterpart
Ishtar, both of whom Lurker identifies as "goddesses
of Venus." Inaras has also been likened to the Greek goddess
Artemis, with both being deities of wild animals, and both killing
mortals for some unfortunate gaze (recalling Actaeon and his dogs).
Through Venus and Artemis (by way of Diana) we're now acquainted once
more with that "morning-star" Lucifer. Yet here we might
also note that, as the name suggests, this moniker was only applied
at dawn, ahead of the rising sun in the east. When Lucifer was seen
after dusk, preceeding the "hours of darkness" (now
recalling the Sun-god of the Underworld), it was known to the Romans
by the name of Vesper, the "evening-star," relating to the
western direction of the setting sun.
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| Ladon in the garden of the Hesperides; Attic red-figure, 5th century BC |
Vesper now relates to the Greek Hesperus, brother of Phosphorus (the Hellenic Lucifer), and father of the fabled Hesperides, nymphic triplets (thinking now to the "Luciferian" twin Leucippides) who kept a grove of golden apples (golden-red fruit of white flesh) sacred to the marriage of Zeus and Hera. As Lemprière described it, "this celebrated place or garden abounded with fruits of the most delicious kind, and was carefully guarded by a dreadful dragon, which never slept ... this monster, as it is supposed, was the offspring of Typhon." Being called Ladon (also "a river of Arcadia" [compare with our "Don," or "Le Donon"], and "one of Actaeon's dogs," according to the same source), this dragon cuts an obvious parallel with the serpent of Eden, and is likely equivalent (at least in name) with Leviathan via Lathon/Lotan of the Canaanite Hadad-Baʿal saga (thinking also of Labbu from Enlil's flood). Ladon also suggests Apsû and Tiamat by way of their shared sleeplessness, and Apep/Satan/Lucifer, by way of Typhon (all the while giving rise to vague notions of some Apsû-Apep-apple linkage, buried deep in the annals of linguistic possibility).
Of course, all of these serpentine characters ultimately refer back to our current principle, Illuyankas (who's name simply means "serpent," likely of the same PIE root from which we get "eel"), and could thus imply something more than a purely adversarial connection between Illuyankas and Inaras; with the two, perhaps, being distant relations (think Apsû/Tiamat and Ea/Marduk), if not one and the same figure (recalling Seth and Apep). The closest overall correlation would seem to be with the Aryan Sachi (another goddess of Venus) who rides with her storm-god consort, Indra, on the snake-like Airavata, against the likewise snake-like Vritra. In each case, all of this densely compounded imagery appears to trace a strange ouroboric outline in which the archetypal dragon-slayer kills not only the enemy, but also the ally and the self.
This now returns us to
the dragon-and-son-slaying Tarhund, who, in turn, suggests another
figure previously mentioned: the legendary St. George — he of the
red cross on a white field; patron saint of England, Malta, Georgia,
and elsewhere; native of the Anatolian region of Cappadocia
(heartland of the Hittite empire some two millenia prior); and whose
name, we might note, given the agriculture intent of these purulliyas
stories, means "farmer," from the Greek γη
("earth") + εργον ("worker").
George's most famous association, however, is, of course, with a
lake-dwelling dragon that tormented the kingdom of Silene (variously
thought to be located in Turkey, Libya, or Palestine) by demanding
tribute from its citizens in the form of their children. As the
legend goes, when it came time for the king's own daughter to be
given over she is rescued by St. George, fortuitously riding by on
horseback, who slays the beast on condition that the king covert his
subjects to Christianity. In the 13th century rendition by Jacobus de
Voragine (as translated by Caxton) the grateful king also raises a
church "of our Lady and of S. George, in the which yet
sourdeth a fountain of living water, which healeth sick people that
drink thereof." This would tend to further align St. George
with all our prior keepers of magic wells, and the dragon with those
other monsters from whose slaying such waters might emanate; Vritra,
Apsû, Tiamat, et al.
As to this now emerging
theme of child sacrifice, or killing, it somewhat recalls the
Mesopotamian Cycle, as well as the filicidal Greek tandem of Uranus
and Cronos, along with their blood-lusting equivalents in the
near-east, Baʿal Hammon and Moloch (mentioned previously in linking
Satan with Saturn), who required real, not mythic, victims in their
dark and grisly rites. Regarding Tarhund's own sacrificed child, and pursuant to Moxon's earlier hypothesis of a sacrificial "red king" of fertility, we are brought to one Telipinu, a god of agriculture and
son of the weather-god himself. While it is not assumed that Telipinu
is the sacrificed son of the second Illuyankas tale (he is a
god, not a mortal, after all), it is somewhat strange that this god
appears in another set of legends wherein he suddenly goes missing,
taking all mortal life with him in his absence. This "Myth of
the Missing God," as Gurney writes, "describes the
paralysis of all life on earth caused by the disappearance of the god
of fertility, the search for the god, and finally the re-invigoration
of the earth when he is discovered and brought home." In one
version of this myth Telipinu is found sleeping in a meadow by a bee
sent from the goddess Hannahannas, and here Gurney notes a striking
parallel with an episode in the Finnish Kalevala epic where
the hero is revived with honey sent by a bee from his mother. Then,
observing of this myth that "a version has been found in
which the object of the search is the Weather-god himself,"
we must note another striking parallel found in an extensive footnote
from Hamlet's Mill, pertaining also to the taking of life from
the land in the Kalevala, and then its relation to
similar Celtic traditions:
The Esthonian
Kalevipoeg (= son of Kaleva, the same as Finnish Kalevanpoika) makes
the soil barren wherever he has plowed with his wooden plow (Setala,
FUF 7, p. 215), but he, too, fells trees with noise — as
far as the stroke of his axe is heard, the trees fall down (p. 203).
As for Celtic tradition, one of the Rennes Dindsenchas tells
that arable land is changed into woodland because brother had killed
brother, "so that a wood and stunted bushes overspread
Guaire's country, because of the parricide which he committed"
(Stokes, RC 16, p. 35). Whereas J. Loth (Les Mabinogion du
Livre Rouge de Hergest, vol. I, p. 272, n. 6) gives the names of
three heroes who make a country sterile: "Morgan
Mwynvawr, Run, son of Beli, and Llew Llaw Gyffes, who turn the ground
red. Nothing grew for a year, herb or plant, where they passed:
Arthur was more 'rudvawc' than they. Where Arthur had passed, for
seven years nothing would grow." Rudvawc means
'red ravager,' as we learn from Rachel Bromwich (TrioedaYnys
Prydein: The Welsh Triads [1961], p. 35). Seven years was the
cycle of the German Wild Hunter; Arthur was a Wild Hunter, too. 'The
"Waste Land"' is, moreover, a standard motif of the legends
spun around the Grail and the Fisher King. All this will make sense
eventually.
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| Medieval depiction of the immobile Fisher King, draped in red (above); Odin's "wild hunt" rides over a wasteland, from an 1872 painting by P.N. Arbo (below)  |
It would now seem that we
are gradually being presented with a rather different image of our
heretofore heroically inclined "red king." One in which the
dragon-slayer shares much more in common with the dragon itself;
appearing, at times, even to be in league with the serpent — as
willing to take life as preserve it, as much a de-animating force as
anything else. Indeed, we may begin to see these mythological
adversaries not so much as intrinsically connected, but more
inherently conglomerated. Recall that our "red ravager"
Arthur was, in fact, himself a "red dragon," now in deathly
sleep (like Telipinu, and all those others before) on the isle of
"Avalon" — a name, in all likelihood, derived from abal,
the Old Celtic word for "apple." As then concerns Arthur's
"rudvawc" nature, the source and
meaning of this ravaging behaviour is somewhat obscure. Certain
scholars, though, have linked it, and Arthur, to the 6th century
Welsh prince Cuneglasus, or Cynglas "Goch," meaning Cynglas
"the Red" (son of Owain "White-tooth"), and
identified by the famed contemporary cleric St. Gildas as a "red"
or "tawny butcher" — one of five historical British
tyrants named in his book On the Ruin and Conquest of Britain.
The connection to Arthur arrives mainly through Gildas addressing
Cuneglasus as "thou bear, thou rider and ruler of many, and
guider of the chariot which is the receptacle of the bear,"
recalling "Arthur's" relation to arktos, "bear,"
and to the "red giant" star Arcturus, "watcher"
of the constellation Ursa Major, otherwise known as Arthur's Wagon,
or "Chariot."
Beyond this, our only
source is the aforemention Welsh Triads, a catalogue of
auspicious trios collected from material found largely within three
medieval manuscripts: the Red Book of Hergest, the White
Book of Rhydderch, and the Black Book of Carmarthen.
Together with the Yellow Book of Lecan, shown earlier in
relation to the Ulster Cycle of Irish "red king" legends,
we would seem to attain once more to that recurring chromatic
quadrumvirate of red-white-black-yellow; now finding within it, oddly
enough, the greater part of ancient Celtic mythology. Of course, we
will also remember the Triads in relation to Brân (the
"blessed raven king"), and then to his own relation with
the abovementioned Fisher King — recalling Brân's ownership
of the re-animating cauldron Pair Dadeni, and the Fisher King's
guardianship of the Holy Grail; Brân's immobile, disembodied
head, and the Fisher King's immobile, disengaged body (with the
immobility of both being tied to the health of their respective
lands, albeit in somewhat opposite ways). Here, again, we'll recall
Arthur's exhumation of Brân's protective head, thus inviting
the "white dragon" of Saxon invasion, making a "waste
land" of Celtic Britain in the vein of the Fisher King's own
ruined realm.
As for
Santillana and Von Dechend's "Wild Hunter" reference, we,
of course, have already met many of these; from Actaeon and Artemis,
to Nimrod and Orion, to Herne, Pwyll, and even the "red"-related
Cocidius. Their "German Wild Hunter," however, would seem
to be Odin, described here in relation to another group of "missing
gods," all from various traditions, and each involved somehow
with the Milky Way (that celestial serpent's lair of Airavata,
Tiamat, and Labbu):
It
is a strange lot of characters that were made responsible for the
Milky Way ... But where did they go, the ones mentioned, and the many
whom we have left out of consideration? It depends, so to speak, from
where they took off. This is often hard to determine, but the subject
of 'tumbling down' will be dealt with next. As for Virgo, who had
left the 'earth' at the end of the Golden Age, her whereabouts in the
Silver Age could have been described as being 'in mid-air.' Many
iniquitous characters were banished to this topos; either they were
thrown down, or they were sent up — Lilith dwelt there for a while,
and King David, also Adonis, even the Tower of Babel itself, and
first of all the Wild Hunter. This assembly of figures 'in mid-air'
helps to give meaning to an otherwise pointless tale, a veritable
fossil found in Westphalian folklore: "The Giants called
to Hackelberg [= Odin as the Wild Hunter] for help. He raised a storm
and removed a mill into the Milky Way, which after this is called the
Mill Way."
Here,
then, we have Odin as millwright, storm-god, and hunter at once. What
game this "Wild Hunter" was after, though, these authors do
not exactly say. Concerning a Siberian "lot of characters"
responsible for the Milky Way, however, they note that "whether
the figure is the son of God, the forest-man, or the Bear, he hunted
a stag along the Milky Way, tore it up and scattered its limbs in the
sky right and left of the white path." The stag, of course,
relates to numerous of our previously named hunters — particularly
Actaeon, being also "torn up," and Herne, the
hunter-and-stag in one who ended up killing himself. It likewise
relates to another Hittite figure whom Gurney denotes as "the
god on the stag." "He was a god of the countryside,"
says Gurney, "and indeed in one text he is described as 'a
child of the open country,'" further noting that his cult
"was very widespread and was evidently an ancient one, for
models of stags have been found in tombs dating back to the third
millennium B.C." Not much else is known of this god, though
his pastoral functions suggest vague relations to both Inaras and
Telipinu. The funerary stag models also faintly suggest the stag
skulls found at Star Carr in Yorkshire. These bonds are somewhat
strengthened by the fact that all of the Hittite iconography seems to
depict stags of the red deer species (same as the skulls of Star
Carr). It is perhaps slightly less helpful, though slightly more
interesting to note, however, that Mallory (among others) has
suggested *york- (recalling our York) to be the
Proto-Indo-European root term for the smaller species of roe deer
(ζóρξ being the Greek, and york still being
the Cornish word for this animal). Lastly, we might mention how
Lurker remarks of the Mesopotamian Enlil that he "bears a
head-dress decorated with horns (the so-called horned crown)."
This vaguely antlered topping may, theoretically, preface some
Anatolian stag-god, and even imply such later characters as
Cernunnos, Ossian, or even Herne.
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| Top to bottom, left to right: Hittite "god on the stag"; Enlil and his "horned crown"; Actaeon attacked by his hounds; antlered figure from the Danish Gundestrup cauldren, possibly depicting Cernunnos |
Rounding
up the Hittite cannon of mythological literature, Gurney cites a
number of tales being, likely, of nearby Hurrian origin, including a
certain Epic of Kessis, or Kesse, another hunter who, like the
missing god of fertility, forsakes his occupation with the
consequence of all animals disappearing from the land. Another tale
then concerns the "myth of divine kingship," telling of the
dynastic battles before the reign of Tarhund:
Alalu
reigned in heaven for nine years. In the ninth year Anu made war on
Alalu and conquered him, and Alalu fled before him to earth (i.e.,
the underworld?) ... Anu too reigned for nine years, and in the ninth
year Kumarbi made war on Anu. The latter abandoned the struggle and
flew like a bird into the sky...
Here
we will note the similarity to Santillana and Von Dechend's cast of
missing characters who were either "thrown down" or "sent
up." But we will soon note other similarities, too, for, as
Gurney tells us, before Anu can escape into the air "Kumarbi
seized his feet and pulled him down," then "bit off
Anu's member (called euphemistically his 'knee') and laughed for
joy." We will now observe that the immobility of the Fisher
King is generally attributed to a wounded "knee," "thigh,"
or another part of his leg always taken to actually refer to his
groin — hence the infertility of his land. Anu, however, would not
seem so impotent, as he warns Kumarbi:
'Do
not rejoice for what you have swallowed! I have made thee pregnant
with three mighty gods. First I have made thee pregnant with the
mighty Weather-god(?), secondly I have made thee pregnant with the
River Aranzakh (the Tigris), and thirdly I have made thee pregnant
with the great god Tasmisu (a minion of the Weather-god). Three
terrible gods I have planted within thee as fruit of my body.'
Upon
hearing this Kumarbi spits Anu's member to the ground, and so, in
continuing with all of the prior agricultural themes, it is the earth
who eventually bears these "terrible gods" as children.
This tale, as such, somewhat recalls another strange episode in the
conflict of Horus and Seth wherein each tries to impregnate the other
in a contest of dominance for control of Egypt. Gurney, though, by
way of Dr. H.G. Güterbock, suggests a closer resemblance to the
aforementioned successions of Uranus-Cronos-Zeus in Hesiod's
Theogony, noting how "Kronos, incited by Gaia [his
literal "mother earth"], emasculates his father
[Uranus] with a sickle," and how later "Kronos
swallows all his children except Zeus, who is saved by the
substitution of a stone which Kronos swallows instead of him,"
being then forced by Zeus to spit out his siblings along with the
stone which "is set up as a cult-object at Pytho (Delphi)."
Gurney later notes of the incomplete Hurrian myth, "in the
broken part of the tablet there is some reference to Kumarbi eating
and to a stone which may possibly correspond to the Pythian
'omphalos' of Hesiod's version."
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| Saturn/Cronos above a dragon and child; detail from the Splendor Solis |
As far
as this tale corresponds to the original Mesopotamian version, Alalu
(of the underworld) might be seen to represent Apsû and/or
Tiamat, while Anu (of the sky) could be Ea, whose semen then begets
the storm-god Tarhund, thence Marduk. The only direct correlation in
the historical records, however, is between Kumarbi and horned Enlil.
This may be due, in part, to certain of Kumarbi's offspring; two sea
monsters raised against Tarhund (who, in turn, overthrew Kumarbi in
the myth of divine kingship) — Hedammu and Ullikummi — the first
being a vast serpent, the second more of a living-mountain made of
diorite stone. We then, of course, recall Enlil's own creation, the
Milky Way serpent Labbu, as well as his role in unleashing the great
Sumerian flood — all while taking further note of said Pythian
stone at Delphi, once guarded by the chthonic Greek dragon Python;
that "celebrated serpent," as writes Lemprière,
"sprung from the mud and stagnant waters which remained on
the surface of the earth after the deluge of Deucalion."
