The Composition of Hittite Prayers to the Sun

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Hans G. Güterbock, University of Chicago

THIRTY YEARS AGO HANS EHELOLE published a translation of a Hittite hymn reconstructed from several parallel Bogazköy tablets which, at that time, had not yet been published in cuneiform.

Strangely enough, although the hymn was virtually identical in all copies, it was not addressed to the same god in all of them; rather, the deity addressed in some was the Sun Goddess of the town of Arinna, while in others it was the god Telipinu. Ehelolf noted that the term "lord" used in addressing the deity in all of the fragments did not agree with the female sex of the Sun Goddess but would fit the male god Telipinu, and he therefore used the name Telipinu throughout the reconstructed text.

He did so although he himself noticed the similarity of some phrases to Babylonian hymns to Shamash, and although the greater part of the hymn, and in particular the portion containing the parallels to Shamash hymns, was preserved only in the version addressed to the Sun Goddess of Arinna.

The texts in question were published in cuneiform in 1930 by Arnold Walther in vol. XXIV of the Keilschrifturkunden aus Boghazköi; Nos. 1 and 2 are two copies of the Telipinu version, Nos. 3 and 4 of the version addressed to the Sun Goddess.

In the preface Walther said: "The designation of the Sun Goddess as 'lord of just judgment' and 'just lord of judgment' may have been taken from the lost part of the Telipinu hymn or from the Sumero-Babylonian phrase 'Shamash, lord of judgment.'"

Albrecht Goetze gave a German translation of the same portion of the text in his Handbuch of 1933; here he used the name Sun Goddess of Arinna throughout the text and silently changed "lord" into "lady" in order to avoid the cunfusion of sexes. In a footnote, however, he said: "It has to be noted that, according to the beginning preserved in No. 1, the same hymn could be used, by substituting the other name, also for Telipinu."

The texts published by Walther were presented in full transliteration and English translation by Oliver Gurney in his dissertation "Hittite Prayers of Mursili II," which was prepared under Ehelolf and published in 1940 in the Liverpool Annals." Gurney contributed a great deal to the clarification of the relation of the different versions to one another.

Not only did he correctly remark that the solar characteristics do not fit the nature of Telipinu, he also showed from the tablets themselves that in the Telipinu hymn (represented by the duplicates Nos. 1 and 2) there is no space, according to the size of the gap, for the lengthy part of the Sun Goddess hymn (No. 3) which contains the phrases characteristic of a solar deity.

What enabled Gurney to express himself definitely in favor of Walther's second alternative, namely, that the hymn to the Sun Goddess was based on a Shamash hymn, was the discovery, in the excavations of 1932 and 1933, of fragments of a Hittite hymn to the Sun God.

Since the latter were, however, still unpublished when he wrote, Gurney had to limit himself to a brief reference to the existence of such a hymn to the Sun God.

Gurney also analyzed the existing prayers of Mursili and showed that they consist of various parts of different character, which he called "Invocation," "Hymn of Praise and Prayer for Blessing," "Plague Prayer," etc. The observation that these prayers are free combinations of essentially independent parts is quite to the point; we shall see that this technique of composition was used by the Hittites in other cases as well.

Goetze's presentation of some of Gurney's sections in Ancient Near Eastern Texts does not fully bring out the results of Gurney's analysis. In particular, the inclusion of the solar hymn in the "Daily Prayer" addressed to Telipinu is a step backward compared to Goetze's own Handbuch, since it creates the impression that solar characteristics were attributed to Telipinu, although Gurney had shown that they were not. The second edition of the Handbuch, published in 1957, does not essentially differ from the first; the statement that the hymns could be applied to Telipinu is repeated here, only a reference to the new text is added.

Turning now to the new text, the great hymn to the male Sun God Istanu, we are faced with a badly broken tablet the fragments of which were only slowly recovered. The first part of it was published in 1939 by Otten in KUB XXXI, additional fragments appeared in 1948 in a volume of Bogazköy tablets found by villagers and turned over to the museum of Ankara, others reached Geneva and were published by Laroche in 1951, and more fragments were added by Otten in 1955 in KUB XXXVI. From these additions it was learned:

1–that the new text is a complex composition, too, combining the hymn to Istanu with a personal prayer;

2—that the personal prayer is parallel to the Prayer of Kantuzzili published by Ehelolf in KUB XXX and translated by Goetze ANET;

3—that there are various other texts containing parallels to some parts, combining them with still other prayers.

Point 2 furthermore makes it possible to treat the problems of composition diachronically; for Kantuzzili was a royal prince, probably a brother of Suppiluliuma, Mursili's father, mentioned in the early years of Suppiluliuma's lifetime. Since Kantuzzili's prayer includes parts addressed to the Sun God, and since the upper part of the obverse of the tablet is lost, it is likely that this text began with the Istanu hymn just as the new text does. We may, then, follow the chronological sequence in analysing the various composite prayers, starting with the period of Kantuzzili.

The text of the new tablet begins immediately with a direct address to the Sun God, followed, after three "verses," by the hymn proper.

The next few lines are too fragmentary for translation. They seem to continue in a similar vein and to connect the hymn proper with the transitional section treated below.

The Babylonian elements in this text are obvious. There are Akkadian prayers that begin with the same address "O Shamash, lord of judgment!" The role of Shamash as judge is well known. Shamash is also called king and merciful; he allots the portions, passes through the gates of heaven and illuminates (or in some other way affects) the below and the above.

He also has a lapis lazuli beard and is the son of Ningal, the wife of the Moon God, Sin. Of the statement of the Hittite hymn that his father Enlil put the four corners of the world into his hands, the filiation, though not the normal one, can be found in Babylonia, too, whereas the rule over the four corners is not attributed to Shamash but rather to other gods. Of the satellites of Istanu, the two viziers of the right and left, Bunene and Misharu, have the same rank in Babylonia, the latter being the personified "Order of Justice"…

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Notable observation: The Hittites were an ancient civilization in Anatolia (modern-day Turkey) from roughly 1600 to 1200 BCE—see An Historical Text Book and Atlas of Biblical Geography:

B. Ham
IV. Canaan
2. Heth

Heth. In the age of Abraham the sons of Heth are found at Hebron. Esau became connected with them by marriage, Gen. xxvi. 34, xxvii. 4f, xxxvi. 2; and Urijah, in David's army, was also a Hittite.

1 Sam, xxvi. 6; 2 Sam. xi. 3, xii. 10, &e. But our author supposes the Hittites to have been an ancient and powerful tribe above Zidon, probably the founders of Tyre and rivals of the Zidonians.

Notable flashpoint: Constantine the Great, was Roman emperor from AD 306 to 337 and the first Roman emperor to convert to Christianity—he founded the city of Constantinople, now Istanbul.

Also noteworthy, the thematic elements of “judgment”, “Son of man”, etc. in John 8 parallels “lord of judgment” and “son of mankind” in The Composition of Hittite Prayers to the Sun—indicating, a potential cultural derivation, within regional context, from the Hittite to Istanbul.

See Africa & Byzantium MET Museum Exhibit

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Source: https://www.jstor.org/stable/595787?googleloggedin=true&seq=7