Kumarbi
The worship of Kumarbi is attested from sites located in all areas inhabited by the Hurrians, from Anatolia to the Zagros Mountains, though it has been argued that his importance in the sphere of cult was comparatively minor.
The oldest possible reference to him occurs in a royal inscription from Urkesh from either the Akkadian or Ur III period, though the correct reading of the name of the deity meant is a matter of scholarly debate.
[1] In Ugaritic texts written in the local alphabetic cuneiform script it was rendered as kmrb (𐎋𐎎𐎗𐎁)[5] or kmrw (𐎋𐎎𐎗𐎆),[6] vocalized respectively as Kumarbi and Kumarwi.
[20] In myths he was portrayed as an old deposed king of the gods, replaced by his son Teshub, though this is presumed to be a fictional etiological narrative explaining the structure of the Hurrian pantheon, rather than reflection of a loss of importance at the expense of another deity.
[23][24][25] However, Lluís Feliu points out that the direct evidence for his supposed agrarian character is presently limited to the fact that the sumerogram dNISABA was sometimes employed to write his name, and the identification of a plant he holds on the Yazılıkaya relief as an ear of grain.
[10] Feliu’s criticism of this characterization is supported by Alfonso Archi, who points out the ear symbol is not used elsewhere, and might only represent a play on words referencing the scribal convention of using the name of dissimilar Hittite deity Ḫalki as a logogram designating Kumarbi.
[41] In the Hurrian column of a multilingual edition of the Weidner god list from Ugarit, a goddess named Ašte Kumurbineve, literally “wife of Kumarbi”, appears instead.
[42] However, according to Aaron Tugendhaft she is one of the deities attested in it who would be considered “pure scholarly inventions” meant to mimic Mesopotamian pairs of major gods and their wives with etymologically related names,[43] such as Anu and Antu.
[55] Ullikummi was the product of Kumarbi’s “sexual union with a huge cliff” according to Harry Hoffner,[54] though Daniel Schwemer instead assumes that the passage describing his conception alludes to a goddess related to stones.
[76] However, this assumptions rests on the proposed reading of a single inscription from Terqa from the end of the Old Babylonian period, in which Šunuḫru-ammu, a ruler of the kingdom of Khana, mentions the sacrifice he made to Dagan ša ḪAR-ri.
[77] The proposal that the epithet should be interpreted as ša Ḫur-ri, “of the Hurrians”, has originally been made by Ignace J. Gelb, and subsequently found support of authors such as Volkert Haas, Ichiro Nakata, Karel van der Toorn[78] and Alfonso Archi.
[79] References to Kumarbi have also been identified in texts from Alalakh, with one example being tablet A1T 15 which mentions a priest in his service, a certain Kabiya, though there is presently no indication that any of the structures discovered during excavations was dedicated to him.
[88] He is entirely absent from the earliest known Hurrian personal names from the Ur III and Old Babylonian periods, though it has been noted they usually were not theophoric, in contrast with these from later sites such as Nuzi, and that other major deities, like Šimige, Kušuḫ or Šauška, are also not attested in them.
[14] In Taite, a Mitanni city conquered by Assyria during the reign of Adad-nirari I,[122] Kumarbi apparently retained a degree of relevance well into Neo-Assyrian times alongside two other originally Hurrian deities, Nabarbi and Samnuha.
[3] This description has been described as an “unexpected reversal of sexes”,[127] but Mark Weeden notes that it might echo the Hurrian tradition about the birth of Teshub, in the context of which Kumarbi could similarly be referred to as his mother.
[126] He states that whether this reflects a survival of a local belief connected to the worship of Teshub in Aleppo, possibly though not necessarily tied to Mitanni royal ideology, or a tradition preserved in Hattusa and later imported into northern Syria is unknown.
[154] Amir Gilan has described it as “one of the finest and most sophisticated works of literature to survive from the Hittite world.”[151] The title Song of Kumarbi has originally been proposed by Hans Gustav Güterbock.
[159] The myth begins with an invocation of primeval deities, who are invited to listen to the narrator’s song about the deeds of Kumarbi, and with an account the reigns of three “kings in heaven” are described, without the origin of any of them being mentioned.
[164]Kumarbi spits out some of Anu’s semen, which falls on the mountain Kanzura which becomes pregnant with Tašmišu instead, though this still leaves the remaining two children inside him, and he travels to Nippur to seek a solution.
[100] The text does not explicitly refer to kingship among the gods or to the defeat of the eponymous figure, Silver,[f] and the assumptions that it structurally resembled other myths belonging to the Kumarbi Cycle, while considered plausible, is only conjectural.
[176] His mother eventually fearfully reveals to him that his father is Kumarbi, that his siblings are Teshub and Šauška, and that he should head to Urkesh, but when he reaches this city, he learns that he is gone from his house, and instead wanders the mountains.
[181] Kumarbi is displeased about being rebuked in front of other gods, and, possibly calling himself the son of Alalu, mentions the deity Ammezzadu in an unknown context while complaining about Ea’s words.
[184] In the beginning of the composition, Kumarbi devises a new plan[190] and travels from Urkesh to a cold spring, where he spots an enormous stone which he deems to be a suitable candidate to impregnate to create a new opponent for Teshub.
[156] It has been suggested that the text might deal with the final victory of Teshub over his adversaries,[176] though it has also been interpreted as an example of a narrative focused on a “minor kingship” as Eltara does not appear in sequences of “kings in heaven” in other sources, which list Alalu, Anu and Kumarbi.
[210] Daniel Schwemer in a more recent study argues that a confrontation between Teshub and the sea might have been the final section of the Kumarbi Cycle, in the aftermath of which his kingship was firmly established.
[218] The similarities include references to deities being placed inside someone, presumably Kumarbi, details of the accounts of the births of Aranzaḫ and Teshub, and the mention of impregnation by spittle.
[235] Kumarbi is also mentioned in a historiola focused on the flood hero in a text presumed to be a healing ritual of “Hurro-Luwian” background, in the past sometimes classified as a fragment of a Gilgamesh myth instead.
[148] Volkert Haas compared Kumarbi’s role as an antagonist seeking to overthrow the rule of another deity to those played by Mesopotamian Enmesharra and Ugaritic Mot in myths involving them, and has suggested that all of these narratives might symbolically represent times of hunger or other difficulties.
[260] She notes Kumarbi and Kronos in theory were figures more similar to each other, and assumes the motif was reinterpreted to suit Zeus instead because the author of this text wanted to emphasize his creative powers.
[262] As an extension of discussion of the possible influence of the Kumarbi Cycle and Theogony, additional parallels have been pointed out between both of these works and the accounts of the reigns of Elyon, Ouranos and El in the writings of Philo of Byblos.
