Worshipping Gods and Stones in Late Bronze Age Syria and Anatolia

Mesopotamia in the Ancient World Impact, Continuities, Parallels Proceedings of the Seventh Symposium of the Melammu Project Held in Obergurgl, Austria, November 4–8, 2013 Edited by Robert Rollinger and Erik van Dongen

Melammu Symposia 7 Edited by Robert Rollinger (Helsinki / Innsbruck)

In collaboration with Ann Gunter (Evanston), Jaakko Hämeen-Anttila (Helsinki), Johannes Haubold (Durham), Giovanni-Battista Lanfranchi (Padova), Krzysztof Nawotka (Wrocław), Martti Nissinen (Helsinki), Beate Pongratz-Leisten (New York), Kai Ruffing (Kassel), Josef Wiesehöfer (Kiel)

Mesopotamia in the Ancient World Impact, Continuities, Parallels Proceedings of the Seventh Symposium of the Melammu Project Held in Obergurgl, Austria, November 4–8, 2013 Edited by Robert Rollinger and Erik van Dongen

Ugarit-Verlag Münster 2015

Mesopotamia in the Ancient World. Impact, Continuities, Parallels. Proceedings of the Seventh Symposium of the Melammu Project Held in Obergurgl, Austria, November 4–8, 2013

Edited by Robert Rollinger and Erik van Dongen

Melammu Symposia 7

© 2015 Ugarit-Verlag – Buch- und Medienhandel GmbH, Münster www.ugarit-verlag.com All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photo-copying, recording, or otherwise, without the prior permission of the publisher. Printed in Germany by Memminger MedienCentrum, Memmingen ISBN 978-3-86835-128-6 Printed on acid-free paper

Table of Contents Introduction: Obergurgl 2013, or A New Dawn for the Melammu Project ................ 1 Robert Rollinger

Old Battles, New Horizons: The Ancient Near East and the Homeric Epics ........ 5

Talking to God(s): Prayers and Incantations Tzvi Abusch (Chair) Introduction ......................................................................................................... 35

Cynthia Jean Performing Rituals in Secluded Places: A Comparison of the Akkadian and Hittite Corpus ............................................................................................... 41

Patrick M. Michel Worshipping Gods and Stones in Late Bronze Age Syria and Anatolia ............. 53

Alan Lenzi The Language of Akkadian Prayers in Ludlul Bēl Nēmeqi and its Significance within and beyond Mesopotamia ............................................... 67

David P. Wright Ritual Speech in the Priestly-Holiness Prescriptions of the Pentateuch and its Near Eastern Context ................................................................................... 107

Alberto Bernabé To Swear to Heaven and Earth, from Mesopotamia to Greece ......................... 125

Martin Lang (Respondent) Response ........................................................................................................... 135

Et Dona Ferentes: Foreign Reception of Mesopotamian Objects D. T. Potts (Chair) Introduction ....................................................................................................... 143

Giacomo Bardelli Near Eastern Influences in Etruria and Central Italy between the Orientalizing and the Archaic Period: The Case of Tripod-Stands and Rod Tripods ................................................................................................ 145

VI Table of Contents

Winfried Held and Deniz Kaplan The Residence of a Persian Satrap in Meydancıkkale, Cilicia .......................... 175

Joachim Ganzert On the Archetype of Sacral Rulership Legitimization and the Lower Court in the Lüneburg Town Hall ............................................................................... 193

Ann C. Gunter (Respondent) Response ........................................................................................................... 221

‘Fighting like a Lion’: The Use of Literary Figures of Speech Simone Paganini (Chair) Introduction ....................................................................................................... 227

Sebastian Fink Metaphors for the Unrecognizability of God in Balaĝs and Xenophanes ......... 231

Johannes Haubold ‘Shepherds of the People’: Greek and Mesopotamian Perspectives ................. 245

Krzysztof Ulanowski The Metaphor of the Lion in Mesopotamian and Greek Civilization .............. 255

Amar Annus and Mari Sarv The Ball Game Motif in the Gilgamesh Tradition and International Folklore ........................................................................................ 285

Thomas R. Kämmerer (Respondent) Response ........................................................................................................... 297

Mesopotamia and the World: Interregional Interaction Giovanni-Battista Lanfranchi (Chair) Introduction ....................................................................................................... 307

Reinhard Pirngruber šulmu jâši libbaka lu ṭābka : The Interaction between the Neo-Assyrian King and the Outside World ................................................ 317

André Heller Why the Greeks Know so Little about Assyrian and Babylonian History ........ 331

Julien Monerie Writing Greek with Weapons Singularly Ill-designed for the Purpose: The Transcription of Greek in Cuneiform ........................................................ 349

Krzysztof Nawotka Alexander the Great in Babylon: Reality and Myth .......................................... 365

Table of Contents VII

Birgit Gufler and Irene Madreiter The Ancient Near East and the Genre of Greek Historiography ....................... 381

Simonetta Ponchia (Respondent) Response ........................................................................................................... 397

The World of Politics: ‘Democracy’, Citizens, and ‘Polis’ Kurt A. Raaflaub (Chair) Introduction ....................................................................................................... 413

Kristoffer Momrak Identifying Popular Power: Who were the People of Ancient Near Eastern City-States? ....................................................................................................... 417

Kurt A. Raaflaub Lion’s Roar and Muses’ Song: Social and Political Thinking in Early Greek Poets and Early Israelite Prophets ..................................................................... 433

Sabine Müller A History of Misunderstandings? Macedonian Politics and Persian Prototypes in Greek Polis-Centered Perspective ............................................... 459

Raija Mattila (Respondent) Response ........................................................................................................... 481

Iran and Early Islam Lucian Reinfandt (Chair) Introduction ....................................................................................................... 487

Aleksandra Szalc Semiramis and Alexander in the Diodorus Siculus’ Account (II 4–20) ............ 495

Tim Greenwood Oversight, Influence and Mesopotamian Connections to Armenia Across the Sasanian and Early Islamic Periods ................................................ 509

Lutz Berger Empire-building vs. State-building between Late Antiquity and Early Islam ................................................................................................. 523

Josef Wiesehöfer (Respondent) Response ........................................................................................................... 533

Representations of Power: Shaping the Past and the Present Sabina Franke (Chair)

Introduction ....................................................................................................... 539

VIII Table of Contents

Frederick Mario Fales Looking the God in the Eye: Sennacherib’s Bond with Destiny, from Rock Reliefs to Cylinder Seals ................................................................ 543

Dirk Wicke Assyrian or Assyrianized: Reflections on the Impact of Assyrian Art in Southern Anatolia ......................................................................................... 561

Rocío Da Riva Enduring Images of an Ephemeral Empire: Neo-Babylonian Inscriptions and Representations on the Western Periphery ................................................. 603

Christoph Schäfer Inspiration and Impact of Seleucid Royal Representation ................................ 631

Jonathan Valk and Beate Pongratz-Leisten (Respondent) Response ........................................................................................................... 643

List of Contributors ................................................................................................ 653 Index ....................................................................................................................... 657

Worshipping Gods and Stones in Late Bronze Age Syria and Anatolia

Patrick M. Michel

Worshipping deities in the Late Bronze Age appears to have been similar with re-spect to certain features both in North Syria and in Anatolia. An explanation is that a common substrate existed in this area, i.e. a Hurrian one. However, we should not overlook the fact that northern Syria was included in the Hittite Empire during the reign of Mursili II and that, during the Late Bronze Age, Emar, one of the most im-portant city of Aštata, was part of the Hittite Empire.

We are already familiar with the cult reorganization program of Tudḫaliya IV (Hazenbos, 2003) in several towns and sanctuaries throughout Anatolia, but we should also consider how this reorganization had affected worship and worship centers in the newly conquered Syrian cities. This paper would like to deal with the worship of two different kinds of cult objects: 1) anthropomorphic statues of the god and 2) the aniconic forms of the deity, e.g. a standing stone. Worship of these objects was often conducted separately, but here we will focus on those cults that worship both the anthropomorphic statuary and the aniconic forms of the god, a feature common to cults in both Anatolia and northern Syria at the same time.

In this context, the cuneiform texts of Late Bronze Age Emar give us great in-sight into cults of deities in the local pantheon that included both statues and stand-ing stones. The Hittite texts of the same period provide similar insight into the same phenomenon. The numerous “cult inventories” and festival texts that date to the reign of the Hittite Great King Tudḫaliya IV describe in detail the way one should worship deities, both with statues and standing stones.

Which rites (SISKUR) are linked to the cults (EZEN)?1 What information do we have to describe the rites? The following study would like to deal with some specific ritual actions to show how gods were worshipped both in Syria and in Anatolia, during the period when Aštata (in the area of Northern Syria) was part of the Hittite Empire. With respect to the combined iconic-aniconic cults we will examine the following features of cult ritual:

• processions; • offerings; • veiling of a stone or a statue;

1 These EZEN festivals or cults are composed of several SISKUR rituals/rites. An EZEN could have more than one SISKUR whereas a SISKUR is a unique element of an EZEN.

54 Talking to God(s): Prayers and Incantations

• anointing of stones; and • burning of offerings.

Emar texts Of the texts excavated at Emar, most were discovered in building M1, the so-called “Temple of the Diviner”, which was in fact the archive, library, and school of a family of diviners, known as the Zu-Bala family.2 Written in the “Syrian” hand (except Emar 375 and 446), the texts can be divided into three categories: ephemeral documents, cultic documents and scholarly writings. Here we are interested primar-ily in the cultic documents.

The cultic documents describe rituals (SISKUR/SÍSKUR) and festivals (EZEN/ EZEN4). They provide a clear and detailed view of local religion, including proce-dures both for the celebrating of city gods and for the installation of the city’s reli-gious personnel. None of them contains a colophon, making it impossible for us to know who wrote them. That they are all, however, part of the Diviner’s archive, enables us to treat them roughly as a corpus.

Three major EZEN festivals are of particular interest to us: the Zukrum,3 the In-stallation of the maš¬artu, and the Installation of the ENTU of Ba¬al.

These three festivals have in common the worshipping of standing stones. Thus, we will study those SISKUR that involve the worship of these standing stones. The important Zukrum festival (EZEN) illustrates how the statues of the gods are carried out of the city to be worshipped in an open-air sanctuary. The rituals (SISKUR) are held in a place called the “Gate of the sikkanu” (Gate of the standing stones). How were the deities worshipped in this holy sanctuary? What is the relationship between the statues of the gods and the standing stones?

In the Installation of the maš¬artu, a standing stone is carried onto the roof of a temple during the night. In the Installation of Ba¬al’s ENTU, a standing stone of NIN.KUR is brought to the priestess’s house and draped with a red veil. Afterward, the same stone is anointed by the priestess with oil.

EZEN Zukrum

In thirteenth century Emar, there was a seven-year cycle of ceremonies. The element most distinctive of the lithic rituals at Emar is the fact that the anthropomorphic statue of the god is brought out of his temple and out of the city to an open-air sanc-tuary in the countryside, where the original essence of the divine is. This festival gives a very complete vision of the several rites carried out during the ceremony. First, we read of the procession in text Emar 373:

2 See now Rutz, 2013. 3 Edition of the text: Fleming, 2000: 234–257.

P. M. Michel: Worshipping Gods and Stones in Late Bronze Age Syria and Anatolia 55

25 dŠa-aš-ša-be-tu4 ša É dNIN.URTA i-na KÁ na4.mešsi-ka-na-ti u[ṣ-ṣ]a “Šaššabētu of NIN.URTA’s temple goes out at the ‘Gate of the sikka-

nu’.” 29–30 dNIN.É.GAL-lì d30 dUTU ša É.GAL-lì i-na KÁ na4.mešsi-ka-na-ti ú-še-

ṣu-ú “They make Bēlet-ekalli go out, The Moon God and the Sun god of

the Palace (in procession) at the ‘Gate of the sikkanu’.” 45–47 KUR EN bu-ka-ri dNIN.URTA dŠa-aš-ša-be-[ta š]a É dNIN.URTA

[dNIN.É.GA]L-lì d30 ˹u˺ dUTU ša É.GAL-lì DINGIRmeš [gáb]-bi u dingir.mešŠa-aš-ša-be-ia-na-ti x x x x x (x x) a-na KÁ na4.mešsi-ka-na-t[i] ˹ú˺-še-ṣu-ú

“Dagan, Lord of Offspring?, NIN.URTA, Šaššabētu of NIN.URTA’s temple, NIN.É.GAL, the Moon God and the Sun God of the Palace, all the gods and the Šaššabēyānātu spririts, they make go out at the at the ‘Gate of the sikkanu’.”

163 [x x (x) giš]MAR.GÍD.DA [ša dKUR i-na?] be-ra-at na4.mešs[i-ka-na-ti

e(-et)-ti-iq] “[ . . . ] the chariot/wagon [of Dagan passes between] the standing

s[tones].” Parallel passages also give: 183–184 gišMAR.GÍD.DA i-na be-ra-at na4.mešsi-ka-na-ti e-et-ti-iq “The chariot (of Dagan) passes between the standing stones.”

or

191–192 i-na pa-ni nu-ba-ti dKUR i-na be-ra-at na4.mešsi-ka-na-ti e-ti-iq “At nightfall, Dagan passes (with his chariot) between the standing

stones.” The procession, which leads from the inner city to the open-air sanctuary, passes by a gate. This gate serves as the limen through which the deity travels from one space to another. The very name of the gate, “Gate of the Standing Stones”, indicates its cultic importance. Although we do not know where the gate was, its name indicates clearly that it was directly linked to the place of worship. The text tells us that the deities go out to this gate where the stones stand. We read of the further detail of the double procession: the first procession occurs by day and the second one “at night-fall”. Offerings are described as follows: 172–173 ku-ba-da TUR (eras.) i-na KÁ na4.mešsi-ka-na-ti a-na pa-n[i-šu] DÙ “The small kubadu at the ‘Gate of the sikkanu (standing stones)’, they

make in front of [him] (Dagan).”


The kubadu should be understood as a particular ritual offering (small or big), which appears several times during the Zukrum celebration and is closely linked to the burnt offering ambaššu/i.4 The kubadu is not peculiar to the Zukrum: we find it in several festivals of Emar, but, in the Zukrum, it appears at the gate. The kubadu of a burnt animal is specific to the Zukrum:5

35–37 a-na pa-ni KÁ.GAL ša qa-ab-li ku-ba-da a-na gáb-bi DINGIRmeš DÙ

1 UDU.U8 ša-a-si a-na gáb-bi DINGIRmeš i-qa-al-lu-ú “At the Great Central Gate they perform the kubadu for all the gods.

That one ewe is to be burned for all the gods.” We find burnt animal offerings nowhere else in Syria, but examples of burnt animal offerings are attested in Hittite Anatolia, in Bronze Age Greece and in the Bible.6 So how did it become involved in the Zukrum of Emar? When the celebrants get back to town a ewe is burnt for Dagan and NIN.URTA at the Great Central Gate.7 This gate should be considered the last one on the return to the temples, or perhaps the last one before re-entering the city. If so, the Gate of the standing stones could be identified with the door of the sanctuary, and the Great Central Gate as a City Gate on the city wall. This practice appears elsewhere in Emar ritual with the Hurro-Hit-tite name ambaššu, which means that the whole animal is given to the gods and that nothing is consumed by human beings (see below). Gates and doors often serve as loci for offerings and ritual practices, because going out of the temple and then, out of the city, is a dangerous issue: the god being out of its house is more vulnerable. That’s the reason why one should veil the god and ask protection for the going and the coming back. One should also prevent the enemy from stealing the statue. Furthermore, Emar’s gates of rituals are to be con-sidered as borders between the urban and non-urban (wild) word. However, the statue of the deity has to return intermittently from the urbanized world to nature (where the aniconic-original form of the deity is), and this crossing of the limen could not happen without very specific offerings to the gods.

The veiling of the statue is a very important issue in the second part of the Zukrum text, which insists on the visibility of the statue of Dagan. The deity is un-veiled only in front of the sacred stones, which underlines the importance of this ritual moment.8 We see the following information about Dagan’s appearance (with line numbers):

4 Ambaššu is the Akkadian form of the Hurro-Hittite word ambašši-. 5 Qalû ‘to burn’. 6 Exodus 29, 18 mentions this noble sacrifice: “and burn the whole ram upon the altar; it is a burnt offering to the Lord; it is a pleasing odor, an offering by fire to the Lord” (US Revised Standard Version, 1952). 7 See Emar 373: 62. [i-na pa-n]i KÁ.GAL ša [qa-a]b-li ku-ba-da, ou Emar 373: 166–167. Fleming, 2000: 247–249. “When they reach [the great gate of] battle (different translation of qablu/qablû), they perform the lesser sacrificial homage (kubadu). They burn for all the gods [one ewe, two] pair of thick loaves and [one] jar from the King. They anoint the stones [with oil and blood].” 8 However, on the 15 SAG.MU of the 6th year, Dagan goes out the city without a veil. We see no explanation for this.


15 SAG.MU of the 6th year: • The statue of Dagan EN buqari (Lord of Offsprings?) is unveiled when it goes

out in a procession (172). • The statue of Dagan is veiled after the sacrifice (173). • Statues of Dagan and NIN.URTA are veiled during the procession (176). 25 Niqali of the 6th year, all the gods are brought to the standing stones: • The statue of Dagan EN buqari is veiled when it goes out in a procession (180) • The statue of Dagan is veiled for going and return (181) 15 SAG.MU of the 7th year: • The statue of Dagan is veiled to go (189). • The statue of Dagan passes unveiled between the stones (163). • The statue of Dagan is veiled (to get back from the open-air sanctuary of stand-

ing stones) (192). The 7th day of the 7th year: • The statue of Dagan is veiled to go to the standing stones (198). • The statue of Dagan is unveiled after the fire, in order to pass between the stones

(202). The purpose of veiling Dagan’s statue while it stands outside the temple is also to prevent the bad omen of Dagan looking in the direction of an enemy during his procession. Normally, the statue of Dagan appears unveiled only in front of the sacred stones. This practice evidences a real concern about controlling people’s access to Dagan through his statue.9 It is rare to have such attention to veiling the god in an ancient ritual text. Finally, the anointing of stones is described in several places in the text, using oil and blood: 167 [… Ìmeš (?) ÚŠmeš NA]4

meš i-pá-aš-ša-šú “They anoint the stones [with oil and blood].”

34 (consecration’s year) ki-i-me-e KÚ NAG NA4

meš gáb-bá iš-tu Ìmeš ù ÚŠmeš i-ṭa-ru-u

60 (celebration’s year) [ki-i]-me-e KÚ NAGmeš na4.mešsi-ka-na-ti iš-tu Ìmeš ÚŠmeš [i/ú-pá-š]a-šu

This kind of blood rite is well known from Kizzuwatna, but no parallels have been found in Mesopotamia (see below). It is worth emphasizing that the Emar unction seems to be a mix of blood and oil, rubbed on the stones after the feast. This practice is considered a means of feeding the aniconic deities with the blood of sacrificed animals, in the same way that the burnt offerings allow all the gods to be fed. Actu-ally, burnt offerings are for all gods because the savour ascends to heaven. It in-volves a broader dispersal of the sacrificial offerings than the precise application of a blood unction to a single deity’s statue or stone.

9 See also Crowell, 2001: 62.


We can observe that during the consecration year, which is the sixth in the sev-en-year cycle, the Akkadian verb ṭarû is used, whereas we find pašašu during the celebration of the Zukrum. Should we understand some sort of ritual difference? Fleming suggests that the first verb is a more specific term than the general verb pašašu,10 expressing a physical contact with hands, and points out that the very word for “standing stones”, sik(k)anati, appears only during the festival. In fact, in the entire ritual text, standing stones are called sikkanu only during the celebration of the Zukrum. Thus, it may be the case that sikkanu is only used to speak of stones in a sacred and ritual context. The same phenomenon appears in the Mari letters, which date back to Zimrî-Lîm: when the king asks for a stone, or when the merchant speaks about a stone for the cult of Ištar, the scribe writes NA4 or abnum. But when the text deals directly with the celebration of Ištar or speaks about standing stones of gods that are already in place, the scribes uses the lexeme sikkanu.11

The climax of the festival lies in the meeting of the anthropomorphic statue of Dagan with several sacred stones standing outside the city walls. This meeting needs a long preparation, and the several rites are executed along the procession leading to this open-air sanctuary.

Installations of priestess During the installations (malluku) of women, two similar rites are practiced: veiling and unction.

The veiling of the priestess appears in the ritual for Ba¬al entu’s (EREŠ. DINGIR). Like a bride, the girl is veiled (Emar 369: 60–64) before she leaves her father’s house to meet the deity. Her face is covered with a red veil taken from NIN.KUR’s temple. One should not only consider this veil as a wedding garment, but also as a materialized distance between the human being and the god. The girl will be allowed to look directly at Ba¬al only once the installation is completed. Before its completion, the girl’s vision of the god is to be occluded just like that of the people of Emar vis-à-vis Dagan. Thus, the veil is to be understood as a means of protecting the deity and maintains the distinction between men and gods while they interact. During this installation there is a double unction: first, the diviner (lúḪAL) anoints the girl; then, the girl anoints the standing stone of NIN.KUR in the same manner in which she was anointed. This double action creates a clear identification between the priestess and the goddess NIN.KUR, who is presumably the consort of Ba¬al.

We may also find a rite of unction during the installation of the maš ¬artu (Emar 370). On the third day of the malluku, a standing stone is placed on the top of a building. During the night, cedar oil and a goat are offered to Aštarte, with the epi-thet tāḫāzi.12 Should we imagine that the cedar oil is used to anoint the stone? It is

10 Fleming, 2000: 83 and note 140. 11 Compare for example ARM XIV, 26 (A.1957) with M.7014, see also Michel, 2014: 83–84. 12 Because of the presence of the lú.meš tāḫāzi (Emar 370: 62, edited by Arnaud, 1985–1986).


worth noting in this case that the oil is specifically derived from cedar. We do not know if giš.ì giš.erin (Emar 370: 42) refers to cedar oil or cedar resin, but here the term should be understood as vegetable oil, perhaps olive, which has been perfumed with cedar wood more than resin. It is difficult to say if the cedar used for this oil is from Lebanon (Pinaceae). The value of cedar to perfumers lies in the oils held in the wood. They protect the tree from attacks by insects and fungi, and incidentally have an attractive odour to humans.13 The practice of conducting offerings on top of the temple is also attested in Uga-rit: we know specifically about the tower of Ba®al (KTU 1.119:12) or the high chapel (KTU 1.41: 37, 46). Worshipping deities in the heights, on tops of buildings or on mountain-tops, was the best way to be closer to heaven, and thus, to the gods. Con-cerning the maš¬artu ritual, acting by night or on the top of the building should here be considered as another means to avoid people to look at the deity. There is no use of veil in this ritual, but the darkness of the night stands in for the veil. In Emar, the visibility of the deity outside the temple is a fulltime preoccupation during the rituals.

Hittite texts Hittite Cult inventories represent a very extensive corpus of texts. However, they are repetitive enough to allow us to take only a few of them into consideration. We will mostly consider CTH 525.314 concerning cults in the cities of Urišta and Ḫakmiš, describing processions and meeting of the statue with its own stone. This inventory dates back to the Late Hittite Period and was found in excavation debris. We also add CTH 525.2 (KUB 17.35) dating from the same period and dealing with unction. Other aspects of the cult will be discussed in the following ritual texts: Ritual for the Goddess of the Night (CTH 481), a (Ḫ)išuwa feast (CTH 628) and the AN. TAḪ.ŠUM festival, all dealing with ambaššu-burnt offerings (CTH 594) and feast for Teššub and Ḫebat of Lawazantija (CTH 699) concerning the veiling of statues. Different Hittite deities went regularly (autumn and spring) out of their temple to reach an open-air sanctuary in the countryside or in the mountains to be worshipped in the original place that gave birth to their cult. As we saw in Emar, the going out of the temple represents a procession. In CTH 525.3 (KUB XXV 23), the procession is described as follows:

12’nu ma-a-an IŠ-TU lúKÚR kat-ta ki-it-ta-ri ˹na˺[-a]n ḪUR.SAG-i pé-tanx-zi na-˹an˺ [na4ZI.KIN pé-ra-an ta-ni-nu-wa-an-zi] 13’na4ZI.KIN-ia gišḫa-a-ra-u-i kat-ta-an ar-˹ta˺-˹ri˺ 3! NINDA UP-NI pár-ši-ya-an-zi 14’KAŠ-ia ši-ip-pa-an-zi ma-a-an ˹IŠ˺-˹TU˺ lúKÚR Ú-UL kat-ta ki-it-ta 15’na-an na4ZI.KIN gišḫa-a-ra-u-i ka[t-t]a-an ÍD-an-kán ta-pu-ša

13 The composition of the essential oil varies radically with the species. Those of the family Cupressaceae typically contain cedrol, cedrene and thujopsene, while one member of the genus Cedrus (Cedrus deodara) yields alpha- and gamma-atlantones and deodarone. I thank Emmert Clevenstine for giving me this information. 14 See Hazenbos, 2003: 30–40.


“When (the country) is under enemy control, they bring it (statue of Mt. Ḫaluwanna) to the mountain and [they arrange it in front of the standing stone], the stone is standing under a poplar.15 They break three pieces of bread of one upnu and offer beer. When (the country) is not under enemy control, then the stone (is) under a poplar close to a river.”

The procession is divided into two different itineraries, depending on the political situation of the country. The safety of the god is a very important issue, and the ritual officials would try to avoid any risk of having the statue stolen by enemies. Having one’s god in enemy hands would mean having one’s own god against one-self. This was a quite important point for the Hittites who used to integrate foreign deities, such as Aššur or Ištar, into their own pantheon. The earliest example is the integration of the Storm God of Aleppo at the time of Ḫattusili I. He took the god as booty from his campaigns in northern Syria. Collins writes that he eventually be-came syncretized with Teššub, becoming fully integrated by the time of the early empire.16 Taking into consideration the importance of Aleppo, Bachvarova states that “the possibility of diplomatic ramifications to the introduction and subsequent elevation of its god, although not recorded in the text, should not be ignored.”17

Besides conducting the procession so as to avoid theft of the gods, of particular importance in the ritual procession was that it concluded at the poplar. One would expect the deity of Mt. Ḫaluwanna to go back to his mountain to be worshipped, but we know that the river could also be used as ritual place as long as a poplar was present. Thus both mountains and rivers were fitting locales for these rituals, since they both were acknowledged as containing natural power. Standing stones under trees, and/or next to rivers are attested in several Hittite texts.18 This gives a quite precise image of the holy natural place, where the sacred stone is worshipped in a grove or next to water (which was needed for ritual purpose: hydrophoria). We do not exactly understand the meaning of trees in the rituals but we can notice, as in the text CTH 525.3, that they have been considered as very localized divine spirits19 (with anima = Hitt. istanzana-).20

The most common offering was bread. The same text CTH 525.3 reads:

Obv.8’–9’GIM-an-ma ḫa-mi-iš-ḫi DÙ-ri te-et-ḫa-i dugḫar-˹ši˺ [ge-e-nu-wa-an-zi na-at] ( . . . ) 44’LÚ.MEŠ uruÚ-ri-iš-ta ma-al-la-an-zi ḫar-ra-an-z[i] (…) NINDA.KUR4.RA dugḫar-ši-ia-aš

“At spring time, it thunders, [they open] the ḫarši vase, and the men of the city of Urišta grind and mash (grain) (…) (they place) 1 thick bread (made with the grain) of the ḫarši vase.”

15 Akk. ṣarbatu, perhaps the Euphrates Poplar (populus euphratica). 16 Collins, 2010: 60. 17 Bachvarova, 2009: 34. 18 Karaḫna festival (CTH 681.1), cult of Nerik (CTH 678), and during the AN.TAḪ.ŠUM festival on the 14th and on the 15th day. We can also add a ritual for Telepinu (CTH 638.2.H). 19 Bryce, 2004: 145. 20 Lebrun, 2003: 70.


This bit of text helps us understand the importance of Hittite seasonal rituals. At the end of summer, the grain was put into a pithos (Hitt. ḫarši), which would be reo-pened the following spring. The grain was then mashed to prepare the ritual bread used in the offerings. This ritual action clearly links the two yearly processions of the anthropomorphic statue of the deity to the natural sanctuary. The central moment of the ritual was the breaking of the freshly baked bread.21 This breaking of bread, which is peculiar to Hittite rituals, is also found in Emar in the so-called Anatolian ritual, which displays the Akkadian form NINDA ksp (Emar 472).

The information we have regarding the veiling statues in Anatolia is not as clear as the evidence from Emar, but garments were used for statues in Hittite ritual as well. CTH 699 (KBo XXIII 34) shows how the goddess Ḫebat is dressed with a red garment (alalu) during the procession. The red garment will be taken off when the statue enters holy grove. 13’ gada-]la!-a-lu SA5 A-NA Ḫé-pát ḫi-in-ga-nu-z[i

“(With?) a red [a]lalu [garment] for Ḫebat he tends his homage.”

The anointing of stones was a very common feature in the Hittite rites for standing stones. CTH 525.2 (KUB XVII 35 obv. II: 16–19) mentions washing and anointing of stones:22 18 na4ZI.KIN ŠE+NÁG-an-zi Ì-an-zi DINGIR-LUM PA-NI na4ZI.KIN

“They wash the standing stone. They anoint (it). (They place) the deity in front of the standing stone.”

The sumerogram Ì followed by a verbal ending is used for the anointing of human beings (KUB XXXVI 90: 15–18), animals (Kumarbi Cycle KUB XXXVI 12), and gods (KUB XVII 35).23 The text CTH 525.2 specifies that the stone is first washed. This may be necessary to take off the oil that had been used in the last ritual. Only after the unction is the statue placed in front of its own stone. The whole ritual pre-pares the meeting of the two material representations of the deity, namely the an-thropomorphic statue and the aniconic stone. The text CTH 481, IV shows a Hittite-Hurrian (from Kizzuwatna) example of blood unction. 38–40 “The golden god, the walls and tools of the brand new (golden) god

they anoint with blood. The new deity and the temple are now clean.”24

This kind of blood rite is well known in Ḫatti and from Kizzuwatna, or Hurrian rituals,25 but no parallel could be found in Mesopotamia, where blood rites are apo-tropaic. In Hittite rituals, blood serves to nourish gods.

21 Archi, 1975. 22 Fleming, 2000: 87, note 161, donnait la référence de ce texte, pour l’édition du texte voir Carter, 1962: 127 and 140. 23 For further examples and discussion see Lam, 2011: 167–168. 24 Wright, 1987: 36 note 67.


“The blood rite reflects a unique South Anatolian / North Syrian phenomenon. Although one could hypothetically view this similarity as an effect of Hittite political hegemony in Emar during this period, it seems just as likely that the blood rite of the zukru-festival represents one of the many indigenous Syrian traditions preserved by the ritual corpus of Emar.”26

Contrary to Feder, I do think this is an effect of the Hittite religious and political control during the thirteenth century. Furthermore, the procession of Dagan during the Zukrum is similar to those processions that are described in the cult inventories for the spring and autumn festivals in Hittite Anatolia. Ritual processions, both in Emar and in Hittite Anatolia occur when the anthropomorphic statue of the god, the image, is taken outside the city to be worshiped with his standing stone ḫuwaši/sik-kānu. The religious meaning seems to be the same, and we can consider that the Zukrum, in its Late Bronze Age form is somehow “Hittitizied” because of the Hittite political hegemony. Another element is found in the Emar ritual as well as in the Hittite ritual and represents a very specific rite, the burning of offerings. Let us consider the text KUB XXXII 128 Vs. I (CTH 628): 24 na-aš-ta LUGAL-uš IŠ-TU É dIš-ḫa-ra pa-ra-a 25 ú-iz-zi na-aš I-NA É dAl-la-a-ni pa-iz-zi 26 nu A-NA dIš-ḫa-ra ma-aḫ-ḫa-an MUŠEN am-ba-aš-ši 27 MÁŠ.GAL-ia ke-el-di-ia ši-pa-an-te-er 28 A-NA dAl-la-a-ni am-ba-aš-ši 1 MUŠEN 1 UDU-ia 29 ke-el-di-ia QA-TAM-MA ši-pa-an-da-an-zi 30 ḫu-u-ma-an-kán QA-TAM-MA ḫa-an-da-a-an wa-a-tar-ra 31 gišERIN-az DINGIRlim-ni me-na-aḫ-ḫa-an-da munustap-ri-ia-aš 32 [(l)]a-ḫu-u-wa-i ma-a-an munustap-ri-ia-aš-ma NU.GÁL 33 [(nu)] wa-a-tar gišERIN-ia DINGIRlim-ni me-na-aḫ-ḫa-an-da 34 [(lúSAN)]GA-š[(u-pá)]t la-a-ḫu-u-wa-i

“The king goes out of the temple of Išḫara and goes to the temple of Allani. When they sacrifice one bird for the goddess Išḫara as a burning offering and a goat as an offering for the well-being,

they also sacrifice a bird and a sheep to the goddess Allani as a burning offering (and) the same for the offering for the well-being. That way everything has been ordered. And the tapriya women libate water with a cup of cedar wood. If there is no tapriya women, the priest libates the water with a cup of cedar wood in front of the deity.”

25 Beckman, 2011: 101 “But it must be recalled that without exception, the texts featuring the verb ešḫarnumāi- are late and Hurrian-influenced. That is, they belong to the Kizzuwatnaean stratum of Hittite cult, which introduced such other novelties as burnt offerings and the wide-spread use of bird sacrifice into Ḫatti.” 26 Feder, 2010: 110–111.


The most common burnt animal is bird, but this text also attests the burning of a goat or a sheep. The offering ambašši is made together with the keldi-,27 and both terms are borrowed from Hurrian vocabulary. The latter is specifically offered for the well-being of the deity. Burning an animal means that the whole offering is made for the god and that the human, priest or not, does not take anything for him-self. This was the best way to worship the gods, and that might be the reason why this kind of offering was done for the gods’ “well-being”. Several rites were necessary to take care of the divine statue. The act of anoint-ing may have been the first of a series of different rites performed for the deity.28 In this series, one could easily add the burnt offering.

Conclusion: How should we understand the meeting of a statue with a standing stone in an open-air sanctuary? Worshipping deities means taking care of the gods and feeding them. Several rituals are attested in the religious texts: processions, unction, veiling and offerings. All the cases studied in this paper concern the rites executed with the processions removing the statue of the deity out of the temple and into an open-air sanctuary. During the ritual the anthropomorphic statue meets his aniconic double. Such a meeting appears to be periodical and linked either to an annual cycle or to a seasonal cycle. In both case, the procession leading the statue to the sanctuary where the stones stood was an important event. Several rites were necessary during the procession, some in-cluded passing through gates, and avoiding visual contact with the deity. The veiling of the statue outside the temple is therefore well attested. The different ritual texts presented here help us to understand the way stones and divine statues were wor-shipped, both in Anatolia and in Syria at the same time. Offerings were made in different forms (oil, bread, meat), with anointing and burning of animals (goat, sheep). The unction can be of different kind. The use of blood is rare in Mesopota-mia, but well documented in the Hurrian context of Syria and Anatolia during the Late Bronze Age. In the texts, the blood is clearly identified with the blood of the slaughtered animal, and used to feed the aniconic deity. The Emarite Zukrum should primarily be the moment when Dagan meets his own stone, in front of all the deities. It is the meeting of the aniconic form of Dagan and his anthropomorphic statue. As in his case, all the deities of Emar (statues of temples) came out of the city and went to the “Gate of sikkanu (standing stones)” in order to meet their own stone. This meeting corresponds to the necessity of the hand-made statue of the deity to go to the original place of its cult. A hand-made statue was not considered to be a divine image directly after its fabrication. It is known, for example, that the Mesopotamian ritual Mîs pî (washing of the mouth) permits the human-made statue to become a divine image. The most important ele-

27 Used as the equivalent of akkadien šulmu(m). For an etymology of the Hurrian vocable and more examples of ambašši together with keldi-, one could see Nougayrol et al., 1968: 513 and Lam, 2011: 163–164. 28 Lam, 2011: 163–164.


ment in this ritual is that the hands of the craftsman are symbolically cut with a wooden sword. This ritual act is necessary to make the statue enter the divine sphere after its fabrication. Such a ritual shows how the ancient civilizations of the Near East were conscious of the non-divine status of the new divine statue. On the other hand, the religions were naturalistic. Sun, stars, rivers and mountains were divine. Stones found in nature or on mountain, near rivers or under trees could have been divine. Amorphous stones were divine because they were given as such by gods in nature. Taking this evidence into consideration, the aniconic standing stone was seen as the best way to materialize divine power. Each hand-made divine statue had at least one standing stone outside the city, and needed to be regularly led back to the standing stone in order to be “recharged” with divine essence. The same kind of procession existed at the same time in Anatolia. The Storm God (of whatever town) went out in spring and in autumn to meet his standing stone in an open-air sanctuary.29 The naturalistic character is strongly expressed in Hittite rituals where stones are placed under trees or next to rivers and sometimes on a mountain. The regularity of the ritual is expressed, at least in the cult inventories, with the baking of breads. At every celebration, bread was baked with flour made of mashed grain from the last harvest. The breaking of the bread was the most im-portant offering rite. The relation between aniconic stones and anthropomorphic statues in Hittite rituals is very strong. Stones stand everywhere in the countryside and all the rituals: cult inventories as well as KI.LAM, AN.TAḪ.ŠUM or ritual for the Goddess of the Night (to give a few examples) deal with standing stones. The natural landscape of Anatolia was full of cliffs and rocks. The strength of the Storm God was easily materialized in the solidity of the stone. Furthermore, the standing stone on the slope of a mountain seen as the residence of a Storm God’s hypostasis was considered as a “replica” of the very mountain. Using aniconic “im-ages” of gods avoided the issue of hand-made statue, which is the reason why Tud-ḫaliya IV hardly ever changed the form and the kind of divine representation. Some

29 Several elements indicate that a comparison between Hittite standing stones (hitt. ḫuwaši) and Hindu linga(m) would also be legitimate. In Sanskrit the word signifies: “mark”, “sign”, “chief mark” or “characteristic of something”. As far as I know from the textual evidence, most of the Hittite ḫuwaši are found in place connected with natural elements: mountains, sources, trees and so on. The climax of Hittite festivals took place when the statue of the deity was put in front or next to his own stone, outside the temple. I can here mention a striking Hindu parallel from near the falls of Muthyala Maduvu (Bangalore, Karnataka, South India). In this area a small temple is known as Muthyala Eshwara. Not far from it, there is a Shiva Linga with one linga surrounded by stones sculptures of deities and theriomorphic statues which clearly recall the context of Hittite rituals (water, rocks, aniconic idol and theriomor-phic deity statue). Finding new comparisons would help us understand the meaning and the practice of such rituals. Comparing Indian and Anatolian practices could be useful in the same Indo-European context. A picture of the linga ritual showing a statue of a bull in front of a standing stone remind me of the Alaça Höyük relief showing a bull on a podium before a standing stone. The Hindu deity Shiva in India could be materialized by a stone in and outside the temple. The Hindu scripture Linga Purana supports an interpretation of the linga as a cosmic pillar, symbolizing the infinite nature of Shiva. The oldest example of linga is known to date back to the 2nd century BCE and is still in use for worship in Gudimallam. On Shiva see Kramrisch, 2007: 181–229. See also Doniger O’Flaherty, 1981.


stones have been replaced by theriomorphic images in some peripheral areas in order to strengthen the cultic uniformity of the empire, but every procession de-scribed in the texts lead to a stone sanctuary and all the great festivals keep their lithic features. In the end, in this context, the divine statue could only be worshipped in its relation to the aniconic stone of the same god.

Abbreviations CM: Cuneiform Monographs CTH: Catalogue des textes hittites JANER: Journal of Ancient Near Eastern Religion JCS: Journal of Cuneiform Studies KBo: Keilschrifttexte aus Boghazköy KUB: Keilschrifturkunden aus Boghazköy UF: Ugarit-Forschungen

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Worshipping Gods and Stones in Late Bronze Age Syria and Anatolia

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