Upelluri
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Upelluri or Ubelluri was a primordial giant in
Hurrian mythology The Hurrians (; cuneiform: ; transliteration: ''Ḫu-ur-ri''; also called Hari, Khurrites, Hourri, Churri, Hurri or Hurriter) were a people of the Bronze Age Near East. They spoke a Hurrian language and lived in Anatolia, Syria and Northern Me ...
. He is only known from the ''Song of
Ullikummi __NOTOC__ In Hurrian mythology, Ullikummi is a giant stone monster, son of Kumarbi and the sea god's daughter, Sertapsuruhi, or a female cliff. The language of the literary myth in its existing redaction is Hittite, in cuneiform texts recovered a ...
'', which is one of the few Hurrian texts offering a view of this culture's cosmology. It was believed that Upelluri was already alive during the separation of heaven and earth, which were placed on his back, and that he lived in the "Dark Earth," the Hurrian
underworld The underworld, also known as the netherworld or hell, is the supernatural world of the dead in various religious traditions and myths, located below the world of the living. Chthonic is the technical adjective for things of the underworld. ...
. His name ends with the Hurrian suffix -''luri'', known also from the names of the mountain goddess
Lelluri Lelluri (also spelled Lilluri, Liluri) was a Hurrian goddess worshiped in southeastern Anatolia and northern Syria. She was associated with mountains, and in known sources appears in connection with the god Manuzi. Character Lelluri most lik ...
and Impaluri, sukkal (attendant deity) of the sea god
Kiaše Kiaše, also spelled Kiaže or Kiyaši was a Hurrian deity representing the sea. Sometimes in modern scholarship, he is simply referred to as "the Sea" or "the Sea God." Based on evidence from Ugarit, Alalakh and Hattusa, it is assumed that he wa ...
, as well as a number of Hurrian mountain and stone names. In the ''Song of Ullikummi'', known from poorly preserved fragments of a Hurrian original and a more complete Hittite translation, the eponymous monster is placed on his right shoulder by Irširra (perhaps to be identified as goddesses of nursing and midwifery), the servants of
Kumarbi Kumarbi was an important god of the Hurrians, regarded as "the father of gods." He was also a member of the Hittite pantheon. According to Hurrian myths, he was a son of Alalu, and one of the parents of the storm-god Teshub, the other being Anu ...
, to let him grow away from sight of allies of Kumarbi's enemy
Teshub Teshub (also written Teshup, Teššup, or Tešup; cuneiform ; hieroglyphic Luwian , read as ''Tarhunzas'';Annick Payne (2014), ''Hieroglyphic Luwian: An Introduction with Original Texts'', 3rd revised edition, Wiesbaden: Harrassowitz Verlag, p. ...
, such as the sun god
Šimige __NOTOC__ Šimige (in Ugaritic: ''ṯmg'') was the Hurrian sun god. From the 14th century BC he was also worshiped by the Hittites as the Sun god of Heaven. In the Hittite cliff sanctuary at Yazılıkaya, he is depicted as one of the chief deities ...
. Later the god Ea seeks him out in order to find out how to defeat Ullikummi, and asks him if he is aware of the identity of the monster growing on his back. As it turns out, Upelluri did not notice the new burden at first, but eventually he starts to feel discomfort, something that according to this text he did not experience even during the separation of heaven and earth. The rest of the tablet is broken, and the next preserved scene does not feature Upelluri anymore. It has been pointed out that the later Greek
Atlas An atlas is a collection of maps; it is typically a bundle of maps of Earth or of a region of Earth. Atlases have traditionally been bound into book form, but today many atlases are in multimedia formats. In addition to presenting geographic ...
plays a similar cosmological role as Upelluri.


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* * * Hurrian legendary creatures Atlas (mythology) Giants {{MEast-myth-stub