Šulinkatte was a Hittite god of Hattian origin. He was regarded as a war deity. Additionally, he could fulfill the role of a protector of palaces and houses. In the local tradition of Nerik, he was regarded as the father of the

weather god of Nerik The Weather god of Nerik is a Hittite weather god, who was mainly worshipped in the Hittite city of Nerik, whose cult was relocated to Kaštama and Takupša for two hundred years after the Hittites lost Nerik to the Kaskians. He was also referred ...

. He first appears in texts dated to the fifteenth or fourteenth century BCE. His main cult center was the sparsely attested city Tamarmara, but he was also worshiped elsewhere in ancient

Anatolia Anatolia (), also known as Asia Minor, is a peninsula in West Asia that makes up the majority of the land area of Turkey. It is the westernmost protrusion of Asia and is geographically bounded by the Mediterranean Sea to the south, the Aegean ...

, for example in

Hattusa Hattusa, also Hattuşa, Ḫattuša, Hattusas, or Hattusha, was the capital of the Hittites, Hittite Empire in the late Bronze Age during two distinct periods. Its ruins lie near modern Boğazkale, Turkey (originally Boğazköy) within the great ...

and Nerik. Fragments of a Hattic song celebrating him are also known.

Name and character

The

theonym A theonym (from Greek (), 'god', attached to (), ) is a proper name of a deity. Theonymy, the study of divine proper names, is a branch of onomastics, the study of the etymology, history, and use of proper names. Theonymy helps develop an und ...

Šulinkatte has Hattic origin. It is a combination of the words ''katte'', "king", and ''šuli'', of unknown meaning, and presumably can be translated as "king of ''šuli''". It could be represented by the

logogram In a written language, a logogram (from Ancient Greek 'word', and 'that which is drawn or written'), also logograph or lexigraph, is a written character that represents a semantic component of a language, such as a word or morpheme. Chine ...

^d U.GUR. On this basis it has been proposed that the first part of his name can be interpreted as "sword", but this view found no widespread support. The writing ^d ZA.BA₄.BA₄ is also attested. Šulinkatte was a war god. He shared this role with many other deities in the Hittite pantheon, including fellow Hattian god Wurunkatte, Hittite Zappana and Iyarri,

Hurrian The Hurrians (; ; also called Hari, Khurrites, Hourri, Churri, Hurri) were a people who inhabited the Ancient Near East during the Bronze Age. They spoke the Hurro-Urartian language, Hurrian language, and lived throughout northern Syria (region) ...

Aštabi Aštabi (, ''aštb''), also known as Aštabil, was a god worshiped in the third millennium BCE in Ebla, later incorporated into Hurrian beliefs in locations such as Alalakh and Ugarit and as a result also into the religion of the Hittite Empire. ...

Ḫešui Ḫešui, also known as Ḫišue, was a Hurrian religion, Hurrian war god. He was also incorporated into the Hittite mythology and religion, Hittite pantheon. He is sparsely attested in known sources, and his origin and the meaning of his name rem ...

Nupatik Nupatik, in early sources known as Lubadag, was a Hurrian god of uncertain character. He is attested in the earliest inscriptions from Urkesh, as well as in texts from other Hurrian settlements and Ugarit. He was also incorporated into Hittite rel ...

and

Tašmišu Tašmišu (Tashmishu) was a Hurrian god. He was regarded as a brother of Teshub, and it is assumed he had a warlike character. Character Volkert Haas proposed that Tašmišu's name was derived from the Hurrian language, Hurrian word ''tašmi'', ...

Mesopotamian Mesopotamia is a historical region of West Asia situated within the Tigris–Euphrates river system, in the northern part of the Fertile Crescent. Today, Mesopotamia is known as present-day Iraq and forms the eastern geographic boundary o ...

Nergal Nergal ( Sumerian: d''KIŠ.UNU'' or ; ; Aramaic: ܢܸܪܓܲܠ; ) was a Mesopotamian god worshiped through all periods of Mesopotamian history, from Early Dynastic to Neo-Babylonian times, with a few attestations indicating that his cult surv ...

and Ugur and more. He was also believed to be the protective god of the royal palace, responsible for warding off demons. Various Hittite texts indicate that he might have more broadly played the role of protector of palaces, houses and gates. According to a preserved description of a statue of Šulinkatte, he could be depicted standing on a lion, with a sword in one hand and a man's chopped off head in the other. This iconography reflects his character as a warlike god. He was portrayed as a young man according to the text KUB 57.105.

Associations with other deities

In the local tradition of Nerik, Šulinkatte and the

sun goddess of the Earth The Sun goddess of the Earth ( Hittite: ''taknaš dUTU'', Luwian: tiyamaššiš Tiwaz) was the Hittite goddess of the underworld. Her Hurrian equivalent was Allani and her Sumerian/Akkadian equivalent was Ereshkigal, both of which had a marked i ...

were regarded as the parents of the

. A deity named Šulinkattainu, whose name is a combination of the theonym Šulinkatte and a Hattic

diminutive A diminutive is a word obtained by modifying a root word to convey a slighter degree of its root meaning, either to convey the smallness of the object or quality named, or to convey a sense of intimacy or endearment, and sometimes to belittle s ...

suffix In linguistics, a suffix is an affix which is placed after the stem of a word. Common examples are case endings, which indicate the grammatical case of nouns and adjectives, and verb endings, which form the conjugation of verbs. Suffixes can ca ...

, is also known, and might also plausibly be his child.

Volkert Haas Volkert Haas (1 November 1936 – 13 May 2019) was a German Assyrologist and Hittitologist. __NOTOC__ Life Volkert Haas studied Assyrology and Near Eastern archaeology at the Free University of Berlin and the University of Marburg from 1963 to ...

suggested he should be identified with Taru, who he presumed was identical with the god from Nerik. This view is supported by other

Hittitologist Hittitology is the study of the Hittites, an ancient Anatolian people that established an empire around Hattusa in the 2nd millennium BCE. It combines aspects of the archaeology, history, philology, and art history of the Hittite civilisation. Ther ...

s as well. In incantations, Šulinkatte could appear in association with Kataḫzipuri, the Hattian goddess of magic.

Worship

Oldest known attestations of Šulinkatte, such as the text CTH 516.B, come from the fifteenth or fourteenth century BCE. His main cult center was the sparsely attested city Tamarmara, located in central

. The aforementioned text is a ritual focused on him originating in this city, attributed to the priest Tarḫini. He had two festivals in this city as well, one in the beginning of the year and another in fall. Šulinkatte's cult had a supraregional character. He was worshiped in

. During the festival, a celebration focused on him took place in the shrine of a deity designated by the

sumerogram A Sumerogram is the use of a Sumerian cuneiform character or group of characters as an ideogram or logogram rather than a syllabogram in the graphic representation of a language other than Sumerian, such as Akkadian, Eblaite, or Hittite. Th ...

DINGIR.MAḪ. In the text KUB 44.23, he takes the place of Zilipuri, another Hattian god whose name could be written with the logogram ^dU.GUR. According to

Manfred Hutter Manfred Hutter (born 6 June 1957) is a professor at Bonn University. He is usually interested in writing about minority religion A minority religion is a religion held by a Minority group, minority of the population of state or which is otherwise ...

, a degree of overlay between these two gods only begins in the thirteenth century BCE. He was also worshiped in , a city located in the proximity of the middle run of Zuliya, identified as the modern Çekerek River. In Ḫanḫana and Kašḫa Šulinkatte was one of the twelve deities who were represented in the form of a ''ḫuwaši''

stele A stele ( ) or stela ( )The plural in English is sometimes stelai ( ) based on direct transliteration of the Greek, sometimes stelae or stelæ ( ) based on the inflection of Greek nouns in Latin, and sometimes anglicized to steles ( ) or stela ...

during a festival dedicated to Telipinu. He also appears in a similar listing connected to a ceremony from Zalpa. A line from a praise song attributed the "women of Nerik" dedicated to Šulinkatte, written in Hattic, is also known, though only a few words can be translated with certainty, including ''katte'' ("king"), ''izzi'' ("auspicious") and ''karam'' ("wine").

References

Bibliography

* * * * *{{cite book, last=Taracha, first=Piotr, title=Religions of Second Millennium Anatolia, series=Dresdner Beiträge zur Hethitologie, volume=27, publisher=Harrassowitz Verlag, publication-place=Wiesbaden, year=2009, isbn=978-3447058858 Hittite deities Hattian deities War gods Domestic and hearth deities