Šuwaliyat was a Hittite god associated with vegetation. He was worshiped in Kanesh, Ḫupišna and Ḫunḫuišna, as well as 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 ...

. In a number of ritual texts he appears alongside the grain goddess Ḫalki. A close connection between him and the Hurrian god

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'', ...

is also attested, and in Hittite adaptations of Hurrian myths and in other texts reflecting Hurrian influence his name could be used to designate his Hurrian counterpart.

Name and character

It is presumed that the theonym Šuwaliyat is etymologically Hittite, and that it is an example of a gendered noun with the

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 ...

-att, used to derive nouns from verbs or adjectives. Attested syllabic writings in Hittite cuneiform include

nominative In grammar, the nominative case ( abbreviated ), subjective case, straight case, or upright case is one of the grammatical cases of a noun or other part of speech, which generally marks the subject of a verb, or (in Latin and formal variants of E ...

''^dšu-wa-li-ia-az'', genitive ''^dšu-wa-li-ia-at-aš'', accusative ''^dšu-wa-li-ia-at-ta-an'' and dative ''^dšu-wa-li-ia-at-ti''. The name is unrelated to that of the Hurrian goddess Šuwala. The sumerograms ^d NIN.URTA and ^d URAŠ could be used to represent Šuwaliyat's name. However, as pointed out by , he did not display any of Ninurta's non-agricultural traits, and in particular he was not regarded as a warlike deity. He was associated with vegetation and grain. argues his original character can be compared to that of Telipinu.

Worship

Hittite texts indicate that Šuwaliyat was venerated as a local deity in Kanesh, Ḫupišna and Ḫunḫuišna. The last of these settlements is only known from a single reference to a festival dedicated to this god which took place there, identified in the text KUB 17.19. After the Old Hittite period, a new temple of either Šuwaliyat or

was also built atop Büyükkale, a part of

. In the festival, Šuwaliyat was paired with the grain goddess Ḫalki. The pair is attested elsewhere among gods the Hittites associated with Kanesh, as well as in the sphere of domestic worship. In the text KBo 22.124 ( CTH 682) they both receive offerings alongside the vegetation deity Zinkuruwa.

Šuwaliyat and Tašmišu

When

Hurrian deities The Hurrian pantheon consisted of gods of varied backgrounds, some of them natively Hurrian religion, Hurrian, while others adopted from other pantheons, for example Religion in Ebla, Eblaite and List of Mesopotamian deities, Mesopotamian. Like th ...

started to be venerated in the

Hittite Empire The Hittites () were an Anatolian peoples, Anatolian Proto-Indo-Europeans, Indo-European people who formed one of the first major civilizations of the Bronze Age in West Asia. Possibly originating from beyond the Black Sea, they settled in mo ...

, Šuwaliyat came to be identified with

, the brother and

servant A domestic worker is a person who works within a residence and performs a variety of household services for an individual, from providing cleaning and household maintenance, or cooking, laundry and ironing, or care for children and elderly ...

of the Hurrian weather god,

Teshub Teshub was the Hurrians, Hurrian weather god, as well as the head of the Hurrian pantheon. The etymology of his name is uncertain, though it is agreed it can be classified as linguistically Hurrian language, Hurrian. Both Phonetics, phonetic and L ...

. The name of the former was effectively used to designate the latter. However, the association between the two depended entirely on their position in offering lists, and their character was not similar, with a connection with vegetation not attested for Tašmišu and warlike traits for Šuwaliyat. There was also no preexisting connection between Šuwaliyat and the weather god Tarḫunna in Hittite culture, and the latter's companion was typically Waššezili. The pairing of Šuwaliyat and a weather god in Hittite festivals which belonged to the sphere of state cult therefore reflects the connection between Teshub and Tašmišu, and according to Piotr Taracha can be considered an example of Kizzuwatnean influence. In the Hurro-Hittite ''itkalzi'' ritual, the name Šuwaliyat is also used to designate Tašmišu, in this context paired with Hurrian Nabarbi, his spouse. It is also possible that under one of his two names he is depicted in Yazılıkaya, though due to the state of preservation of the accompanying

hieroglyphic Luwian Luwian (), sometimes known as Luvian or Luish, is an ancient language, or group of languages, within the Anatolian languages, Anatolian branch of the Indo-European languages, Indo-European language family. The ethnonym Luwian comes from ''Luwiya ...

inscription this remains uncertain. The connection between the two gods is also well documented in Hurro-Hittite literary texts. The name Šuwaliyat is used to refer to Tašmišu in the Hittite version of myths belonging to the so-called '' Kumarbi Cycle''. For example, in the ''Song of Kumarbi'' he is the brother of the weather god and Aranzaḫ. He also corresponds to Tašmišu in Hurro-Hittite

bilinguals Multilingualism is the use of more than one language, either by an individual speaker or by a group of speakers. When the languages are just two, it is usually called bilingualism. It is believed that multilingual speakers outnumber monolin ...

. In the case of the '' Song of Release'' ("Epic of Freeing"), the name Šuwaliyat appears in the Hittite passages dealing with the meetings between Teshub and Allani and Išḫara, but not in their Hurrian version. It is possible that the connection between Šuwaliyat and Tašmišu also led to the use of the sumerograms ^dNIN.URTA and ^dURAŠ to designate the latter, which according to Daniel Schwemer is attested only in Hittite sources, while a god list from Emar instead presents Papsukkal as his Mesopotamian counterpart due to their similar characters as messenger deities.

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 Nature gods Agricultural gods