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WINTER FESTIVAL FOR THE SUN-GODDESS OF ARINNA (Hittite. ŠA dUTU KU-UṢ-ṢÍ "of the Winter Sun-goddess" (KUB 2.6 VI 1-2)) — the winter festival of the Hittite kingdom dedicated to the Sun-goddess of the city of Arinna. We know about the existence of at least 7 tables describing this festival, of which the end of the sixth and the beginning of the seventh have been preserved. The end of the sixth table covers the end of the first and the beginning of the second day of the festival. All the tablets describing this holiday date back to the 14–13th centuries BC. Therefore, it is unclear whether this festival was celebrated earlier than this time, although most of the festivals associated with the cult of the Sun-goddess of Arinna are attested already in the Middle Hittite period. In the preserved part of the description of the festival, there are few indications of the place of action: the only place name mentioned is the otherwise unknown city of Tašpanda (KUB 2.6 III 15, the name may be a modification of the toponym Tapaššanda, known for the uprising lead by prince Ḫuzziya against his father, Hittite king Ḫattušili I in the 17th century BC), to which the prince is traveling, therefore, there is no unity among researchers whether this festival was celebrated in Hattuša (Popko, 2003) or Arinna (Steitler 2017, 282). Since this festival is not specifically mentioned in the festival lists, it is difficult to say anything about the specific moment of its celebration during the winter.
The main surviving description of the festival begins in the house of the cupbearer with a drink in honor of the seven gods — Storm-god, Mezzulla, Telepinu, GAL.ZU, Taḫpiltanu, Fireplace, and Šušumaḫi. Then the action moves to the temple of the Sun-goddess, where the ceremony of handing over the paršulli-bread, received by the prince from the head of the cooks in the cupbearer's house to the king, and then to the head of the courtiers, who takes it to the bed-chamber and gives it to the deaf people. The king and the head of the cooks deliver sacrifices to the gods, such as Lulaya. Then, the king and the queen also move to the bed-chamber, where the king sits on a sacred bed, and the queen drinks for Ḫaliḫari. After that, the king rises to the podium in the middle of the portico, escorting the prince to Tašpanda, and together with the queen they pull the curtain of the palace, which ends the description of the first day of the festival. The second day begins with the lifting of the palace curtain and ceremonies in the washing house, where the royal couple dresses and comes to the palace, whereas the courtiers greet the king in the courtyard of the body-guards (MEŠEDI), and follow the royal couple to the temple of the Sun-goddess. In the temple, the king strips a silver belt with a red thread, and the head of the cooks places the ritually clean heads and feet of the sacrificial animals in the hearth and libates in different parts of the room. Then the king bows down and ascends to the throne, and the head of the bodyguards prepares for the next ceremony, associated with consumpting a dish of ḫapalzil with meat. After its completion, the king descends from the throne to the window, and the wolf-men run around the hearth and move it to the door. Then the chief of the carpenters, the chief of the blacksmiths of the city of Arinna, and the chief of the scribes on wooden tablets pass each other wakata-bread, the kunzi-symbol and the solar disk (šittar). Next, the ceremony moves into the courtyard, where flocks of sheep dedicated to the deities Mezzulla and Ḫulla gather, and all participants in the temple rituals march, holding a solar disk and ritual weapons. The king and the queen descend from the katapuzna-gallery into a chariot and circle the procession, heading for the house of winemakers. The meal with the ḫapalzil dish continues here, and among the gods for whom libations are made, Iyuluma is mentioned. From other fragments of the description of the festival, it is known that in some ceremonies not only the kunzi-symbol appears, but also the "kunzi of the city of Arinna", and along with the solar disks, lunar ones are also carried. Also, according to fragments that may relate to the description of this holiday, the ceremony of drinking by the royal couple for Tuḫašail and participation in processions with solar disks of the weavers of the city of Tawiniya are known.
The feature of the composition of the participants of the festival — the priests are not named, and the musicians and courtiers accompany the royal couple in the worship of deities (Görke, Mouton, 2014, 125), but the prince plays an important role (Ардзинба, 1982, 46). Among the gods revered during the festival, which mainly belong to the Hattian stratum of the Hittite pantheon, there are deities adjacent to the Sun-goddess — the Storm-god and Mezzulla, and deities associated with the Temple of kurša (fleece or hunting bag) — Telepinu and Taḫpiltanu. Although the kurša itself does not appear in the preserved part of the description of the festival, a separate description of its winter travels is known, so the gods associated with the kurša could have a special meaning for all winter festivals. The absence of mention of the worship of the Sun-goddess of Arinna itself can be explained by the incompleteness of the preserved text, in which a significant part of the actions takes place in the temple of this deity, and it is represented by solar šittar-disks, analogies of which are known from the burials of the end of the 3rd millennium BC from Alaca-höyük.
Source: CTH 598. URL: https://www.hethport.uni-wuerzburg.de/hetkonk/hetkonk_abfrage.php?c=598
Bibliography:
- Ардзинба В.Г. Ритуалы и мифы Древней Анатолии. М., 1982.
- Görke S., Mouton A. Royal Rites of Passage and Calendar Festivals in the Hittite World // Life, death and coming of age in antiquity: individual rites of passage in the ancient Near East and adjacent regions. Leiden, 2014: 117-146.
- Popko M. Zum Tempel der Sonnengöttin von Arinna in Hattuša // Altorientalische Forschungen. 2003. Bd. 30/1. S. 11–17.
- Steitler Ch. The Solar Deities of Bronze Age Anatolia: Studies in Texts of the Early Hittite Kingdom. Wiesbaden: Harrassowitz, 2017.
WINTER FESTIVAL FOR THE SUN-GODDESS OF ARINNA
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