The Kumarbi Cycle (Song of Kingship in Heaven)
c. 1400–1200 BCE · Hittite Empire · Hattusa (Bogazköy), Turkey
*This translation is not currently available.* The Kumarbi Cycle is a group of Hittite myths about a succession of divine kings — a tradition that likely influenced the Greek Theogony. The first adequate English translation was made by Hans Güterbock in 1946. We are actively exploring ways to include this text. Subscribe to our email list at anunnaki.ai for updates when new texts are added.
notes
The Kumarbi Cycle is a group of Hittite mythological texts preserved on clay tablets from the Hittite capital Hattusa (modern Boghazköy in Turkey), composed during the Hittite New Kingdom (c. 1400–1200 BCE). The cycle includes the Song of Kumarbi (also called Kingship in Heaven), the Song of Ullikummi, and several related texts. It is of exceptional importance in the history of world mythology because it is the direct source — or shares a direct source — of the succession myth in Hesiod's Theogony. The structural parallel with Hesiod is striking and has been established beyond reasonable doubt. In the Hittite text: Alalu is overthrown by Anu; Anu is overthrown by Kumarbi (who bites off his genitals); Kumarbi is overthrown by the Weather God Teshub. In Hesiod: Ouranos is overthrown by Kronos (who cuts off his genitals with a sickle); Kronos is overthrown by Zeus. The motif of succession through castration, the swallowing of offspring, and the final triumph of the youngest generation of gods is common to both traditions. The Hittite text predates the Greek by several centuries and was transmitted through the Hurrian cultural sphere into the Mycenaean Greek world. The myth of Ullikummi — the stone monster born from the sea, who grows until he reaches heaven and threatens to destroy the gods — is the Hittite contribution to the dragon-and-hero combat myth that underlies the Chaoskampf pattern across ancient Near Eastern and Mediterranean traditions. The solution discovered by Ea (using the primordial copper cutter that once divided heaven from earth) is characteristically Mesopotamian: the answer to a new problem lies in the ancient tools that created the world. Upelluri — the cosmic giant who carries the world on his shoulders — is the Hittite analogue of the Greek Atlas, and like Atlas he is unconscious of the burden he carries. His comment that his shoulder aches from Ullikummi's weight, but that he felt nothing when heaven and earth were built upon him, is a quietly comic moment in a largely serious text. The Kumarbi Cycle represents the transmission of Mesopotamian and Hurrian mythology into the Hittite world, and through the Hittites into the Greek tradition. It is one of the most important pieces of evidence for the interconnectedness of ancient Near Eastern and Mediterranean mythological traditions.
currently held: Museum of Anatolian Civilizations, Ankara
related texts
THEOGONY ## The Muses and the Poet (ll. 1-25) From the Heliconian Muses let us begin to sing, who hold the great and holy mount of Helicon, and dance on soft feet about the deep-blue spring and the altar of the almighty son of Cronos, and, when they have washed their tender bodies in Permessus or…