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Naming Two Goddesses as One

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Naming Two Goddesses as One

The prayer that carries her name is addressed to the Sun-goddess of Arinna, the head of the Hittite pantheon and the deity in whose name the kings ruled, and it asks for the life of Hattusili. It is one of the fullest personal prayers to survive from the Hittite archives, and its argument is intimate rather than formal: the queen presents herself as a woman who has served the goddess for a long time, offers her devotion to the goddess's son as grounds for a hearing, and asks that a life be spared.

Its importance for the history of religion lies in a single clause. Puduhepa states that the Sun-goddess of Arinna and Hebat are the same goddess, that the name Hebat is what the people of Kizzuwatna call her, and that in the land of Hatti she is called the Sun-goddess of Arinna. This is a theological identification made explicitly and in writing, by the person best placed to make it, at the moment the Hurrian pantheon was being absorbed into the state cult of an empire.

The rock relief at Firaktin shows the working result. Hattusili stands before the storm god pouring a libation; facing him across the panel, Puduhepa performs the same act before her goddess. Two rites, two pantheons, one royal couple, one monument. The reorganization of the cults that she and her son carried out produced the same effect on a larger scale, and the divine couple of the imperial cult in its final form, the storm god and Hebat, is Hurrian in name and Hittite in function. Her son had the pantheon carved in that form at the rock sanctuary of Yazilikaya outside the capital.

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