Weather god

Weather god from Zincirli with a bundle of lightning and ax, in the late Hittite style

A weather god was worshiped in many cultures, for example in Mesopotamia , Old Syria, Anatolia and Old America .

Ehecatl and Tlaloc

Central American peoples, including the Mexica , the Toltecs, and the Teotihuacan people , worshiped numerous weather- related gods, including a wind god called Ehecatl in Nahuatl and a rain god called Tlaloc .

Thor

The Germanic Thor , Zeus in Greece and the Japanese god Raijin were associated with lightning and thunder .

Ra

The sun was also worshiped in many cultures. In ancient Egypt, Ra sailed across the sky daily in the sun barge, and in the Inca Empire the sun god Inti is imagined as a golden disc with a human face.

Iskur

In the Sumerian religion , the weather god was called Iškur . In southern Mesopotamia, its destructive capabilities such as storm, flood and drought came to the fore. This was mainly due to the fact that he did not “need” Iškur as a source of rain in the south, where irrigated agriculture was not predominant.

Baal

In the Ugaritic - Phoenician area, Ba'al was worshiped as the fertility and weather god in the Ugaritic religion . He was depicted with a helmet and two bull horns.

Hadad

The Semitic weather god Hadad is already mentioned in the third millennium BC. Venerated in northern Syria. His shrine was in Aleppo . In Mesopotamia he was venerated around the city of Qarqar as a blessing giver. Hadad / Adad is the son of An and husband of Ninḫursanga in Akkadian mythology . Adad's symbolic animal was the bull , his attribute a lightning bolt - either in one hand or alone.

Taru

Among the Hatti , the weather god was called Taru .

Tarḫunna

With the Hittites , too , the weather god Tarḫunna was at the head of the pantheon . Among the Luwians he was called Tarḫunz . The name appears among the Lycians as Trqqis, which was equated with the Greek Zeus.

Iupiter Dolichenus

In Roman times, the Syrian weather god was spread as Iupiter Dolichenus by the Roman military as far as Central Europe. A bronze votive plate comes from Heddernheim .

Teššup

Among the Hurrites , the weather god was Teššup and was at the head of the pantheon. Among the western Hurrites he was married to Ḫepat and his son was Sarruma , the daughter Allanzu . Teššup's most important place of worship was Aleppo . The climax of his cult was there in the second millennium BC. Chr .; in the first millennium BC However, adoration can hardly be proven any more.

Teišeba

In the kingdom of Urartu (Eastern Anatolia) the weather god was called Teišeba .

Tinia

Among the Etruscans the main god Tinia (Tins) was also invoked as the weather and vegetation god.

Peter as "weather god"

In monotheistic Christianity there are in principle not several gods differentiated according to their functions, so there is no weather god either. In popular belief, however, the apostle Peter is seen as responsible for the weather and in this context is also referred to as the weather god. This designation has broken away from popular belief and has become common language.

The attribution probably stems from the fact that Peter is responsible for opening and closing the gates of heaven in medieval depictions. "Peter has opened the sluices of heaven" is the popular paraphrase of the rainy weather. As the cultural-historical successor of the Roman god Janus , Peter is also closely related to weather phenomena.

literature

Helmut Freydank u. a .: Lexicon of the Old Orient. Egypt * India * China * Western Asia . VMA-Verlag, Wiesbaden 1997, ISBN 3-928127-40-3 .
Brigitte Groneberg : The gods of the Mesopotamia. Cults, myths, epics . Artemis & Winkler, Stuttgart 2004, ISBN 3-7608-2306-8 .
Daniel Schwemer : The figures of the weather gods of Mesopotamia and Northern Syria in the age of the cuneiform cultures: materials and studies based on written sources. Harrassowitz, Wiesbaden 2001. ISBN 978-3-447-04456-1 .

Web links

Wiktionary: Wettergott - explanations of meanings, word origins, synonyms, translations

Daniel Schwemer: Weather God / Weather Gods. In: Michaela Bauks, Klaus Koenen, Stefan Alkier (Eds.): The Scientific Biblical Lexicon on the Internet (WiBiLex), Stuttgart 2006 ff.

Individual evidence

^ Graulich, Michel: “Los dioses del Altiplano central” . In: Arqueología Mexicana . No. 20 , p. 30-39 .
↑ ^a ^b Julie Lloyd: Weather. From climate history to weather forecast. Parragon, Bath (UK) n.d., p. 157.
↑ Examples: Weather god Petrus ensures a sunny festive atmosphere (Aargauer Zeitung), symphonic orchestras hope for positive signals from weather god Petrus (Solinger Tageblatt), "Weather god Peter turned a blind eye" (Wasserburg voice).
↑ Peter in the Ecumenical Lexicon of Saints

[1] Graulich, Michel: “Los dioses del Altiplano central” . In: Arqueología Mexicana . No. 20 , p. 30-39 .

[Wetter-2] Julie Lloyd: Weather. From climate history to weather forecast. Parragon, Bath (UK) n.d., p. 157.

[3] Examples: Weather god Petrus ensures a sunny festive atmosphere (Aargauer Zeitung), symphonic orchestras hope for positive signals from weather god Petrus (Solinger Tageblatt), "Weather god Peter turned a blind eye" (Wasserburg voice).

[4] Peter in the Ecumenical Lexicon of Saints