Weather god of Aleppo
The weather god of Aleppo was one of the most important deities in the ancient Orient, namely in Syria . His temple was on the citadel of Aleppo . The cult of the originally local weather god of Aleppo (Ḫalab) spread far beyond Syria in the Bronze Age . The god was named differently by the different peoples who lived in Syria throughout history. His native Semitic name was Haddu or Hadad , the Assyrians called him Adad , in Ugarit he said Balu Ḫalbi in the Hurrians Teššub Ḫalbaḫe , the Luwians Halpawani Tarhunza and during ancient times it was used as Zeus or Jupiter worshiped.
historical development
Around the middle of the 3rd millennium BC In cuneiform texts from Ebla the god "Ḫadda of Ḫalam" is mentioned for the first time. The kings of Ebla made sacrifices to him twice a year and they also maintained his temple. At that time he was a local god whose cult was only spread regionally.
Simultaneously with the rise of the country Yamḫad , whose capital was Ḫalab, Ḫadad of Ḫalab also gained influence in all of Syria and his oracle became known beyond the country's borders. Zimri-Lim of Yamḫad had a statue of the god built in Mari on the Euphrates . A text from Mari describes the statue of the weather god in the temple of Ḫalab as a seated man with a smaller sun god on his knees. The booty that the Hittite king Ḫattušili I brought from the conquered Syrian city of Ḫaššu to Ḫatti also included a statue of the weather god of Ḫalab.
The Hurrites who settled in Syria assimilated the weather god of Ḫalab with Teššub, who thereby became the husband of the goddess Ḫebat , who was previously unknown to the Hurrites. Through Hurrian mediation, the weather gods of Ḫalab and Ḫebat found their way into the Hittite imperial pantheon.
After 1200 BC Ḫalab lost its political position, but remained an important place of worship. Inscriptions by the kings of the Neo-Hittite states often mention the Tarhunza of Halpa, who they depicted standing on a bull with an ax in their right hand and a bundle of lightning in their left hand. The Assyrian King Shalmaneser III. sacrificed to the Adad of Ḫalab when he was 853 BC. BC marched with his army through the area of Aleppo. An Assyrian text counts Adad of Ḫalab as one of the seven great weather gods.
During antiquity, the cult of Jupiter Dolichenus emerged in Syria , who can be identified from the iconography as the form of the weather god of Aleppo. With Roman soldiers, the cult of the weather god standing on a bull reached the Rhine.
The cult lived on until Christianization, and the Roman Emperor Julian Apostata , who tried to strengthen the ancient religion, which was losing strength, also made sacrifices to the weather god of Aleppo.
The temple of the weather gods in Aleppo
The temple of the weather god on the citadel of Aleppo has been studied by Syrian and German archaeologists since 1996; however, the excavations were stopped by the Syrian civil war. The oldest remains of the early Bronze Age temple can be found in the middle of the 3rd millennium BC. To be dated.
During the Middle Bronze Age under the kings of Yamḫad, the temple was expanded and received a huge cella measuring around 27 × 13 meters, the roof of which was constructed from Lebanon cedar . The entrance was in the south. Renovations were carried out under the Mittani rule. The probably two-story temple burned at the end of the 14th century BC. Chr. Down to the bottom.
The new temple was built in the Hittite style, with a cult image of the god. The orthostats were provided with hybrid beings, such as bull men, sphinxes or fish men, in the Syro-Hittite style. The temple was smaller than its predecessor and was realigned on the axis and adapted to the Hittite religious ideas. This temple also burned down.
In the 11th century BC King Taita of Palistin had the temple rebuilt, using orthostats from the old temple. Taita had a picture of herself placed next to that of the weather god and added a longer Luwian inscription. This temple was built around 900 BC. Renovated and decorated with reliefs of other deities, including the "weather god of the club", Runtiya , and the winged Šawuška with an ax. But before construction could be completed, the temple was destroyed by fire and abandoned.
The new temple of the Aramaic period and the later ones have not yet been found and were probably covered by the buildings of the Ayyubids .
literature
- Guy Bunnens: The Storm-God in Northern Syria and Southern Anatolia from Hadad of Aleppo to Jupiter Dolichenus. In: Manfred Hutter, Sylvia Hutter-Braunsar (ed.): Official religion, local cults and individual religiosity (= Old Orient and Old Testament . Vol. 318). Ugarit-Verlag, Münster 2004, ISBN 3-934628-58-3 . Pp. 57-82.
- Volkert Haas : History of the Hittite religion (= Handbook of Oriental Studies . Sect. 1 The Nahe and the Middle East. Vol. 15). Brill, Leiden et al. 1994, ISBN 978-9-004-09799-5 .
- Kay Kohlmeyer : The temple of the Storm god in Aleppo during the late bronze and early iron ages. In: Near Eastern Archeology. Vol. 72, No. 4, 2009, pp. 190-202, JSTOR 25754027 .
- Andrew Lawler: Temple of the Storm God. In: Archeology. Vol. 62, No. 6, 2009, ISSN 0003-8113 , pp. 20-25, online .