Hebat
| Hebat | |
|---|---|
| Spouse | Teshub |
| Children | Sarruma |
Hebat, also transcribed Kheba or Khepat, was the mother goddess of the Hurrians, known as "the mother of all living".
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[edit] Family
Hebat is the consort of Teshub and the mother of Sarruma. Originally, as Kheba or "Kubau" it is thought she may have had a Southern Mesopotamian origin, being the divinised founder of the Third Dynasty of Kish. The name can be transliterated in different versions; Khebat with the feminine ending -t is primarily the Syrian and Ugaritic version. As it is written cuneiform script allows the name to be pronounced with either /b/ or /p/, though in the Hurrian language Hepa is the most likely pronunciation. The sound /h/ in cuneiform is in the modern literature sometimes transliterated as kh.
Later assimilated with Hebat was the Hittite sun goddess Arinna. A prayer of queen Puduhepa makes this explicit: "To the Sun-goddess of Arinna, my lady, the mistress of the Hatti lands, the queen of heaven and earth. Sun-goddess of Arinna, thou art queen of all countries! In the Hatti country thou bearest the name of the Sun-goddess of Arinna; but in the land which thou madest the cedar land thou bearest the name Hebat."[1]
[edit] Cult
Hebat was venerated all over the ancient Near East. Her name appears in many theophoric personal names. A king of Jerusalem mentioned in the Amarna letters was named Abdi-Kheba or Abd-Hebat, possibly meaning "Servant of Hebat".
The mother goddess is likely to have had a later counterpart in the Phrygian goddess Cybele.
[edit] See also
[edit] References
- ^ Bach, Alice Women in the Hebrew Bible Routledge; 1 edition (3 Nov 1998) ISBN 978-0-415-91561-8 p.171
Christopher Siren [1]
