“Up” - “Down”: Anabasis and Katabasis in the myths of the Hurrian-Hittite tradition.

A not inconsiderable number of Hurrian myths, which were received by the Hittites and handed down in various forms either as original Hurrian-language texts or as translations and revisions in their own language, contain the motives of Anabasis into the heavens and Katabasis into the underworld of various deities. These are mainly “songs” (sum šir3), which is what the Hittites called the epic texts of foreign origin with a mythological content that belong to the so-called Kumarbi cycle, which on tells of the rise of the weather god Teššup to the kingship in heaven and the detention of the older divine generation in the underworld, as well as the attempts of Kumarbi, the elderly father of the gods, to dethrone Teššup with some deities he fathered and to win the kingship in heaven. The research will also include other mythic-epic texts, such as the bilingually passed-down Hurrian-Hittite Song of the Release. Furthermore, some ritual texts of the Hurrian-Hittite tradition provide reflexes of the mythic motifs of Anabasis-Katabasis. A particularly interesting topic is the motif of the descents of the weather god Teššup into the realm of the dead and his meeting with the queen of the underworld, Allani, which is documented in two mythic texts and in a summoning ritual (see below 3). Various episodes are preserved here, but they contain the same motif and should be investigated comparatively and analysed stratigraphically, using the means of myth analysis.

Egyptian myths in the context of underworld and heavenly journeys.

Where the heroes live: Transgressing borders, changing spheres and 'afterlife' in Virgil's Aeneid.