© Koninklijke Brill NV, Leiden, 2008 JANER 7.2
Also available online – www.brill.nl
* I would like to thank M. Weeden for translating a first version of this arti-
cle and for checking the English of the final text. Note the following abbrevia-
tions: Wettergottgestalten: Daniel Schwemer, Die Wettergottgestalten Mesopotamiens und
Nordsyriens im Zeitalter der Keilschriftkulturen. Materialien und Studien nach den schriftlichen
Quellen, Wiesbaden 2001; Storm-God: Alberto R. W. Green, The Storm-God in the
Ancient Near East, BJS 8, Winona Lake 2003; FM 7: J.-M. Durand, Le Culte d’Addu
d’Alep et l’affaire d’Alahtum, Florilegium Marianum 7 = Mémoires de NABU 8, Paris
2002; FM 8: J.-M. Durand, Le Culte des pierres at les monuments commémoratifs en Syrie
amorrite, Florilegium Marianum 8 = Mémoires de NABU 9, Paris 2005; Feliu,
Dagan: L. Feliu, The God Dagan in Bronze Age Syria, CHANE 19, Leiden 2003.
THE STORM-GODS OF THE ANCIENT NEAR EAST:
SUMMARY, SYNTHESIS, RECENT STUDIES*
PART I
DANIEL SCHWEMER
Abstract
In many regions of the ancient Near East, not least in Upper Mesopotamia, Syria
and Anatolia where agriculture relied mainly on rainfall, storm-gods ranked among
the most prominent gods in the local panthea or were even regarded as divine
kings, ruling over the gods and bestowing kingship on the human ruler. While
the Babylonian and Assyrian storm-god never held the highest position among
the gods, he too belongs to the group of ‘great gods’ through most periods of
Mesopotamian history. Given the many cultural contacts and the longevity of tra-
ditions in the ancient Near East only a study that takes into account all relevant
periods, regions and text-groups can further our understanding of the different
ancient Near Eastern storm-gods. The study Wettergottgestalten Mesopotamiens und
Nordsyriens by the present author (2001) tried to tackle the problems involved, bas-
ing itself primarily on the textual record and excluding the genuinely Anatolian
storm-gods from the study. Given the lack of handbooks, concordances and the-
sauri in our field, the book is necessarily heavily burdened with materials collected
for the first time. Despite comprehensive indices, the long lists and footnotes as
well as the lack of an overall synthesis make the study not easily accessible, espe-
cially outside the German-speaking community. In 2003 Alberto Green published
a comprehensive monograph entitled The Storm-God in the Ancient Near East whose
aims are more ambitious than those of Wettergottgestalten: All regions of the ancient
Near East—including a chapter on Yahwe as a storm-god—are taken into account,
and both textual and iconographic sources are given equal space. Unfortunately
this book, which was apparently finished and submitted to the publisher before
Wettergottgestalten came to its author’s attention, suffers from some serious flaws with
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122 daniel schwemer
regard to methodology, philology and the interpretation of texts and images. In
presenting the following succinct overview I take the opportunity to make up for
the missing synthesis in Wettergottgestalten and to provide some additions and cor-
rections where necessary. It is hoped that this synthesis can also serve as a response
to the history of ancient Near Eastern storm-gods as outlined by A. Green.
Part I (JANER 7/2)
1. ‘Storm-God’: Scope and Limits of a Modern and Ancient Concept
2. Natural Phenomenon and Divine Manifestation
3. Sumerian Iskur
3.1 Name and Early History
3.2 Development of the Cult in the Third Millennium
3.3 Deities Associated with Iskur
3.4 Modus Operandi in Religious Literature
4. Semitic Hadda
4.1 Name and Early History
4.2 Assyro-Babylonian Adad (Addu)
4.2.1 Third and Early Second Millennium
4.2.2 The First Half of the Second Millennium
4.2.3 The Second Half of the Second Millennium and the First
Millennium
4.2.4 Adad in the God-Lists, the Circle of Deities Associated with
Adad
4.2.5 The Goddess Sàla
4.2.6 Adad as God of Divination
4.2.7 Modus Operandi in Literary Texts
4.3 The Syrian and Upper-Mesopotamian Hadda (Haddu, Hadad)
4.3.1 Hadda: The Third Millennium
4.3.2 Haddu: The First Half of the Second Millennium
4.3.3 Haddu, Tessub and Baalu: The Second Half of the Second
Millennium
4.3.4 Aramaean Hadad, Assyrian Adad and Luwian Tar¢unza: The
First Millennium
4.4 The Storm-God of Aleppo
Part II (forthcoming: JANER 8/1)
5. Tessub, the Hurrian King of the Gods
5.1 Name and Early History
5.2 Spread of the Cult
5.3 Tessub as Head of the Imperial Pantheon of Mittani
5.4 Modus Operandi and Circle of Deities Associated with Tessub
6. Baalu: The Storm-God as Lord of the Gods
6.1 The Epithet baalu “Lord” as a Divine Name
6.2 Baalu of Ugarit
6.2.1 Position in the City Pantheon
6.2.2 The Mythological Texts
6.3 Baalu (Addu) at Emar
6.4 Baaal and Baaalsamêm in the First Millennium
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the storm-gods of the ancient near east 123
7. The Anatolian Storm-Gods Taru and Tar¢un(t)
7.1 Names and Strands of Tradition
7.2 Position in the Pantheon
7.3 Modus Operandi in Mythology and Ritual
8. The Victory of the Storm-God over the Sea
9. Further Gods with Storm-God Characteristics
9.1 The North-Babylonian and Assyrian Storm-God Wèr
9.2 The Babylonian God of the Western Lands Mardu-Amurru
9.3 The Anatolian Vegetation- and Storm-God Telipinu
10. A Few Remarks on Iconography
Appendix: Selected Additions and Corrections to Schwemer, Wettergottgestalten
1. ‘Storm-God’: Scope and Limits of a Modern and Ancient Concept
Deities with different names are frequently gathered under a sin-
gle typological label, whether in Ancient Near Eastern Studies, or
in the study of religions in general, when they display a broad
agreement with regard to their central functions and profile.
Typological classification can bring several deities together within
just one cultural context or assemble divinities from different cul-
tural traditions under one type. Typological labels such as ‘storm-
god’ have no direct counterpart in the various ancient Near Eastern
languages, and the identification of a series of deities as represen-
tatives of one particular type does not imply a priori that relation-
ships can be reconstructed by historians of religion or that theological
connections were made by the ancient scholars themselves.
It is not due to chance, however, that especially translations of
ancient Near Eastern cuneiform texts use typological labels so fre-
quently instead of the proper name of a particular deity. In cuneiform,
even in scribal traditions that usually show a decided preference
for syllabic writing, the proper names of many important deities
were regularly written with the sign-combination for a Sumerian
deity’s name that served as a logographic writing for the particu-
lar god’s name. The selection of a specific Sumerogram (or
Akkadogram) to represent a god’s name was normally determined
by whatever deity was felt to be typologically related in the Sumerian
pantheon to that particular god. The conventional Sumerographic
writing of a divine name in cuneiform thus reflects a typological
classification of the deity in question from the perspective of the
respective scribal tradition. Yet not every Sumerographic convention
for writing a divine name was established on the basis of the role of
the god represented by the Sumerogram in Sumerian mythology.
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124 daniel schwemer
1
For a full discussion of the function and problems of typology in modern
study of religions and in ancient theology see Wettergottgestalten, 5-9.
Rather the scribal conventions of the neighbouring cuneiform cul-
ture from which cuneiform was adopted in the first place served
as a direct model; the conventions of the linguistically heteroge-
neous North Syrian/Upper Mesopotamian area with Akkadian as
written language, for example, served as a model for the use of
Sumerograms among the Hittites.
In texts from regions or eras characterised by the coexistence of
different languages and cultural traditions it is often difficult to iden-
tify what might be the ‘right’ reading of a Sumerographically writ-
ten proper names of deities. In such cases one mostly resorts to
the typological label (‘storm-god’ etc.). Indeed, Sumerographically
written divine names were consciously used by the ancient scribes
in this way. Thus, Sumerographically written divine names may
well have been occasionally realised differently in letters of inter-
national correspondence in the usage of the sender to that of the
recipient. Most importantly, however, the two- or three-columned
god-lists, which were ordered according to criteria of theological
typology and stemmed from the school tradition of Babylonia,
although the genre spread to Assyria, Upper Mesopotamia and
Syria, use the Sumerogram as the higher rubric to which various
concrete names are assigned.
1
The manifold contacts between the regions and cultures of the
ancient Near East also led to the proximity and co-existence of
different polytheistic systems and thus to identifications and syn-
cretisms between typologically similar deities with different names.
Conversely local forms of the same god could be worshipped under
various different names or epithets within one cultural context. Most
ancient Near Eastern deities can therefore not be considered in iso-
lation, but need investigation within the realms of a typologically
coherent group. The definition of such a group should take its start-
ing point from a manifestation of the particular type of god that
is well documented in text and image, whose modus operandi, profile
and basic functions serve as basis for the definition of the type; in
the case of storm-gods the Assyro-Babylonian Adad would be the
obvious starting-point. All those deities considered to be typologi-
cally related with the god chosen as starting-point or with each
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the storm-gods of the ancient near east 125
2
Such an overly broad definition of the type ‘storm-god’ can be found e.g. in
W. Gerhardt’s dissertation The Weather-God in the Ancient Near Eastern Literature with
Special Reference to the Hebrew Bible (Dropsie College, Philadelphia 1963, supervised
by M. Held), and is, in my opinion, also one of the basic methodological flaws
in Green’s Storm-God (2003); an example of how such overly broad definitions nec-
essarily mislead collegues in neighbouring disciplines is A. Lichtenberger, Kulte und
Kultur der Dekapolis, ADPV 29, Wiesbaden 2003, 36-39.
other, in as far as this is attested by the evidence of ancient Near
Eastern texts and images, are then to be included in the inquiry.
Furthermore, those deities should be included, whose basic profile
corresponds to the generic definition, though connections to one of
the gods from the first group are not recognisable in the trans-
mitted corpus of texts and images. Given that the criteria of modern
and ancient typology are mostly the same and that for many deities
no detailed profile can be deduced from the sources, there are very
few deities that can be assigned to this group (but see here 9.).
According to this definition the most important ancient Near
Eastern storm-gods are the Semitic Hadda—West Semitic Hadda,
Haddu, Hadad (Syria-Palestine, Upper Mesopotamia), Akkadian
Adad, Addu (Babylonia, Assyria)—, Syro-Palestinian Baalu (Baaal),
Hurrian Tessub (Tessob) along with Urartian Teiseba (Syria,
Mesopotamia, Kurdish mountain area, Anatolia), Hattian Taru and
Hittite-Luwian Tar¢un(t) (Anatolia). On the other hand gods whose
profile intersects in some respects with several or one of the ‘actual’
storm-gods without the basic distinction between the relevant deities
being affected or without their mutual points of contact having led
to a typologically motivated equation in antiquity, are better not
to be assigned to the category ‘storm-god’. There is little to be
gained from establishing an overly broad category that neither cor-
responds to a comparable category in ancient theology nor reflects
any historical developments manifest in the available sources. Of
course it deserves attention that a number of gods whose basic
profile is not that of a typical storm-god are associated with phe-
nomena like wind, storm and flood; but declaring them to be ‘storm-
gods’ or even manifestations of ‘the storm-god’ does not lead to a
meaningful interpretation of the phenomenon. Among the gods that
are often misleadingly addressed as ‘storm-gods’ in secondary lit-
erature are above all:
2
Enlil: The Sumerian father and lord of the gods is, together with
the more remote An, the powerful ruler of the world who bestows
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