SYRO-HITTITE CYLINDERS: GENERAL CONSIDERATIONS. 201) 
lonian, or Assyrian, gods also are well known, although the forms under which 
they were figured are by no means all settled; fully half the principal gods are yet 
in doubt. The Phenician deities are well enough known by name, the Baals and 
Baalats, Melkart and Ashtart, and Adonis and Anat, and Tanith and Resheph. 
Then there were the Syrian gods, Hadad, or Addu, identified by the Assyrians 
with Ramman; Resheph, again, and Atar, corresponding to Ishtar, Atis, and 
Atargatis who seems to have been a compound of the last two. 
Any or all of the gods of Babylonia, Assyria, or Egypt, or any of the gods of 
Phenicia or Syria, as these districts were overrun by the Hittites, were likely to be 
adopted by them and to be confused with their native mythology; just as some 
of the Semitic deities were very early adopted into the Greek pantheon and so 
assimilated that even now we find it difficult to disentangle them; and just as, at a 
later period, the worship of the Persian Mithra was brought from the east to the 
west. But still closer, perhaps, was the relation between the distinctively Hittite 
deities and those of Nahrina and Mitanni, and of the Vannai regions, either early 
occupied by the Hittites, or by people who were the next neighbors to the Hittites 
in their original seats, and who very likely spoke a kindred language, not Semitic 
and only doubtfully Aryan. We are so fortunate as to know the names of the gods 
of Mitanni at an early period in the history of the Hittites, for they are mentioned 
by Dushrattu in his letters preserved among the Tel el-Amarna tablets. His princi- 
pal god was Teshub. Other deities are mentioned by him (excluding Egyptian gods) 
under Assyrian names, such as Ishtar and Shamash. As he mentions a battle with 
the Hittites in which Teshub has delivered him, we might plausibly assume, but 
not certainly, that Teshub was not the Hittite name of the god. At the same time 
we know that Assyria and Babylonia could fight with each other and yet accredit 
their respective victories to the same Ishtar. Other gods of Mitanni were Sausbe 
and Zannukhu. Teshub was also the god of the Shu, a kindred people. 
At a later but yet early period, say from goo to 800 B. C., we have the Van 
inscriptions, which contain long lists of the gods of the Vannai, with the sacrifices 
offered to each. Some forty-five gods worshiped by these predecessors of the 
Armenians are mentioned by name, all ending in s, which seems to be a nominative 
termination. The chief was Khaldis, and with him stood two other principal gods, 
Teisbas (the same evidently as Teshub) and Ardinis. ‘The principal god of Mitani 
and Shu was thus a secondary god, of high rank, among the Vannai. Yet the name 
Teshub being found in the chief order of their deities is an indication that the 
Vannai and the people of Mitanni were closely related to the Hittites, as their 
inscriptions, so far as read, also seem to show. 
Our chief Egyptian source of information for the Hittite mythology is to be 
found in the great inscription of Rameses II., in which he gives a translation of the 
treaty made with him by Khetasira, King of the Hittites, whose capital seems to 
have been the unknown city of Arenena. From the careful copy and translation 
with notes by W. Max Miller (“Der Biindnisvertrag Ramses’ I]. und des Chetiter- 
kénigs”’) we gather the following facts: There was a chief “Sun-god, Lord of 
Heaven, Sun-god of the City of Arenena.”” We are told—but there seems to be a 
confusion here—that in the pictorial engraving attached to the silver text of the 
treaty, the Sun-god was represented as holding in his protecting embrace the 
princess of the land of the Hittites. It would seem that there 1s here a mistake made 
Ty 
