CHAPTER 24

Hatti’s Divine

Overlords

THETHOUSANDGODS

‘L

and of a Thousand Gods!’Though this proud Hittite
boast was a somewhat exaggerated one, the Hittite
pantheon could certainly claim hundreds of members.
Statues of gods taken from the temples of the enemy lands seized by
Hittite armies were laden into wagons as spoils of battle and
trundled back to the homeland where they joined the ranks of their
fellow-deities. They too were worshipped and had offerings made
to them by their conquerors. They too were included in the long list
of gods to whom oaths were sworn when Hittite treaties were
drawn up. In Hittite religion, as in all polytheistic religions, the
word‘infidel’had no meaning. The capture of an enemy’s gods
provided the clearest token of the enemy’s defeat and submission.
But his gods were gods nevertheless, even if of inferior status, and
were so treated in the land of their conqueror.
The Thousand Gods claim also reflects the rich eclecticism of
Hittite civilisation, and the ways in which this civilisation was shaped
by the adoption into it of many elements of its Near Eastern
contemporaries and predecessors. For the foreign gods brought with
them important aspects of the traditions and cultures of their native
regions, which became part of the fabric of Hittite civilisation.
Of course, many of the lesser gods were simply local versions of the
chief gods of the land. Wefind, for example a myriad of storm gods,