in Bronze Age Anatolia. In many traditions the goddesses determine fates by
spinning.
Their names are different in different countries, but this is understandable.
When deities are especially dangerous, it is common to avoid the name that is
most truly theirs and to replace it with some substitute; we often find alterna-
tive names current at the same time. The important thing is the unity of the
conception over such a large part of the Indo-European area, which makes it
likely that it goes back to the deepest level of Indo-European.
Among the numerous deities of the Hittites and their Anatolian kinsmen
are the Gulses, or in the Palaic language Gulzannikes, whose name comes
from the verbal root guls- ‘write’. They were ‘goddesses of individual destiny,
presiding at birth and acting as nurses, also in mythology creatresses of
man’.^13 They appear repeatedly in mythical narratives in company with the
Mother Goddesses called H
̆
annah
̆annes, and once also with Papaya and
Isdustaya, goddesses who spin the threads of fate. In a ritual text for the
erection of a new royal palace it is laid down that when the king enters into it,
he commands an eagle to fly towards the sea and to report on who it sees
sitting in field and forest. The eagle reports: ‘I have looked. It is Isdustaya and
Papaya, the ancient, infernal divinities, who are sitting huddled there.’ ‘So,
what are they doing all the time?’ ‘She holds a spindle, they hold mirrors filled
(with images); and they are spinning the king’s years. And a shortening of his
years, (even) a tally of them, is not to be seen!’^14
While there are no spinster Fate-goddesses in the Vedas, there are certain
passages in which the continuity of human life is conceived as a drawn-out
thread or lengthening strip of fabric. One poet asks ‘which god was it that put
seed in man, saying tántur a ̄ ́ ta ̄yata ̄m, “let the thread (or warp) be extended”?’
(AV 10. 2. 17). A sacrificer making an offering for offspring prays for his
family to pass successfully along an unbroken thread (6. 122. 1 áchinnam
̇
tántum ánu sám
̇
tarema, cf. 2). The famous Vasis
̇t
̇ha family of Rishis weave the
warp that Yama, the first man, set up on the loom (RV 7. 33. 9, 12).^15
In the Odyssey (7. 197 f.) Alcinous says that once Odysseus has been
brought home to Ithaca, he will experience whatever Aisa and the Spinners
(Κλ;θε or Κατα ́ κλωθε) spun for him with their flax at his birth. In the
Iliad (20. 127 f., 24. 209 f., cf. 525) the same expression is used with Aisa or
Moira as the subject: both words mean ‘share, portion’, and the goddess is
(^13) Gurney (1977), 18. Cf. H. Otten–J. Siegelová,Archiv für Orientforschung 23 (1970), 32–8;
Johann Tischler, Hethitisches etymologisches Glossar, i (Innsbruck 1977–83), 627–30; Jaan
Puhvel, Hittite Etymological Dictionary, iv (Berlin–New York 1997), 239–44.
(^14) KUB xxix. 1 i 50–ii 10; H. T. Bossert, Die Welt des Orients 2 (1957), 351 f.
(^15) M. Lindenau, Zeitschrift für Indologie und Iranistik 1 (1922), 47.
380 10. Mortality and Fame