Telipinu
Telipinu West AsiaThe Hittite weather god was also a fertility god, and he disappeared like his son Telipinu, the deity of agriculture. A myth deals with the desolation on earth caused by the angry withdrawal of Telipinu, and with measures adopted to appease him and secure his return. When the god of agriculture left in a temper, ‘in such haste that he put his right boot on his left foot and his left boot on his right foot’, both gods and men were faced with ruin. Trees withered and fields and springs dried up; oxen, sheep, and women ceased to bear young; famime crept over the world, as ‘off to corpses stalked Telipinu, and in a corpse buried himself’. When the eagle sent out by the sun god failed to locate the missing deity, the mother goddess Hannahanna implored the weather god himself to undertake a search. He broke into Telipinu's city, discovered no one there,‘and then sat down in despair’. Thereupon, Hannahanna sent forth a bee, ordering it...
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