ARINNA SEKHMET HYRIA IONIC HEPAT KHI-BABA

Qadesh, standing on a lion, posed between the Egyptian gods Min and Resheph. Photo by Rama, Wikimedia Commons.

The lion rider:

These days a naked lady holding a snake and riding a lion is not the first image which comes to mind when the word “holy” is spoken. However, that is exactly the title of the goddess at the center of the picture above. This particular example is Egyptian, but this is a Canaanite (pre-Israelite) goddess from the Bronze Age, who is depicted much the same way throughout the region all the way up to Syria in that time period.  She is labeled Qadesh (Qudshu), which means “the Holy One.” Who is she?  Some say an as yet unknown deity whose name is Qadesh. Most, however, assume this is an epithet of one of the major Canaanite goddesses.  She might be Astarte (Ashtart, biblical Ashtoreth), the western variant of Babylonian Ishtar, goddess of the planet Venus (a.k.a. the Morning and Evening Star) and the Goddess of Love and War.  This goddess was associated with a lion there. But more likely she is Asherah, the Mother Goddess,  who is called in some written documents the Qadesh and also is frequently given the title the Lion Lady.The flower and the nudity are natural symbols of fertility; the snake is associated with wisdom. This fits with the archaelogical evidence that Asherah was worshiped by the Canaanites and later Israelites as the Mother Goddess and the Tree of Life.  (See Asherah Part I and Part II.) But why is Asherah the Lion Lady?

I don’t know the answer to that question. But I do know that Asherah’s association with lions is far from unique in the ancient world. In fact, the Lady of the Lions is an image that extends across time for more than 6,000 years and across a wide geographic region as far as Minoan Crete to the west, Anatolia (Turkey) to the north, and Mesopotamia (Sumer, Babylon, modern Iraq) to the east. More than 40 goddesses in Egypt were associated with lions or other felines. Asherah herself would continue to be depicted with lions past the heyday of the Canaanites and through the days when Israel was the nation ruling that region.

Often, a goddess with lion symbolism is associated with a god identified with the bull.  This is the case with Asherah, whose spouse was originally El, the Bull God, Father God of the Canaanites.  Mythologist Joseph Campbell associated lions with the sun and bulls (and snakes) with the moon.  So it is possible we have the remains here of an ancient identification of Sun Goddess and Moon God (just the reverse of the later pattern, interestingly). Lions also guarded the gates of the great cities of the ancient empires of the Babylonians, the Hittites, and the early Greek Mycenaeans.

Above the figure of Asherah holding the 'flower' and the nudity are natural symbols of fertility; the snake is associated with wisdom. This fits with the archaelogical evidence that Asherah was worshiped by the Canaanites and later Israelites as the Mother Goddess and the Tree of Life.  (See Asherah Part I and Part II.) But why is Asherah the Lion Lady?

BACK TO BACK

A complicated dance with the Earth which creates a 584 day cycle of relationship as the two planets journey in orbit around the Sun. In one half of this cycle, she is the Evening Star, shining her brightest in the west just after the Sun has set there.  In the other half, Venus shines most brightly in the east just before the Sun rises there. Then she is the Morning Star, heralding the dawn of the Sun, a new day.  Facing east, the people of the Middle East saw a lioness awake, or a mistress of lions; a Goddess of War; a  protector of pharaohs; the strength and majesty of a kingdom, or an empire.

To the Egyptians and the Hittites, the Lion Goddess was expressly a Sun Goddess and represented the power of the king, or the queen.  The Egyptians worshiped the lion-headed Sekhmet, a ferocious warrior and protector of her father Ra, the Sun God, as well as of the pharaohs who were viewed as his sons on earth.  She was one of several goddesses to be referred to as the Eye of Ra and was depicted bearing a sun disk on her head.

To the north, the Hittites of Anatolia (Turkey) worshiped a deity whose name is lost but who was referred to as the Sun Goddess of Arinna and who was believed to be the ruler of all the kingdoms of earth and who was associated with lions.

The Canaanites were sandwiched in between these two great powers and sometimes ruled by Egypt. They were a group of peoples who lived along the eastern edge of the Mediterranean Sea and part of their lands would eventually become the nation of Israel and home to most of the tales in the Judeo-Christian Bible. For them, the War Goddess Anat  and the Sun Goddess Shapash were separate deities who worked together to rescue the Storm God Baal from the land of the dead.
Archaeologists have discovered many ancient images of a goddess riding a lion in sites of ancient Israel. Some identify this goddess as Anat, others as the Love Goddess Astarte, or the Mother Goddess Asherah, or some combination of two or three of these.  In Babylon, the Goddess of Love and War, symbolized by a lion, was Ishtar, represented by the planet Venus.  (Astarte, also called Ashtart, is the Canaanite version of Ishtar. Her name is perverted into Ashtoreth in the Bible, a spelling which insults her by calling her a whore.) Ishtar’s  brother was Shamash, the Sun, but he, too, may once have been a goddess.

The forerunners of  the Amorites, who ruled Mesopotamia from Babylon, and the forerunners of the Canaanites, the Jews, and the Arabs, were a group of proto-Semitic language speaking peoples who considered the Sun to be femaleFertility and health, love and war, are pretty powerful stuff for the goddess in the sky, whether sun or star. For the Hittites, however,  the Sun Goddess of Arinna was even more powerful.  They went one step further and called their Sun Goddess the Mother Goddess, mother of the gods, and “Queen of all countries.” A prayer attributed to Queen Puduhepa of the Hittites has been found which reads:

“To the Sun-goddess of Arinna, my lady, the mistress of the Hatti lands, the queen of heaven and earth. Sun-goddess of Arinna, thou art queen of all countries! In the Hatti country thou bearest the name of the Sun-goddess of Arinna; but in the land which thou madest the cedar land thou bearest the name Hebat.”

Cinyras connection to Hyria (Ionic: Ὑρίη Huriē, Koine: Ὑρία Huria;) is a toponym mentioned in Homer's catalogue of the ships, where the leading position in the list is given to the contingents from Boeotia, where Hyria and stony Aulis, where the fleet assembled, lead the list.

Ḫepat

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia.

Ḫepat, also transcribed, Khepat, was the mother goddess of the Hurrians, known as "the mother of all living". She is also a Queen of the deities.

Mythical family

Hebat is married to Teshub and is the mother of Sarruma and Alanzu, as well mother-in-law of the daughter of the dragon Illuyanka.

Name derivation

Queen Kubaba may have been deified, becoming Hebat

It is thought that Hebat may have had a Southern Mesopotamian origin, being the deification of Kubaba, the founder and first ruler of the Third Dynasty of Kish. The name may be transliterated in different versions - Khepat with the feminine ending -t is primarily the Syrian and Ugaritic version.

In the Hurrian language Ḫepa is the most likely pronunciation of the name of the goddess. In modern literature the sound /h/ in cuneiform sometimes is transliterated as kh.

Arinniti[

The Hittite sun goddess Arinniti was later assimilated with Hebat. 

A prayer of Queen Puduhepa makes this explicit: "To the Sun-goddess of Arinna, my lady, the mistress of the Hatti lands, the queen of Heaven and Earth. Sun-goddess of Arinna, thou art Queen of all countries. In the Hatti country thou bearest the name of the Sun-goddess of Arinna; but in the land which thou madest the cedar land thou bearest the name Hebat."

Widespread veneration

Ḫepat was venerated all over the ancient Near East. Her name appears in many theophoric personal names. A king of Jerusalem mentioned in the Amarna letters was named Abdi-Heba, possibly meaning "Servant of Ḫepat".

The mother goddess is likely to have had a later counterpart in the Phrygian goddess Cybele. 

Hebat is the Mother Goddess of the Hurrians, a people who lived on the eastern edge of the Hittite Empire and just north of the Babylonians. She was the wife of their Storm God and was sometimes depicted standing on her sacred animal .

Arinna a place, was the major cult center of the Hittite sun goddess, (thought to be Arinniti) known as ^dUTU ^URUArinna "sun goddess of Arinna". Arinna was located near Hattusa, the Hittite capital.^[1]The name was also used as a substitute name for Arinniti.

The sun goddess of Arinna is the most important one of three important solar deities of the Hittite pantheon, besides UTU nepisas - "the sun of the sky" and UTU taknas - "the sun of the earth".

She was considered to be the chief deity in some source, in place of her husband. Her consort was the weather god, Teshub; they and their children were all derived from the former Hattic pantheon.

The goddess was also perceived to be a paramount chthonic or earth goddess. She becomes largely syncretised with the Hurrian goddess Hebat. "but in the land which thou madest the cedar land thou bearest the name Hebat."

THE POSITIVE BENEFIT OF THE SUN

In Egypt 1550 BC, Sekhmet's breath represented a hot desert wind, and her body was the glare of the midday sun. When Hathor came down to earth to take vengeance on man. Sekhmet became the destructive eye of the sun, and a solar goddess, and was named “Eye of Ra.” The ancient Egyptians knew that the sun could bring life, (Hathor), but also death. (Sekhmet). Her name translates as "The Powerful One." Sekhmet used her power destructively and brutally as well as helpfully healthyly.

Ancient Egyptians believed that Sekhmet took over sun by day and  she gave birth to the moon same night.The ancient Egyptians describe Sekhmet as the daughter of Ra, the feminine eye of the Sun, sent to Earth to restore balance and order. Her job was, and still is, to alchemically transform any negativity plaguing the Earth. She does this by devouring it, taking it into her belly, or alchemical cauldron, digesting and transforming it in to a powerful expression of Pure Divine Love. Sekhmet’s name, derived from Sekhem, describes her purpose, as Sekhem is an ancient Egyptian word meaning “sacred power” or sacred energy. Sekhmet (a Solar Goddess) restores cosmic law (for Maat) and balance through the process of Divine Alchemy – transforming negative energy and returning it to its original Divine expression.

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Right hand a pomegranate for the principal of blood unity fertility in marriage and a mirror in her left hand for the principal of spirit in reflected light, path of self awareness, the One truth, human consciousness. She also seems to have a single horn, a third eye of knowledge.