Scenes of a disrupted landscape in hittite historiolae: ancient notions of smoke within urban environments of Anatolia

Abstract

This article examines a group of texts from Hittite Anatolia known by modern scholars as different versions of the “myth of the god who disappeared” (CTH 323–337).¹ Broadly speaking, these texts narrate the story of gods that become enraged and leave their temples in a rush,² mixing up their clothes in their escape. As soon as they leave, mist and smoke make their appearance, seizing (from epp- / app‐) the windows and constraining (from wišūriya-³) the temple, cultic objects, and animals in the sheep pen and in the cattle barn. The representative of this type of texts that is best preserved is that of the god Telipinu (CTH 324⁴), who was a deity connected to fertility, agriculture, and rain.⁵ In it, after some initial lines that suggest a crisis is taking place,⁶ the god takes off (§3’), mist and smoke manifest themselves (§4’) – a passage referred here as the “smoke topos”⁷ – , after which the crisis escalates as a result of the god taking with him all of the good things he provided the world...