Runtiya was the Luwian god of the hunt, who had a close connection with deer. He was among the most important gods of the Luwians.
Runtiya was the Luwian god of the hunt, who had a close connection with deer. He was among the most important gods of the Luwians.
The name was written in the Luwian cuneiform of the Bronze Age as 𒀭𒆗𒄿𒀀ᴰLAMMA-ya, which can be read as *Runtiya or *Kruntiya. In Hieroglyphic Luwian of the Iron Age, he was named "Runtiya" and his name was generally written with the image of a deer or antlers, as (DEUS) CERVUS ("God deer"). [1]
The name is possibly derived from a word for "horn" or "antler", but all the etymologies which have been proposed to date are problematic. The relationship between Runtiya and the Kurunta is disputed. Some scholars argue that the two gods are identical and reconstruct an older Luwian form of the name, *Krunti(ya)-; [2] [3] others suggest that there was a pre-Indo-European Anatolian divinity which the Luwian Runtiya and the Hittite Kurunta had developed.
Runtiya was often invoked in personal names: the oldest example derives the 18th century BC Kültepe, where a man called Ruwa(n)tia and another called Ru(n)tia are attested. [4] The latest attested names are Hellenistic examples from Cilicia: Rondas (Ρωνδας), Rozarmas (Ρωζαρμας; Luwian: *Runt-zalma- "Runtiya is safety") and Rondbies (Ρωνδβιης; Luwian: Runt(a)-piya- "Runtiya-Gift"). [5]
During the Bronze Age, he was the treated as a protective deity, the son of the Sun god Tiwaz and the goddess Kamrušepa. His partner was "Lady Ala." The pair were invoked along with various mountains and rivers, such as ḪUR.SAGŠarpa (Arısama Dağı near Emirgazi). Runtiya's epithet šarlaimi ("raised") was also the name of a mountain god. In the Neo-Hittite period, Runtiya and Ala-Kubaba shared a sanctuary at Ancoz.
Runtiya was closely linked with the deer and his Iron Age epithets Imralli and Imrassi ("The meadow") indicate his connection to hunting. According to Iron Age evidence, he received sacrifices of gazelles and rewarded the worshipper for this with success in the hunt.
Divinities are also known from the Bronze Age which were referred to with the Luwian word im(ma)ra- ("field, meadow") and are likely to be linked to this aspect of Runtiya. Thus, in the cult of the Hittite city of Ḫubišna, the divinity ᴰ Imralli was named immediately before ᴰLAMMA šarlaimi and in the cult of Ištanuwa , ᴰImmaršia is listed immediately after the "Great Protective God" (dLAMMA GAL). Another relevant Luwian deity was ᴰ Immarni .
The Carian god Imbramos or Imbrasos (Ἴμβρασος) which Stephanus of Byzantium identified with Hermes, probably belongs to this group of deities as well.
In the Luwian-Phoenician Karatepe Bilingual Runtiya is identified with Resheph (ršp ṣprm "Rašap of the he-goats" or "Rašap of the birds"). [6]
According to a Hittite description of a statuette of the Protective God, he was depicted as a man standing on a deer, with a bow in his right hand and eagle and hares in his left hand. Iron Age depictions of Runtiya, like the Karasu relief show him as a beardless god standing on a deer, with a peaked cap and a bow over his shoulder.
It is generally agreed that Runtiya lived on in the cult of Hermes at Korykos in Rough Cilica, especially since the lists of priests of the sanctuary in the nearby grottos of Cennet and Cehennem frequently include Ro(nd)- as part of their personal names. [7]
The Anatolian languages are an extinct branch of Indo-European languages that were spoken in Anatolia, part of present-day Turkey. The best known Anatolian language is Hittite, which is considered the earliest-attested Indo-European language.
Luwian, sometimes known as Luvian or Luish, is an ancient language, or group of languages, within the Anatolian branch of the Indo-European language family. The ethnonym Luwian comes from Luwiya – the name of the region in which the Luwians lived. Luwiya is attested, for example, in the Hittite laws.
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Hittite mythology and Hittite religion were the religious beliefs and practices of the Hittites, who created an empire centered in what is now Turkey from c. 1600–1180 BC.
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Tarḫuntašša was a Bronze Age city in south-central Anatolia mentioned in contemporary documents. Its location is unknown. The city was the capital of the Hittite Empire for a time and later became a regional power in its own right. The kingdom controlled by the city is known by the same name and its approximate borders are known from texts.
A Sumerogram is the use of a Sumerian cuneiform character or group of characters as an ideogram or logogram rather than a syllabogram in the graphic representation of a language other than Sumerian, such as Akkadian, Eblaite, or Hittite. This type of logogram characterized, to a greater or lesser extent, every adaptation of the original Mesopotamian cuneiform system to a language other than Sumerian. The frequency and intensity of their use varied depending on period, style, and genre. In the same way, a written Akkadian word that is used ideographically to represent a language other than Akkadian is known as an Akkadogram.
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Tarḫunz was the weather god and chief god of the Luwians, a people of Bronze Age and early Iron Age Anatolia. He is closely associated with the Hittite god Tarḫunna and the Hurrian god Teshub.
Tiwaz was the Luwian Sun-god. He was among the most important gods of the Luwians.
Ala was a Hittite and Luwian goddess of the wilderness and partner of the god Runtiya. She played only a minor role in the pantheon.
Arma was an Anatolian Moon god, worshipped by the Hittites and Luwians in the Bronze Age and early Iron Age.
Tarḫunna or Tarḫuna/i was the Hittite weather god. He was also referred to as the "Weather god of Heaven" or the "Lord of the Land of Hatti".
Luwian religion was the religious and mythological beliefs and practices of the Luwians, an Indo-European people of Asia Minor, which is detectable from the Bronze Age until the early Roman empire. It was strongly affected by foreign influence in all periods and it is not possible to clearly separate it from neighbouring cultures, particularly Syrian and Hurrian religion. The Indo-European element in the Luwian religion was stronger than in the neighbouring Hittite religion.
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