Near East and Eastern Mediterranean myths often tell of sequences of time periods. Many of them have been interpreted as cycles, but some of these myths may be explanations to history as an earthly expression of the cosmic cycle of the precession of equinoxes. One of these myths is the Ugarite Baal cycle. It can be interpreted as events of the agricultural year. Undoubtedly it has this interpretation, but it may not be the main interpretation: by the rule of correspondence in astrology, what happens in the stars in the celestial year happens on the earth in the earth year. Sometimes the Ugarite Baal cycle is understood as relating to a seven year drought. This may well have been one of the intended meanings, but it does not need to be the main one.
The Bible contains a theory of times in the ages of the patriarchs. It has a period of 2000 years and is composed of three 2000 year periods and one 1000 year period, and it is a cycle. Zoroastrism also has a theory of times with the period of 3000 years. I found traces of a theory of times from the Hurrian myth Song of Kumarbi. It may have a period of 630 years and it may relate to the eruption of volcano Thera which destroyed the Minoan culture.
While rereading Macej Popko’s two books Huryci (1992) and Magia i wróżbiarstwo u Hetytów (1982) I noticed that the Hurrian myths the Song of Kumarbi (given in the book on page 150) and the Song of Ullekummi may be more interesting than I originally thought. Assuming that there is a historical explanation to these myths, it is quite helpful that they are relatively early, from the 13th or 14th century BC, that is before the collapse of the Near East Bronze Age. There seems to be a reference to a volcano eruption and here were not that many events of that kind that these myths could relate to.
Hurrians created the kingdom of Mitanni which was for two centuries the strongest power in the Near East. Hurris appear in the Near East already in the third millennium BC, but essentially we can track them from the 18th century BC. The writing time of the myths, the 14th and 13th centuries BC, sets the lower bound. Before the 18th century Hurrians were one ethnic group in Ur III, which may explain why Akkadian gods, like Anu (Sumerian An) and Ea (Sumerian Enki) appear in their myths, though these gods were widely known in Northern Near East.
The Song of Kumarbi describes a sequence where first rules Alalu as the high god, then he is thrown to the underworld by Anu, who then rules. Anu is thrown out by Kumarbi and finally Kumarbi is thrown out by Teshub. Each god rules for nine years. The Song of Ullekummi describes how Kumarbi tried to regain his position. It reminds of the feud between El and Baal in the Ugarite Baal cycle and of Hesidos’ Theogonia. The Greek Theogonia has long been known to have Near Eastern, and especially Hurri and Hittite, roots.
This Hurrian sequence has the interesting aspect of each god ruling for nine years. What could this nine years be in human years? The second god is Akkadian Anu (Sumerian An), the sky god. An was the highest god in the Sumerian pantheon and is known since c. 3000 BC. Since Sargon the Akkadian got into power 2251 BC the high god was Enlil, that is the Semite god El.
Kumarbi is El/Enlil and is also identified with the Greek god Cronus and also Uranus of Teogonii. This god is the god of mountain, sometimes the mountain is a volcano. The god has also some storm god features and can throw thunderbolts, as is explained in the stories of Eliah in the Bible. Eliah has a competition with prophets of Baal and God lightens Eliah’s offer with a thunderbolt. Eliah’s story is yet another version of the feud between El and Baal.
Teshub, who threw Kumarbi from his position, was the Hurrian storm god. He is identified with Baal Hadad, Greek Zeus, Roman Jupiter, Hittite Taru and many other, often Indo-European storm gods. Hadad was also a fertility god and his death and rebirth was celebrated in a rite.
Let us try to convert nine god years of the Song of Kumarbi to man years. The time of Anu’s rule as the high god was about 700 years from c. 3000 BC to c. 2300 BC. We can date Teshub as the high god of Hurrians since about 1700 BC as Mitanni was created around that time. Thus, the time of the rule of Kumarbi is about 600 years from c. 2300 BC to c. 1700 BC. The numbers 600-700 years suggests that nine years is 9 days of the Platonic year.
The Platonic year (the cycle of the precession of equinoxes) is about 25,800 years, but Sumerian astronomy used multiples of 6 and also 7 was an important number (especially for Semites like Akkadians), thus we may suspect that they estimated the Platonic year as 25,400 years. This is so because 25,400=12*2100=12*30*70, i.e., there are 12 months, each 2,100 years, and each month has 30 days, each 70 years. By this calculation 9 Platonic days is 9*70=630 years. The Song of Kumarbi does not day nine god’s days, but nine years. Yet, the nine years cannot be man’s years. The period nine is probably from the human gestation period of nine months, but the length of the nine years should be around 600-700 years. Thus, 630 years is the logical explanation.
Calculating 630 years from 2251 BC when Sargon of Akkad started his rule gives 2881 BC. This is very close to the traditional date of the Deluge. The Sumerian Deluge myth is based on the river flood in Shuruppak around 2880 BC. Assigning the start of rule of Anu to 2900 BC, we get the rule of Kumarbi to 2250-1620 BC and the rule of Teshub starting at 1620 BC.
The reign of Alalu as the high god must then be 3510-2880 BC, i.e., before the Deluge. Hurris formed Alalu from the Semitic god Alu. Alu was a vengeful spirit and could not be described by an image, like the Semitic El/Yahweh later was a vengeful god and could not be described by an image. Papko’s Magia i wróżbiarstwo u Hetytów on page 37 informs that Alalu was one of the gods of Sumerian Anunnaki. These ancient gods had been expelled to the underworld.
The Song of Kumarbi does not give any end to Teshub’s rule, but assuming he also ruled 630 years, we get to 1010 BC, which is the beginning of David’s reign in the traditionally chronology. There must be some reason why Israelites believed that a new era of 2000 years would start from the Messiah of Davidic lineage. King David was a messiah and the reign assigned to him (especially if it is about 100 years earlier than David’s real reign) may well have an explanation in the calculations of times. Later Jews adopted the 7000 year system of times (3*2000 years + 1000 years). It does not fully agree with this 630 year system.
Philo of Byblos in Phoenician history (translating from Sanchuniathon) gives the sequence of gods as Elium, Uranos (Sky), Elos (El) and Baal-Hadad. Greek Teogonii gives a list of three gods: Uranus, Kronos, Zeus. In all three lists the second god is a sky god (Anu, Uranos, Uranos), the third is a Semitic mountain god (Kumarbi, Elos, Cronus), and the fourth is a storm god (Teshub, Baal-Hadad, Zeus).
In the Song of Kumarbi, Kumarbi is said the son of Alalu and Teshub is the son of Anu, but in different myths the father-son relation varies. In another myth Kumarbi is the son of Anu, and bites off and eats the genitals of Anu. This reminds of Cronus and Zeus in Theogonia: Cronus ate all his children and tried to eat also his son Zeus, but Zeus castrated Cronus. If this is the original form, Teshub should have castrated Kumarbi, not Kumarbi castrated Anu.
In Philo of Byblos Teshub is replaced by the Kanaanite god Baal Hadad. Hadad is the son of El in some myths and the son of Dagan in some other myths. Hadad is not the son of Anu, but the explanation may be that the original storm god in the myth is Hurrian Teshub and Hadad was an older god who later became identified with Teshub. This is why the father-son relation does not match. Hadad as Hadda is found in Ebla c. 2500 BC.
The feud between El and Baal Hadad in the Ugarite Baal cycle has a correspondence in the Song of Kumarbi as the effort of Kumarbi to throw over Teshub.
Kumarbi creates a sea monster as the opponent of Teshub. The myth tells that Kumarbi married the daughter of the Sea and got the sea monster as a child with her. Let us remember the Sumerian god Enki (Akkadian Ea) is the sea god and Enlil is the Sumerian correspondence of El. There is no Sumerian or Akkadian myth where Enlil and Enki would be joining forces against An, and this is to be expected if the Hurrian myth relates to historical events, like the eruption of Thera, that occurred long after Sumerian and Akkadian times. In the Ugarite Baal cycle there is a myth of a sea monster. El makes his son Yamm (the Sea) the god of all gods. Yamm has to drive Baal-Hadad from his throne. The sea monster Yamm, written often as Yw, is one of the possible origins of Yahweh. Yahweh is an opponent of Baal in the Bible, but Yahweh resembles El rather than the sea monster Yamm. However, Yahweh was originally one of the sons of El. It may be so that Yahweh is originally a son of El, who was expelled to the underworld, and Yahweh’s goal was to throw Baal Hadad from his throne.
There is a corresponding Greek myth of Titans. Titans were monstrous children of Uranus and Gaia. After Cronus overthrew Uranus as the chief of gods, Cronus ruled the sky with Titans as his subordinates. Later they were thrown over by the children of Cronus: Zeus and the oldest Olympian gods. Thus, Titans are siblings of Cronus. In the same way Ullekummi of the Song of Ullekummi is the brother of Kumarbi.
In the Song of Ullekummi, Kumarbi makes a stone monster called Ullekummi (the monster is made, but it is also Kumarbi’s brother). The stone monster is in the sea, it is of stone, like a mountain, and it keeps on growing. From these properties it seems that Ullekummi is an erupting volcano in the sea. The feud between Kumarbi and Teshub is after Teshub become the high god, which we just dated to c. 1620 BC. The Song is written in the 13th or 14th century BC. This limits the time window for a volcano in the sea reasonably close to Mitanni or Anatolia (where the Hittite archive in Hattusa is where the Song was found) to a so narrow range that the eruption of Thera in Santorini, dated between 1642 and 1540 BC, is the only possible historical event that could be intended in the Song of Kumarbi as the effort of the mountain/volcano god to raise against the reigning storm god of Hurrians and Hittites. If Ullekummi is the volcano, then the sea monster is most probably a tsunami created by the volcano eruption.
There most probably is a connection between the eruption of Thera and the expulsion of Hyksos in c. 1550 BC. It is quite possible that Manetho is correct and Hyksos built Jerusalem. If so, Jebusites probably did preserve Hyksos traditions of the expulsion, the volcano eruption and tsunami, and of El. The Jebusite king-priest Melchizedek was a priest of El Eliyon, which may mean Alulu/Kumarbi, i.e., the vengeful Semitic god El/Yahweh. The eruption of Thera may even be the reason why the cult of the old El god was restored by Israelites and some other Syrian peoples after 1550 BC.
If El was an underworld god, it explains why the Bible associates diseases with God (Habakkuk 3:5, Plague went before Him and fever followed). Underground gods were associated with diseases, prophecy and magic. For the worshippers of El, he naturally was just an ancient high god, not a god of the underground. Of course, this is a rather speculative theory.
References:
Maciej Popko, Huryci, PIW, 1992.
Maciej Popko, Magia i wróżbiarstwo u Hetytów, PIW, 1982.