The Ethnicity of the Sea Peoples - RePub - Erasmus Universiteit ...

APPENDIX III: A LUWIAN TRIFUNCTIONAL DIVINE TRIAD
RECORDED FOR CRETE
The Egyptian hieroglyphic text of a medical papyrus,
probably stemming from to the reign of Amenhotep III
(1390-1352 BC), preserves a magical spell against the Asiatic
pox in the language of the Keftiu. In transliteration,
this text reads:
sntk3pwpyw3yym‘ntrk3k3r,
or, in the vocalized transliteration as adopted by
Wolfgang Helck:
sa-n-ta-ka-pu-pi-wa-ya-’a-ya-ma-n-ta-ra-kú-ka-ra.
As argued at length in my contribution on the topic
from 1992 (with references), the formula can be subdivided
into six individual entities, four of which render
three divine names in sum, viz. Santas, Kupapa, and Tarku
Kara, and the remaining two of which consist of vocabulary
words, viz. waya (w3y) and ’ayaman (ym‘n). 681 The
three divine names are all of Luwian background, 682
681 Woudhuizen 1992a: 1-10; according to the expert Egyptologist
J.F. Borghouts, the sign Gardiner 1994: N 31 “road” does not render
a phonetic value in the present context.
682 For Luwian hieroglyphic, see Sava 1998: 41-2 (Santas); 17-
29 (Kupapa); 47-63 (Tar®unt); note that Tar®u(nt) is represented
as Trqqñt- or Trqqas in Lycian inscriptions, see Melchert 1993,
s.v., and as Zeus Targunos in Lydia, see Woudhuizen 1990: 101;
Santas and Kupapa are recorded in form of ãnt2a and Kufad in
Lydian no. 4, see Gusmani 1964. Related onomastic elements of
these three divine names together are attested for the archives of
Tell Atchana/Alalakh (Goetze 1954: 74, 78; Laroche 1960b: 116)
and Ras Shamra/Ugarit (Gordon 1965: glossary nos. 1186, 1777,
2607 and 2609) in North Syria (cf. Strange 1980: 132), i.e. precisely
the region from where Luwian hieroglyphic disseminates in
the beginning of the second millennium BC (Best & Woudhuizen
1989: 108-20; 128-37). At Karkamis in this very same region also
a divine triad is venerated, this time consisting of Tar®u(nt) (or its
Hurritic equivalent Tešup or its Semitic counterpart Adad), Kupapa
and the stag-god Kar®u®as, see Laroche 1960b: 120; this latter
divine triad is mentioned together in, amongst others, a Luwian
hieroglyphic inscription on a stone bowl dedicated by the Phrygian
king Midas and hence dating to the late 8th century BC, which was
transported as a spolia from Karkamis to Babylon, see Hawkins
2000: 394-6 and Woudhuizen 2004b: 105-6 (= Babylon 2).
141
whereas the vocabulary words, in conformity with the
situation in Cretan Linear A, are Semitic, waya corresponding
to wy “and” as recorded for a Phoenician inscription
from Cyprus and ’ayaman to ‘immanu “with us” as in
Biblical ‘immanu’el “with us god”, so that in its entirety
the translation of the formula runs as follows: “Santas, Kupapa,
and with us Carian Tar®u(nt)”.
Of the three gods in question, Tar®u(nt) is the stormor
weather-god, often depicted with the symbol of lightning
in his hand. Next, Kupapa, who is likely to be identified
with the Phrygian Magna Mater, Kybele, no doubt
likewise represents agricultural richness and procreation.
Finally, there is some evidence to consider Santas as a
war-god, because (1) he is depicted armed with a bow, (2)
in his capacity as chief god of Tarsus during the Classical
period he is identified with the Greek war-hero par excellence,
Herakles, and (3) in a Hittite text he is staged as
dressed in bloodred cloths – red being the color of the warrior
class. 683 At this point, one cannot help to be reminded
of Georges Dumézil’s epoch-making thesis of a trifunctional
ideology of the Indo-Europeans, Tar®u(nt) representing
royal sovereignty (= F1), Santas standing as a
protagonist for the class of warriors (= F2), and Kupapa
acting as protectress of the class of agricultural producers
(= F3). At any rate, the parallels from the pantheon of
other Indo-European peoples like the Romans, the Indians,
and the Germans for trifunctional divine triads are conspicious:
684
683 Melchert 2002: 241-2; Kammenhuber 1940: 193; cf. Dumézil
1958: 26.
684 Dumézil 1958: 48 f. (Roman); 34 (Indic); 58 (Germanic); according
to Littleton 1973: 12 the Germanic evidence should rather
be analysed as follows: F1 Othinn, F2 Thrr, and F 3 Freyr.