A Compendium of the Ancient Gods
Illuyanka, plate

There existed, in the deep places of the world the Hittites knew, a serpent-monster whose coils could fill a valley and whose strength was greater, at least in the first encounter, than that of the storm-god himself. The Hittites called him Illuyanka — a name which is simply their word for "snake" raised to the dignity of a proper noun, as if to say: "The Snake."

Two versions of his combat with Tarhunt are preserved. In the first, Tarhunt and Illuyanka met in battle and Tarhunt was defeated; the storm-god went weeping to the gods, and Inara his daughter contrived the feast-trap by which Illuyanka was bound and slain. In the second, Illuyanka caught Tarhunt in his coils and tore out the storm-god's heart and eyes. Tarhunt, recovering, fathered a son upon a mortal woman; the son was raised, came to manhood, and asked to marry the daughter of the dragon. The dragon, asked for his daughter's hand by this unknown suitor, demanded as bride-price the heart and eyes that Tarhunt's son must collect from his father's vanquisher. The youth retrieved the organs; his father was restored; and Tarhunt, in his second strength, killed Illuyanka. The youth, who had fulfilled his oath to his father-in-law by helping to retrieve the organs, was killed by his own request, declaring himself to be the dragon's son-in-law in death as in life.

The myth was recited annually at the Hittite Purulli Festival, the great spring rite of the New Year, when the dragon's yearly defeat by the storm-god was repeated in liturgy as an act of cosmic renewal. The order of the world, in Hittite religion, was not stable; it had to be re-won every year against an adversary who, defeated, would return.

Curator’s note

What the sources say, and what later tradition added. The sources for this bay

The Illuyanka Myth (CTH 321) survives in Old Hittite copies and is the principal Hittite contribution to comparative Indo-European mythology. The dragon-slaying pattern — in which a young storm-god defeats a serpent or dragon-monster, often after an initial defeat or with the help of a feminine ally — is widespread: it appears in Vedic Indra-vs-Vritra, in Greek Zeus-vs-Typhon, in Norse Thor-vs-Jörmungandr, in Iranian Thraetaona-vs-Aži-Dahāka, in Biblical-cosmogonic memories of YHWH-vs-Leviathan/Rahab. The Hittite instance is among the earliest written witnesses of the type, and the ritual context (the Purulli) shows the cosmological function of the myth: the story is not entertainment but new-year liturgy, a re-enactment of cosmic order maintained against return of chaos.

Kin in the sources

Each tie is quoted from the entry that states it.

When the sources speak

Dated witnesses for Anatolia. A date marks when the evidence was written down, not when the belief began. The whole timeline

c. 3400–3000 BCE
Uruk-period writing and monumental temple economies create the earliest recoverable administrative setting for named divine institutions.
c. 2900–2350 BCE
Early Dynastic city-states preserve local cults, hymns, royal inscriptions, and god lists; later copies often transmit older compositions.
c. 2334–2154 BCE
The Akkadian Empire expands bilingual and imperial patterns of divine identification without erasing local cult titles.
c. 2112–2004 BCE
Ur III administration and scribal schooling standardize many Sumerian literary and liturgical forms.
c. 2000–1600 BCE
Old Babylonian schools copy major myths, laments, hymns, debates, and heroic narratives in the form most often used by modern editors.
c. 1650–1200 BCE
Hittite and Hurrian archives at Hattusa transmit Anatolian myths, imported Syrian materials, and ritual compositions.
c. 1400–1190 BCE
The tablets of Ugarit preserve the Baal Cycle, Kirta, Aqhat, ritual lists, and a dense Late Bronze Age West Semitic pantheon.
c. 1000–612 BCE
Neo-Assyrian and Neo-Babylonian empires collect, revise, and politically reinterpret older learned traditions.

Floor plan

The rooms follow one another in the order their peoples first appear in the written record.

  1. The Cradle of Citiesc. 3400 BCE to 395 CE. 115 works
  2. The Gift of the Nilec. 4000 BCE to 395 CE. 73 works
  3. The Olympian Orderc. 1600 BCE to 750 CE. 152 works
  4. The Persian Worldc. 2000 BCE to 1010 CE. 30 works
  5. The Levantine Borderlandsc. 1200 BCE to 500 CE. 20 works
  6. The Edges of Empirec. 2000 BCE to 1500 CE. 33 works
  7. The Etruscan Worldc. 900 BCE to 750 CE. 22 works
  8. The Roman Inheritancec. 1200 BCE to 500 CE. 58 works
  9. The Northern Inheritancec. 2000 BCE to 1600 CE. 131 works