This page groups deities by the earliest year a surviving written or inscribed source places them, sorting gods by how far back their documented worship can actually be traced. Archaeologists call this kind of earliest possible date a terminus post quem, which Wikipedia defines as "the earliest date the event may have happened or the item was in existence." Browsing by first attestation separates deities known from the oldest surviving records from ones who only appear in much later texts.
Facts
Overview
What Defines This GroupingThe gods of the Hittite state and its Anatolian empire: a deliberately accumulated pantheon. The Hittites adopted the gods of the peoples they ruled and bordered, and their own texts call the result the thousand gods of Hatti. Several deities appear in more than one linguistic layer under more than one name, and the entries record the layer rather than merging them. 2 Peoples and Traditions CoveredThe Hattians, the pre-Hittite population of central Anatolia, whose gods the Hittite state took over wholesale 2 Peoples and Traditions CoveredThe Hittites themselves, speakers of Nesite, whose royal archives at Hattusa are the source of the corpus 2 Peoples and Traditions CoveredThe Hurrians, whose gods entered through Kizzuwatna and whose Kumarbi cycle is the best known myth the Hittite archives transmit 2 Peoples and Traditions CoveredThe Luwian and Syro-Mesopotamian peoples of the empire and its borders, whose deities were absorbed alongside the rest 2 Attestation
Era of AttestationAttested in the cuneiform archives of Hattusa from the Old Hittite period to the fall of the empire, about 1650 to 1180 BCE. 2 Veneration TodayThe cult ended with the empire; no continuous worship survives. 2 Learn More
The gods of the Hittites
This group gathers the deities of the Hittites, the Bronze Age power of Anatolia whose extensive cuneiform archives survive at Hattusa. The Hittites absorbed gods from the Hattian, Hurrian, Mesopotamian and Syrian peoples around them, and their state religion was proverbially called that of the thousand gods.
The browser will find the storm-god Tarhunna (Teshub in the Hurrian layer), the sun-goddess of Arinna who headed the state pantheon, and the mythic cycles of Kumarbi and the succession in heaven, which show striking parallels to later Greek myth. The atlas notes the layered, borrowed character of the pantheon.
Era Attested Start Year
Sources
1. Divinity Atlas Directory Taxonomy, First Edition Category Tree
2. Hittite Myths, 2nd edition
Harry A. Hoffner Jr. (Gary M. Beckman, ed.), Society of Biblical Literature (Writings from the Ancient World), 1998IntroductionView the Source Divinity Atlas Directory Prose, First Edition Category Descriptions
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