The author shows that the Holy Trinity of the main Hurrian Gods,
Tešub
,
Ḫebat
and their son
Šarruma
is addressed in a sophisticated and poetic way, usually at the beginning of the so-called 'libation formulas', by means of descriptive epithets. They appear in a fixed order of importance. First Tešub's Linear A epithet
a-ta-i-jo-wa-ja
'Our Father', absolutive/vocative
attai=(j)=o/uwwa=(j)=aš
, consisting of
attai
'father' + transitional semi-vowel
-j-
between 2 vowels + enclitic possessive pronoun 1
st
person sing.
-o/uwwa-
(my) + transitional semi-vowel
between 2 vowels + the pluralizer
-aš
(our). Compare cuneiform Hurrian
d
Te-e-eš-šu-pa-aš
........
eb-ri-iw-wa-šu-uš at-ta-iw-wa-šu-uš
(3
ergatives
), 'Tešub .... Our Lord, Our Father' in the Tušratta letter (Mit. IV 118).
Then the epithet of
's wife
a-di-ki-ti/e(-te)
, analysis
ašdi
-
dagitti
, 'The woman is a beauty / beautiful' > 'The (most) beautiful woman', appears (in haplography) in the libation formulas. The form is attested as
a-di-da-ki-ti
(KN Zc 6.2) in
scriptio plena
on the interior of a Middle-Minoan III cup at Knossos (
= 'woman').
[In Linear A and B
-s-
preceding an occlusive is not expressed in consonant clusters.]
Then the epithet of the young god
Šarrum(m)a
appears as
a-sa-sa-ra-me
arša-šarr=a=me
, 'The young man/boy, he is like the King of Gods'. The Linear A variant
ja-sa-sa-ra-ma|-na
(KN Za 10a-b) can be analysed as
y(a)/y(e)-arša-šarr=a=mann=a
, 'as well as "The young boy (
arša
'young man') is (
mann=(i)a
) like the King of Gods" ',
(
šarr=a
is the
essive
of Hurrian
šarr=i
'King of Gods').
The contents of the prayers in the 'libation formulas' appear to be about the same subject as the meaning of many personal names, in which the
birth of healthy children
, sometimes after the death of an older child, is always in the minds of the parents.
Linear A
u-na-ka-na-si
, Hurrian
un=a-ḫ(ḫ)an=a=šši
'come childhood, childbirth' is an essential term occurring in almost every formula. It may not be accidental that the name
Arkhanes
is attested as
a
]
-ka-ne
(AK 3a.1+fr. AK.1b.1, join P.G. van Soesbergen) on a Linear A tablet found in the Minoan Villa of
Epano Arkhanes
. Even more significant is the fact that the toponym can be analysed as Hurrian
ar=ḫane/i
'Give a child' and that the Villa of Arkhanes may well have been the starting point for supplicants and priests to go upto the Peak Sanctuary of Mount Ioukhtas to pray to
Tešub, Ḫebat and Šarru(m)ma
.
See for an extensive analysis
Chapter 11: 'Religious' Linear A inscriptions