Kura
Eblaite · deity · eblaite 3rd millennium bce · Recorded classification
Kura was the city god of Ebla (Tell Mardikh) and, beside Hadabal, the foremost deity of the Eblaite pantheon attested in the palace archive of around 2400-2300 BCE. Worshipped, so far as is known, only at Ebla itself, he was bound closely to the institution of kingship: the great ritual of the renewal of kingship began at his temple by the city wall, and king and queen were treated as the earthly manifestation of Kura and his consort Barama. The meaning of his name is unknown and is generally ascribed to a pre-Semitic substrate. After the destruction of Ebla both Kura and Barama vanish from the record.
Domains
- kingship
- city protection
Powers
- to safeguard and renew the kingship of Ebla
Epithets
- dingir-dingir Ib-laKIAlfonso Archi, 'Studies in the Pantheon of Ebla,' Orientalia 63 (1994): 249-256. (secondary)
Relations
- spouse: BaramaBarama is the consort of Kura; the divine pair head the local pantheon and stand as the heavenly counterpart of the king and queen in the wedding ritual.Alfonso Archi, Ebla and Its Archives: Texts, History, and Society (Boston/Berlin: De Gruyter, 2015). (secondary)
Sources
- Kura was the tutelary head god of the third-millennium-BCE Syrian city-state of Ebla, protector of kingship and the focus of the royal wedding ritual.: Walther Sallaberger, 'Kura, Youthful Ruler and Martial City-God of Ebla,' in Ebla and Beyond, ed. P. Matthiae, F. Pinnock and M. D'Andrea (Wiesbaden: Harrassowitz, 2018), 107-139. (secondary); Alfonso Archi, 'Studies in the Pantheon of Ebla,' Orientalia 63 (1994): 249-256. (secondary)