Hanwasuit
Hanwasuit (Hattic Ḫanwašuit, Hittite Ḫalmašuit) is the deified royal throne-dais, one of the most distinctive inheritances of the Hattic substrate in Hittite religion. She appears already in the Anitta text, the oldest Hittite historical document, in connection with the seizure of Hattusa, and Frank Starke demonstrated that she stands at the centre of the old central Anatolian ideology of kingship. In the Old Hittite ritual for the founding of a new palace the king addresses the Throne as a personal ally: she sends the eagle to the sea, where the fate-goddesses Ištuštaya and Papaya sit spinning the king's years, and the transfer of the regalia of rule takes place in her presence. The Hittite common noun for the throne-dais, ḫalmaššuitt-, is itself a loanword from her Hattic name.
Domains
- kingship
- royal throne
Powers
- to bestow kingship and its regalia upon the ruler
Sources
- Frank Starke, "Ḫalmašuit im Anitta-Text und die hethitische Ideologie vom Königtum", Zeitschrift für Assyriologie und Vorderasiatische Archäologie 69 (1979): 47–120
- Volkert Haas, Geschichte der hethitischen Religion (Handbuch der Orientalistik I/15), Leiden: Brill, 1994
- Piotr Taracha, Religions of Second Millennium Anatolia (Dresdner Beiträge zur Hethitologie 27), Wiesbaden: Harrassowitz, 2009