Telipinu

Telipinu was a king of the Hittites ca. 1460 BC (short chronology timeline). At the beginning of his reign, the Hittite Empire had contracted to its core territories, having long since lost all of its conquests, made in the former era under Hattusili I and Mursili I – to Arzawa in the West, Mitanni in the East, the Kaskians in the North, and Kizzuwatna in the South.

Biography

Telipinu was a son-in-law of Ammuna and brother-in-law of Huzziya I as a husband of Ammuna's daughter Ištapariya. His name was taken from the agricultural god Telipinu. During Telipinu’s reign, Huzziya and his five brothers were killed.

He was able to recover a little ground from the Hurrians of Mitanni, by forming an alliance with the Hurrians of Kizzuwatna; however, with the end of his reign, the Hittite Empire enters a temporary "Dark Ages", the Middle Kingdom, lasting around 70 years, when records become too scanty to draw many conclusions.

Telepinu is perhaps most famous for drawing up the Edict of Telepinu which dictated the laws of succession for the Hittite throne. It was designed to stop all the royal murders which had taken place in the previous decades, which had destabilised the empire and reduced the empire to only its heartland.

Telipinu (god)

Telipinu (Cuneiform: ^dTe(-e)-li-pí-nu(-ú), Hattic: Talipinu or Talapinu, "Exalted Son") was a Hittite god who most likely served as a patron of farming, though he has also been suggested to have been a storm god or an embodiment of crops. He was a son of the weather god Teššub and the solar goddess Arinniti according to their mythology. His wife was the goddess Hatepuna, though he was also paired with Šepuru and Kašḫa at various cultic centres.

Telipinu was honored every nine years with an extravagant festival in the autumn at Ḫanḫana and Kašḫa, wherein 1000 sheep and 50 oxen were sacrificed and the symbol of the god, an oak tree, was replanted. He was also invoked formulaically in a daily prayer for King Muršili II under the latter's reign.

The Telipinu Myth is an ancient Hittite myth about Telipinu, whose disappearance causes all fertility to fail, both plant and animal:

In order to stop the havoc and devastation, the gods seek Telipinu but fail to find him. Hannahannah, the mother goddess, sent a bee to find him; when the bee did, stinging Telipinu and smearing wax on him, the god grew angry and began to wreak destruction on the world. Finally, Kamrušepa, goddess of magic, calmed Telipinu by giving his anger to the Doorkeeper of the Underworld.