"the lord of Heaven", the Baal. As Sutekh, Tarku, Adad, or
Ramman, he was the god of thunder, rain, fertility, and war, and he
ultimately acquired solar attributes. A famous rock sculpture at
Boghaz-Koei depicts a mythological scene which is believed to represent
the Spring marriage of the Great Father and the Great Mother,
suggesting a local fusion of beliefs which resulted from the union of
tribes of the god cult with tribes of the goddess cult. So long as the
Hatti tribe remained the predominant partner in the Hittite
confederacy, the supremacy was assured of the Great Father who
symbolized their sway. But when, in the process of time, the power of
the Hatti declined, their chief god "fell... from his predominant
place in the religion of the interior", writes Dr. Garstang. "But the
Great Mother lived on, being the goddess of the land."[292]

In addition to the Hittite confederacy of Asia Minor and North Syria,
another great power arose in northern Mesopotamia. This was the
Mitanni Kingdom. Little is known regarding it, except what is derived
from indirect sources. Winckler believes that it was first established
by early "waves" of Hatti people who migrated from the east.

The Hittite connection is based chiefly on the following evidence. One
of the gods of the Mitanni rulers was Teshup, who is identical with
Tarku, the Thor of Asia Minor. The raiders who in 1800 B.C. entered
Babylon, set fire to E-sagila, and carried off Merodach and his
consort Zerpanitu^m, were called the Hatti. The images of these
deities were afterwards obtained from Khani (Mitanni).

At a later period, when we come to know more about Mitanni from the
letters of one of its kings to two Egyptian Pharaohs, and the Winckler
tablets from Bog-haz-Koei, it is found that its military aristocracy
spoke an Indo-European language, as is shown by the names of their
kings--Saushatar, Artatama, Sutarna, Artashshumara, Tushratta, and
Mattiuza. They worshipped the following deities:

Mi-it-ra, Uru-w-na, In-da-ra, and Na-sa-at-ti-ia--

Mitra, Varuna, Indra, and Nasatyau (the "Twin Aswins" = Castor and
Pollux)--whose names have been deciphered by Winckler. These gods were
also imported into India by the Vedic Aryans. The Mitanni tribe (the
military aristocracy probably) was called "Kharri", and some
philologists are of opinion that it is identical with "Arya", which
was "the normal designation in Vedic literature from the Rigveda
onwards of an Aryan of t