Aranzah

Also Known As: Aranzaḫ; also written Aranziḫ and Araššiḫ; the Hurrian name of the river Tigris and of the god who is that river; listed as Aranzû and Aransuḫ in the Mesopotamian word list Malku, and as Arazaḫi in Akkadian texts from Hattusa
Region/Culture: Mesopotamia and Ancient Near East
Mythos: Hittite/Hurrian Mythology
Primary Type/Nature: Gods and Deities
Mythical Attributes: Aranzah is the Tigris itself as a living, male god, a power that Anu calls not to be resisted when he plants it inside the body of Kumarbi.
Role in Mythos: In the Kumarbi cycle he is one of the three gods born of Kumarbi after the castration of Anu, a brother of the storm god Teshub and of Tašmišu, and counted among Teshub’s allies.
Relation to Humans: Hurrian parents named their children after him across northern Mesopotamia and Syria, with names such as Ḫazip-Aranziḫ, Aranzah granted. In the Hittite telling of Sargon of Akkad’s march on Purušḫanda, the king stops to sacrifice one ox and seven sheep to the sacred river.

The first thing anyone learns about Aranzah is that he was meant as a punishment. Kumarbi has chased the sky god Anu up into heaven, dragged him down and bitten off his genitals, and the manhood of Anu has fused inside him like bronze. Kumarbi is laughing. Anu is not. Don’t rejoice, he tells him. I have put a burden inside you. He names what it is: the storm god, the vizier Tašmišu, and the River Aranzah, which in one translation is not to be resisted and in another is not to be borne. Then Anu climbs back into the sky and hides. That is how a river enters the story, as a weight in the belly of a god who thought he had won.

Aranzah is the Hurrian name for the Tigris, and the Hurrians did not separate the water from the god. The river running cold and brown out of the mountains of what is now southeastern Turkey, down past the old Hurrian country and on toward Assyria and Babylon, was a divine person, and a male one. Nobody has managed to explain the name. It is plainly Hurrian and its root is unknown. The Babylonian scholars who compiled the word list known as Malku noted it down as a foreign term for their own river, Aranzû or Aransuḫ, and scribes at the Hittite capital Hattusa used a form of it, Arazaḫi, even when writing Akkadian. Mesopotamians called the same river-god Idiqlat. Where the Tigris flowed, someone was praying to it.

His birth is the most famous thing about him and the least clear. The story comes from a Hittite tablet of the song that modern editors call the Song of Emergence, or of Going Forth, or of Kumarbi, part of the loose cluster of Hurrian myths in which the old god Kumarbi fights and loses to the storm god Teshub. The tablet is badly damaged exactly where the births happen. Kumarbi spits something out of his mouth, and Mount Kanzura receives it and becomes a fearsome god. For a while that was read as the birth of the river; closer readings of the text give the mountain’s child to Tašmišu instead, and one editor concludes that Aranzah came out by some route the surviving lines never show. A later fragment has the river going forth and the goddesses of fate delivering it. Three gods were promised. The tablet tells us how two of them got out, and even that with gaps.

Whatever the route, the result is a family. Aranzah is the brother of Teshub, the storm god who will become king of heaven, and of Tašmišu, Teshub’s vizier, all three of them sons of Anu carried by Kumarbi. When the cycle turns into a war between the old king and the new, the river stands on Teshub’s side. Anyone who knows Hesiod will feel the floor tilt here: a sky god castrated by his son’s generation, the severed part becoming new gods, a younger storm god taking the throne. Greek poets were telling a close relative of this story centuries later, with Ouranos and Kronos in the parts.

Outside the theogony, Aranzah turns up in a stranger place. A fragmentary Hurrian tale preserved in Hittite follows a king of Akkad called Gurparanzah, whose name has been translated as quiver of Aranzah, the river that gave him his name. The river god is the hero’s own protector. When Gurparanzah is parted from his bride Tadizuli and falls into grief in a place called Nuadu, Aranzah goes looking for him; the translator Mary Bachvarova reads the damaged lines as the god taking the form of an eagle for the journey. If she is right, it is the only moment in the record when this god has wings, or any shape at all. Another fragment, known as Ea and the Beast, mentions someone pregnant with Aranzah, which may be a second version of his strange birth or a piece of the same song.

The river also had a working life among ordinary worshippers. Hurrian personal names built on his name are common wherever Hurrians settled, and some of the letters from the palace at Mari carry one of them, Ḫazip-Aranziḫ, Aranzah granted. The Hittites kept a version of a Mesopotamian legend in which Sargon of Akkad leads his army north-west toward the city of Purušḫanda. On the way the king halts at the water and sacrifices to the Aranzah River, the holy river: one ox and seven sheep. The smell of the burnt fat would have hung over the bank while the soldiers waited to cross. It is a rare combination of animals in a Hittite text.

Much later, in the first millennium BC, the Assyrian kings Tiglath-Pileser I and Shalmaneser III travelled to the grotto where the Tigris runs out from under the rock in the land of Shubria and made sacrifices there; the bronze bands of the Balawat Gates show Shalmaneser’s visit. Karen Radner links the sanctity of that source to the older Hurrian worship of the river. Those visits come many centuries after the Hurrian texts, so this is the cult’s likely afterlife rather than proof of it, but the picture is hard to shake: kings standing in the echoing dark of a cave while the water that was once a son of Anu pours out past their feet.

His power is simply the river’s power, and Anu’s word for it fits: not to be resisted. The Tigris could feed a country or drown it. Born from the castration that began the fall of the old gods, Aranzah is a piece of the sky’s revenge, and he ends on the winning side. His limits are the limits of his record, which is thin and broken, and in his own birth story he gets fewer lines than a mountain. He lives in broken clay, in personal names, and in one ox and seven sheep on a riverbank.

Frequently Asked Questions

Who is Aranzah in Hurrian mythology?

Aranzah is the Hurrian god of the river Tigris, and the river itself treated as a male deity. In the Kumarbi cycle, preserved on Hittite tablets, he is one of three gods born of Kumarbi after Kumarbi bit off the genitals of the sky god Anu. His brothers are the storm god Teshub and Tašmišu.

How was Aranzah born?

When Kumarbi castrated Anu, Anu told him he had been impregnated with the storm god, Tašmišu and the River Aranzah. The tablet recording the births is badly damaged, so exactly how Aranzah emerged is disputed. Mount Kanzura received something Kumarbi spat out, but that child is now usually identified as Tašmišu, and a later fragment says only that the river went forth and the fate goddesses delivered it.

Is Aranzah the same as the Tigris?

Yes. Aranzah is the Hurrian name for the Tigris, and the Hurrians regarded the river as a god. Babylonian scholars recorded the name as a foreign word for the Tigris, and the Mesopotamian name for the same river god was Idiqlat.

What is the story of Gurparanzah?

Gurparanzah is a king of Akkad in a fragmentary Hurrian tale preserved in Hittite, and his name has been translated as quiver of Aranzah. Aranzah acts as his protective god. When Gurparanzah is separated from his bride Tadizuli, Aranzah travels to find him, possibly, according to the translator Mary Bachvarova, in the form of an eagle.

Was Aranzah actually worshipped?

Yes. Hurrian personal names built on Aranzah’s name are widespread, including Ḫazip-Aranziḫ, meaning Aranzah granted, in letters from Mari. The Hittite version of the Sargon legend has Sargon of Akkad sacrifice one ox and seven sheep to the Aranzah River on his march toward Purušḫanda.