KUMME, SHRINE OF THE HURRIAN STORM-GOD TESHUB: A LOCATION ADJACENT TO A “MONSTER” VOLCANO?

Kumme, Urartian Qumenu, was anciently a very famous place, a center for the worship of the Hurrian weather deity Teshub.  Unfortunately, the site has not been convincingly located.  General consensus among Assyriologists and historical geographers is that the shrine must lie somewhere on the border region of what was then Assyria and Urartu, but which today forms the junction of Turkey, Syria, Iran and Iraq.

Dr. Mark Wheedon, SOAS, University of London, believes the site must have been “around the upper Habur, possibly further north in the mountains of the Tur Abdin or around Diyarbakir.”

According to Professor Gary Beckman, International Institute, University of Michigan:  “We still don't know where Kummi(ya) was located, other than generally in northeast Syro--Mesopotamia.”

Dlshad A. Marf Zamua adds: “Kumme and Qumenu is located inside the Iraqi Zagros, somewhere between Lesser Habur and Upper Zab, although its exact location is not yet known.”

Professor Doctor Daniel Shwemer, Universitat Wurzburg, Institut fur Alertumswssenschaten, Lehrstuhl fur Altorientalistik, shared the following:

“I am not aware of any game-changing evidence coming up since I summarized the hypotheses in my Wettergottgestalten and JANER 8/1, p. 3 (both available on my academia.edu page). A more recent article thyt you may wish to consult is K. Radner, Between a rock and a hard place: Muṣaṣir, Kumme, Ukku and Šubria – the buffer states between Assyria and Urarṭu, in the Munich Urartu conference volume published as Acta Iranica 51 (2012).”

I will hear quote extensively from Karen Radner’s article, which offers her own tentative identification of the shrine, and supply here map of the region:

A careful reading of this epic poem, fragmentary though it is, offers a wonderful portrait of the volcanic monster Ullikummi.  

http://thetempleofnature.org/_dox/oriental-forerunners-of-hesiod.pdf

https://www.academia.edu/4668128/Translation_of_the_Kumarbi_Cycle_with_Song_of_Hedammu_separated_into_two_different_versions_from_Gods_Heroes_and_Monsters_A_Sourcebook_of_Greek_Roman_and_Near_Eastern_Myths_in_Translation_edited_by_Carolina_L%C3%B3pez-Ruiz._New_York_Oxford_Oxford_University_Press_2013_

In her book ANCIENT ASSYRIA: A VERY SHORT INTRODUCTION (Oxford University Press, 2015, p. 71), Dr. Karen Radner says this of the monster:

But when I wrote to her and pointed out the undoubted volcanic nature of Ullikummi, she responded as follows:

 “Kumme in the monster's name refers to the weather god of Kumme (= Lord of Kumme), and not the place. To refer to deities known as Lord or Lady of <Place Name> in that way is the normal convention in personal names. The name Ullikummi has no relevance for a discussion of Kumme's location.”

In other words, Dr. Radner originally tried to associate the volcano monster with a proposed Kumme at Beytussebap – even though there was no volcano in the vicinity.  Then, apparently, when she recognized that the monster did not accord well with the phenomenon of avalanches and landslides, she shifted away from the view that Ullikummi as the vanquisher of Kumme has anything whatsoever to do with the shrine and instead has only to do with the god of Kumme.

This seems an untenable position to me.  Why?  

Well, chiefly because there ARE a couple of volcanoes in this region which make for very good candidates for the monster Ullikummi.  None of them, however, are near enough to Beytussebap to allow us to identify the latter with the shrine of Kumme.

The volcano of Hasan Dag is now believed to be that which was recorded during one of its eruptive phases in Neolithic art at Catalhoyuk.  This conclusion was reached in the following comprehensive study:

http://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0084711

Alas, Hasan Dag is much too far to the west for us to consider as the volcano monster Ullikummi.

There are only three volcanoes worth considering, given the general region in which Kumme is believed to be located.  

1)      The great Karaca Dag volcano (http://www.volcanodiscovery.com/karaca_dagi.html)

2)      Nemrut Dag (http://www.volcanodiscovery.com/nemrut_dagi.html) 

3)      Sharat Kovakab (http://www.volcanodiscovery.com/sharat-kovakab.html)

If we pay attention to the details of the Ullikummi myth, we notice that he is associated with a sea.  In particular, he is not only placed on the shoulder of the Atlas-like Upelluri, but he is said to be in or on the sea.

Neither Karaca Dag nor Sharat Kovakab are anywhere near seas.  Nemrut Dag, however, is on the Lake Van.  And during the Assyrian period, Lake Van was called the “Upper Sea” of Nairi.  The Armenians also called the lake a sea.  One of the Armenian appellations was the Sea of Tosp, this being for Tushpa, the capital of Urartu (= the kingdom of Ararat) on the lake/sea.  The diameter of the Nemrut caldera is about 9 x 5 km and it is half filled by a crater lake.

The Nemrut Dag volcano was also active throughout the modern geological period (Holocene).

A number of etymologies have been proposed for Kumme.  The first sees in this word Akkadian kummu, “cella, sanctuary”, and by extension, “shrine, holy edifice.”  But Gernot Wilhelm has proposed a Hurrian derivation from kum, which is now thought to me “tower” (see Alfonso Archi’s “The West Hurrian Pantheon and its Background”, in BEYOND HATTI, ed. By B.J. Collins and P. Michalowski, 2013,

https://www.academia.edu/7003610/The_West_Hurrian_Pantheon_and_Its_Background). 

The Nemrut volcano is named for Nimrod, the legendary builder of the TOWER of Babel.  For additional information and traditions on this volcano, see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nemrut_%28volcano%29.  

A good site for more details on the history of eruptions at Nemrut Dagi, see http://volcano.si.edu/volcano.cfm?vn=213020.

All the evidence suggests, therefore, that Ullikummi or “Vanquish Kumme” is a Hurrian name for Nemrut Dag.

But if this is so, where is Kumme, the shrine of Teshub/Teshup the storm god, whom the Urartians called Teisheba? 

As was made clear to me by Dlshad A. Marf Zamua of Leiden University, 

“…each epic and myth had its own message.  They tried to describe a natural event (such as the volcano you mention) or geographical feature, and sometimes the originators of these stories set themselves up as heroes of the epics, with their enemies as demons or monsters.”

In other words, Kumme represented itself in the epic poem as the special place of their god, Teshup.  They symbolized their enemy as one centered near the great Nemrut Dagi volcano around Lake Van, which was the heartland of the Urartian kingdom.  The same Urartian kingdom which under its king Minua (810-785/780 B.C.; see https://www.academia.edu/6490899/From_Tushpa_to_Militia._Further_considerations_on_the_Westward_expansion_of_the_Kingdom_of_Urartu) eventually conquered Kumme.

When it comes to an actual location for Kumme, I do not think Radner is correct.  Here is an important discussion concerning logging on the Zab from Michael C. Astour’s “Semites and Hurrians in Northern Transtigris” (General Studies and Excavations at Nuzi 9/1, 1987), which she alludes to in her own treatment of the subject:

It is very hard to argue against this, as I can think of no reason why men from another river-system further north would be used for the task of running the logs down the Zab when there certainly would have been plenty of labor to requisition on the Zab itself.  

We thus must look more closely at the Komane Radener summarily dispenses of in a note.  The following selections are from David Wilmshurst’s The Ecclesiastical Organization of the Church of the East 1318-1913 (2000):

These examples show that Komane or Koma (the latter perhaps being merely a textual error or a truncation, i.e. a sort of nickname for the place – although it is eerily reminiscent of Kumme) was a known place from fairly early on in the modern period.  Also, as any map will tell us, it was on the Ghara, a tributary of the Great Zab.  Thus loggers from Komane/Koma could easily have partaken in the log-running operation mentioned in Sargon’s correspondence.

Here is Komane on the map (http://www.atour.com/news/assyria/images/VMAAB-lg.jpg):

And an aerial photograph of Komane, courtesy Basim Nona via http://iq.worldmapz.com:

 

Given that both the name and the geographical situation of Komane/Koma matches those of Qumenu/Kumme, I personally see no further reason to search for this “lost” shrine of the storm god Teshup.