Myth of Telipinu
Blight and drought are the visible symptoms of a god's private anger, so the land can only be healed by a ritual that physically locates and appeases the vanishing god rather than by any human remedy.
- divine anger as the cause of natural disaster
- the vanishing-god pattern
- ritual reenactment as the cure
- myth bound to a performed purification rite
The storm god's son Telipinu grows angry and vanishes, and with him goes fertility: crops fail, animals stop breeding, and even the gods go hungry. The gods search for him without success until a bee, sent by the goddess Hannahanna, finds him asleep and stings him awake, which only makes him angrier. A ritual of magical soothing, performed over him with symbolic objects representing the removal of his rage, finally calms Telipinu and restores order. The myth was recited as part of a purification ritual meant to be reenacted whenever the kingdom faced comparable crisis.
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