A god is furious, and in his fury he has abandoned the people and the kingdom to suffer one catastrophe after another. Today we look at the myth, the ritual, and the theological understanding of why bad things happened and what to do about them, according to ancient Anatolian traditions that pre-date the Hittites themselves. Through looking at this story, we get a window into the mindset and lifestyle of the people over whom the Hittites rules, a mindset that was almost certainly shared at least in part by the rulers themselves. Will the missing god be found and the natural order restored? Yes, he will, but it is in the manner that this is accomplished that quite a lot is revealed.
The god Telipinu is sometimes spelled Telepinu, or even once Telepenu, not completely sure here again if there is a difference, but it is probably just a shift in the spelling convention.
It is very hard to find good online sources for Hittite stuff, but there is a print book called Hittite Myths, 2nd Edition by Harry Hoffner, a pretty big name in Hittite Studies, which is my primary reference for myth translations.
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