Hannahanna
Also known as: The Grandmother, Mother goddess
Mythological Narrative
The Hittite mother goddess, 'the Grandmother', who when every other god has failed sends a bee to find the missing Telipinu.
Scholarly Commentary & Evolution
## The Grandmother
Hannahanna's name simply means "grandmother", and scribes often wrote it with Sumerian signs used for Mesopotamian birth and mother goddesses. She is a figure of wisdom and authority among the gods: in the Disappearance of Telipinu it is she who tells the Storm-god to go and look for his son, and she who, when he returns empty-handed, sends the bee.
## The bee
The scene is one of the most memorable in Hittite literature. The Storm-god objects that the bee is small and its wings are small; Hannahanna sends it anyway, telling it to find Telipinu, sting his hands and feet to wake him, and smear him with wax. The bee finds him asleep in a meadow near the town of Lihzina and does exactly that, though waking Telipinu only makes him angrier, and a further ritual is needed.
## A vanishing goddess herself
Like several Hittite deities, Hannahanna has her own fragmentary "disappearance" myth, in which she too departs in anger and must be brought back, again with the help of a bee. The recurrence of the bee as the messenger who finds hidden gods is one of the distinctive features of this Anatolian tradition.
Academic Discussion & Critique
Exchange peer-reviewed hypotheses, comparative Indo-European etymologies, and archaeological field interpretations regarding Hannahanna.
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