Kamrušepa

## The divine ritual expert

Kamrušepa is the goddess of magic in the Hittite texts, the divine model for human ritual practitioners. In incantations the healer often describes a problem and then says what Kamrušepa did about it, so that the human rite repeats a divine precedent. Her Hattian counterpart is Katahzipuri.

## Soothing Telipinu

In the Disappearance of Telipinu, waking the god by the bee's sting only makes his anger worse, and he begins to destroy the land. The gods then turn to Kamrušepa, who performs a purification: she takes away his anger, rage, and sullenness, and the ritual sends them down to the Dark Earth, where they are locked in bronze vessels with lids of lead so that they cannot return. The text alternates between her actions and the words of a mortal ritualist, which shows how the myth was used: the human performer repeats what the goddess once did.

## Other texts

Kamrušepa also appears in Luwian incantations and in rituals for healing people and animals; she is associated with the Sun-god and with the gate of the gods. She is known almost entirely from ritual literature, not from temples or state festivals.