Note 46.1 — Chapter III · The Morphology of the Compared Religions.

The Mitani chieftains bear names that show a convincingly Aryan formation, and we know from the momentous inscriptions found in 1907 at Boghaz-Keui recording treaties between the king of the Hittites and the king of the Mitani (B.C. 1400), that the dynasts of the latter people had Aryan gods in their pantheon.46.1 But the Mitani themselves were not Aryans, and are assumed by Winckler and Messerschmidt to be Hittites.46.2 If this were proved, the theory which it is the general aim of these lectures to consider, that the Babylonian religious system may have reached the Mediterranean in the second millennium, would receive a certain vraisemblance from the fact revealed by the letter of King Tushratta, namely, that the Mitani of this period had adopted some of the Mesopotamian personal divinities, and might therefore have transmitted them to the coast of Asia Minor. Yet the Hittites had their own local divine names; from the cuneiform inscriptions written in the Hittite language found at Van in Armenia, we gather the names of various Hittite gods, Teshup, for instance, who appears on a column found at Babylon holding the lightning, and in his right hand a hammer, which, from the analogy of other religions, we may interpret as the fetich-emblem of the thunder.46.3