Apaliunas

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Apaliunas is a Luwian deity attested among the gods in western Anatolia in a treaty inscription. Apaliunas is considered to be the original from which Apollo of the Hellenes as well as Apulu of the Etruscans, perhaps independently, derived their names and their earliest characters.

Apaliunas is among the gods who guarantee a treaty drawn up about 1280 BCE between Alaksandu of Wilusas, interpreted as "Alexander of Ilios" and the great Hittite king[1], Muwatalli II. He is one of the three deities named on the side of the city. In Homer, Apollo is the builder of the walls of Ilium, a god on the Trojan side.

Further east of the Luwian language area, a Hurrian god Aplu was a deity of the plague—bringing it, or, if propitiated, protecting from it — and resembles Apollo Sminthos, "mouse-Apollo"[2] worshiped at Troy and Tenedos, who brought plague upon the Achaeans in answer to a Trojan prayer at the opening of Iliad.[3]. The Hurrian Aplu itself seems derived from Babylonian "aplu" meaning "son of", a title that was given to the Babylonian plague god, Nergal as son of Enlil. In Greek mythology, Apollo remained the son of the chief god, Zeus.

The character of Apaliunas can, as yet, only be approximately estimated by extrapolating from Apollo as healer and oracle, whose intervention was sought by Greeks suffering from disease and whose reassuring advice was sought in matters of cult. Apaliunas, as Apollon — to give him the Greek form of his name — reached Delos and Delphi at the end of the Bronze Age.

The question of whether Apulu/Apaliunas is one of the original Etruscan deities, predating the Hellenic influence that introduced several specifically Greek deities, is based in large part on the remark by Dionysius of Halicarnassus, in describing the origin of the Etruscans, whom he called Pelasgians:

For the Pelasgians in a time of general scarcity in the land had vowed to Zeus, Apollo and the Kabeiroi tithes of all their future increase.[4]

[edit] Notes

  1. ^ Latacz 2001:138.
  2. ^ σμίνθος, "mouse".
  3. ^ Iliad i. 37-39.
  4. ^ Dionysius, 1.23.5.

[edit] References

  • Latacz, Joachim, 2001. Troia und Homer: Der Weg zur Lösung eines alten Rätsels. (Munich)
  • Korfmann, Manfred, "Stelen auf den Toren Toias: Apaliunas – Apollon in Truisa – Wilusa?,” in Güven Arsebük, M. Mellink, and W. Schirmer (eds.), Light on Top of the Black Hill. Festschrift für Halet Cambel (Istanbul) 1998:471-78. Stel outside the supposed gates of Troy.