Hittite PantheonCreature
Hedammu
- devours cattle, fish, and people in huge quantities
- threatens to starve the gods of offerings
A voracious sea-serpent, son of Kumarbi and the daughter of the Sea, whom the goddess Šauška draws out of the water with her beauty in the fragmentary Song of Hedammu.
About Hedammu
Another of Kumarbi's champions
The Song of Hedammu (CTH 348) is the most fragmentary song of the Hurrian Kumarbi cycle. In it, Kumarbi allies with the Sea and marries the Sea's daughter, Šertapšuruḫi, and their child is Hedammu, a monstrous serpent that lives in the sea and eats without end. Its appetite threatens the whole world: if it devours humanity and the animals, there will be no one left to bring offerings to the gods.
Šauška's plan
The goddess Šauška, Teššub's sister, takes on the serpent. The surviving fragments describe her bathing, anointing herself with perfumed oil, and adorning herself, then going down to the shore and showing herself to Hedammu, who is enchanted. The text seems to go on to describe her giving him a drugged or intoxicating drink, but the ending is not preserved, and it is not known exactly how Hedammu was overcome.
Relationship to Ullikummi
Hedammu's story and Ullikummi's are variations on a theme: Kumarbi breeds a monster to overthrow Teššub, and Šauška's seduction is tried against it. With Hedammu it seems to work; with the deaf and blind Ullikummi it fails, and a different kind of wisdom is needed.
Sources and further reading
Source notes
These references are recorded in the catalog. Their passage wording and translation have not been checked, so quotations are not displayed here.
- Song of Hedammu, CTH 348, trans. H. A. Hoffner Jr., Hittite Myths
About this entry
By Elizabeth Stein for Mythos Atlas. About the author. Editorial notes are grounded in the site's cited sources and can be challenged through the contact page.
The danger rating is an editorial shorthand for how the myths portray the creature, not a claim made by the sources.