Alalu

The first king

The Song of Kumarbi opens by calling on the Former Gods to listen, and then tells how, in earlier years, Alalu was king in heaven. Anu, the mightiest of the gods, served him as cup-bearer, bowing at his feet and handing him his drink. After nine years Anu rebelled and defeated him, and Alalu fled down to the Dark Earth.

Father of the plotter

Kumarbi, who later overthrows Anu, is described as Alalu's offspring, so the struggle for kingship in heaven becomes a feud between two lineages: Alalu and his descendant Kumarbi on one side, Anu and the storm-god conceived from his seed on the other. Alalu himself plays no further part in the surviving text.

Among the Former Gods

Alalu belongs to the group Hittite texts call the Former Gods (karuileš šiuneš), primeval deities who were banished to the underworld and who are invoked in rituals as a group. The idea of a whole older generation of gods deposed and confined below the earth is another point of contact with the Greek Titans, but Alalu himself has no clear Greek equivalent.