Spindle or Mace? A Hypothesis on One of the Attributes of the Statuette of the God Teišeba Discovered in Karmir Blur

Abstract Teišeba was the weather god of the Urartian State. Following the supreme god Ḫaldi, he was the second highest-ranked god in the Urartian pantheon. In all probability, the statuette of the beardless deity found during the Karmir Blur excavations could be identified with the Urartian weather god. It is generally accepted that with his left hand he clasps an axe against his chest, while his right hand swings a mace in front of his knees. Instead of this explanation we propose that this deity holds not a mace but a spindle. In this context it is noteworthy that according to A. Petrosyan, the name of the Urartian god Teišeba is deriving from Proto-Indo-European *teḱs – which means “axe”, but also “to weave”. *Teḱs also characterizes the cosmogonic action of the creator god, who in the context of the thunder-god myth, is to be identified with the thunder god.