Nahhunte
deity
Nahhunte was the Elamite sun god. While the evidence for the existence of temples dedicated to him and regular offerings is sparse, he is commonly attested in theophoric names, including these of members of Elamite royal families.
Name and character
Multiple writings of the name are known. In Elamite documents, the attested forms include Nahhunte, Nahhute, Nahiti and dPÍR. Forms attested in Akkadian texts include Naḫḫude, Naḫunde, Nanḫunde, dUTU and, exclusively in theophoric names, -nande and -ḫundu.
According to Matthew Stolper, the name Nahhunte is a compound noun, but its precise etymology is impossible to ascertain. He proposes that it was a cognate, and possibly a homonym, of the Elamite word for the sun. In curse formulas, his name functioned as a metonym for the sun itself.
In texts from Susa, Haft Tepe and Malamir the name of the sun god was usually written logographically as dUTU and it is uncertain when it should be read as Nahhunte rather than Shamash. It is possible that in legal texts, when dUTU occurs next to Inshushinak, Ruhurater or Simut, the logogram should be read as Nahhunte.
Worship
The oldest attestation of Nahhunte is the "Treaty of Naram-Sin of Akkad," in which the name is spelled as Nahiti.
The public source identifies “Nahhunte” as deity. This brief keeps that definition visible, then builds a research path around Nahhunte and deity.
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This entry incorporates text from “Nahhunte” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.