You've heard the legend of the God Who Fell From the Sky. But what did this dramatic myth really mean to the Hittites?

In this episode of Veritas Antiqua, we go beyond the story and put this cosmic drama on the table. The bilingual (Hattian-Hittite) tablet we have might have been "lesson material" for scribes. But what does it tell us? Was this an accident triggered by the Storm God's wrath, or was it a "conscious" descent by the Moon into a marketplace?

At the center of our discussion are these questions:

• How did this event shake the Hittite understanding of the universe (Cosmos), which was built on a "delicate balance"?

• Why was the descent of the sacred into the mundane (the marketplace) perceived as a "pollution" (Paparatar)?

• Why was the solution not brute force, but "persuasion, consolation, and ritualistic purification"?

• What were the expert roles of Hapantali and Kamrušepa in this crisis?

And of course, we discuss the meaning of the tablet being "broken" at the most critical moment, and that "surrealist lion" detail sketched in the margin by a scribe.

Analyze the legend's backstory and the shattered cosmos of the Hittites with us.