Ḫalki was the Hittite deity of grain. While it is commonly assumed the name consistently referred to a goddess, a male form of this deity has also been identified. Ḫalki was associated with other grain deities, namely Mesopotamian Nisaba and Hattian Kait, with the latter presumed to be functionally identical. The oldest attestations come from Kanesh, though they are limited to theophoric names. In later periods, the female form of Ḫalki was worshiped in Hattusa, and the male one in Nerik, though evidence from other cities is also available.
Name and character Ḫalki was regarded as the deity of grain. The name is identical with the ordinary Hittite word for grain, in at least some contexts specifically used to refer only to barley (logographically ŠE). It is generally assumed that Ḫalki was a goddess at least through the Old Hittite period, though sometimes the term "deity" is used instead out of caution. The former assumption is supported by epithets such as DUMU.MUNUS-la and supessara (KI.SIKIL), both of which can be translated as "young woman". However, explicit references to a male form of Ḫalki have been identified too, in addition a text in which two forms of the deity are invoked, with only one explicitly referred to as female, which most likely indicated a need to differentiate between them due to this aspect of their character differing.
Associations with other deities Possibly as early as in the Old Hittite period, the Sumerogram dNISABA came to be used as a logographic writing of Ḫalki's name in Hittite sources. Nisaba was a Mesopotamian goddess similarly associated with grain, and she is first attested in Anatolia in the Old Assyrian texts from Kanesh as one of the deities of the foreign traders, though there is no indication that she continued to be worshiped there after they abandoned the site. It has been argued that her name was only ever used as a logogram in Hittite sources, but according too Piotr Taracha she might have been separately introduced to the Hittite pantheon at some point. Alfonso Archi notes that the use of the logogram dNISABA to represent Ḫalki's influenced the tradition of representing the Hurrian god Kumarbi, who prior to being incorporated into Hittite tradition independently developed a similar connection to the Mesopotamian goddess, under Ḫalki's name. Examples are known from texts linked to the city of Ankuwa. Taracha notes this is one of the two examples where a Hittite deity was associated in that capacity with a foreign one of a different gender, the other being the case of Lelwani and Allatum. The Hattian theonym corresponding to Ḫalki's name was Kait. This Hattic word similarly means "grain". According to Piotr Taracha both names functionally referred to the same goddess. The equation between the two is confirmed by a bilingual text from the Old Hittite period, KUB 28.75, which also states that Kait's name (not preceded by a so-called "divine determinative", dingir) among the gods was ḫāyamma (similarly lacking the dingir sign). Mark Weeden has proposed that it might be a combination of the name of the spouse of Nisaba, Haya, and an unknown Hattic element, amma, which he tentatively translates as "mother", though he also considers a fully Hattic origin plausible. Taracha notes that this explanation does not match the consensus view that the Hattic word for mother was either šemu or mu/wuu. The text KBo 20.101 indicates that the female version of Ḫalki was believed to have a daughter also named Ḫalki (dḫalkin DUMU.MUNUS-lan dḫalkin, "Ḫalki [and] baby girl Ḫalki"), who seemingly represented young seeds. Volkert Haas speculatively proposed that this pair might have been comparable to Greek Demeter and Kore. The male version of Ḫalki, known from the text KBo 52.20 + E 780, apparently was regarded as the husband of Ḫatepinu (otherwise attested as the wife of Telipinu) and of a goddess from Ḫarpiša designated by the Sumerogram dNIN.É.GAL, the brother of tutelary god of Zitḫara (Zitḫariya), and possibly as the father of the weather god of Nerik (presumably a local tradition, compared in scholarship to references to Šulinkatte and the sun goddess of the Earth being his parents).
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