Runtiya

Bronze Age Luwian and Hittite texts treat Runtiya as a member of the divine household: in Bronze Age contexts he is described as a protective deity and is attested as the son of the sun-god Tiwaz and the goddess Kamrušepa. This description reflects cultic and genealogical placement within Luwian/Hittite religious lists rather than a single narrative origin tale.

Iconography and textual descriptions represent Runtiya anthropomorphically as a male god closely connected with a stag or antlers. A Hittite description of a statuette shows him as a man standing on a deer, with a bow in his right hand and eagle and hares in his left. Iron Age reliefs (for example the Karasu relief) portray him as a beardless god standing on a deer, wearing a peaked cap and shown with a bow over his shoulder. In Hieroglyphic Luwian his name is frequently written with the image of a deer or antlers (the deer/antler sign).

Runtiya functions primarily as a protective and hunting patron: Bronze Age texts treat him as protective, and Iron Age evidence records that he received sacrifices of gazelles and was believed to reward worshippers with success in the hunt. Epithets linking him to meadows/fields (Imralli/Imrassi, "the meadow") connect him to pasture and game. In bilingual inscriptions (Karatepe) Runtiya is identified with the West Semitic deity Resheph, indicating contexts of syncretism with other animal-associated or martial/arrow-bearing gods; in later Cilician contexts his cult is argued to have persisted in associations with Hermes at Korykos.