two distinct deities in texts from Ur and Hattusa. Allani's name was written logographically as dEREŠ.KI.GAL. In Mesopotamia they were eventually equated with each other, and in the god list An = Anum Allatum is simply an epithet of Ereshkigal. Hittites associated Allani with their own underworld goddess, the Sun goddess of the Earth, originally possibly a chthonic aspect of the Hattian sun goddess. In Kizzuwatna, Allani/Sun goddess of the Earth presided over ritual purification and was believed to keep evil and impurity sealed in her kingdom. Despite the equation, Allani did not acquire the characteristics of a solar deity. Under her Mesopotamian name Allatum Allani was separately syncretised with another Hittite death deity, Lelwani, originally a male god from the Hattian pantheon, who started to be viewed as a goddess due to this equation. Female Lelwani is already attested in sources dated to the reign of Hittite king Hattusili III. The deity's name was written logographically as dALLATUM. dALLATUM and dEREŠ.KI.GAL may occur in the same texts separately from each other, indicating that Allani and Lelwani were not directly regarded as the same. It is possible that in Ugarit Arsay, one of the daughters of the weather god Baal, was viewed as the equivalent of Allatum. Because of this association it has been proposed that she shared her character as an underworld deity. However, Steve A. Wiggins notes that it is important to maintain caution when attempting to define the roles of poorly attested Ugaritic deities entirely based on the character of their presumed equivalents. Mythology According to Hurrian texts, Allani resided in a palace at the gate of the "Dark Earth" (Hurrian: timri eže), the land of the dead. In one episode from a longer mythical composition titled Song of Release (KBo 32.13) the weather god Teshub descends to the underworld and partakes in a banquet held by Allani alongside his enemies, the "former gods" whose defeat is described in the cycle of Kumarbi. The rest of the narrative is missing and both its conclusion and purpose are uncertain. Multiple explanations were proposed by experts. Walter Burkert and Erich Neu assume that Allani presided over reconciliation between Teshub and his enemies. Volkert Haas suggests that the underworld banquet should be understood as an episode comparable to the Mesopotamian myth of Inanna's descent to the netherworld, with Teshub temporarily imprisoned in the land of the dead. Gernot Wilhelm proposes