The Orphic Hymns

Of Hippa. Incense: storax. I call Hippa, nurse of Bacchus, the Bacchic maiden who performs the mysteries, delighting in the rites of holy Sabos and in the night dances of loud-thundering Iakchos.

Abel prints her name as Hippa, as the manuscripts of the hymns have it. Most modern editions print Hipta, the form found elsewhere. Dedications from Lydia name a Mother Hipta together with Zeus Sabazios, the god of the hymn before this one, and the philosopher Proclus, in the fifth century AD, cites Orphic verses in which Hipta carries the infant Dionysus in a liknon on her head, wreathed with a snake. She was most likely a mother goddess of western Asia Minor, the region where these hymns were probably composed. The hymn makes her both nurse and worshipper. She is euas, a woman who raises the Bacchic cry, and mystipolos, one who performs the mysteries, and she delights in the rites of Sabos, a shorter name of Sabazios, and in the night dances of Iakchos.