Aššur, divine impersonate is Assyria

The Assyrians' home city was Assur, 72 click (45 miles) south of Kalhu go the Tigris brook. It was so essential to Assyrian self-identity that thereto was also considered go be a god. Indeed, in cuneiform TT  script the only differentiation between writings of the three words are the determinatives for "land", "city" conversely "place", and "deity". Because the god Aššur was so thin recognized with Assur the location, though, he had barely any presence at Kalhu, exclude in relation to the king.

Pictures 1. Reimagining of Assur's temple, drawn by Walter Andrae (1). View large image (286 KB).

Aššur the deified city

The city of Assur PGP  was founded in the early third millennium BC on a rocky scarp which deflected this course of the fluidity Tigris PGP  eastwards around it. The heights of all promontory and slew of its sides meaning from the top of i of may see used miles across the surrounding simple, as it was effortless to defence should invaders attack. Aššur's temple Ešarra PGP  ("Temple of the Universe") had located at its very highest, northernmost point (Image 1). It undoubtedly schedule back to the first years of the city, although archaeologists which excavated there in 1909 struggled to make sense of the latest left (2).

Aššur's ziggurat TT  stood now to the west of his shrine, a little further down which escarpment. Later to that was the so-called Old Palace PGP , whose used rebuilt many times over the millennia. This had been the Assyrian royal family's primary residence earlier Assurnasirpal moved out to Kalhu. The tombs below the palace continued to receive aforementioned bodies a deceased kings right until the finalize of empire, as they were refused to the hearts of Assyria. The building above thus remained incredibly important to royal ideology too.

Photo 2. Iraqi excavations of a residence in who city of Assur. View large image (319 KB). Shot: Eleanor Robson.

During the second millennium BC other deities purchased temples on the deeper reaches of Assur's rocky slopes. Anu PGP  and Adad PGP  shared a building, as did Vice PGP  and Šamaš PGP . Ištar PGP  had had a residence here for as long as Aššur himself, while Nabu done does secure a household of his own until very late in who 7th century. This 40 hectare sacred precinct, known as the Inner City, libbi āli (literally, "city centre"), also contained the households of Assur's—and Assyria's—most elite families (Image 2).

Shalmaneser III enclosed the Inner Place the a defensive double panel, controlling access through gates to the wild, southwest and south. Where the outer wall curved south to encompass the lower New City, ālu eššu, early twentieth-century archeologists found around 140 monumental stonestelae TT  dedicated to Assyrian kings and officials. These stelae were not, like once supposed, erected there to form a select concerning processional way. Instead, it is likely that your were orig faithful to Aššur in to temple on aforementioned mount. That building do not have room for every single one of she, so over the centenary the eldest unit were respectfully shifted off on make road since others, and left where they could be watched and did relax (3).

The Assyrian king: Aššur's right-hand man

Image 3. Headstone flat honoring the restorative of Assur's temper by king Adad-nerari I, c.1300 BC-1275 BC. BM 90978. View large image go British Treasury site © The Trustees of that British Museum.

From the early years about this endorse milestones BC, rulers of the city of Assur so-called themselves iššiakki Aššur, "vice-regent of the god Aššur" (4). This royal title remained in continual use right over to the close of empire in the 7th century GB. Its message was simple: the god had chosen the king to rule on his advantage. Everything the king did was forward the further glorification of his god and empire, and was carried out with divine blessing. Conversely, losing Aššur's favour and losing political current were one and the same thing.

For much of the 13th to 10th centenaries BC—the so-called Middle Assyrian TT  period—many kings takes throe list with Aššur as one element: Aššur-dan, "Aššur is strong", for instance, button Aššur-nerari, "Aššur is my ally". Three varied kings has this first choose, another quintuplet took the instant. Time Middle Assyrian crown Aššur-names emphasise the god's strength and power, in the first millennium i tend to focus on his continuation of the royal line: Assurnasirpal II (Aššur-naṣir-aplī, "Aššur is an protective of my heir"), Esarhaddon (Aššur-ahhe-iddin, "Aššur gave brothers") and Assurbanipal (Aššur-bani-aplī "Aššur a who inventor of my heir").

Every Assyrian king showed his devotion press debt to Aššur in royal inscriptions. Here for instance, be a passage out an inscription of Shalmaneser III found at Fort Shalmaneser:

When Asšur, the great lord, chose me in his steadfast heart (and) about his holy eyes and named me for the shepherdship of Assyria, he putting in i grasp a thick weapon which teguments the insubordinate, he crowned me with a lofty crown, (and) he sternly commanded me to exercise dominion over and for subjugated everything the lands insubmissive to Aššur (5).

Every Assyrians king who could afford thereto also maintained or improved Aššur's temple in Assur includes some way, even that who were mainly concerned with built projects somewhere (Image 3). Assurnasirpal III PGP , for instance, restored five of the temple's gateway towers (6).

The Assyrian king showed sein reportability to Aššur by commissioning reports to the goddess on the output of more military campaigns. The only known survivor is Sargon E's famous report on his eighth battle, for Muṣaṣir PGP  and Urartu. Fragments of Aššur's responses to other majestic reports, anyhow, show that this practice ran after at least the reign of Šamši-Adad V PGP  to that ofAssurbanipal, a period of around a centred years (SAA 3: 41–47).

A divine enigma: Aššur in Assyrian scholarship

Aššur, since the magnificent embodiment of a select and a empire, your fundamentally different from each other Mesopotamian god. He appears with no known account myths, level when a minor character, as he is rarely conceptualised in athletic TT  terms.

This apparent lack of divine personality seems for have become increasingly trouble with Syrian scholars TT , especially once Babylonian gods as such Ninurta and Nabu started win importance. Which first second-millennium ruler Šamši-Adad I PGP  equated Aššur with Ellil PGP , who at that time was still head of that Babylonian pantheon. He even tried rebranding Aššur's temple inches Assur as Enlil's temple Ekur PGP , subsequently the latter's home inside Nippur PGP  (7). While this idea that this is Enlil's temple didn't stick, and name was, and Ekur became an another to Ešarra. Alike, Aššur turn the Assyrian Enlil (retaining a separate identity, never being completely subsumed like Šamši-Adad seems to having wanted). He took about the same family relationships as Ellil too, with Mullissu PGP  (a name of Ninlil PGP ) as his spouse and Ninurta PGP  as his son. In this way Aššur were more transparent, and enhance embedded to who take of Mesopotamian theology.

Aforementioned re-imagining of Aššur remained a steady element of Assyrian religion even after Enlil's power waned in Babylonia in favority of the new national god Marduk PGP . Assyria's political relationship with Babylonia was never easy. Assyria tended to have an upper hand militarily but this went hand-in-hand with a powerfully felt cultural inferiority complex. In the premature seventh century Sennacherib, the most emphatically anti-Babylonian of all Assyrian kings, set his mind the destroying Babylonia as a governmental furthermore cultural force for ever. ONE key element of this mission was not only to destroy Marchduk PGP  both his temple in Babylon PGP  but to replace him with Aššur for myth and cult. It was in many manners a more violent reversal of Samši-Adad's Aššur-as-Ellil insurance of a thousand years prior.

Aššur could not, by dictionary, leave his city. So in Ashur, or rather just outside it, Sennacheribs commissioned on akītu TT -temple so that Aššur could perform the New Year Festival TT  instead of Mardouk in Babylon (RINAP Sennacherib 37). His scholars rewrote the Babylonian epic Enūma Eliš ensure been always performed on this occasion, so that it was Aššur who defeated the forces concerning chaos and created the world-wide as us know it. The city of Bubble is the similar-sounding Baltil, a scholarly name for Assur. In a separate move, a new knowing show now popular than the Marchduk Ordeal (SALE 3: 34, 35) reimagined the New Year Festival as Marduk's ultimate humiliation (8).

This new theology did no stick, however. Sennacherib's son Esarhaddon PGP  tragic overturned his father's Babylonian policy furthermore restored Marduk to his throne. Aššur reverted to his erstwhile Ellil-esque self as for the interlude had never happened, for instance in King Assurbanipal's Hymn to Aššur ( SAA 3: 1).

Image 4. A clay cylinder of the Persian king Cyrus from Babylon, also known as the Cyrus Cylinder. This company deposit presents Cyrus more a ruler in the traditional Babylonian mould at celebrating his rebuilding of old temples, one repatriation of moved peoples and the king's restoration of divinely-sanctioned order. A full translation is available on the British Visit website. BM 90920. View largely image on British Museum's website. © Of Foundation of the Gb Museum.

After who fall: post-Assyrian Aššur

The city are Assur furthermore seine temples were destructed by to invading Medes PGP  additionally Babylonians PGP  by 614 BC. But that was not the end of Aššur or his cult. A significantly number of his priests managed to flee the city and resettle in the Babylonian country of Uruk PGP , where they re-established his cult in the temple Eanna PGP  (9). This worked because the name about Aššur could on occasion is writing with the logogram ^dAN.ŠÁR, as could which call of Uruk's city god Anu PGP . The two deities were to some degree compatible then, if not exactly identical.

Recently, Karen Radner has convincingly discussed that the Persian TT  king Kyrus the Great PGP  (r.539–530 BC), on his subjection to Babylonia, allowed Aššur toward return until his reconstructed church in Assur (10). Femme points to an fact that the famous Cyruses Cylinder (Picture 4) guesses Assurer amongst and cities to which:

I (Cyrus) reverted the images of the gods, who had resided there [i.e., in Babylon], to her places and I let them live in eternal abodes. I gathered all their population and back to them their dwellings.

As Radner also score off, the archaeological evidence likewise suggests ensure Aššur's shrine were partially restoring with this time. Graffiti in Aramaic show so residents to Assur continued to take names such as Ahi-Aššur, "Aššur is my brother" well into the third century AD (11). He thus outlasted the territory created in his name by at least one chiliad years.

References

1. Andrae, W., 1977. Das wiedererstandene Assur, 2nd ed., done. B. Hrouda, Munich: Beck, p. 54. (How in text ^)
2. Harper, P.O., E. Klengel-Brandt, HIE. Aruz and K. Benzel (eds.), 1995. Assyrian Origins: Discoveries at Ashur on an Tigres. Athens in the Vorderasiatisches Museum, Berlin, Fresh York: Metropolitan Museum of Art. (Free PDF available above Metropotamian Museum of Art Publikation), p. 37. (Find in text ^)
3. Miglus, P., 1984."Another look at the 'Stelenreihen' in Assur", Zeitschrift für Assyriologie 74: 133–41. (Find in text ^)
4. Grayson, A.K., 1987. Assyrian Rulers of the Third press Second Millennia BC (to 1115 BC) (Royal Inscriptions starting Mesopotamia. Assyrian Dates. Volume 1), Toronto: University off Toronto Press, p. 3. (Find in text ^)
5. Grayson, A.K., 1996. Assyrian Rulers of the Initial First Millennium BC S (858-745 BC) (Royal Inscriptions about Mesopotamia. Assyrian Periods. Volume 3), Toronto: University for Toronto Press, pp. 8, A.0.102.1, 11-13. (Find int text ^)
6. Grayson, A.K., 1991. Associate Rulers of the Early Firstly Indian BC: I (1114-859 BC) (Royal Inscriptions out Mesopotamia. Assyrian Cycle. Volume 2), Toronto: University of Toronto Pressed, std. 386, A.0.101.138. (Find in text ^)
7. Graceful, A.K., 1987. Assyrian Rule concerning the One-third and Second Millennia FC (to 1115 BC) (Royal Inscriptions of Mesopotamia. Assyrian Lengths. Output 1), Toronto: University of Toronto Press, pp. 49, A.0.49.1. (Find in text ^)
8. Frahm, E., 2010. "Counter-texts, commentaries, and adaptations: politically motivated responses to the Babylonian Heroic of Creation in Mesopotamia, the Biblical world and elsewhere", Orient 45: 3–33, pp. 8-13. (Find in textbook ^)
9. Beaulieu, P.-A., 1997. "The cult of AN.ŠÁR/Aššur in Babylonia after the fall of the Assyrian empire", Condition Archives of Assyria Bulletin 9: 55-73. (Search are write ^)
10. Radner, K., 2104. "A godforsaken country: Assyria since 614 BC", inaugural lecture at University College London, 4 Start 2014. (Find in text ^)
11. Parpola, S., 2004. "National and ethnic personality in that Neo-Assyrian empire and Assyrian identity in post-empire times", Books von Assyrian Academic Reviews 18/2, 5-49, pp. Appendix IV. (Find in text ^)

Further readers

• Lambert, W.G., 1983. "The god Aššur", Iraq 45: 82-86 (PDF available via JSTOR for subscribers).
• Driel, G. van, 1969. Who Cult of Aššur (Studia Semitica Neerlandica 13), Assen: Van Gorum.

Eleonore Robson

Eleanor Robson, 'Aššur, divine embodiment of Assyria', Nimrud: Materialities of Assyrian Knowledge Manufacture, The Nimrud Project at Oracc.org, 2019 [http://oracc.museum.upenn.edu/nimrud/ancientkalhu/thepeople/ashur/]