Ashur (god)

Ashur (also, Assur, Aššur; written A-šur, also Aš-šùr) is an East Semitic god, and the head of the Assyrian pantheon in Mesopotamian religion, worshipped mainly in the northern half of Mesopotamia, and parts of north-east Syria and south east Asia Minor which constituted old Assyria. He may have had a solar iconography.

Aššur was a deified form of the city of Assur (pronounced Ashur), which dates from the mid 3rd millennium BC and was the capital of the Old Assyrian kingdom. As such, Ashur did not originally have a family, but as the cult came under southern Mesopotamian influence, he later came to be regarded as the Assyrian equivalent of Enlil, the chief god of Nippur, which was the most important god of the southern pantheon from the early 3rd millennium BC until Hammurabi founded an empire based in Babylon in the mid-18th century BC, after which Marduk replaced Enlil as the chief god in the south. In the north, Ashur absorbed Enlil's wife Ninlil (as the Assyrian goddess Mullissu) and his sons Ninurta and Zababa—this process began around the 14th century BC and continued down to the 7th century.

Ashur

Ashur (אַשּׁוּר; often also transliterated as Asshur to reflect the pointing of Hebrew letter 'ש' (Shin) in the Masoretic text, which doubles the 'ש'), was the second son of Shem, the son of Noah. Ashur's brothers were Elam, Arphaxad, Lud, and Aram.

The Hebrew text of Genesis 10:11 is somewhat ambiguous as to whether it was Asshur himself (as the 1611 Authorized Version says), or Nimrod (as in some other English translations) who, according to Biblical tradition, built the Assyrian cities of Nineveh, Resen, Rehoboth-Ir and Calah, since the name Asshur can refer to both the person and the country (Genesis 10:8–12 AV, Genesis 10:8–12 ESV).Sir Walter Raleigh devoted several pages in his History of the World (c. 1616) to reciting past scholarship regarding the question of whether it had been Nimrod or Ashur who built the cities in Assyria.

The 1st century Judaeo-Roman historian Flavius Josephus further gives the following statement: "Ashur lived at the city of Nineveh; and named his subjects Assyrians, who became the most fortunate nation, beyond others" (Antiquities, i, vi, 4).

Ashur (disambiguation)

Ashur or Assur or Asur may refer to

See also

Assur

Aššur (Akkadian) (English | Ashur/Assyria, Assyrian / Aššur; Assyrian Neo-Aramaic / Ātûr ; Hebrew: אַשּׁוּר‎ / Aššûr; Arabic: آشور‎ / ALA-LC: Āshūr; Kurdish: Asûr), also known as Ashur, Qal'at Sherqat and Kalah Shergat, is a city from the Neo-Assyrian Empire. The remains of the city are situated on the western bank of the river Tigris, north of the confluence with the tributary Little Zab river, in modern-day Iraq, more precisely in the Al-Shirqat District (a small panhandle of the Saladin Governorate).

The city was occupied from the mid-3rd millennium BCE (c. 2600–2500 BCE) to the 14th century, when Timur conducted a massacre of its Assyrian population. The site of Assur is a World Heritage Site and was placed on the list of World Heritage Sites in danger in 2003, in part due to the conflict in that area and also due to a proposed dam that would flood part of the site. It is about 40 miles south of the former Nimrud and 60 miles south of Nineveh.

History of research

Exploration of the site of Assur began in 1898 by German archaeologists. Excavations began in 1900 by Friedrich Delitzsch, and were continued in 1903–1913 by a team from the German Oriental Society led initially by Robert Koldewey and later by Walter Andrae. More than 16,000 tablets with cuneiform texts were discovered. Many of the objects found made their way to the Pergamon Museum in Berlin.