Ashur (god)
Ashur, Ashshur, also spelled Ašur, Aššur was the national god of the Assyrians in ancient times until their gradual conversion to Christianity between the 1st and 5th centuries AD.
Name
The name of the god Ashur is spelled exactly the same as that of the city of Assur. In modern scholarship, some Assyriologists choose to employ different spellings for the god vis-a-vis the city as a means to differentiate between them.In the Old Assyrian Period, both the city and the god were commonly spelled as A-šùr. The god Ashur was spelled as dA-šur, A-šur, dA-šùr or A-šùr, and from the comparative data there seems to be a bigger general reluctance to use the divine determinative in Anatolia in comparison to data from the city of Assur itself.
From the Middle Assyrian period onwards, Aššur was generally spelled as Aš-šur, for the god, the city and the state.
Ashur's name was written once as AN.ŠÁR on a bead of Tukulti-Ninurta I. In the inscriptions of Sargon II Ashur was sometimes referred to as Anshar, and under Sennacherib it became a common systemic way to spell his name. After the fall of the Neo-Assyrian Empire, Ashur continued to be revered as Anshar in Neo-Babylonian era Uruk, and as Ashur in Assyria proper. As Assyrian kings were generally reluctant to enforce worship of Ashur in subject areas, it is assumed that Ashur was introduced to Uruk naturally by Assyrians.
History
Third Millennium BCE
Little is known about the city of Assur in the 3rd Millennium BC, but the city may have had a religious significance. While the city did contain a temple dedicated to their own localised Ishtar, there are no known mentions of Ashur as a distinct deity, and it is unknown if the cult of Ashur existed at this time, although the possibility cannot be ruled out because of scarcity of evidence.Old Assyrian Period
The Old Assyrian Period is contemporary with the Isin-Larsa period and the Old Babylonian Periods in southern Mesopotamia after the city became independent from Ur. During the Old Assyrian period, the temple to the god was built and maintained by the residences of the city. Ashur started to appear in texts such as treaties and royal inscriptions, and the king traced their legitimacy to the god. In the Old Assyrian period, the kings never assumed the title of king, instead referring to themselves as the governor or city ruler, reserving the title of king instead for Ashur. Pongratz-Leisten notes that similar cases could be found in Eshnunna, where the early kings of Eshnunna addressed Tishpak as king with titles traditionally associated with kings such as “king of the four corners.” She connects it to an older cultural sphere containing pre-Sargonic Lagash, where the kings of Lagash designated themselves as the ENSI of Lagash. Charpin instead notes that the ideology around Ashur and Tishpak is similar to the one around Ishtaran of Der, who was called the “king of Der”. However, in the Old Assyrian Period the king was not yet the chief priest of Ashur.The earliest expression of the god Ashur being the king of the city with the ruler being his representative was in Silulu's seal that is known from uses later in the Old Assyrian period, where the opening lines were "Ashur is king, Silulu is the governor of Assur." The inscription ended with the phrase ARAD-ZU, linking the seal with the Ur III administration, but instead of a presentation scene, a triumphant figure is shown trampling on an enemy, bearing resemblance to Naram-Sin's pose on his victory stela and the lost depiction of Shu-Sin trampling on his enemy. Coupled with the ideology of Ashur being the king of the city, the victorious figure could represent Ashur. The Puzur-Assur dynasty which reused the presentation scene, which depicts a worshipper being led by a goddess to a seated god. Considering that the owner of the seal was the Assyrian ruler, it is likely that the seated god is Ashur.
Almost half of Old Assyrian theophoric names feature the god Ashur, with around another 4 percent featuring ālum which referred to the city of Assur. However, it is not clear whether the term Aššur in the names refers to the god or the city. Theophoric names involving Ashur are generally exclusively Assyrian.
Outside of the city of Assur, Assyrian merchant colonies in southeast Anatolia constructed sanctuaries to the god Ashur, which included the objects like his statue and his dagger and knife/spear. Oaths were sworn and verdicts were issued in front of the dagger. The dagger seemed to have also received libations. The weapon of Ashur, more famously known to have been placed in Assyrian provincial centres and client states in the Neo-Assyrian period, were also known in the Old Assyrian period and were seemingly used in ordeals where the defendant would have to draw the weapon out from its sheath, as the guilty would be unable to draw out the weapon due to divine refusal. The practice of swearing oaths in front of divine symbols, like weapons, is a well known practice in Mesopotamia. Traders would swear by the names of gods such as Ashur, Ishtar, Ishtar-ZA-AT, and Nisaba that they were speaking truth. Traders are often encouraged to go back to the city of Assur to pay homage to Ashur.
In 1808 BCE, Shamshi-Adad captured Assur, dethroned the Assyrian king and incorporated Assur into his kingdom. While he never set Assur as his seat of kingship, he assumed the position of the king in the city and left inscriptions calling himself the viceroy of Ashur, in line with the traditional Old Assyrian inscriptions, and reconstructed the temple of Ashur into a bigger complex, and the groundplan remained relatively unaltered until Shalmaneser I who added a backyard. However, he was first the appointee of Enlil, and in one of his building inscriptions he designated the Ashur temple as a temple of Enlil instead. Shamshi-Adad's inscription equating the Ashur temple as a temple of Enlil has commonly been interpreted to be the first reference to an equation between Ashur and Enlil. Another possibility is that Shamshi-Adad constructed separate cells in the new temple, which housed both Ashur and Enlil. His inscriptions also always applies the divine determinative to the name of the god Ashur, unlike earlier times. However, in a late 17th century letter written by the Assyrian king to the king of Tikunani uses inconsistent sign markings for the term Aššur, once being accompanied by both the divine determinative and the geographical determinative.
A treaty after the reign of Shamshi-Adad between Assyrian traders and the king of Apum. In the treaty, Ashur is not mentioned, but it has been proposed that Šarra-mātin mentioned at the beginning between Enlil and Dagan is Ashur. Kryszat accepts the proposal, and suggests that this may reflect Shamshi-Adad's identification of Ashur with Enlil. However, another Old-Assyrian text appears to name Ashur and Šarra-mātin separately, and so Kryszat suggests that perhaps Šarra-mātin was an older aspect of Ashur or a separate god that was later absorbed into Ashur. Another treaty concluded between Mutija, king of Apum, and Hazip-Teshub king of Razama also invoked Ashur, which Eidem suggests is due to the geographical location of Razama.
The tākultu festival was first attested during the reign of Shamshi-Adad I on a vase dedicated to Dagan. It would seem that the festival was already part of the cult of Ashur.
The inscription of Puzur-Sin presents a hostile attitude towards Shamshi-Adad and his successors, claiming that they were a "foreign plague" and "not of the city of Assur." Puzur-Sin claims that Ashur commanded him to destroy the wall and palace of Shamshi-Adad.
Middle Assyrian Period
Beginning in the Middle Assyrian Period, the Assyrian kings projected a more territorial ideology, with the king acting as the agent of placing the territory under divine rule. The practice where each province had to supply yearly a modest amount of food for the daily meal of Ashur, which ideologically demonstrated how all of Assyria was to jointly care for their god, was first attested during the Middle Assyrian period. the tākultu festival was also mentioned in the inscriptions of Adad-nirari I and his successor Shalmaneser I. However, mentions of the tākultu ritual in Assyria ceased until the Sargonids.Starting from Ashur-uballit, the Assyrian kings started to designate themselves as king and claimed themselves to be a major power. In addition to emulating the other great powers, they also adopted most of Shamshi-Adad I's royal titulature, including being the appointee of Enlil before being the viceroy of Ashur. Despite this, the Old Assyrian notion that the true king of Assur was the god Ashur persisted, as seen in the Middle Assyrian coronation ritual that was carried out inside the temple of Ashur. The king is led inside the temple where a priest would strike the king's cheek and proclaim "Ashur is king! Ashur is king!" Ashur-uballit also introduced the title SANGA/šangû into the royal repertoire, which may have been the product of a Hittite influence. The practice for the king’s reign to be referred with "during my priesthood" was also introduced during the Middle Assyrian period.
The Assyrian king was also given the mission to extend the land of Assyria with his "just sceptre" as mentioned in the coronation hymn. Royal actions undertaken, such as military campaigns and successes, were attributed to the support of the god Ashur, along with the other major gods in the Assyrian pantheon. Similar to the city of Assur, the land of Aššur shared the same name as the god Ashur, which essentially meant that the country belonged to the god. Starting from the Middle Assyrian period, the mission of the Assyrian king was to extend the borders of Assyria and establish order and peace against a chaotic periphery.
Ashur started to be referred to more often as an Assyrian equivalent of Enlil, with titles such as "lord of the lands", "king of the gods" and "the Assyrian Enlil". Adad-nirari and Shalmaneser began to call the temple of Ashur names of Enli's temple in Nippur, and Shalmaneser even claimed to have put the gods of Ekur into the temple. The construction of Kar-Tukulti-Ninurta was attributed to the command of Ashur-Enlil.
However, Enlil and Ashur were still treated as separate gods in the Tukulti-Ninurta Epic, and some traits of Enlil were not carried over to Ashur, especially in regards to how Ea and Enlil raised the young Tukulti-Ninurta, a role which was not given to the god Ashur.
Kar-Tukulti-Ninurta, constructed by the eponymous king himself was explicitly stated to be a cult centre for Ashur. The building of a new capital and cult centre is traditionally viewed as an attempt to separate the royal monarchy from the established elites and pressure groups, however it is clear that the city of Assur was still respected as building works were still done in Assur, the main palace at Assur was still being constantly maintained, and the perimeter of the ziggurat in Kar-Tukulti-Ninurta was half of the one in Assur. The main bureaucracy in Kar-Tukulti-Ninurta was connected with the city of Assur as well. Assur was still referred with epithets such as "my city" and "desired object of the deities", although they could refer to Kar-Tukulti-Ninurta as well.