Judaism
Babylonian Gods
Abstract
© Dr M D Magee
Contents Updated: Tuesday, November 20, 2001
Preface
Do not expect total logic in any natural mythology. They evolved, they were not devised to be sensible. In times before the empire formed, cities each had their own god, and the roles of the gods were pretty much the same, albeit with a local emphasis. When the cities joined into a nation, the gods became a pantheon and the temples specialized. Thus myths exist in which the name of a god is one then another in different versions. Ea and Enlil had the same role, for example, in different versions of a myth.
Anu
The name of this divinity is derived from the Sumerian “ana”, “heaven”, of which he was the principal deity. Anu was the visible sky, but was also the invisible heavens considered beyond the sky, so already the Sumerians had the idea of transcendence. He is called the father of the great gods, though, in the creation-story, he is the son of Ansar and Kisar. In early names he is described as the father, creator, and god, probably meaning the supreme being. His consort was Anatu, and the pair are regarded in the lists as the same as the Lahmu and Lahame of the creation-story, who, with other deities, are also described as gods of the heavens. Anu was worshipped at Erech, along with Ishtar.
Ea (Aa, Yah, Yehouah)
Ea is “king of the Abyss, creator of everything, lord of all”. Aa is a word which may mean “waters”, or if read “Ea”, “house of water”. The Abyss is not sinister as it sounds to us. It is the watery foundation of the world (compare Genesis 1). Ea was the ocean stream that surrounded the earth like a serpent and fed all the rivers and lakes. He, like Anu, is called “father of the gods”. As “Lord of Wisdom” (the meaning of Ahuramazda), his son Marduk went to him for advice.
He was depicted as a serpent (zig-zag, waves) and held to be a benefactor of humanity, but his jealousy deprived humanity of immortality. Ea had given to humanity culture and skills, and was the god of healing who had revealed medicines to mankind. He was the god of artisans in general—potters, blacksmiths, sailors, builders, stone-cutters, gardeners, seers, barbers, farmers. This is the Aos (a form which confirms the reading Aa) of Damascius.
He was depicted as a goat-headed fish—the zodiacal sign Capricorn, December being the onset of the main rains, when the seed is sown. The Greeks called him Oannes (John), and his priests wore a scaly cloak. This is the Oannes of Berosus, who states that he was “a creature endowed with reason, with a body like that of a fish, and under the fish’s head another head, with feet below, like those of a man, with a fish’s tail”. This description applies fairly well to certain bas-reliefs from Nimrud in the British Museum. Berosus said he lived in the Persian Gulf, landing during the day to teach the inhabitants the building of houses and temples, the cultivation of useful plants, the gathering of fruits, and also geometry, law, and letters. A H Sayce, the Assyrialogist, tells us judgements in Assyrian legal cases were to be made “according to the statutes”, “the law book”, and the “writing of the god, Ea”.
He was worshipped at Eridu, called the Holy City, which was the centre of the world, and had a sacred grove or garden where a single tree of life and knowledge grew. He is Yehouah (Ea, Yah)!
The name of his consort, Damkina or Dakina, probably means “the eternal spouse”, and her other name, “Lady of the earth”, indicates her province. She is often mentioned in the incantations with Ea. The water god fertilised the earth goddess. Ea was the god of fertility, hence this ending to the poetical description of the ship of Ea:
May the ship before thee bring fertility, May the ship after thee bring joy, In thy heart may it make joy of heart.
Among the passengers in the ship were Enki (Ea), and Asari-lu-duga, who is Osiris evidently identifed with Marduk here. All through the story of the Flood it was the god Ea who favoured Utnapistim, the Babylonian Noah, for his faithfulness, and afterwards gave him salvation from the Flood and immortality with the gods.
Bel (Enlil, El) and Beltis
The deity mentioned next in this list is called “older Bel”, by Tiglath-pileser I in describing the temple which he built for him at Assur (about 1200 BC) to distinguish him from Bel-Marduk. Bel, whose name means “the lord”, was so called because he was regarded as chief of the gods. Being a god of the rain or storm, he is regarded as having formed a trinity with Anu, the god of heaven, and Ea, the god of the deep, and prayer to these three was as good as invoking all the gods of the universe.
Beltis was properly only the spouse of the older Bel, but as Beltu, her Babylonian name, simply meant “lady” in general (just as Bel or Belu meant “Lord”), it became a title which could be given to any goddess, and was in fact borne by Zerpanitum, Ishtar, Nanna, and others. The name of the city over which the special Beltu presided had to be given to distinguish them. Besides having her earthly seat with the older Bel in Nippur, the Assyrians sometimes name Beltu the spouse of Assur, their national god, suggesting an identification with Bel, latterly Bel Marduk.
The Older Bel is also Enlil or En-lilla, pronounced Illila (Ilum, Il, El), “lord of mist”, god of the underworld, his consort being Nan-lilla, “the lady of the mist”, Beltu, “the Lady”, the original Lilith, the Jewish “night-monster”. The Mesopotamian night monster, Lilu or Lila, was masculine but had a companion called his handmaid or servant. The original Sumerian, “lila”, seems to mean “mist”, though the Semitic root, “lil” or “layl”, whence the Hebrew “layil” and Arabic “layl”, means “night”. To the word “lilu” the ancient Babylonians formed a feminine “lilithu”, perhaps Lilu’s handmaid, which entered the Hebrew language under the form of “lilith”. According to the rabbis, she was a beautiful woman who lay in wait for children by night—Lamashtu.
Enu-restu or Nirig
Enu-restu means “primeval lord”, and “lord” that of the first element, “ni” in the Sumerian form. One of the descriptions of this divinity is “assarid ilani ahe-su”, “the eldest of the gods his brothers”. This deity was a special favourite among the Assyrians, many of whose kings, to say nothing of private persons, bore his name as a component part of theirs. He is described as being the son of Bel, and in the likeness of Anu. The inscriptions call him “god of war”, though, unlike Nergal, he was not at the same time god of disease and pestilence. Apparently, he rode in a chariot of the sacred lapis-lazuli against the gods of hostile lands. Anu having endowed him with terrible glory, the gods of the earth feared to attack him, and his onrush was as that of a storm-flood. He was “the hero, whose net overthrows the enemy, who summons his army to plunder the hostile land, the royal son who caused his father to bow down to him from afar”. “The son who sat not with the nurse, and eschewed(?) the strength of milk”, “the offspring who did not know his father”. “He rode over the mountains and scattered seed—unanimously the plants proclaimed his name to their dominion, among them like a great wild bull he raises his horns”.
Nusku
This deity was popular in both Babylonia and Assyria. He was the great messenger of the gods, and is variously given as “the offspring of the abyss, the creation of Ea”, and “the likeness of his father, the first-born of Bel”. Gibil, the fire-god, has the same diverse parentage, so two gods were probably the same. Nusku was the god whose command is supreme, the counsellor of the great gods, the protector of the Igigi (the gods of the heavens), the great and powerful one, the glorious day, the burning one, the founder of cities, the renewer of sanctuaries, the provider of feasts for all the Igigi, without whom no feast took place in E-kura. Like Nebo, he bore the glorious sceptre, and it was said of him that he attacked mightily in battle. Without him the sun-god, the judge, could not give judgment.
Nusku may not have been the fire-god, but the brother of the fire-god, either flame, or the light of fire. The sun-god, without light, could not see, and therefore could not give judgment. No feast could be prepared without fire and its flame. As the evidence of the presence of the shining orbs in the heavens—the light of their fires—he was the messenger of the gods, and was honoured accordingly. He became the messenger especially of Bel Marduk, the younger Bel, whose requests he carried to the god Ea in the Deep. In one inscription he is identified with Nirig or Enu-restu, who is described above.
Nebo and Tasmetum
Marduk’s son was Nebo (in Semitic Babylonian, Nabu), the messenger, Mercury. As “the teacher” and “the hearer” Nebo and Tasmetum were among the most popular of the deities of Babylonia and Assyria. Nebo achieved his greatest importance after 800 BC. In men’s names, this god occurs more than any other, even including Marduk himself—a clear indication of the estimation in which the Babylonians and Assyrians held the possession of knowledge. Many of the Neo-Babylonian kings bore his name in theirs (Nebuchadnezzer, Nabonidus) and during the neo-Babylonian dynasty Nebo may have been replacing Marduk as the most important of the gods, just as Marduk had replaced Bel.
His special cult city was Borsippa, now the Birs Nimrud, near Babylon. Nebo was worshipped at the temple-tower known as Ezida, “the everlasting house”, at Borsippa, traditionally regarded as the site of the Tower of Babel, though that title, would best suit the similar structure known as Esagila, “the house of the high head”, in Babylon itself.
Under the name of Dim-sara he was “the creator of the writing of the scribes”, as Ni-zu, “the god who knows” (zu, “to know”), as Mermer, “the speeder(?) of the command of the gods”—on the Sumerian side indicating some connection with Addu or Rimmon, “the thunderer”, and on the Semitic side with Enu-restu, who was one of the gods’ messengers.
There was a mountain bearing his name in Moab, upon which Moses—an “announcer”—died. Besides the mountain, there was a city in Moab so named, and another in Judaea, both of which meaning the Babylonian Nebo because the corresponding word in Hebrew is “nabi”.
A seal-impression on an early tablet shows a male figure with wide-open mouth seizing a stag by his horns, and a female figure with no mouth at all, but with prominent ears, holding a bull in a similar manner. Here we have the “teacher” and the “hearer” personified, perhaps meaning these two deities.
The worship of Nebo and the gods associated with him continued until the fourth century of the Christian era.
Shamash (Shamash) and his Consort
The worship of the sun in Babylonia and Assyria was always popular, but Shamash did not become chief god, as in Egypt. Marduk was also a sun-god, but with broader attributes.
The lunar inclinations of the Jews under the Greeks illustrated by their preference for counting days from the onset of night, suggests they derived their ideas of God from the god Sin, rather than the sun, but evidence from the Scrolls shows that some Jews still oriented towards a solar god and counted days from dawn. In Mesopotamia, the sun was the offspring of Nannara or Sin, the moon. Shamash is described as “the light of things above and things below, the illuminator of the regions”, “the supreme judge of heaven and earth”, “the lord of living creatures, the gracious one of the lands”. He was the constantly righteous in heaven, the truth within the ears of the lands, the god knowing justice and injustice, righteousness he supported upon his shoulders, unrighteousness he burst asunder like a leather bond. The sun-god was the great god of judgment and justice. He is constantly called “the judge”, the reason being, that the sun shines upon the earth all day long, and his light penetrates everywhere, so he knew and investigated everything, and was therefore best in a position to judge aright, and deliver a just decision. His image appears at the head of the stele inscribed with Hammurabi’s laws, and legal ceremonies were performed within the precincts of his temples. The chief seats of his worship were the great temples called E-babbara, “the house of great light”, in the cities of Larsa and Sippar.
The consort of Shamash was Aa, whose chief seat was at Sippar, side by side with Shamash. Aa, with the name of Burida in Sumerian, was more especially the consort of Sa-zu, “him who knows the heart”, one of the names of Marduk, who was probably the morning sun, the night time sun or the winter rainy sun.
The sun god had several other non-Semitic names, including “the light”, “the rising sun”, Mitra, identifying him with the Persian Mithras, and Sahi, the Kassite name of the sun. He also has the names of his attendants Kittu and Mesaru, “Truth” and “Righteousness”, who guided him upon his path as judge of the earth.
Tammuz and Ishtar
Tammuz is always called “the shepherd”, and had a domain where he pastured his flock. According to the classic story, the mother of Adonis (Tammuz) had offended Aphrodite, who, in revenge, made her have incestuous intercourse with her own father. Pursued by her father, who wished to kill her for this crime, she prayed to the gods, and was turned into a tree, from whose trunk Adonis was afterwards born. Aphrodite was so charmed with the infant that, placing him in a chest, she gave him into the care of Persephone, who, however, when she discovered what a treasure she had in her keeping, refused to part with him again. Zeus was appealed to, and decided that for four months in the year Adonis should be left to himself, four should be spent with Aphrodite, and four with Persephone, or six should be spent with Aphrodite on earth and six with Persephone in Hades. He was afterwards slain, whilst hunting, by a wild boar.
Whilst on earth, he was the one who nourished the ewe and her lamb, the goat and her kid, and also caused them to be slain—probably in sacrifice. Ishtar, the Babylonian Venus, went in search of him in Hades, but little more is known. However, the whole story will have spread from Babylonia to Phœnicia, and thence to Greece. In Phœnicia, Tammuz encountered the boar in the mountains of Lebanon, where the river named after him, Adonis (the Nahr Ibrahim) ran red with his blood, really the earth washed down by the autumn rains. The descent of Tammuz to the underworld, typified by the flowing down of the earth-laden waters of the rivers to the sea, was not only celebrated by the Phœnicians, but also by the Babylonians, who had at least two series of lamentations which were used on this occasion, and were probably the originals of those chanted by the Hebrew women in the account in Ezekiel. “He has gone, he has gone to the bosom of the earth”, the mourners cried, “he will make plenty to overflow for the land of the dead, for its lamentations for the day of his fall, in the unpropitious month of his year”. The various religious days were recognized in commerce and the Egibi bank, for example had in its calendar, entries like:
2 Tammuz (June)—a day of weeping.
There was also lamentation for the cessation of the growth of vegetation, and one of these hymns, after addressing him as the shepherd and husband of Ishtar, “lord of the underworld”, and “lord of the shepherd’s seat”, goes on to liken him to a germ which has not absorbed water in the furrow, whose bud has not blossomed in the meadow, to the sapling which has not been planted by the watercourse, and to the sapling whose root has been removed. In the “Lamentations” in the Manchester Museum, Ishtar, or one of her devotees, seems to call for Tammuz, saying, “Return, my husband”, as she makes her way to the region of gloom in quest of him. Ereshkigal, “the lady of the great house” (Persephone), is also referred to, and the text seems to imply that Ishtar entered her domain in spite of her. In this text other names are given to him, namely, “son of the flute”, and “life of the people”.
In an incantation for purification, the subject is told to get the milk of a yellow goat which has been brought forth in the sheep-fold of Tammuz, recalling the flocks of the Greek sun god Helios, the clouds illuminated by the sun, likened to sheep. A Sumerian expressions for “fleece” was “sheep of the sky”. The name of Tammuz in Sumerian is Dumuzi, or in its rare fullest form, Dumuzida, meaning “true” or “faithful son”, the reason for the title being lsot to us. Sayce says a title of Tammuz was “Only Begotten”.
Ishtar, the spouse of Tammuz, best known from her descent into Hades, had to pass through seven gates, and an article of clothing was taken from her at each, until she arrived in the underworld quite naked, typifying the teaching, that man can take nothing away with him when he departs this life. On her arrival in Hades, Ereskigal commanded Namtaru, the god of fate, to smite Ishtar with disease in all her members—eyes, sides, feet, heart, and head. During her absence, love left the earth and things began to go wrong. The gods had to intervene, sending a messenger to demand her release, which was ultimately granted. When the messenger reached the land of No Return, the queen of the region threatened him with all kinds of torments—the food of the gutters of the city were to be his food, the oil-jars of the city (naptha?) his drink, the gloom of the castle his resting-place, a stone slab his seat, and hunger and thirst were to shatter his strength.
These were evidently the punishments inflicted there, but as the messenger threatened was a divine one, they could not be effected, and he obtained his demand, for Ishtar was set free. At each gate, as she returned, the clothing and adornments which had been taken from her when she had descended there were given back to her, in reverse order. Whether Tammuz, for whom she had gone down, was set free also, is unclear in the parts of the legend we have but the end implies that Ishtar was successful in her mission, and must therefore have been reunited with her husband. The Greek myths of Adonis, outlined above, and Persephone seem to replace the God with the Maiden who is herself reunited with her mother, Demeter for a season. It is hard to imagine the stories have different origins and conclusions.
Ishtar, as goddess of love and war, was more generally popular than her spouse, Tammuz, who was adored by women rather than the men. She was also Innanna, Ennen, and Nina, whilst a not uncommon name in other inscriptions is Ama-Innanna, “mother Ishtar”. The principal seat of her worship in Babylonia was at Erech, and in Assyria at Nineveh, but also at Arbela, and many other places. She was also honoured under the Elamite names of Tispak and Susinak, “the Susian goddess”.
Nina
From the name Nin, Ishtar is also Nina. Identified with Aruru, the goddess who helped Marduk to create mankind, Ishtar was also regarded as the mother of all, and in the Babylonian story of the Flood, she is made to say that she had begotten man, but like “the sons of the fishes”, he filled the sea. Nina, as another form of Ishtar, was a goddess of creation, typified in the teeming life of the ocean, and her name is written with a character standing for a house or receptacle, with the sign for “fish” within. Her earliest seat was the city of Nina in southern Babylonia, from which place, in all probability, colonists went northwards, and founded another shrine at Nineveh in Assyria, which became the great centre of her worship, and was called Ninaa or Ninua after her. As their tutelary goddess, the fishermen in the neighbourhood of the Babylonian Nina and Lagas were accustomed to make to her, as well as to Innanna or Ishtar, large offerings of fish.
Nin-Gursu and his Consort
This deity was son of Enlila or Bel, and was identified with Nirig or Enurestu. He was a sun deity. In an incantation for the Sumerian “Take a white kid of En-Mersi (Nin-Gursu)”, the Semitic translation is “of Tammuz”, showing that he was identified with the latter god. Nin-Girsu is the name of the god of agriculturalists, confirming this identification, Tammuz being also god of agriculture.
She was the “mother” of Lagas, and spouse of Nin-Girsu. Like Nin-Girsu, she planted grain and vegetation, but she also also planted the seed of men, sounding like Aruru. In her character of the goddess who gave life to men, and healed their bodies in sickness, she was identified with Gula, one of those titles is “the lady saving from death”.
Ereshkigal or Allatu
The meaning of her name is “lady of the great region”, a description which means the land of the dead, and of which a variant, “lady of the great house”, occurs in the Hymns to Tammuz in the Manchester Museum. One of the El-Armana tablets states that the gods once made a feast, and sent to Ereshkigal, saying that, though they could go down to her, she could not ascend to them, and asking her to send a messenger to fetch away the food destined for her. This she did, and all the gods stood up to receive her messenger, except one, who seems to have withheld this token of respect.
The messenger, when he returned, related to Ereshkigal what had happened, and angered thereat, she sent him back to the presence of the gods, asking for the delinquent to be delivered to her, that she might kill him. The gods then discussed the question of death with the messenger, and told him to take to his mistress the god who had not stood up in his presence. When the gods were brought together, that the culprit might be recognised, one of them remained in the background, and on the messenger asking who it was who did not stand up, it was found to be Nergal.
This god was duly sent, but was not at all inclined to be submissive, for instead of killing him, as she had threatened, Ereshkigal found herself seized by the hair and dragged from her throne, whilst the death-dealing god made ready to cut off her head. “Do not kill me, my brother, let me speak to thee”, she cried, and on his loosing his hold upon her hair, she continued, “thou shalt be my husband, and I will be thy wife—I will cause you to take dominion in the wide earth. I will place the tablet of wisdom in thine hand—thou shalt be lord, I will be lady”. Nergal thereupon took her, kissed her, and wiped away her tears, saying, “Whatever thou hast asked me for months past now receives assent”.
Ereshkigal did not treat her rival in the affections of Tammuz so gently when Ishtar descended to Hades in search of the “husband of her youth”. Not only was Ishtar deprived of her garments and ornaments, but by the orders of Ereshkigal, Namtar smote her with disease in all her members. Not until the gods intervened was Ishtar set free.
Nergal
He is “lord of the great habitation”, in parallel to his spouse Ereshkigal. He ruled Hades, and was god of war and of disease and pestilence. As “the warrior, the fierce storm-flood overthrowing the land of the enemy”, he fought on the side of those who worshipped him. He differs from Nirig, another god of war, in symbolizing the misery and destruction which accompany the strife of nations. As a consequence of this side he is also god of fire, the destroying element. He was god of the midday or of the summer sun, and therefore of all the misfortunes caused by an excess of his heat.
The chief centre of his worship was Cuthah, Sumerian Gudua, near Babylon, now represented by the mounds of Tel Ibrahim. He is the equal of the Greek Ares and the Roman Mars.
Amurru
Amurru is “Lord of the mountains”, and his worship became popular in the dynasty to which Hammurabi belonged, about 1800 BC, when Amurru was much combined with the names of men, and is found both on tablets and cylinder-seals. It is Martu in ideograms, a word that is used for Amurru, the land of the Amorites, which stood for the West. Amorites entered Babylonia in number during this period.
Sin or Nannara
The cult of the moon-god was one of the most popular in Babylonia, the chief seat of his worship being at Uru (now Muqayyar) the Biblical Ur of the Chaldees. The origin of the name Sin is unknown, but it is thought that it may be a corruption of Zu-ena, “knowledge-lord”, as the compound ideograph expressing his name may be read and translated. Sin and Sinai in the bible are the same word, and Zion probably is too. Besides this compound ideograph, the name of the god Sin was also expressed by the character for “30”, provided with the prefix of divinity, an ideograph which is due to the thirty days of the month, and is thought to be of late date.
Nannar is described as “the lord, prince of the gods, who in heaven alone is supreme”, and as “father Nannar”, “great Anu”, “lord of Ur”, “lord of the temple Gisnu-gala”, “lord of the shining crown”. He is also said to be “the mighty steer whose horns are strong, whose limbs are perfect, who is bearded with a beard of lapis-stone, who is filled with beauty and fullness (of splendour)”.
Besides Babylonia and Assyria, he was also worshipped in other parts of the Semitic east, especially at Harran, to which city Abraham migrated, scholars say, in consequence of the patron-deity being the same as at Ur of the Chaldees, where he had passed the earlier years of his life. The Mountain of Sinai and the Desert of Sin, both bear his name.
The spouse of Sin or Nannara was Nin-Uruwa, “the lady of Ur”. Sargon of Assyria (722-705 BC) calls her Nin-gala. Their children were Shamash, Ishtar, and Adad.
Aku is the moon-god among the heavenly bodies. It is this name which is regarded as occurring in the name of the Babylonian king Eri-Aku, “servant of the moon-god”, the biblical Arioch (Gen 14).
Addu or Rammanu
Hadad bears many names in the inscriptions, testifying to his popularity. Among his non-Semitic names may be mentioned Mer, Mermer, Muru. Addu is explained as being his name in the Amorite language, and a variant form, apparently, which has lost its first syllable, namely, Dadu, also appears—the Assyrians seem always to have used the terminationless form of Addu, namely, Adad. Addu, Adad, and Dadu might be derived from the West Semitic Hadad, but the other name, Rammanu, is native Babylonian, and cognate with Rimmon, which is thus shown by the Babylonian form to mean “the thunderer”.
He was the god of winds, storms, and rain. In his name Birqu, he appears as the god of lightning. He is sometimes associated with Shamash, was a “god of justice”. In the Assyrian inscriptions he appears as a god of war, and the kings constantly compare the destruction which their armies had wrought with that of “Adad the inundator”. For them he was “the mighty one, inundating the regions of the enemy, lands and houses”, and was prayed to strike the land of the person who showed hostility to the Assyrian king, with evil-working lightning, to throw want, famine, drought, and corpses therein, to order that he should not live one day longer, and to destroy his name and his seed in the land.
The original seat of his worship was Muru an unknown place. The consort of Addu was Sala, whose worship was likewise popular, and to whom there were temples, not only in Babylonia and Assyria, but also in Elam, seemingly always in connection with Addu.
Abil-addu was “the son of Hadad”, the equivalent of the Syrian Ben-Hadad. A tablet in New York shows that his name was weakened in form to Ablada.
Assur
The Assyrian religion was mainly that of Babylonia, and that was mainly Sumerian. so, none of these gods are specifically Assyrian, though worshipped by the Assyrians. Assur, the national god of Assyria, who was worshipped in the city of Assur, the old capital of the country, however, is not found in the Babylonian lists of gods.
Assur was the local god of the city whose name he bore, and became chief god of the Assyrian pantheon just as Marduk became king of the gods in Babylonia—because Assur was the capital of the country. Around the eighth century BC, Assur, seems to have been seen as Ansar of the first tablet of the Creation-story, the “host of heaven”. Damascius transcribed Ansar as Assoros, suggesting the pronunciation was Assur. So, Assur the god of the city of the same name became associated with Ansar, and thus a local city god became a god of heaven. Assur was called the “Lord of the Hosts of Heaven and Earth”, the title used in the bible of Yehouah—Lord of Hosts.
Temples to him were to be found all over the Assyrian kingdom, Assyria being more closely united than Babylonia. The god followed the king on warlike expeditions, and the king stood for the god on earth in engaged in religious ceremonies. God and king were probably thought of as inseperable. On sculptures, Assur accompanies the king in the form of a winged circle, in which is shown sometimes a full-length figure of the god in human form, sometimes the upper part only, facing towards and drawing his bow against the foe.
As a sun-god, but not Shamash, he resembled the Babylonian Marduk, and was possibly identified with him, especially as, in at least one text, Beltu (Beltis) is described as his consort, which would possibly identify Assur’s spouse with Zerpanitum. His identification with Marduk, if that was ever accepted, may have been helped by the likeness of Assur to Asari, one of Marduk’s names.
Assur also meant or came to mean “holy” and sometimes is repeated three times. Asur as another form of Asir found in early Cappadocian names, a form of Asiru, a title of Marduk, apparently meaning Lord in the sense of overlord or guardian. Persian Ahura means Lord, from Asura.
As he represented no personification or power of nature, but the general protecting spirit of the land, the king, the army, and the people, the capital of the country could be transferred from Assur to Calah, from there back to Assur, and finally to Nineveh, without affecting the position of the protecting god of the land in any way. He had no need to fear that he should suffer in esteem by the preference for some other god. If he was the “host of heaven”, all the deities might be regarded as having their being in him.
The spouse of Assur does not appear in the historical texts, and her mention elsewhere under the title of Beltu, “the lady”, does not allow of any identification being made. In one inscription, Assuritu is called the goddess, and Assur the god, of the star Sib-zi-anna, possibly Regulus, which was apparently the star of Marduk in Babylonia.
Dagan
An ancient god, Dagan, is generally identified with the Phœnician Dagon. Hammurabi seems to speak of the Euphrates as being “the boundary of Dagan”, whom he calls his creator. In later inscriptions the form Daguna, which approaches nearer to the West Semitic form, is found in a few personal names. Phœnician statues showed him with the lower part of his body in the form of a fish (1 Sam 5:4). Whether the deities clothed in a fish’s skin in the Nimrud gallery are Dagon or not is uncertain—they may be intended to be Ea or Aa, the Oannes of Berosus, who was represented in this way. The two deities might have been the same.
Marduk
Marduk was one of the offspring of Ea. There is little to connect him with Shamash, but he was originally a sun god, as the etymology of his name shows. The form is shortened from “Amar-uduk”, “the young steer of day”, a name which suggests that he was the morning or rising sun, the sun god in his beneficient aspect. Marduk was also Bel or Lord. He is the equivalent of Mithras in Persian religion, and Christ in Christianity. Many hymns were written to him.
Marduk had many other names, among which may be mentioned Asari, which has been compared with the Egyptian Osiris, Asari-lu-duga, “Asari who is good”, compared with Osiris Unnefer—Namtila, “life”—Tutu, “begetter, renewer”—Sarazaga, “the glorious incantation”—Mu-azaga, “the glorious charm”. Sayce says he is also the “Restorer to Life” and the “Raiser from the Dead”.
Professor Edward Chiera translated the original Babylonian Creation myths from a Sumerian tablet. A serious conflict arose among the gods over whether a slave race (humanity) should be created or not. They disagree. The dragon, Tiamat, was against it, and fought Bel until it was overcome by Bel’s thunderbolts. Then God, Bel, created humanity. The New testament makes fresh use of the ancient tale in this way:
And there was war in heaven. Michael and his angels fought against the dragon. And the dragon and his angels fought, and prevailed not, neither was their place found any more in heaven. And the great dragon was cast out, that old serpent, called the Devil, and Satan, which deceiveth the whole world. He was cast out into the earth, and his angels were cast out with him.Revelation 12:7
Here it is plain that Bel, who is also Marduk, is Michael, and Tiamat is the Devil, Satan. He was considered the intermediary between Ea and the human world, advising Ea on what went on, and on mankind’s suffering. By his kindness, he obtained from his father Ea, dwelling in the outer world or abyss, instructions on how to relieve the suffering, and charms and incantations to do it, and restore the sick to health. So he is “the merciful one”, but most merciful was he in that he spared the lives of the gods who had sided with Tiamat. E A Wallis Budge (Babylonian Life and History) says:
The omnipresent and omnipotent Marduk (Merodach) was the god, who “went before Ea” and was the healer and mediator for mankind. He revealed to mankind the knowledge of Ea; in all incantations he is invoked as the god “mighty to save” against evil and ill.
In connection with the fight, he bore also the names, “annihilator of the enemy”, “rooter out of all evil”, “troubler of the evil ones”, “life of the whole of the gods”. From these names it is clear that Marduk, in defeating Tiamat, annihilated, at the same time, the spirit of evil. So, he is the redeemer of mankind who fought the powers of evil. In a bas relief in the British Museum, Marduk pursues Tiamat who was chaos, and was depicted with a tail, claws and horns! She was the Babylonian Satan, the idea underlying the identity of Eve and the serpent. Sanskrit has a number of words meaning darkness formed from the root TM, and one wonders whether our word “time” and “Tiamat” are related in that time causes corruption or chaos.
As “king of the heavens”, he was identified with the largest of the planets, Jupiter, as well as with other heavenly bodies. Jupiter seemed to superintend the stars, and Marduk was seen as shepherding them—“pasturing the gods like sheep”, as the tablet has it.
In images of the creation epic, Marduk often has two faces, showing him to have been a likely model for the Sabine god, Janus, adopted by the Romans, also a god of the morning. The Babylonian creation epic was enacted each new year, the two faces looking backwards on to the pre-creation chaos and forwards to the order created. Despite Marduk being the chief of the gods, Nabu, judging by theophoric names, was the most popular.
Zerpanitum
Marduk’s consort was Zerpanitum (Zer-banitum) considered the “seed-creatress”. She was also called Aru’a in an inscription of Antiochus Soter (280-260 BC) read as “the queen who produces birth”. She seems to be identical with Aruru, who created the seed of mankind along with Marduk. She was also called “the lady of the abyss”, and elsewhere “the voice of the abyss” for no known reason. Zerpanitum was one of the most important goddesses in the Babylonian pantheon. The tendency of scholars has been to identify her with the moon, Marduk being a solar deity and the meaning “silvery”—Zerpanitum, from sarpu, one of the words for “silver”, was regarded as supporting this idea. She was identified with the Elamite goddess named Elagu, and with the Lahamum of the island of Bahrein, the Babylonian Tilmun.
Just as Bel meant “lord”, and was used, like the Phœnician Baal, of the chief god of any city, so Beltu meant “lady”, the chief goddess of any place. Aruru was one of the names of the “lady of the gods”, and aided Marduk to make the seed of mankind. At first she was “Aruru, lady of the gods of Sippar of Aruru”, in the time of the dynasty of Hammurabi called Ya’ruru. Another was “Nin-hur-saga, lady of the gods of Kes”. Mama and Mami are other names of “the lady of the gods”, equated with the creatress of the seed of mankind, Aruru, probably so called as the “mother” of all things. Another name of this goddess is Ama, “mother”. The Hebrew “Am ha Eretz” can be read as “Mother Earth”.
