Assur

ASSUR. - 1. DEITY. - National god of the Assyrians, who gave his name to the capital of the kingdom. He is one of the few gods who did not penetrate into Babylonia, despite Assyrian supremacy also over the southern Mesopotamian region in the time of the Sargonids.

The fortunes of the god are bound up with the fortunes of the city; when Assyria became a great empire, the power of A. increased so much that he took precedence over the other divinities and became the imperial divinity. A. is essentially a warrior god who delivers his people's enemies into their hands. Victorious kings dedicate the spoils to him.

In Assyrian lists of divinities, A. comes immediately after Anu, and sometimes even precedes him. It may rightly be said that in the Assyrian pantheon he occupies the place accorded to Marduk in the Babylonian pantheon.

Some authors emphasize the great affinity that this god displays with the national god of the Israelites. In this regard it should be noted that the essential elements found in Yahweh: monotheism, jealous guardianship of the moral law, do not appear in the Assyrian national god, whose characteristic is to be a warrior god.

Giustino Boson

2. CITY

City on the right bank of the Tigris, named (Assyr. and Hebr. 'Aššur) after the supreme Assyrian god Aššur, from which the entire territory of the Assyrians took its name (as the Amorites did from Amurru), called in cuneiform documents mat Aššur ("land of A.") and in the Bible "kingdom of A." or simply "A." In the Old Assyrian period (from its origins to 1115 B.C.), it was the capital of the Assyrians, until Shalmaneser I (1290-60) established his capital at Kalah (modern Nimrūd) south of Nineveh, 70 km north of A., and then Tiglath-Pileser I at Nineveh (ca. 1100); A., however, always remained the religious capital: the temple of A. preserved the political and military archive. On a rock at the edge of the steppe, the ruins of A. are today called Qal'at Serqāt, facing the Gebel Hamrin. Its history is largely identified with that of the Assyrians. While its first kings gave themselves the title of "prefect" and "priest" of A., Šamši-Adad I (ca. 1892-1860) proclaimed himself šar hiššatim "king of the world," because he ruled over the "land between the Tigris and the Euphrates."

A. has prehistoric origins. Before the middle of the 3rd millennium B.C., the Sumerian language and culture prevailed there, as attested by the statues found in the lower strata of its ruins. Its most ancient local kings (ca. 2500 B.C.) were Ellil-Kapkapu, Ušpia (who built there the temple of the god Aššur E-hur-sag-hur-kur-ra, "mountain of the lands"), Kikia (who built the walls of the city). Before 2300 B.C. the Semitic race and civilization established themselves there. From an inscription of the king (fakhanah "prefect") Zāriqum, A. appears to be a vassal of King Būr-Sin of Ur (2228-2220 B.C.). But while the dynasties of Larsa and Išin were contending for primacy in Mesopotamia, A. was emancipating itself and its king Ilu-šuma extended his dominion as far as Ur, Akkad, Nippur (ca. 2030 B.C.). With Puzur-Asir I (2086-2072) begins the uninterrupted series, until the disappearance of Assyria, of the patesis and kings of A. Hammurapi restored A., then a Babylonian military garrison. It was for a long time subject to the kingdom of Mitannu, whose king Tušratta (ca. 1390-1370 B.C.) still possessed it (along with Nineveh) in the el-Amarna period. The city reached its zenith with the kings Aššur-Uballiṭ and Adad-Nirāri I (ca. 1350-1285

B.C.), who begin the victorious rise of Assyria, which had made itself independent. It was a sacred city, famous for its temples of Aššur, of Ištar, of Adad (to which the temple of Anu was later added), of En-ili (rebuilt by Samši-Adad I), of Samaš or "Sun" (built by Arik-dén-ili (ca. 1325-1311), and it preserved this primacy even when Nineveh became the capital. Semiramis (Sammuramat), mother of Adadnirari III (806-782 B.C.), built a monument there. A rebellion of A., led by priests, took the kingdom from Shalmaneser V and gave it to Sargon II (722 B.C.). Esarhaddon (681-669) exempted A. from tribute and services; he restored there the temple of Aššur, celebrating its dedication with the Assyrian nobles for three days. Similar honors were paid by his son Ashurbanipal. In 615 B.C. the Babylonian Nabopolassar attempted in vain to storm A., but at the end of 614 the Medes of Cyaxares conquered and destroyed it, and on its ruins they concluded an alliance with Nabopolassar; the end of Assyria followed in 612 B.C. The Parthians later founded a city of their own there (2nd-1st centuries B.C.), provided with a grandiose palace with Hellenistic ornaments of colored stucco. Still in the 3rd century A.D. the god Aššur was worshiped there by a few faithful among the ruins.

In the Bible "Assur" never designates the city (except Gen. 2:14 Hebr.), but always Assyria (people and region); the term "Assyria," known to the Greeks (Herodotus, I, 178-85 and 192, where Ἀσπερίχ equals Βαβολοκλή), is missing there. The Vulgate calls the people "assyrius," but usually "Assyrii"; the Hebrew text, to indicate the Assyrians, always uses A. (Aššur); the name is then credited by the empires that succeeded the Assyrian one: Babylonia (1 Kings 23:20) and Persia (Eid. 6:22).

Gen. 10:11 relates that Nimrod, a Hamite of Kuš, came from Sennaar (Babylonia) to A. (the region); Mi. 5:6 therefore calls A. "land of Nimrod." Indeed Assyria was first colonized by non-Semites coming from southern Mesopotamia. But the people of A. is rightly said to be descended from Shem (Gen. 10:22).

The ruins of A. (Qal'at Šerqšt) were explored, from 1902 to 1914, by W. Andrae, who identified there six archaeological strata, gigantic fortifications, many palaces and temples, among them the double temple of Anu and Adad with two towers of receding stories, various temples of Ištar, the Bit Akhti "house of festivals" (where the new year festival was celebrated) and the tomb of Sennacherib (705-681 B.C.). Important is the account of the cosmogony (akin to the Enūma elif, v.) found in the excavations of A. (H. Gressmann, Mitorientalische Texte zum Alten Text, 2nd ed., Berlin-Leipzig 1926, pp. 131-32). The inscriptions found at A. were published by L. Messerschmidt and F. Delitzsch (1912), by O. Schroeder (1920-22); those of religious content by E. Ebeling (1915-17).

BBL.: W. Andrae, Die archaischen Ischter-Tempel in A., Leipzig 1922; id., Das wiedererstandene A. (Sondschrift der deutsch-orient. Gesellschaft), 9, Leipzig 1938 (updated compendium of many earlier publications by W. Andrae); E. Ebeling, B. Meissner, E. F. Weidner, Die Inschriften der altasyrischen Könige (Altorient. Bibliothek), 1, Leipzig 1926; E. Unger, Das Stadtbild von A. (Der Alte Orient. 27, III), Leipzig 1929; F. M. T. Böhl, Religienze teksten uit A. (VI-IX), in Ex Oriente Lux, 7 (1940), pp. 403-17; E. F. Weidner, Assurbanipal in A., in Archiv für Orient-Forschung, 13 (1940), pp. 204-18; W. von Bissing, Ägyptische und ägyptisierende Alabastergefässe aus den deutschen Ausgrabungen in A., in Zeitschrift für Assyriologie, 12 (1940), pp. 149-185; J. Pehuela, La data de reconstrucción del templo de Anu-Adad en Assur, in Sefarad, 4 (1944), pp. 119-46.

Antonino Romeo