SHAMASH

SHAMASH: translation

Babylonian sun god. According to the personal names from the Akkadperiod, the sun deity, as in other Semitic cultures, may have originally been female. In Mesopotamia, Shamash became identified with the Sumerian sun god Utu, whose shrine was at Larsa. In the Old Babylonian period, Shamash came to be seen as the supreme arbiter of justice—Hammurabi on the stele with his law code is seen to receive the symbols of kingship from the sun god. At this time, the main sanctuary of the sun god was at Sippar, where he resided in the Ebabbar, the “shining house,” to the detriment of the temple at Larsa.

In Babylonian hymns and prayers, Shamash is not only invoked to safeguard the rights of individuals but to guard all those on a journey, such as merchants and soldiers, and to combat evil in the many apotropaic and curative rituals and incantations. The wife of Shamash was Aya, who was the patron of a special category of cloistered (naditu) women during the Old Babylonian period.

See also RASSAM, Hormuzd.