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ASSUR

(Heb. ʾaššûr; Akk. aššur)

(DEITY)

The Assyrian national deity and head of the pantheon; principally a god of war, kingship, and royal ideology. His name is identified with the city, and from it the names Assyria and the Assyrians derive. Assur may have been a local tribal deity with no original position or lineage in the Mesopotamian pantheon. He assimilated the characteristics of Enlil, a prominent deity in the early Mesopotamian pantheon, sometime during the 2nd millennium b.c.e. Assur became the “lord of the universe” and “the father of the gods.” Along with his consort Ninlil, who was also the wife of Enlil, he resided in the E-kur temple in Assur. When the Assyrian king Sennacherib destroyed Babylon (ca. 689) he replaced the Babylonian cult of Marduk with his deity Assur.

Assur is identified as An-šar in Enuma Elish, the Mesopotamian creation epic, and in the Assyrian version of this myth Assur displaces Marduk as the triumphant hero who slays Tiamat. The bronze doors of Sennecherib’s New Year’s temple in Assur depict scenes from this battle. Additionally, Assur assumed the essential role played by Marduk in the Akîtu, the annual New Year’s festival in which the king proclaimed obedience and loyalty to Assur and the citizens of the land. The Assyrian kings were thus considered not only the administrative leaders of the state, but also acted as high priests in Assur’s cult. The earliest reference to Assur appears in the Old Assyrian cuneiform texts of Cappadocia, a major trading colony, dating to ca. 2000. Assur, as a deity, is not mentioned in the OT; however, the name does appear as a component in the theophoric name of the Assyrian king, Assurbanipal (“Assur is the creator of the heir”).

Julye Bidmead

Prayer Tents Bible References - Prayer Tents

ASSUR

Eerdmans Dictionary of the Bible (2000)