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Updated: June 24, 2025
Marduk was too much like Ashur to find a place at his side. Nabu was a totally different deity, and in worshipping him who was the son of Marduk, the Assyrian kings felt that they were paying due regard to the feelings of their Babylonian subjects. The cult of Nabu thus became widely extended in Assyria.
Ashurbanabal, however, goes still further, and, influenced by the title of 'Belit' as applied to Ishtar, makes the latter the consort of Ashur.
Marduk, as we have seen, was not often appealed to by the Assyrian kings, but Nabu seemed always ready to help them. Hence the king confesses his sins and makes an appeal to the great Babylonian god and not to Ashur. He is encouraged by the promise that his life will be spared, and that his supremacy will be recognized in Babylonia.
+722+. In Babylonia the earliest pair of deities, Lakhmu and Lakhamu, vague forms, were succeeded by a second pair, Anshar and Kishar, somewhat less vague, and these in their turn yielded to the more definite group represented by Ea, Bel, and Marduk deities who became the embodiments of the highest Babylonian culture; in Assyria Ashur and Ishtar occupied a similar position.
The god who comes to stand at the head of the Assyrian pantheon Ashur suffers from none of these restrictions. He is independent of other gods and is under no obligations to any of his fellows, and his rule once acknowledged remains supreme, with, perhaps, one short period excepted, throughout all the vicissitudes that the empire undergoes.
The oldest kings of Assyria call themselves 'the priests of Ashur, and it is only as with the growth of political power a differentiation of functions takes place that the priest, as the mediator between the deity and his subjects, becomes distinct from the secular ruler.
He lords it over gods and spirits, but he lords it solely because of his warlike qualities. Ashur is the giver of crown and sceptre, and the kings of Assyria are the patesis of the god, his lieutenants. He is the god that embodies the spirit of Assyrian history, and as such he is the most characteristic personage of the Assyrian pantheon in a certain sense the only characteristic personage.
True, so far as Babylonia was concerned, Marduk was always the acknowledged head, but during the period that Assyria held Babylonia in a more or less rigid form of subjection it was inevitable that Ashur should lower the prestige of Marduk.
There were other occasions, too, in which, both in ancient times and in more modern periods, prayers were sent up to the gods. Kudur-mabuk, of the second dynasty of Ur, informs us that he built a temple, E-nun-makh, to Sin in gratitude to the god for having hearkened to his prayer. The Assyrian kings pray to Ashur or Ishtar before the battle, and offer thanks after the victory has been gained.
Although purchased in Mosul, the slab had been found by the natives in the mounds at Sherghat, for the text engraved upon it in archaic Assyrian characters records the restoration of a part of the temple of the god Ashur in the ancient city of Ashur, the first capital of the Assyrians, now marked by the mounds of Sherghat, which have already been described.
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