Shamash

The Babylonian sun god, who was closely associated with the older Sumerian solar deity, Utu, and whose symbol was the solar disk. Shamash’s father was Nanna, god of the moon; his sister was Inanna, goddess of love and sexual passion; and his principal shrine was originally located at Larsa, northwest of Ur. In the Old Babylonian period, consisting of the early centuries of the second millennium B. C., Shamash became an important dispenser of justice, and for this reason the great Babylonian lawgiver Hammurabi depicted himself receiving his famous law code directly from Shamash. In these same years a new shrine to the god—the Ebabbar, or “Shining House”—was erected at Sippar and competed with Shamash’s Larsa temple. Shamash was also a patron deity of soldiers, merchants, hunters, and other travelers, and a number of prayers and hymns reflecting that part of the god’s personality have survived. A passage from one of these reads:

The feeble man calls you from the hollow of his mouth, the humble, the weak, the afflicted, the poor, she whose son is captive constantly and unceasingly confronts you. He whose family is remote, whose city is distant, the shepherd [amid] the terror of the steppe confronts you, the herdsman in warfare, the keeper of sheep among enemies. Shamash, there confronts you the caravan, those journeying in fear, the traveling merchant, the agent who is carrying capital. Shamash, there confronts you the fisherman with his net, the hunter, the bowman who drives the game, with his bird net the fowler confronts you.

SEE ALSO: Inanna; Larsa; Nanna