Shamash

“ Shamash, the great judge of heaven and earth, who keeps aloft all ways of life, the master of the courage of life, shall break up his kingdom, shall not carry out his right, shall stop his road, shall destroy the courage of his troops, in his dreams face bad prophecies with the extermination of the foundations of his throne and prophesy the downfall of his country. ”

“ He is supposed to throw open the gates of the morning and raise his head over the horizon, lighting up the heaven and earth with his beams. The knowledge of justice and injustice and the virtue of righteousness were attributed to him, and he was regarded as a judge between good and evil, for as the light of the sun penetrates everywhere, and nothing can be hidden from its beams, it is not strange that it should stand as the symbol for justice. Shamash appears at the head of the inscription which bears the laws of Khammurabi, and here he stands as the symbol for justice. ”

“ In the incantations, Shamash is frequently appealed to, either alone, or when an entire group of spirits and deities are enumerated. He is called upon to give life to the sick man. To him the body of the one who is smitten with disease is confided. ”

“ To my father say, thus saith Elmeshu: Shamash and Marduk fill with well-being the days of my father perpetually. My father, be thou well, flourish; the God that preserves my father direct my father's source of grace. I have sent to greet my father. May my father's peace endure before Shamash and Marduk. From the time that Sin Amurrû named my father's name, and I answered for my fault, thou, my father, didst say, “When I shall go to Dûr-Ammi-zadûga, which is on the River Sharḳu, I will forward a sheep and five minas of silver, in a little while, to thee.” ”

“ May she bring about the downfall of his country, the loss of his people, the efflux of his life like water, by the order of the Bêl, the king. May Ea, the grand prince, whose destiny takes premier rank, the messenger of the gods, who knows all, who has prolonged my life, distort his understanding and intellect, curse him with forgetfulness, dam up his rivers at their source. In his land may Ashnan (the deity of wheat) , the life of the people, not grow. May Shamash, great judge of heaven and earth, who governs the creatures of life, the lord of help, cut off his sovereignty ”

“ Bit-Shamash and he had played together as children; together had reached the period of adolescence; had tasted the first delights of young manhood, entered upon a career of the wildest dissipation, and finally settled down to take up the duties of life, still in each other's company, still holding fast to a brotherhood of spirit that was perhaps the most beautiful thing in the life of each. Ribâta was in no way possessed of the remarkable personal beauty that had rendered Belshazzar famous—or, some said, infamous, through the land. ”

“ Whereas Shamash is viewed as the 'judge of mankind,' Marduk becomes the god who restores the dead to life, though he shares this power with Shamash, Gula, Nebo, and Nergal. But after all, even in the religious texts, his more prominent rôle is that of a ruler,—a magnified king. He protects the weak, releases the imprisoned, and makes great the small. He controls by his powerful hand the mountains and rivers and fountains. He is the counsellor who guides the decrees, even of the great gods, Anu and Bel. ”

“ Drawn by Faucher-Gudin, from a Chaldæan intaglio pointed out by Heuzey-Sarzcc; the original is in the Louvre. The scene depicted behind Shamash deals with a legend still unknown. A goddess, pursued by a genius with a double face, has taken refuge under a tree, which bows down to protect her; while the monster endeavours to break down the obstacle branch by branch, a god rises from the stem and hands to the goddess a stone-headed mace to protect her against her enemy. ”

“ Certainly this appears to be the case with Malik and Bunene, who, with Shamash, form a triad that constitutes the chief object of worship in the great temple E-babbara at Sippar, to whose restored cult Nabubaliddin devotes himself. Both names, moreover, occur as parts of proper names in the age of Hammurabi. Malik—i.e., ruler—is one of the names frequently assigned to Shamash, just as the god's consort was known as Malkatu, but for all that Malik is not the same as Shamash. ”

“ Shamash, judge of the world, determiner of its decisions art thou.
The following delightful fragment of a hymn to Shamash seems to belong even more to Nature’s out of doors than the preceding hymn:
[Beginning of tablet broken.]
Lord, illuminator of the darkness, opener of the face of [heaven] [43]
Merciful God, who raisest up the lowly, who protectest the weak,
For thy light wait the great gods
The Annunaki all of them gaze upon thy face
The mortals all together as a single individual thou leadest.
Expectant with raised head they look for the light of the sun ”

“ May the condemnation of Shamash overtake him forthwith; may he be deprived of water above among the living, and his spirit below in the earth. May Sin [the moon-god] , the Lord of Heaven, the divine father, whose crescent gives light among the gods, take away the crown and regal throne from him; may he put upon him heavy guilt, great decay, that nothing may be lower than he. May he destine him as fated, days, months and years of dominion filled with sighing and tears, increase of the burden of dominion, a life that is like unto death. ”

“ Shamash had reasons for being urgent. Khumbaba, King of Elam, had invaded the country of the Euphrates, destroyed the temples, and substituted for the national worship the cult of foreign deities;* the two heroes in concert could alone check his advance, and kill him. They collected their troops, set out on the march, having learned from a female magician that the enemy had concealed himself in a sacred grove. ”

“ Having indicated how the origin of the image of Shamash can be traced to conceptions arising from the use of the fire-drill and some primitive mode of extracting oil or of preparing a highly valued drink from seeds and plants, by centrifugal action, invented by a primitive agricultural people, I advance the suggestion that the celestial tree of the Norsemen and Semites, associated with the fountain and the four rivers of life, appears as a closely related symbol which, however, mainly expressed the idea of stability. ”

“ There is reason to believe that in ancient times even Shamash was not an entirely beneficent solar deity, but, like Nergal, could figure as a warrior on occasion. But in later times he was regarded as the god who brings light and life upon all created things, and upon whom depends everything in nature from man to vegetable. His consort was Aa, who was worshipped at Sippar along with him. Her cult seems to have been one of great antiquity, but she does not appear to have any distinctive character of her own. ”

“ Pg 296
But sometimes gods and heroes are found side by side on the same seal, as is the case on the seal reproduced in Fig. 60. The horn-capped and seated deity is Shamash, the Sun-god, from whose shoulders rays of light proceed, while from his lap issue streams of living water. Fig. 60. The god is clad in a long mantle hung from the right shoulder, while the left arm and shoulder are left bare, and he is seated on a three or four-legged stool. Before him is a crescent, and behind him is a star mounted on a kind of stand, while in his presence a typical scene is being enacted ”

“ If that man pay attention to my words which I have written upon my monument, do not efface my judgments, do not overrule my words, and do not alter my statues, then will Shamash prolong that man’s reign, as he has mine, who am king of righteousness, that he may rule his people in righteousness. ”

“ On the upper part of the stele, which is now one of the treasures of the Louvre, Paris, King Hammurabi salutes, with his right hand reverently upraised, the sun god Shamash, seated on his throne, at the summit of E-sagila, by whom he is being presented with the stylus with which to inscribe the legal code. Both figures are heavily bearded, but have shaven lips and chins. The god wears a conical headdress and a flounced robe suspended from his left shoulder, while the king has assumed a round dome-shaped hat and a flowing garment which almost sweeps the ground. ”

“ The independence of the course that he pursues in the heavens places him beyond the control of the great judge of the world, the mighty Shamash. There is no one superior to Sin, no one to whose command he must bend. With all this, there is a total absence of any allusion to his power of removing the influence of demons and witches. We have here a hymn purified from all association with the incantation texts, and there is every reason to believe that it was composed for use in the great temple at Ur, which is mentioned in the opening lines. ”

“ In Syria Hadad is hardly to be distinguished from a solar deity. The process of assimilation did not proceed so far in Babylonia and Assyria, but Shamash and Adad became in combination the gods of oracles and of divination in general. Whether the will of the gods is determined through the inspection of the liver of the sacrificial animal, through observing the action of oil bubbles in a basin of water or through the observation of the movements of the heavenly bodies, it is Shamash and Adad who, in the ritual connected with divination, are invariably invoked. ”

“ Judgment of Shamash shall overtake him at once, up among the living, cast down his spirit to the earth. He shall let him do without water among the living, without his spirit under the earth. Sin, the lord of the lord of the heaven, the god-father, whose sickle flares up among the gods, shall deprive him of crown and royal throne; the heavy guilt, the great offence, he will not soften ”

“ The fire constituted the medium, as it were, between the worshipper and the deity addressed. The fire-god is in truth the messenger who carries the sacrifice into the presence of the god worshipped. Even Shamash, though himself personifying fire, is forced to acknowledge the power of Gibil-Nusku, who, we are told elsewhere, is invoked, even when sacrifices are made to the sun-god.
Besides being the son of Anu, Gibil-Nusku is brought into association with the two other members of the triad, Bel and Ea. He is the messenger of Bel and the son of Ea. The former conception is again mythical. ”

“ The eagle recalls the winged disc, the symbol of Ashur, [1039] and the eagle occurs also as a standard among the Hittites, [1040] with whom, as we know, the Babylonians came into contact. The story of Shamash, himself, laying the trap for the eagle looks like a myth produced with some specific intent, an illustration of legitimate sun-worship against rival cults. As a matter of course, in the case of such a myth, it is difficult to say where its popular character ends and the speculative or scholastic theory begins. ”

“ Shamash can hardly have regarded with favor the ambition of a human being to mount to the dwelling of the gods. Gilgamesh makes no such attempt, and Parnapishtim is not carried [Pg 527] on high, but to "the confluence of the streams." Gilgamesh, it will also be recalled, is unable to pass to the nether world where Eabani is placed, and in the following chapter we will come across a tale intended to illustrate the impossibility of any one ever returning from the hollow under the earth where the dead dwell. ”

“ We are fortunate in having a pictorial representation of such a papakhu. A stone tablet found at Sippar [1358] represents Shamash seated in the "holy of holies" of the temple E-Babbara. The god sits on a low throne. In front of him is an altar table on which rests a wheel with radiant spokes,—a symbol of the sun-god. Into this sanctuary the worshipper, who is none other than the king Nabubaliddin, is led by a priest. ”

“ On his portrait-stela king Shamsi-Rammanu the younger (B.C. 825-812) , the grandson of Asurnasirpal, wears the cross only, hanging from his neck-chain and in the text invokes, according to Dr. von Luschan, only Nindar, who has been proven to be Shamash under another name or title. Nindar is identified in Professor Jastrow's hand-book with Ninsia, “a god of considerable importance, imported perhaps from some ancient site of Lagash” ... who “disappeared from the later pantheon.” ... ”

“ The dead do not praise Yahwe, nor any who go down into silence,
But we will bless Yahwe from henceforth and forever.
—Psalm 115:171f.
Shamash honors the head of the just man;
Shamash rends the evil man like a thong.
—Hymn to Shamash No. 1.
98
Beyond the couplet, strophes of three, four, five, six, and more lines are common in the Assyrian hymns, even as in the Hebrew Psalter. Perhaps the fact that interests the Old Testament student most in the strophic arrangement is that the number of lines in the strophes in the same hymn is by no means always uniform. ”

“ Ea, as "the world spine", was symbolized as a column, with ram's head, standing on a throne, beside which crouched a "goat fish". Merodach's column terminated in a lance head, and the head of a lion crowned that of Nergal. These columns were probably connected with pillar worship, and therefore with tree worship, the pillar being the trunk of the "world tree". The symbol of the sun god Shamash was a disc, from which flowed streams of water ”

“ While a considerable proportion may be put down as local gods, enjoying an independent, albeit obscure, existence, at least an equal number will turn out to be mere epithets of gods already known. In all cases where the god's name actually appears as an epithet, we may be certain that such is the case. So when a god is called simply Dainu, i.e., Judge, there can be little doubt that Shamash, the sun-god, is meant; a god, 'great mountain,' is none other than Bel ”