Assur (god)

Assur was the head of the Assyrian pantheon and the rival of the Babylonian Marduk. His origins are unknown but he is one over the very few Mesopotamian city gods, namely of Assur. It might therefore be that he was a personification of the city itself. From about 1300 BC priests attempted to replace Marduk with Assur in Enuma Elish. From the reign of Sargon II he was identified with Anshar the father of An, probably because the similarities of the names. In this version of the Enuma Elish Marduk does not appear and instead Assur slays Tiamat as Anshar. Although he was the most important god of the Assyrians Assur had no mythology or attributes of his own, everything was stolen from gods as Anshar and Marduk. Some scholars have claimed that Assur was represented as the solar disc that appears frequently in Assyrian iconography. However evidence points out that it is in fact the sun god Shamash. Many Assyrian kings had a name that referred to Assur.