Adad

For the village in Iran, see Adad, Iran.
"Ishkur" redirects here. For the electronic music guide, see Ishkur's Guide to Electronic Music.
Adad
God of Weather, Hurricanes, Storms, Thunder and Rain

Assyrian soldiers carrying a statue of Adad
Abode Heaven
Symbol Thunderbolt, Bull, Lion
Consort Shala
Parents Nanna or Sin and Ningal
Siblings Utu, Inanna
Children Gibil or Gerra

Adad (Akkadian) or Iškur (Sumerian) was the storm god in ancient Mesopotamian religion. These two names are usually written with the logogram dIM. The Akkadian Adad was the god Hadad originating in early ancient Semitic religion of the Amorites (Sumerian mar.tu).[1][2][3][4]

In Akkadian, Adad is also known as Ramman ("Thunderer") cognate with Aramaic Rimmon, which was a byname of Hadad. Ramman was formerly incorrectly taken by many scholars to be an independent Assyrian-Babylonian god later identified with the Hadad.

The form Iškur appears in the list of gods found at Shuruppak but was was of far less importance, probably partly because storms and rain were scarce in Sumer and agriculture there depended on irrigation instead. The gods Enlil and Ninurta also had storm god features that decreased Iškur's distinctiveness. He sometimes appears as the assistant or companion of one or the other of the two.

When Enki distributed the destinies, he made Iškur inspector of the cosmos. In one litany, Iškur is proclaimed again and again as "great radiant bull, your name is heaven" and also called son of Anu, lord of Karkara; twin-brother of Enki, lord of abundance, lord who rides the storm, lion of heaven.

In other texts Adad/Iškur is sometimes son of the moon god Nanna/Sin by Ningal and brother of Utu/Shamash and Inanna/Ishtar. He is also occasionally son of Enlil.

Adad/Iškur's consort (both in early Sumerian and the much later Assyrian texts) was Shala, a goddess of grain, who is also sometimes associated with the god Dagan. She was also called Gubarra in the earliest texts. The fire god Gibil (named Gerra in Akkadian) is sometimes the son of Iškur and Shala.

Adad/Iškur's special animal is the bull. He is naturally identified with the Anatolian storm-god Teshub. Occasionally Adad/Iškur is identified with the god Amurru, the god of the Amorites.

The Babylonian center of Adad/Iškur's cult was Karkara in the south, his chief temple being É.Kar.kar.a; his spouse Shala his was worshipped in a temple named É.Dur.ku. In Assyria, Adad was developed along with his warrior aspect. During the Middle Assyrian Empire, from the reign of Tiglath-Pileser I (1115–1077 BCE), Adad had a double sanctuary in Assur which he shared with Anu. Anu is often associated with Adad in invocations. The name Adad and various alternate forms and bynames (Dadu, Bir, Dadda) are often found in the names of the Assyrian kings.

Adad/Iškur presents two aspects in the hymns, incantations, and votive inscriptions. On the one hand he is the god who, through bringing on the rain in due season, causes the land to become fertile, and, on the other hand, the storms that he sends out bring havoc and destruction. He is pictured on monuments and cylinder seals (sometimes with a horned helmet) with the lightning and the thunderbolt (sometimes in the form of a spear), and in the hymns the sombre aspects of the god on the whole predominate. His association with the sun-god, Shamash, due to the natural combination of the two deities who alternate in the control of nature, leads to imbuing him with some of the traits belonging to a solar deity.

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. Similarly in the annals and votive inscriptions of the kings, when oracles are referred to, Shamash and Adad are always named as the gods addressed, and their ordinary designation in such instances is bele biri ("lords of divination").

See also

Notes

  1. ↑ Albert T. Clay. The Origin of Biblical Traditions: Hebrew Legends in Babylonia and Israel. p. 50.
  2. ↑ Theophilus G. Pinches. The Religion of Babylonia and Assyria. p. 15.
  3. ↑ Joseph Eddy Fontenrose. Python: A Study of Delphic Myth and Its Origins. p. 157.
  4. ↑ Alberto Ravinell Whitney Green. The Storm-god in the Ancient Near East. p. 166.

Sources

External links

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