What is "ashur"

alt. 1 the head of the Assyrian pantheon, later identified with Anshar 2 the city of Assur 3 a common given name among Assyrian people 4 grandson of Noah in Genesis n. 1 the head of the Assyrian pantheon, later identified with Anshar 2 the city of Assur 3 a common given name among Assyrian people 4 grandson of Noah in Genesis

Ashur (; often also transliterated as Asshur to reflect the pointing of Hebrew letter 'ש' ( Shin) in the Masoretic text, which doubles the 'ש'), was the second son of Shem, the son of Noah. Ashur's brothers were Elam, Arphaxad, Lud, and Aram.

The Hebrew text of is somewhat ambiguous as to whether it was Asshur himself (as the 1611 Authorized Version says), or Nimrod (as in some other English translations) who, according to Biblical tradition, built the Assyrian cities of Nineveh, Resen, Rehoboth-Ir and Calah, since the name Asshur can refer to both the person and the country ( AV, ESV). Sir Walter Raleigh devoted several pages in his History of the World (c. 1616) to reciting past scholarship regarding the question of whether it had been Nimrod or Ashur who built the cities in Assyria.

The 1st century Judaeo-Roman historian Flavius Josephus further gives the following statement: "Ashur lived at the city of Nineveh; and named his subjects Assyrians, who became the most fortunate nation, beyond others" (Antiquities, i, vi, 4).

Ashur the son of Shem is sometimes compared with the figure of the deity Ashur, for whom a temple was dedicated in the early capital city of Aššur—traditionally by an early Assyrian king named Ushpia in ca. the 21st century BC. It is highly likely that the city and indeed the Assyrian nation and people, were named in honour of this deity.

Ashur or Assur or Asur may refer to

• Assyria:
  • the city of Assur, the initial town dating from circa 2600 BC, and later capital of Assyria
  • Ashur, the main god of Assyrian mythology in Mesopotamian religion (later identified with Anshar)
  • Ashur a traditional and common given and family name among Assyrian people
• Ashur, grandson of Noah in Genesis
• Asur, India, a village in the Kumbakonam taluk of Thanjavur district, Tamil Nadu, India
• Ashur, Iran, a village in Iran
• Ashur, Sistan and Baluchestan, a village in Iran
• Asur people, a tribal group living primarily in the Indian state of Jharkhand
• Asur, a race in Warhammer Fantasy

Ashur (also, Assur, Aššur; written A-šur, also Aš-šùr) is an East Semitic god, and the head of the Assyrian pantheon in Mesopotamian religion, worshipped mainly in the northern half of Mesopotamia, and parts of north-east Syria and south east Asia Minor which constituted old Assyria. He may have had a solar iconography.

Aššur was a deified form of the city of Assur (pronounced Ashur), which dates from the mid 3rd millennium BC and was the capital of the Old Assyrian kingdom. As such, Ashur did not originally have a family, but as the cult came under southern Mesopotamian influence, he later came to be regarded as the Assyrian equivalent of Enlil, the chief god of Nippur, which was the most important god of the southern pantheon from the early 3rd millennium BC until Hammurabi founded an empire based in Babylon in the mid-18th century BC, after which Marduk replaced Enlil as the chief god in the south. In the north, Ashur absorbed Enlil's wife Ninlil (as the Assyrian goddess Mullissu) and his sons Ninurta and Zababa—this process began around the 14th century BC and continued down to the 7th century.

During the various periods of Assyrian conquest, such as the Assyrian Empire of Shamshi-Adad I (1813–1750 BC), Middle Assyrian Empire (1391–1056 BC) and Neo-Assyrian Empire (911–605 BC), Assyrian imperial propaganda proclaimed the supremacy of Ashur declared that the conquered peoples had been abandoned by their gods.

When Assyria conquered Babylon in the Sargonid period (8th–7th centuries BC), Assyrian scribes began to write the name of Ashur with the cuneiform signs "AN.SHAR", literally "whole heaven" in Akkadian, the language of Assyria and Babylonia. The intention seems to have been to put Ashur at the head of the Babylonian pantheon, where Anshar and his counterpart Kishar ("whole earth") preceded even Enlil and Ninlil. Thus in the Sargonid version of the Enuma Elish, the Babylonian national creation myth, Marduk, the chief god of Babylon, does not appear, and instead it is Ashur, as Anshar, who slays Tiamat the chaos-monster and creates the world of humankind.

Ashur, together with a number of other Mesopotamian gods, continued to be worshipped by Assyrians long after the fall of Assyria, with temples being erected in his honour in Assyria ( Athura/ Assuristan) until the 3rd and 4th centuries of the Christian era, but by this time most Assyrians had adopted East Syrian Christianity.

The city of Ashur, named in honour of the deity, was inhabited until the 14th century, when a massacre of Assyrian Christians by Tamurlane left it finally emptied. Ashur is still a common given and family name amongst Assyrians to this day.