Table of Contents
Shamash is the Babylonian and Assyrian sun god, the Utu of the Sumerians, and on this site he turns up as the god who announces the flood, hears the prayer of a childless king and hands down the secrets of heaven. These are the pages where he appears.
The sun god of Sippar
On The sun Sol Utu is the Sumerian and Akkadian sun god and Shamash the corresponding god in Babylon and Assyria. On Apkallu Sippar is the city dedicated to him. On Who is Anu? I note that the sun god was Shamash, not Bel. On Numerology the Babylonian theologians rank him by number, and Hadad, the Storm God Who Rode the Clouds quotes that list: Anu 60, Enlil 50, Ea 40, Sin 30, Shamash 20.
The god who fixed the hour of the flood
On The Deluge of the Chaldeans Ignatius Donnelly quotes François Lenormant’s version of the eleventh tablet of the epic of Uruk, first deciphered by George Smith. There Shamash sets the moment and gives the order to the hero of the flood:
In the evening I will cause it to rain abundantly from heaven; enter into the vessel and close the door.
Shamash, in the Chaldean flood tablet, in Lenormant's translation quoted by Ignatius Donnelly
Blacket, in Researches into the Lost Histories of America (1884), runs through the Assyrian deluge tablet in short lines, and a flood that Shamash made is one of them.
Etana and Enmeduranki
In The Legend of Etana the king of Kish, whose wife cannot conceive, prays to the sun god for the plant of birth. The translated verse on that page begins “Shamash, may I behold the plant of birth” and ends “Grant me a son.” On The Numbers Before the Flood the Enoch link is the strongest for me: in a later Babylonian text studied by W. G. Lambert, Enmeduranki of Sippar receives the secrets of heaven and earth from Shamash.
The Sun-temple at Sippara
Zénaïde A. Ragozin, in The Story of Chaldea (1886), dates Sargon of Agadê from a cylinder of Nabonidus. Nabonidus found the foundation cylinder of Naram-Sin in the Sun-temple at Sippara, one:
which for thrice thousand and twice hundred years none of the kings that lived before me had seen.
Nabonidus, cylinder inscription, quoted by Zénaïde A. Ragozin, The Story of Chaldea (G. P. Putnam's Sons, 1886), p. 213
Her sum is 3750 B.C. for Naram-Sin and 3800 B.C. for his father Sargon.
Related pages
- The sun Sol
- The Deluge of the Chaldeans
- The Legend of Etana
- The Numbers Before the Flood
- Zénaïde A. Ragozin’s The Story of Chaldea (1886)
- Apkallu
- Numerology
- Hadad, the Storm God Who Rode the Clouds
- Researches into the Lost Histories of America (1884)
For every page I tagged with Shamash, see the Shamash tag archive.
