Ashur

   1) (capital)

   Long the capital and one of the chief cities of the Assyrian Empire as well as the root word for the terms Assyria and Assyrian. Located on the west bank of the Tigris River, about 60 miles (97 km) south of the modern Iraqi city of Mosul, Ashur (or Assur) seems to have been settled circa 2500 b.c. by immigrants from Syria. The early Assyrian king Shamshi-Adad I (reigned ca. 1809-1766 b.c.) and his successors made the city a ceremonial center and their imperial capital. It retained that status until 883 b.c., when Kalhu (modern Nimrud) became the Assyrian capital; still, Ashur remained important as the burial site of the Assyrian monarchs. The city met its end in 614 b.c., when the Babylonians and the Medes sacked it during their conquest of Assyria.

   The principal modern excavations of Ashur were conducted by the German Oriental Society, under the direction of Walter Andrae, between 1903 and 1911. Andrae and later researchers determined that the city was originally surrounded by a high circuit wall about 2.5 miles (4 km) long. Ashur eventually boasted at least thirty-four temples honoring a range of Mesopotamian gods, three palace complexes, and three ziggurats, or pyramidlike structures. Today, tragically, the ruins of Ashur lie unprotected, and archaeologists list the site as seriously endangered.

   See also: Assyrian Empire; palaces; ziggurat

   2) (god)

   The chief god of the Assyrian pantheon of deities. Ashur (or Asshur) started out as the local god of the town of Ashur and its surrounding region. But after the Assyrians made that town their capital and expanded outward, creating an empire, the god Ashur grew in importance until he was the state war god and the supreme divinity, more or less equivalent to the Babylonian Marduk. People swore oaths to Ashur, whom artists usually depicted as a bearded, well-dressed man wearing a horned cap and sometimes riding a giant snake. In time the Assyrian kings came to associate themselves directly with Ashur, each claiming to be his earthly representative and deserving of the same loyalty.

   See also: Ashur¹; Assyrian Empire; religion