In Assyrian and Babylonian mythology, PAZUZU (sometimes Fazuzu or Pazuza) was the king of the demons of the wind, brother of Humbaba and son of the god Hanbi. He also represented the southwestern wind, the bearer of storms and drought.
Concerning Pazuzu’s name itself, Dutch assyriologist Franciscus A. M. Wiggermann offers two possible solutions. The first, Neo-Assyrian PN Pa-zu-zu, occurs once in a text from Tall Halaf, and is explained as deriving either from Aramaic pezôzā, “made of fine gold,” or from Aramaic PZZ, “to be impetuous, agile.” The latter of this class of derivations fits Pazuzu’s character exceptionally well. Whether the Neo-Assyrian names Ba-su-su and Ba-zu-zu reflect the same meaning for the same entity cannot be known.
The second potential solution is a bit more tenuous. Pasusu would be derived from PSS, an unattested secondary variant of PSH, known in Babylonian from the word pessû — “halt” or “dwarf.” This would place Pasusu in the class of apotropaic dwarfs attested both in Mesopotamian and Egyptian religion and iconography. In fact, on one well-made Lamaštu amulet, Pazuzu has remarkably short legs, and in an inscription calls Himself ú-GU-u, or “cripple.”
Wiggermann tells us that Pazuzu’s name is not attested before the Iron Age (1200 – 550 BCE), though “the bilingual [Sumero-Akkadian] incantations can be taken to point to an earlier date, as well as perhaps His appearance in an alamdimmû omen.”
As for specific, reasonable dates and alternative sources, the German assyriologist Nils P. Heeßel tells us that “the earliest securely datable Pazuzu representations stem from the royal tombs in Kalhu (Nimrud), which can be dated to the end of the 8th century BCE, while the earliest reference to Pazuzu in texts is found in a letter dated to around 670 BCE.” (2011)
Pazuzu is known from over 170 iconographic representations stemming from the Tigris-Euphrates river system and beyond during the 1st millennium BCE, from the Late Babylonian and Neo-Assyrian (circa 1000 – 609 BCE) and Neo-Babylonian (circa 626 – 539 BCE) periods.
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