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"Shamash is my mother"? In search of female solar deities in the "cuneiform world"

I promised that the triple feature I published last summer wouldn't be my last article dealing with changes of gender of Mesopotamian deities. At long last, it’s time for a new installment of this informal series. In contrast with the previous ones, it deals with a largely speculative case, rather than an attested shift. It has been suggested that the oldest case of a deity’s gender changing was the sun god Shamash. After briefly summarizing his character for context, I’ll look at the argument itself, and at deities who might shed some additional light on it - Ugaritic Shapash in particular. It has been pointed out that she’s overlooked in scholarship, and this holds even more true for popular perception, so it’s a pretty convenient opportunity to shed more light on her.

Shamash (Utu) in Mesopotamia

Shamash on a relief from the reign of Nabu-apla-iddina (wikimedia commons). The sun god, known as Shamash in Akkadian and Utu in Sumerian (and additionally under a variety of secondary bynames) occupied a prominent position in the Mesopotamian pantheon - perhaps not quite on par with the prominence of solar deities in, say, Egypt, but still (Manfred Krebernik, Sonnengott A. I. In Mesopotamien. Philologisch in RlA vol. 12, p. 599-600). There’s some Old Babylonian (c. 1800 BCE) evidence for the existence of a tradition casting Shamash in the role of the foremost god, though - personal names such as Šamaš-šar-ili (“Shamash is the king of the gods”), Šamaš-bēl-ili (“Shamash is the lord of the gods”) and even Šamaš-Enlil-ili (“Shamash is the Enlil of the gods”) are hardly ambiguous. It has been proposed that it might have been an idea promoted by clergy from one of his cult centers. On one hand, Larsa became a regional hegemon for a time, so promoting its tutelary god of the city to the top of the pantheon in theory would be an idea with appeal not only to priests, but also kings. On the other hand, the names espousing the belief in the sun god’s supremacy actually predominate in Sippar, not Larsa. Therefore, it’s possible that this bold idea never gained any royal support - in contrast with, say, putting Sin on top of the pantheon, which most famously became Nabonidus’ preference (Wilfred G. Lambert, Babylonian Creation Myths, p. 262-263). Shamash’s family connections reflected his astral character - his father was the moon god, Sin (Nanna; with Ningal, as expected, being the mother); his sister was Ishtar (Inanna), closely associated with the planet Venus as the morning and evening star. Manzat, the deified rainbow, appears as his additional sister in the incantation series Maqlu. His wife was Aya, the deified dawn (Sonnengott A…., p. 602). However, representing the sun was hardly the only responsibility of Shamash. He was also regarded as a god of justice, possibly because the predictable daily journey of the sun evoked the image of a reliable individual fit to be a judge. He could fulfill this role even in the underworld, possibly due to the belief that the sun was present there at night. His role in divination was probably another extension of his association with justice - it has been suggested that divination rituals were imagined as asking a divine tribunal for assistance in evaluation of specific evidence. The presence of dream deities such as Mamu among his children in turn probably reflected the belief in dream omens as a major component of divination (Sonnengott A…., p. 605). In art, Shamash was depicted with rays emanating from his shoulders, holding a saw (Anna Kurmangaliev, Sonnengott B. I. In Mesopotamien. Archäologisch in RlA vol. 12, p. 616). The former are self-explanatory, but the latter is often regarded as puzzling even by researchers, and multiple inspirations have been proposed (Ibidem, p. 619). One that I found particularly convincing is that it might be a pun of sorts - both in Sumerian and Akkadian, the verb used to refer to proclaiming judgments, respectively kud and parāsum, literally referred to dividing or cutting (Christopher Woods, At the Edge of the World – Cosmological Conceptions of the Eastern Horizon in Mesopotamia, p. 218).

Mythology

Despite his overall prominence, the sun god very rarely appears in the lead role in myths (Beatrice Baragli, Jeremiah Peterson, Utu and Inana: A Sumerian Cultic Song Containing a Myth Featuring the Journey of the Rising Sun, the Appearance of the Morning Star, and the Aromatics Trade, p. 1; note that I’m using page numbers from a pre-print made publicly accessible by the authors, not from the published version of the article). A notable early exception is a text known from Early Dynastic Fara and Abu Salabikh written in UD.GAL.NUN, a sort of cuneiform cryptography . It describes how Utu was entrusted by the other gods with traveling to various mountainous areas to bring deities and animals from them to Mesopotamia (Kamran V. Zand, Mesopotamia and the East: The Perspective from the Literary Texts from Fāra and Tell Abū Ṣalābīḫ, p. 125). The deities include, among others, Ninshubur (found in Subartu) and Sherida (found in Amurru), though they’re not the only ones (Ibidem, p. 157). Sherida was, at least nominally, the Sumerian version of the name of Aya (Julia M. Asher-Greve, Joan G. Westenholz, Goddesses in Context: On Divine Powers, Roles, Relationships and Gender in Mesopotamian Textual and Visual Sources, p. 258). However, it might actually be an Akkadian name itself - derivation from šērtum, “morning”, has been proposed (Gebhard J. Selz, Untersuchungen zur Götterwelt des altsumerischen Stadtstaates von Lagaš, p. 276). Another early example, written in Akkadian, is known from copies from both Abu Salabikh and Ebla. Translation, let alone interpretation, is difficult both due to the state of preservation and the peculiarities of Early Dynastic script (Manfred Krebernik, Mesopotamian Myths at Ebla: ARET 5, 6 and ARET 5, 7, p. 63-64). Providing merchants with goods from distant lands is seemingly in the spotlight. Shamash apparently transports them in his boat (Ibidem, p. 82-83). There’s also reference to him, Ishtaran and Id (the deified river ordeal) assembling for some purpose (Ibidem, p. 85). While Ebla was located far to the northwest of the major Mesopotamian polities, in the proximity of Aleppo, its culture was no small part by influenced from this direction (Vitali Bartash, The Early Dynastic Near East in The Oxford History of the Ancient Near East Volume 1: From the Beginnings to Old Kingdom Egypt and the Dynasty of Akkad, p. 544). The Eblaites spoke a language closely related to Akkadian. In fact, in the third millennium BCE there most likely existed a continuum of dialects closely related to it, spanning from northwestern Syria all the way up to lower Mesopotamia (Alfonso Archi, Eblaite in its Geographical and Historical Context in Ebla and its Archives, p. 33). Another exception is a relatively long Old Babylonian literary text from Nippur, written in standard Sumerian (Utu and…, p. 1-2). It might actually be distantly related to the Early Dynastic Akkadian composition discussed above, since the two show a number of thematic parallels, namely a focus on the sun god crossing the sea, and references to foreign trade (Ibidem, p. 5).

It details his journey through various real and mythical eastern locations, including the Cedar Mountain(s), Elam, Ḫubur and Ḫalḫal. He is seemingly traveling by boat (Ibidem, p. 6-7). It’s not clear if he has to traverse a real body of water - Persian Gulf would make the most sense - or a mythical ocean traditionally placed beyond eastern mountains. A passage stating the sea (even though not personified) fears him might reflect the relatively sparsely attested idea that various creatures believed to dwell in it - such as laḫmu - are terrified by the rays of the sun and hide from them in deep crevices (Ibidem, p. 9-10).

An Old Babylonian terracotta plaque showing armed Inanna and the symbol of Utu (wikimedia commons). Along his journey Utu encounters Inanna. She apparently wants to travel across the sea with him (in one of the copies, she first bothers his attendant Bunene about it), which might reflect her role as the morning star. Utu figures there’s no harm in letting her do that and declares her the “lady of the sea” (gašan a’abba); this is not normally her role, though. The only goddesses with any relatively strong claim to being associated with the sea were the mother-daughter pair of Nanshe and Nin-MAR.KI (Utu and…, p. 10-12). Later sources list etymologically related Ayyabītu, “the sealander”, among Inanna’s titles, but this reflects an association with kings of the Sealand - a kingdom in the southernmost part of Babylonia - instead (Odette Boivin, On the Origin of the Goddess Ištar-of-the-Sealand, Ayyabītu, p. 24-25). The idea that Utu and Inanna traveled together might be reflected in the composition conventionally referred to as Utu F, though - at one point Inanna expresses an interest in seeing distant mountains and the “center of the sea”, presumably a poetic term for the depths (Utu and…, p. 12-13). The rest of the discussed composition is fragmentary, but it seemingly deals with Utu’s role as a protector of travel and international trade. Possibly he’s portrayed as responsible for providing merchants in his cult center, Sippar, with exotic goods from the east. This might be an etiology for this city’s role as a trade hub. No references to Inanna are present in the surviving fragments of this section of the story anymore, despite her well attested interest in goods imported from the east. It’s not clear what, if any, role she might have played. The text concludes with praise of Utu (Ibidem, p. 13-16).

Female Shamash, male Utu?

With some basic information about Shamash out of the way, it’s time to move on to the topic I mentioned in the lead. It has been proposed not just that Shamash’s gender at some point changed, but that it was in fact the oldest example of this phenomenon in Mesopotamia. Proponents of this view assume that an originally female solar deity worshiped by Akkadian speakers from the north became male due to contact with the Sumerian south where the sun deity, Utu, was firmly masculine from the very beginning (Goddesses in…, p. 60). I was actually unable to pinpoint who was the first author to propose this. However, J. J. M. Roberts already discussed it as a possibility in 1972 (The Earliest Semitic Pantheon. A Study of the Semitic Deities Attested in Mesopotamia Before Ur III, p. 52; for Aage Westenholz’s critical review questioning the methodology and the very concept of a “Semitic pantheon” see here, esp. p. 291-293; for similar reservations courtesy of Wilfred G. Lambert see here). It’s true that the word for the sun is grammatically feminine in most Semitic languages - both extinct, like Akkadian or Ugaritic, and extant, like Arabic or Hebrew. Shamash’s name is its direct derivative (Sonnengott A….). However, Akkadian is not unique in treating a deity with a name derived from it as masculine. Amorite personal names - like Samsu-iluna - seem to reflect the idea of a male sun god, too. Phoenician and Aramaic sources also consistently refer to the respective solar deities - šmš and Śameš - as masculine (Manfred Krebernik, Sonnengott A. V. NW-Semitisch. Philologisch in RlA vol. 12, p. 616). The evidence for the existence of a female solar deity in Mesopotamia - the putative “original Shamash” - is at best indirect. A handful of Old Akkadian (middle of the third millennium BCE) personal names might reflect this idea, namely Tamḫur-Šamaš (“Shamash received”), Tūlid-Šamaš (“Shamash gave birth”) and Ummī-Šamaš (“Shamash is my mother”). However, it’s not certain if they reflect the existence of a feminine version of Shamash. The third in particular might be metaphorical (Christopher Woods, On the Euphrates, p. 43). It’s possible it was intentionally paradoxical in order to show its bearer has a uniquely close connection with a deity. While temporarily and culturally distant, the Phoenician onomasticon of the first millennium BCE provides comparable examples (Joseph Azize, The Phoenician Solar Theology. An Investigation into the Phoenician Opinion of the Sun Found in Julian's Hymn to King Helios, p. 130). Other Mesopotamian parallels are also available, though, just not from personal names. A passage from the lengthy composition preserved on Gudea’s cylinders calls the goddesses Bau mother and father (On the…, p. 43). Perhaps even more importantly, metaphorical references to the sun god as both father and mother of social groups he was supposed to be particularly protective of - like orphans and widows - are known from Old Babylonian sources. This constituted an extension of his role as a deity of justice (Utu and…, p. 15-16). Female solar deities with names cognate with Shamash are only unambiguously attested in northwestern Syria and in South Arabia (The Phoenician…, p. 130). The latter area is, for the most part, beyond the scope of this article, though.

The sun deity of Ebla (times two)

The site of Ebla (Tell Mardikh) in 2008 (wikimedia commons). While I already mentioned that Eblaites were aware of the Mesopotamian Shamash thanks to an imported literary text, it seems they perceived their own sun deity differently. A single Eblaite text outright refers to the “female sun deity” (UTU munus) and the “male sun deity” (UTU nita) - presumably the local sun goddess and imported masculine Mesopotamian Shamash - as two separate figures. The names are always represented by logograms, but Alfonso Archi assumes that the Elbaite goddess was named Shamash herself too. He suggests that she was a relic of the deity who, through the influence of Utu, eventually became the masculine Mesopotamian Shamash (Šamagan and the Mules of Ebla. Syrian Gods in Sumerian Disguise, p. 43-44). There isn’t much to say about the individual character of the Eblaite sun goddess. It seems that similarly to her Mesopotamian counterpart she was responsible for protecting truth and enforcing oaths. In the treaty between Ebla and nearby Abarsal (Tell Chuera), she, Hadda (the weather god) and “all the gods” as a collective are invoked to punish anyone who’d ever break it. Ebla’s city god, Kura, is missing - perhaps because as a deity only worshiped there he wasn’t believed to be capable of enforcing “international” norms (Ibidem, p. 44).

Shapash in Ugarit

Alfonso Archi doesn’t connect the Eblaite sun goddess only with Mesopotamian Shamash; he also suggests she was an early version of the unambiguously feminine Ugaritic sun deity, Shapash (Šamagan and…, p. 44). Her name is a cognate of Shamash’s, but with a p in place of an m as a result of a process of devoicing and denasalization; in other words, she was actually also named Shamash at some point in history. The only other site which yielded non-Ugaritic examples of the name Shapash is nearby Alalakh, though - and she only appears there in a handful of theophoric names (Mary E. Buck, The Amorite Dynasty of Ugarit. Historical Implications of Linguistic and Archaeological Parallels, p. 237-238). Shapash was a fairly major deity in Ugaritic religion - arguably the most major of the clearly astral figures (Wilfred H. van Soldt, Divinities in Personal Names at Ugarit, p. 105). She’s one of the deities most commonly invoked in theophoric names overall as well, with 66 individual bearers identified. This puts her at the fifth spot overall, after El’s 282, Baal’s 201 (further bolstered by 36 names invoking him as Haddu), Resheph’s 91, and Teshub’s 70 (Ibidem, p. 100). She ranks within the top ten as far as the total volume of offerings she receives in surviving sources is concerned, too (The Phoenician…, p. 130-131; note the data cited counts offerings to El and Dagan together, which is, to put it lightly, non-standard).

An Anatolian seal with a possible depiction of Shapash and its impression (Louvre). Only a single possible depiction of Shapash has been identified with some degree of certainty, and it actually comes from outside Ugarit. An Anatolian seal from the middle of the second millennium BCE shows, among other things, a beardless figure rising from between two mountains, a stock motif representing the rising of the sun. Since male solar deities would be expected to be bearded, it’s fairly sensible to assume a similar figure lacking facial hair would be a goddess. It has been argued that she might not be Shapash, but rather the sun goddess of Arinna (who I'll return to later), but that’s considerably less likely since the figure lacks her distinctive headdress (The Phoenician…, p. 132-133).

An ivory plaque from Ugarit with a goddess with “hathoric curls” and a solar disc on her head (The Many…, p. 232; reproduced here for educational purposes only). Izak Cornelius tentatively suggests Shapash might be depicted on an ivory plaque showing a four-winged deity seemingly suckling two human figures, presumably an adaptation of a royal motif well known from Egyptian art and literature (The Many Faces of the Goddess: The Iconography of the Syro-Palestinian Goddesses Anat, Astarte, Qedeshet, and Asherah c. 1500-1000 BCE, p. 37-39). Quite notably, she has a solar disc on her headdress (Ibidem, p. 116) - I think that alone is a strong argument to prioritize Shapash over any other candidates. Sadly, for all her prominence in the primary sources, Shapash suffers from a lack of focus in scholarship (The Phoenician…, p. 130). This is in no small part the result of a preoccupation with presenting Anat, Ashtart and Athirat as the three main - if not only - goddesses of Ugarit (Steve A. Wiggins, Shapsh, Lamp of the Gods, p. 327). The situation has been rightly criticized as an “obsession” with this imaginary trinity, and it led to tangible problems for the study of other goddesses - including Shapash, but also the Kotharat, Pidray and others (The Many…, p. 6).

Perhaps the most extreme form of this are rare attempts at just outright denying Shapash was a deity in her own right, and subsuming her under Athirat. Someone has been very aggressively pushing this idea on wikipedia recently, and sadly I’ve seen it taking root elsewhere as a result. However, as noted by Steve A. Wiggins, the only real similarity between the two is that they share the title rbt, conventionally translated as “lady” (A Reassessment of Asherah With Further Considerations of the Goddess, p. 91). Its precise translation is unclear, though. Based on the context in which it occurs as a title of mortal women it has been suggested that it referred to the mother of the heir apparent in a royal family. Based on Athirat’s role in the Baal Cycle it has been suggested that it might more abstractly designate a woman involved in the nomination of a new king, whether she’s related to him or not, though (Ibidem, p. 77-78).

However, the fact that rbt is not exclusively a title of Athirat in Ugarit, and supplementary evidence like the use of its Phoenician cognate to refer to numerous goddesses, might indicate this proposal is too specific. A more generic title like “great lady” or “queen” would be a perfectly serviceable translation, if so (Aicha Rahmouni, Divine Epithets in the Ugaritic Alphabetic Texts, p. 282). In the case of Shapash it likely simply underscores her status as a major deity (Ibidem, p. 287). It has been proposed that it was meant to signify she held a more prominent position than other astral deities, too (Mark S. Smith, Wayne T. Pitard, The Ugaritic Baal Cycle Volume II: Introduction with Text, Translation and Commentary of KTU/CAT 1.3-1.4, p. 406).

No Ugaritic text portrays Athirat as a solar deity (A Reassessment…, p. 91). The claims of her purported solar character are rooted not in the Ugaritic corpus, but rather in the fact that centuries later and considerably further away, in Qataban (a historical kingdom in Yemen) a similarly named goddess appears in association with the lunar god Wadd (Ibidem, p. 180). However, even she wasn’t necessarily associated with the sun (though it cannot be ruled out either); contrary to early assumptions in scholarship that’s hardly the requirement for being paired with a lunar god. Needless to say, given the sheer distance in space and time this cannot be used to argue that the Ugaritic Athirat was a sun goddess all along anyway (Ibidem, p. 186-187). To be entirely fair, this is nowhere near being the consensus position in the first place (Ibidem, p. 234).

The Baal Cycle

As in the case of most (but not all) Ugaritic deities who appear in literary texts, the discussion of Shapash has to start with the Baal Cycle due to the sheer length of this work and its prominence in scholarship. She appears in the very first section of the story, though the passage introducing her is heavily damaged and leaves a lot uncertain. However, it is evident that she acts as El’s messenger. She’s tasked with delivering the news that he plans to make Yam the king of the gods to Attar (Shapsh…, p. 328-329). Her speech (or at least its beginning) is fairly well preserved, and it's worth seeing in its entirety (Mark S. Smith, The Ugaritic Baal Cycle Volume I: Introduction with Text, Translation and Commentary of KTU 1.1-1.2, p. 219):

Attar seems to be less than thrilled about the news, and uses Shapash’s visit as an opportunity to complain that he has no house like the other gods; Ugarit’s divine housing market must be pretty tight, since much later on Baal also voices similar complaints about the inability to obtain a suitable house for himself (Ibidem, p. 252-253). Attar seems to accept El’s decision, though (Ibidem, p. 255). It’s not clear if Shapash then answers him, and berates him for having no wife, or if instead he keeps on grumbling and complains that Yam is not very suitable for his new position because he’s single. For what it’s worth, there is indeed no evidence that Yam ever had a spouse (Ibidem, p. 257-258); I will return to this point in a future article. At first glance it might seem Shapash subsequently makes an appearance after Baal’s triumph over Yam. A passage describing Anat’s battle with nondescript enemies which follows it states she continued “until the coming forth of Shapash”. However, it seems in this case a regular sunrise is meant, not a visit from the goddess representing the sun (Shapsh…, p. 329-330). In contrast, the next reference to Shapash leaves no room for ambiguity. After finally acquiring the desired real estate, Baal decides he should send his messengers Gupan (“Vine”) and Ugar (“Field”) to Mot who, on the account of being personified death, lives in the underworld. He instructs them to travel there alongside Shapash. This reflects the widely attested idea that the sun had to pass through the underworld during the night - something hardly exclusive to Ugarit. Since earlier in the narrative Shapash acted exclusively as a messenger of El, it can also be argued that the fact Baal can now send his own messengers alongside her reflects his rise to a similar position (Ibidem, p. 330-331). Shapash makes yet another appearance after the Mot ordeal leaves Baal (temporarily) dead. She overhears Anat crying, and approaches her. She learns she found Baal’s corpse, and at her request helps her carry it for a burial on Mt. Saphon. It has been suggested that she offers her help because she is, for one reason or another, unusually compassionate - either towards Anat, or in general (Ibidem, p. 331-332). It might also be that she finds Anat because as the sun she is all-seeing or at least sees more than other gods due to traveling every single day, though (The Phoenician…, p. 135). It’s not impossible that the scene takes place near the entrance to the underworld, a location where she’d appear daily anyway. Still, as you’ll see later, there is evidence in other texts that might perhaps point to this being a conscious display of compassion (Shapsh…, p. 332-333). Shapash’s role doesn’t end here. A much debated passage seems to imply that before dying Baal actually descended to the underworld with her. It’s sometimes argued that she therefore had an active part in his death, though according to Steve A. Wiggins this doesn’t need to be true. He points out that traveling there with her would be par the course for someone who’s already dead (Ibidem, p. 333). Since it’s clear that her daily journey also included the underworld, in addition to being a “standard” solar deity she also played the role of a psychopomp. This might explain why ritual texts sometimes address her as Šapšu-Pagri, possibly “Shapash of the corpse” (Dennis Pardee, Ritual and Cult at Ugarit, p. 284). With that in mind, mentioning that Shapash took Baal to the underworld would simply reflect recognizing that he’s dead and buried, not that she helped Mot kill him (Shapsh…, p. 333). If anything, there’s a stronger case to be made that she is Mot’s opponent (Baal Cycle vol. 2, p. 349) and that next to Anat, she actually plays the most vital role in saving Baal’s kingship (Baal Cycle vol. 1, p. 361).

Baal on a stele from Ugarit (wikimedia commons). Of course, since it would be awkward for the eponymous protagonist to remain dead, Baal eventually comes back to life. This is apparently first revealed to El in a dream; he instantly shares the news with Anat. She, in turn, lets Shapash know, apparently at El’s request, and tasks her with looking for Baal, who is apparently to be found in a furrow somewhere out there in the fields. This presumably once again evokes her ability to see everything during her daily journey. Her response is poorly preserved, but it seems she tells Anat to rejoice and prepare wine (Shapsh…, p. 334-335). After a lacuna Baal is evidently back home, but the story is not over yet. Mot reappears - apparently he got better after being cut into pieces etc. by Anat before - and starts complaining about what he perceives as mistreatment. This apparently leads to a scuffle between him and Baal. Before things can escalate, Shapash appears once again, though. She delivers a message to Mot, which seemingly settles everything once and for all (Ibidem, p. 335-336):

It’s up for debate if the message Mot receives comes from El, with Shapash’s authority simply reflecting on whose behalf she’s talking, or if she’s supposed to act on her own accord as a voice of reason among the feuding gods, which would in theory be in line with the earlier rebuke of Attar (The Phoenician…, p. 134). The second option would definitely be narratively interesting - especially with El’s ambivalent attitude towards Baal taken into account - but I don’t think that providing a messenger with own motives to act would necessarily be a major concern for a bronze age compiler in the way it is for modern audiences. For uncertain reasons Shapash makes her final appearance in a short hymn which concludes the Baal Cycle (Shapsh…, p. 337):

Miscellaneous texts

Beyond the Baal Cycle, Shapash arguably gets the most time to shine in two texts of disputed genre dealing with snakebites. In the first of them, a figure named pḥlt, who might be a human, deity or perhaps even a horse (judging from proposed Akkadian cognates, her name has equine associations), asks her to deliver her message to other gods. She addresses her as mother, but this might simply reflect reverence for a more esteemed figure (Shapsh…, p. 338-341). Shapash fulfills the request, and visits multiple other deities in their residences to implore them for help. This section surveys much of the world which was presumably known to the inhabitants of Ugarit: various members of the pantheon are invoked not from sanctuaries in the city or its immediate proximity, but rather from Anatolia, Mesopotamia, the Transjordan, and in one case even Crete. Purely mythical locations appear, too (Ritual and…, p. 173). The last of the deities invoked is Horon, a god associated with apotropaic magic. He turns out to be the most successful, and fully solves the problem (Ibidem, p. 172-173). The text ends with his marriage, though the bride is not directly identified. She might be one and the same as the enigmatic pḥlt, though a minority view is that she’s Shapash. However, both options are speculative (Shapsh…, p. 341). The second similar composition is less well preserved. It deals with the suffering of šrġzz, an apparently human or semidivine individual with no equine traits. Shapash actually plays an active role in expelling the snake’s venom in it, with Horon and other deities taking the backseat (Ritual and…, p. 179-180). Obviously the two snakebite texts can’t be treated as if they formed a coherent whole with the Baal Cycle. However, since motifs pertaining to specific deities can be fairly consistent between literary compositions the fact they both portray Shapash as a compassionate helper has been used as evidence for interpreting her agreement to help Anat as driven by compassion, rather than as merely a matter of convenient placement of the place where Baal’s corpse was found (Shapash…, p. 333). I personally find this proposal convincing, but naturally it cannot be considered conclusively proven. Shapash additionally appears in unclear context in Shachar and Shalim, though not much can be said about her role other than that she is clearly depicted as a heavenly deity, grouped with the “established stars” (A Reassessment…, p. 90-91).

An Egyptian depiction of Resheph (wikimedia commons). A further possibly relevant passage mentioning Shapash identifies Resheph as her doorkeeper. However, the text is likely to be astronomical, not mythological, with Shapash’s and Resheph’s names used as stand-ins for, respectively, the sun and Mars. It might describe sunset, heliacal setting of Mars, or less plausibly a solar eclipse (Maciej Münnich, The God Resheph in the Ancient Near East, p. 127-128).

Because of William F. Albright’s erroneous interpretation, the passage has been treated as an indication that Resheph was the gatekeeper of the underworld. However, even if taken at face value as a reference to deities and not astral bodies, it would merely indicate that Resheph could travel through the sky with Shapash, not that she would encounter him at the gates of the underworld. Resheph’s association with heat and fever might be what’s being referenced this way. Furthermore, the role of a doorkeeper would suit a low-ranking deity (Ibidem, p. 148). Meanwhile, Resheph’s popularity in Ugarit was, if anything, even greater than Shapash’s (Ibidem, p. 156).

Shapash, Shimige and Ayu-ikalti

Shimige on a relief from Yazılıkaya (wikimedia commons). For all of Shapash’s prominence in Ugarit, she actually wasn’t the only solar deity worshiped in this city. Hurrian Shimige also appears in ritual texts (Ritual and…, p. 285). His presence in Ugarit is hardly unexpected - he was worshiped all across the Hurrian cultural sphere (Piotr Taracha, Religions of Second Millennium Anatolia, p. 119). Shimige’s character was, in all due likeness, heavily influenced by Mesopotamian Shamash (Alfonso Archi, The West Hurrian Pantheon and Its Background, p. 11). Even his wife was pretty much, pardon the informal terminology, an expy of Aya. Her name, Ayu-Ikalti, is simply a slightly distorted spelling of the phrase Aya kallatu, “Aya the bride” (Ibidem, p. 10). This isn’t the only case like that - the Hurrian moon god, Kusuh (alias Umbu) had a wife who was very blatantly an expy of Mesopotamian Ningal; the Hurrian form Nikkal actually already matches the Akkadian pronunciation of Ningal’s name. With influence from both Mesopotamia and the Hurrians in Ugarit, it should come as no surprise that the Ugaritic moon god, Yarikh, likewise was provided with a bride based on Ningal and Nikkal, Nikkal-wa-Ib or Nikkal for short (Ibidem, p. 11-12). In at least one case, the existence of these equivalencies created a pretty awkward situation for Shapash. One of the most popular texts for trainee scribes to copy was the Weidner god list (named after its first modern translator, Ernst F. Weidner; most other lists are named after their find spots or incipits). At the peak of its popularity, it was used as a cuneiform learning aid not only in Mesopotamia, but also in various peripheral areas, and even in El Amarna in Egypt (Aaron Tugendhaft, Gods on Clay: Ancient Near Eastern Scholarly Practices and the History of Religion, p. 166). A poorly preserved copy from Emar indicates that somewhere in Syria scribes opted to upgrade the original with a Hurrian column establishing more or less valid equivalencies between deities. In Ugarit a third, unsurprisingly Ugaritic, one was added on top of that (Ibidem, p. 172-173). As expected, where the original had Utu, the Hurrian column has Shimige. Shapash’s placement next to them is not surprising either (Ibidem, p. 176). The next line was troublesome, though - the original has Aya there. The copy from Ugarit has Eyan - Hurrian spelling of Mesopotamian Ea - in the Hurrian column, and the local craftsman god Kothar - whose name could be logographically represented by Ea’s - in Ugaritic. Seemingly based on alternate sign values Aya’s name - which was written a-a - was turned into e-a. It might be that this was simply a scribal play already present in the bilingual edition, but it seems that for the Ugaritic scribe an additional concern was to avoid the risk of dealing with the implications of Shapash also having a wife (Ibidem, p. 179-180). Granted, perhaps we shouldn’t take the trilingual list too seriously. It presents the minor Mesopotamian goddess Imzuanna as the counterpart of Baal simply for the sake of a pun - the sign IM in her name could serve as a logogram representing names of weather gods (Ibidem, p. 179). The fact that the deities were, for the most part, tangible and real in the eyes of the scribes didn’t make a certain degree of playfulness impossible (Ibidem, p. 182). Therefore, it cannot be necessarily assumed that all of the equivalencies represent widespread beliefs (Ibidem, p. 177).

This being said - there’s at least one more source also recognizing the equivalence between Shapash and Shimige. A letter sent to one of the kings of Ugart by the Hittite viceroy mentions a deity referred to as “lady Shimige” (NIN-ka ši-mi-ga), even though Shimige was normally a firmly masculine figure. The epithet might indicate the sender was not only familiar with Shapash, but even accounted for her conventional title rbt (Yoram Cohen, Eduardo Torrecilla, Hittite Cult in Syria: Religious Imperialism or Religious Pluralism?, p. 223-224).

Solar deities of bronze age Anatolia

While there are no further deities with names related to Shamash’s own left to discuss, it’s worth noting sun goddesses were, relatively speaking, abundant even further to the northwest, in the Hittite Empire. The Hittites had an enormous pantheon, as reflected in the use of the formulaic phrase “thousand gods of the land of Hatti” (Daniel Schwemer, Religion and Power in Handbook: Hittite Empire. Power Structures, p. 363-364; the number obviously is not exact). Among them were multiple solar deities - male and female, some strictly Anatolian, some imported - though their names were all commonly written with the logogram UTU, an adaptation of the Mesopotamian name. Precise identification who hides behind it is often possible only based on phonetic glosses, epithets or the cultural milieu of a given text (Gary Beckman, Sun god A. II. In Anatolia. Philological in RlA vol. 12, p. 611).

A Hittite pendant possibly depicting the sun goddess of Arinna with an unidentified child deity in her lap (Metropolitan Museum of Art). Three major Hittite solar deities representing originally distinct Anatolian traditions existed: the sun goddess of Arinna, the sun goddess of the earth, and the sun god of heaven (Religion and…, p. 370-371). The sun goddess of Arinna was the main goddess of the Hittite pantheon (Religions of…, p. 42). It seems that she was originally known as Eštan (Hittite Ištanu), though the title Wuru(n)šemu, “mother of the land”, could be used to refer to her too (Religion and…, p. 371). When the earliest Hittite sources mention a solar deity, they never clarify that she hailed from Arinna. This need only arose later, due to the advent of the second major solar deity, the sun god of heaven (Religions of…, p. 89).

The sun goddess of Arinna was a Hattian deity (Religions of…, p. 52). I won’t dwell upon the Hattians much here, but some explanation is necessary for context. Long story short, when the ancestors of the Hittites (as well as Luwians and Palaians) entered Anatolia, they already found an urban civilization there - namely the Hattians. They gradually became acculturated, largely adopting the Hattian pantheon (Religions of…, p. 34-35).

The sun goddess of Arinna presumably was already the main goddess of the Hattians, and simply retained her original position during the development of Hittite religion. She was regarded as the spouse of the weather god of Hatti and mother of the weather god of Zippalanda and the goddess Mezulla (Oguz Soysal, Wuru(n)šemu in RlA vol. 15, p. 136). Other local Hittite weather gods could be considered her sons too (Religion and…, p. 372). It’s possible that the sun goddess and the weather god were originally paired together when the latter first arose to prominence in the future capital of Hattusa, possibly in the early second millennium BCE (Religions of…, p. 42). Together, the (main) sun goddess and the (main) storm god entrusted Hittite kings with the land they controlled. In religious terms, the king was merely the administrator of what was actually theirs (Religion and…, p. 356-357). The king and the queen also held priestly roles within the cult of the sun goddess in Arinna (Ibidem, p. 360).

Luwian Tarhunza, a fairly representative example of an Anatolian weather god, on a stele from Aleppo (wikimedia commons). While it’s a convention in most Hittitology publications to use the term “weather god” with an epithet of location added for clarification instead of their “personal” names, this doesn’t mean they are unknown. The “main” weather god discussed above was known under the name Tarhunna. It has a sound Hittite etymology - tarḫu means “mighty”. However, it seems it was first and foremost meant to resemble the Hattian weather god’s name, Taru. Well, the name of one of the Hattian weather gods, at least, since there were multiple, often with completely unrelated names. The same phenomenon is attested in Luwian, yielding the names Tarhunt and Tarhunza. Despite some confusion in literature aimed at general audiences, Tarhunna was not identical with Hurrian Teshub, though they were recognized as counterparts after the latter entered the Hittite pantheon (Religion and…, p. 372-373).

In order to synchronize the state pantheon and the personal pantheon of the ruling family, which reflected the traditions of the kingdom of Kizzuwatna, some attempts were made to conflate the sun goddess of Arinna with Teshub’s spouse Hebat, most notably in a prayer attributed to queen Puduhepa. However, there’s no evidence this idea ever enjoyed widespread recognition (Religions of…, p. 91-92). Note also that Hebat had no solar traits, making her a questionable fit in the first place (Sun god A. II…., p. 612).

There’s also at least one case where the sun goddess of Arinna appears in place of Shimige in a Hittite adaptation of a Hurrian text, namely in itkalzi, a purification ritual. She takes his usual place in a sequence which also mentions Ayu-Ikalti. Most likely this is a mistake, with the sun god of heaven being meant, though (Religions of…, p. 89). Piotr Taracha actually assumes that the sun god of heaven was simply Shimige under a new name in the first place (Ibidem, p. 127). However, other authors consider him an Anatolian deity. Gary Beckman proposes that he was a manifestation of the sun goddess of Arinna who retained the original’s solar role but switched gender, for instance (Sun god A. II…., p. 611-612). Daniel Schwemer instead assumes that the sun god of heaven might have been derived from the Luwian sun god, Tiwad, or his Palaic counterpart, Tiyat. However, the only cognate of their names in Hittite is the word šiwatt, “day”; the proper name of the male Hittite sun god was simply Ištanu like his female colleague (Religion and…, p. 371). Granted, it’s possible that the Hittites originally worshiped a sun god similar to Tiwad and Tiyat, but abandoned him in favor of the sun goddess of Arinna (Religions of…, p. 52). This must have happened long before the time of the first textual sources from Anatolia, though (Ibidem, p. 59). It needs to be stressed that, even disregarding Hurrian and Mesopotamian imports, none of the Hittite solar deities display any traits which could go back to a shared Indo-European tradition, despite their language firmly belonging to this family. In contrast, the influence of the “cuneiform world” is quite pronounced (Sun god A. II…., p. 612). A Luwian ritual sharply delineates the spheres of activity of Tiwad and the sun goddess of the earth: if the person it is recited for is alive, they’re under the auspices of the former; if they’re dead, they fall under the jurisdiction of the latter (Religions in…, p. 109).

A damaged relief of Allani from Yazılıkaya (wikimedia commons)

Some additional clues about the character of the sun goddess of the earth can be gleaned from the fact that her name could be represented by Mesopotamian Ereshkigal’s, treated as a logogram, and that in Hurro-Hittite bilinguals she corresponds to the underworld goddess Allani (Religion and…, p. 371). This association originally developed in Kizzuwatna, an area in southeastern Anatolia characterized by both Hurrian and Luwian influences. The association with Ereshkigal was entirely borrowed from Allani (Religions in…, p. 125). Beckman suggests that the original Hattian solar goddess became a primarily chthonic deity with the rise of her male form to prominence (Sun god A. II…., p. 611-612). However, according to Charles W. Steitler, while a solar deity associated with the underworld seemingly did exist in Hattian tradition already, the “sun goddess of the earth” in the proper sense had Luwian origin (Solar and Chthonic Deities in Ancient Anatolia: The Evolution of the Chthonic Solar Deity in Hittite Religion, p. 176).

Taracha suggests that the sun goddess of the earth was originally an at least partially Shapash-like deity representing the belief that the sun had to cross the underworld during the night. He proposes she only became a primarily underworld deity due to “Hurrianization” of southern Anatolian pantheons resulting in patterning her character on Allani’s. In this new guise, she was associated with the gates of the underworld and was invoked to remove evil, ritual impurity and illnesses (Religions on…, p. 109). The influence seemingly went into only one direction - there’s no influence that Allani ever became a solar goddess herself (Gernot Wilhelm, Unterwelt, Unterweltsgottheiten C. In Anatolien in RlA vol 14, p. 346).

Conclusions

With the survey of most solar deities of the “cuneiform world” largely complete (Elam got left out due to lack of relevant info, sorry), it’s time to go back to the initial question - was there ever a female Shamash in Mesopotamia? It’s evident that there must’ve been a female Shamash somewhere at some point for the simple reason that even if we are to discard the Eblaite evidence due to the use of logograms and not phonetic spellings, it’s clear Shapash’s name is a secondary development, but her gender wasn’t.

This being said: if the same deity who became Shapash in Ugarit - or a close relative of hers - was ever worshiped in Mesopotamia, it must’ve been limited to a period too early to be relevant in any conceivable way for our understanding of Mesopotamian religion.

It’s usually simply not possible to easily discern what characteristics might have come from which of two deities in a pair of Sumero-Akkadian equivalents - the merge, if it’s really a merge and not just the use of two different names, happened too early. Contrary to popular misconception it’s not even possible to separate gods into a “Sumerian” and an “Akkadian” pantheon in the light of both languages being plausibly spoken in overlapping areas even before the dawn of recorded history, anyway; some gods share the same name in both in the first place, like Enlil (Walther Sallaberger, Pantheon A. I. In Mesopotamien in RlA vol. 10, p. 303).

In the case of Shamash this isn’t just down to the question about initial gender; Christopher Woods points out that, for instance, it cannot be easily assumed that the fact that the association between the sun god and justice was much stronger in Sippar in the north than Larsa in the south well into the Old Babylonian period cannot simply reflect a difference between Shamash and Utu since it’s much less well attested as a characteristic of most solar deities with cognate names further west (On the…, p. 42-43). In art even in the Early Dynastic period the iconography is identical regardless of the name used; the sun deity is consistently a bearded male figure (Sonnengott B…., p. 616). Joan G. Westenholz assumed the shift only occurred between 2350 and 2150 BCE or so (Goddesses in…, p. 60), presumably based on the dating of the three unusual personal names. However, it’s not possible to distinguish Utu and Shamash - but there just isn’t any other evidence for female Shamash in Mesopotamia in historical times.

While obviously comparative evidence isn’t everything, I feel some skepticism about the existence of female Shamash in Mesopotamia in historical times is warranted by the other cases where more than one solar deity was worshiped in a given area. Between Ugarit, Ebla and Anatolia there doesn’t seem to be even a single confirmed case where contact with a male solar deity resulted in a shift in gender of a female one; Hittites at most might have dropped a male sun deity, but that’s purely speculative. Eblaites simply started to recognize two different solar deities. Exposure to Shimige and Shamash didn’t change much for Shapash, other than making her matrimonial situation a bit awkward in a single unique case (who will be the first person to make her a closeted lesbian in a Baal Cycle retelling?). Of course, it remains a question what’s up with “Shamash-is-my-mother”, the person who gave this article its title, and the two other bearers of similar names. After all, it seems Shamash is already a deity of justice in one of the early myths starring him I’ve briefly discussed; it’s hard to interpret partaking in a gathering with a judge god and deified river ordeal any other way. Perhaps the name illustrates a situation similar to presenting Bau as both mother and father - “Shamash-is-my-mother” was an orphan and the name expressed a wish for the sun god to act in a similar capacity? This is of course pure speculation on my part; note that some of the actually attested names of orphans can be much more blunt, too - Abam-lā-īdē, “I don’t know the father” and Ali-abūša, “Where is my father?”, are two common examples (Marten Stol, Weise in RlA vol. 14, p. 634). This being said, I don’t think the names are necessarily metaphorical. It strikes me as a possibility that Alfonso Archi might have accidentally solved their mystery when he wrote that most deities from Ebla seem to represent a distinctive north Syrian tradition. He explicitly excluded the sun goddess, but I think the most firm evidence actually makes it quite viable to argue a feminine solar deity named Shamash was - at least in the textually documented period of time, from the third millennium BCE on - a northern Syrian peculiarity. It can be argued that Ebla and Ugarit belonged to the same northwestern cultural sphere (The Amorite…, p. 262) - and in the end those two sites provide the most unambiguous evidence for a female solar deity named Shamash. Therefore, perhaps “Shamash-is-my-mother” really was named in honor of a solar goddess named Shamash. Just not necessarily a unique leftover attesting to Mesopotamian Shamash being originally feminine. Instead, what if we’re dealing with someone whose family originally hailed from the northwest - not necessarily specifically from Ebla from Ugarit, but from another nearby locale? There’s at least one comparable case: it is agreed that a certain mr. Izzi-Rashap (“Resheph is my strength”), despite being known from a text from Sargonic Susa, came from some Syrian locale since that’s what the deity invoked in his name points at (The God…, p. 69). A handful of grammatically unusual names invoking Ishtar from the Sargonic period have been argued to reflect a non-Mesopotamian tradition, too (Aren M. Wilson-Wright, Athtart. The Transmission and Transformation of a Goddess in the Late Bronze Age, p. 22). This is purely speculative, of course - but it strikes me as the most sensible explanation for why there’s no trace of a female solar deity in Mesopotamia otherwise.

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