Ishum

Template:Short description Template:Template otherTemplate:Wikidata imageTemplate:Compare image with Wikidata Ishum (Išum; possibly the masculine form of Akkadian išātum, "fire"Template:Sfn) was a Mesopotamian god of Akkadian origin. He is best attested as a divine night watchman, tasked with protecting houses at night, but he was also associated with various underworld deities, especially Nergal (or Erra) and Shubula. He was associated with fire, but was not exclusively a fire god unlike Gibil. While he was not considered to be one of the major gods, he was commonly worshiped and appears in many theophoric names. In bilingual texts he could be associated with Sumerian Hendursaga, but this equation is only attested for the first time in the Old Babylonian period, and the rationale behind it remains uncertain. Both of those gods could be regarded as the husband of the goddess Ninmug, though she was primarily associated with Ishum and only secondarily with Hendursaga.

Character

Ishum has been characterized as a "benevolent fire-god".Template:Sfn It has been proposed that his name was related to the Akkadian word išātum, "fire", cognates of which are present in multiple Semitic languages, both extinct and extant.Template:Sfn Andrew R. George proposes that his name was simply the masculine form of išātum.Template:Sfn However, there is no clear evidence that he was exclusively a fire god like Gibil (Girra).Template:Sfn A possible reference to Ishum as a fire god is present in the Epic of Erra, where he is called a "firebrand" (diparu).Template:Sfn He was frequently described as a divine night watchman.Template:Sfn Many of his epithets refer to this role, including "Herald (nimgir) of the Street," "Headman of the Street," "Hero who Goes about at Night," "Minister (sukkal) of the Night," "Herald of the Night, Lord of the Street."Template:Sfn He could be worshiped as a protective god of the household.Template:Sfn However, as noted by Andrew R. George, he should be differentiated from gods of the household in the proper sense, as he was believed to protect houses from without by patrolling the streets at night, not from within.Template:Sfn

No pictorial representations of Ishum have been identified, and it is uncertain if any specific symbol served as his attribute.Template:Sfn However, based on textual sources it is considered possible that he was associated with torches.Template:Sfn

Worship

The oldest evidence for the worship of Ishum are theophoric names, already attested in sources from the Early Dynastic period.Template:Sfn They are common in sources from the Ur III period,Template:Sfn and retained popularity through the later periods of Mesopotamian history.Template:Sfn He is also common in inscriptions on cylinder seals, and according to Dietz Otto Edzard, Ishum's popularity in these two types of displays of personal devotion can be compared to that of major gods of the Mesopotamian pantheon.Template:Sfn Ishum's importance grew further in the Neo-Assyrian period, possibly because his character made him a suitable deity in times of political instability and war.Template:Sfn

According to a Middle Babylonian metrological text, a shrine of Ishum existed in Nippur.Template:Sfn He was also worshiped in Tarbiṣu in Assyria, where he received offerings alongside Nergal and Laṣ.Template:Sfn

Associations with other deities

According to Joan Goodnick Westenholz, Ishum's mother was Sudaĝ,Template:Sfn one of the names of the wife of Shamash (Aya).Template:Sfn Due to an association between Sudaĝ and Sud (Ninlil), a myth lists the latter as his mother instead.Template:Sfn Manfred Krebernik considers this to be the result of confusion between the names, rather than syncretism.Template:Sfn Ishum's father was Shamash.Template:Sfn

After the Old Babylonian period, Ishum came to be seen as the sukkal (attendant deity) of Nergal, replacing Ugur.Template:Sfn The god list An = Anum is the only source which explicitly refers to Ishum as Nergal's sukkal,Template:Sfn but his activity in literary texts is often related to this function.Template:Sfn He often appears in enumerations of deities of the underworld, for example in Šurpu (alongside Nergal, Shubula and Šar-ṣarbati) and on a kudurru (boundary stone) of Marduk-apla-iddina I, the "land grant to Munnabittu kudurru" (alongside Nergal, his wife Laṣ, Shubula and the pair Lugal-irra and Meslamta-ea).Template:Sfn Shubula appears alongside him particularly commonly in known sources, but the nature of the connection between them is not certain.Template:Sfn While it is commonly assumed that Shubula was Nergal's son, Jeremiah Peterson remarks that in the light of recent research it is possible that he was Ishum's son instead.Template:Sfn In one text, Ishum and Shubula are called the "gods of Tigris and Euphrates."Template:Sfn

When first introduced to the Mesopotamian pantheon, Ishum was not conflated with any Sumerian god of analogous character, similar to other minor gods of Akkadian origin, such as Shullat and Hanish.Template:Sfn Starting in the Old Babylonian period, he came to be equated with Hendursaga in bilingual contexts, with the former appearing in Akkadian and the latter in Sumerian formulas.Template:Sfn They were also equated with each other in the Weidner and Nippur god lists,Template:Sfn and possibly in An = Anum, though due to state of preservation and possible scribal errors the last case is uncertain.Template:Sfn However, the reasons behind the association between these two gods are presently unknown.Template:Sfn Another god closely related to both of them was Engidudu, who was the divine guardian of the Tabira Gate in the city of Assur.Template:Sfn In the Epic of Erra, Engidudu is used as an alternate name of Ishum.Template:Sfn In a bilingual Akkadian-Amorite lexical list dated to the Old Babylonian period,Template:Sfn Ishum s Amorite counterpart is a deity whose name is not fully preserved, a-a-[x]-um.Template:Sfn While full reconstruction is not possible, Andrew R. George and Template:Ill suggest that the most plausible interpretation is that the name is a derivative of the root ʔwr, "to shine", and thus a cognate of Akkadian urrum, "dawn, daytime", Ugaritic ảr, "light", and Hebrew ʔōr, "to shine" and ʔōr, "light".Template:Sfn On this basis they suggest the restoration a-a-[ru]-⸢um⸣, pronounced as /ʔārum/.Template:Sfn Presumably this figure was a minor god in the Amorite pantheon.Template:Sfn

Ishum's wife was Ninmug, a goddess of crafts and birth originally worshiped in Kisiga.Template:Sfn They are first attested as a couple in the Old Babylonian period.Template:Sfn As in the case of other divine wives, such as Aya and Shala, Ninmug was invoked to intercede with her husband on behalf of worshipers.Template:Sfn No children of this couple are known.Template:Sfn Ninmug could also be regarded as the wife of Hendursaga, but this was a secondary development based on the equation between him and Ishum.Template:Sfn It is possible that in the third millennium BCE, Hendursaga's wife was instead Dumuziabzu, the tutelary goddess of Kinunir (Kinirsha), a city in the state of Lagash, though in that period family relations between deities were often particularly fluid or uncertain.Template:Sfn

Mythology

Erra and Ishum

Ishum is one of the main characters of the composition Erra and Ishum,Template:Sfn also known as Epic of Erra.Template:Sfn While the other eponymous god is referred to as Erra, in literary texts this name was considered to be interchangeable with Nergal's.Template:Sfn

The oldest known copies come from the Assyrian city of Nineveh and have been dated to the seventh century BCE, but it has been argued that the composition is between 100 and 400 years older than that based on possible allusions to historical events which occurred during a period of calamity which Babylonia experienced roughly between eleventh and eighth centuries BCE.Template:Sfn Based on a colophon, it was compiled by a certain Kabti-ilāni-Marduk.Template:Sfn Attribution of the text of a myth to a specific author was uncommon in ancient Mesopotamia.Template:Sfn It is assumed that the beginning of the poem designates Ishum as the god who revealed the text of the poem to Kabti-ilāni-Marduk in a dream.Template:Sfn

Ishum is introduced trying to stop his master Erra and his servants, the Sebitti, from waging war on the inhabitants of Babylonia.Template:Sfn Erra dismisses him, noting that it is necessary to regain respect in the eyes of humans, and embarks on a destructive campaign.Template:Sfn The following bloodshed is described from the perspective of Ishum, who explains that the chaos wrought by Erra surpasses the capability of other gods or mortal kings.Template:Sfn These sections of the poem do not celebrate Erra, but rather focus on the suffering of his victims.Template:Sfn Ishum eventually manages to bring an end to the bloodshed by waging a war himself on the inhabitants of Mount Sharshar, seemingly a site associated with the origin of a period of chaos in the history of late second and early first millennium BCE Babylonia which likely inspired this myth. Ishum's war is described in very different terms to Erra's, and with its end the period of instability comes to a close.Template:Sfn Erra is seemingly content with the actions of his sukkal and with hearing the other gods acknowledge the power of his rage. The narrative ends with him instructing Ishum to spread the tale of his rampage, but also to make it clear that only thanks to his calming presence the world was spared.Template:Sfn Andrew R. George notes that Ishum appears to play the role of Erra's conscience through the entire duration of the story.Template:Sfn

Other myths

In a fragment of an Old Babylonian poem, Ishtar explains the circumstances of Ishum's birth to Enlil.Template:Sfn In this composition, he was abandoned on the street before she found him, which might be a mythical justification of his role as a divine watchman.Template:Sfn Andrew R. George notes that the mention of Ishtar temporarily taking care of the young god is unusual, as she "was consistently described as not at any age temperamentally disposed to care for a baby," though he proposes that it might have been a nod to stars lighting up the night, the primary time of Ishum's activity.Template:Sfn Similarly, the fact that Ishum's parents according to this composition were Shamash and Ninlil is regarded as unusualTemplate:Sfn and likely results from confusion between alternate names of Ninlil and Shamash's wife Aya.Template:Sfn

Ishum also appears in the text Underworld Vision of an Assyrian Prince.Template:Sfn The eponymous figure, Kummâ (relation to any historical figures is uncertain), avoids being killed by Nergal, who is convinced that he insulted his wife, only thanks to the intervention of Ishum.Template:Sfn