ASSUR (Auth. Vera. Asshur)

This article appears in Volume V02, Page 788 of the Encyclopedia Britannica.

Encyclopedia Britannica - Main :: ARN-AUD

ASSUR (Auth. Vera. Asshur) , a Hebrew name, occurring in many passages of the Old Testament, for the land and dominion of Assyria.' The country of Assyria, which in the Assyro-Babylonian literature is known as mat Assur (ki), " land of Assur," took its name from the ancient city of Assur, situated at the
' The name Assur is not connected with the Asshur of I Chron.ii. 24i ii. 45. Note that it is customary to spell the god-name Allur and the country-name AHur.
southern extremity of Assyria proper, whose territory, soon after the first Assyrian settlement, was bounded on the N. by the Zagros mountain range in what is now Kurdistan and on the S. by the lower Zab river. The kingdom of Assyria, which was the outgrowth of the primitive settlement on the site of the city of Assur, was developed by a probably

gradual

GRADUAL (Med. Lat. gradualis, of or belonging to steps or degrees; gradus, step)

process of colonization in the rich vales of the middle

Tigris

TIGRIS (Old Persian Tigrd, Diklat of the cuneiform inscriptions, Hiddekel of the Old Testament, Diglath of the Targum, Digla of the Arabs)

region, a

district

DISTRICT

watered by the

Tigris

TIGRIS (Old Persian Tigrd, Diklat of the cuneiform inscriptions, Hiddekel of the Old Testament, Diglath of the Targum, Digla of the Arabs)

itself and also by several tributary streams, the

chief

CHIEF (from Fr. chef, head, Lat. caput)

of which was the lower Zab.'
It seems quite evident that the city of Assur was originally founded by Semites from Babylonia at quite an early, but as yet undetermined date. In the prologue to the law-code of the

great

GREAT

Babylonian monarch Khammurabi (c. 2250 B.C.), the cities of Nineveh and Assur are both mentioned as coming under that king's beneficent influence. Assur is there called A-usar(ki),2 in which combination the ending -ki (" land territory ") proves that even at that early period there was a province of Assur more extensive than the city proper. It is probable that this non-Semitic form A-usar means "well watered region,"3 a most appropriate designation for the river settlements of Assyria. The problem as to the meaning of the name Assur is rendered all the more confusing by the fact that the city and land are also called Aiiur(as well as A-usar) ,both by the Khammurabi records and generally in the later Assyrian literature. Furthermore, the god- and country-name Assur also occurs at a

late

LATE

date in Assyrian literature in the forms An-gar, An-gar (hi), which form 5 was presumably read Assur. In the Creation tablet, the heavens personified collectively were indicated by this term An-gar, " host of heaven," in contradistinction to the earth = Ki-gar, " host of earth." In view of this fact, it seems highly probable that the

late

LATE

writing An-sar for Assur was a more or less conscious attempt on the part of the Assyrian scribes to identify the peculiarly Assyrian deity Astir (see AssuR, the god, below) with the Creation deity An-sar. On the other hand, there is an epithet Afir or Ashir (" overseer") applied to several gods and particularly to the deity Afur, a fact which introduced a third

element

ELEMENT (Lat. elementum)

of confusion into the discussion of the name Assur. It is probable then that there is a triple popular etymology in the various forms of writing the name Ag.fur; viz. A-usar,6 An-gar and the stem agaru, all of which is quite in harmony with the methods followed by the ancient Assyro-Babylonian philologists 7
See also A. H. Layard, Discoveries in the Ruins of Nineveh and Babylon (1853); G.

Smith

, Assyrian Discoveries (1875); R. W. Rogers, History of Babylonia and Assyria, i. 297; ii. 13; ii. 30, 76, 102; J. F. M'Curdy, History, Prophecy and the Monuments, 74, 171 f., 247, 258, 283; 57, 59 f. (on the god). (J. D. PR.)

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