od of Larsa by
the same name that he had in Ur. That Hammurabi, however, calls the
sun-god of Larsa, Utu, may be taken as an indication that, as such he
was known at that place, for since we have no record of a sun-temple at
Babylon in these days, there would be no motive that might induce him to
transfer a name, otherwise known to him, to another place. The testimony
of Hammurabi is therefore as direct as that of Sargon, who calls the
sun-god of Sippar, Shamash. It is not always possible to determine, with
as much show of probability, as in the case of the sun-god, the
distribution of the various names, but the general conclusion, for all
that, is warranted in every instance, that a variety of names refers,
originally, to an equal variety of places over which the worship was
spread,--only that care must be exercised to distinguish between
distinctive names and mere epithets.

A.

A consort of the sun-deity, appearing frequently at his side in the
incantation texts, is A. It is more particularly with the Shamash of
Sippar, that A is associated. She is simply the 'beloved one' of the
sun-deity, with no special character of her own. In the historical
texts, her role is quite insignificant, and for the period with which we
are at present concerned she is only mentioned once by a North
Babylonian ruler, Ma-an-ish-tu-su,[57] who dedicates an object to her.
The reading of the ideogram A, or Nin-A (_i.e._, Lady A), is doubtful.
Malkatu ("mistress" or "queen") is offered as a plausible
conjecture.[58] Lehman (_Keils Bibl._ iii. I, 202) suggests _A-Ja_, but
on insufficient grounds. In any case A has the force of mistress, and
Nin-A simply designates the goddess as the lady, mistress, or queen. It
is likely that A was originally an independent deity, and one of the
names of the sun-god in a particular locality. It occurs in proper names
as a title of Shamash. Instead, however, of becoming identified with
Shamash, A degenerated into a pale reflection of Shamash, pictured under
the relationship of consort to him. This may have been due to the union
of Shamash with the place where A was worshipped. If, as seems likely,
that near Sippar, there was another city on the other side of the
Euphrates, forming a suburb to it (as Borsippa did to Babylon), the
conclusion is perhaps warranted that A was originally the sun-god
worshipped at the place which afterwards became incorporated with
Sippar.[59] Such an amalgamation of two originall