y the side of the great one. The position of Ashur in the
Assyrian pantheon accounts for the general tendencies manifested by the
religion of the northern empire, and upon a clear conception of the
character of Ashur depends our understanding of the special points that
distinguish the other gods from what we have learned of their character
and traits in the southern states. The beginning, therefore, of an
account of the Assyrian pantheon is properly to be made with Ashur.

Ashur.

The starting-point of the career of Ashur is the city of Ashur, situated
on the west bank of the Tigris, not far from the point where the lower
Zab flows into the Tigris. Ashur is therefore distinctly a local deity,
and so far as the testimony of the texts goes, he was never regarded in
early days in any other light than as the local patron of the city to
which he has given his name. He was never worshipped, so far as can be
ascertained, as a manifestation of any of the great powers of
nature,--the sun or the moon; though, if anything, he was originally a
solar deity.[231] Nor was he a symbol of any of the elements,--fire or
water. In this respect he differs from Sin, Shamash, Nusku,[232] and Ea,
whose worship was localized, without affecting the _quasi_-universal
character that these deities possessed. As a local deity his worship
must have been limited to the city over which he spread his protecting
arm; and if we find the god afterwards holding jurisdiction over a much
larger territory than the city of Ashur, it is because in the north, as
in the south, a distinct state or empire was simply regarded as the
extension of a city. Ashur became the god of Assyria as the rulers of
the city of Ashur grew in power,--in the same way that Marduk, upon the
union of the Babylonian states under the supremacy of the city of
Babylon, became the god of all Babylonia. But a difference between the
north and the south is to be noted. Whereas Marduk, although the god of
Babylonia, was worshipped only in the city of Babylon where he was
supposed to have his seat, temples to Ashur existed in various parts of
the Assyrian empire. The god accompanied the kings in their wars, and
wherever the rulers settled, there the god was worshipped. So in the
various changes of official residences that took place in the course of
Assyrian history from Ashur to Calah, and from Calah to Nineveh, and
from Nineveh to Khorsabad, the god took part, and his central seat of
worship