Ishum is best attested as a divine night watchman, tasked with protecting houses at night, but he was associated with various underworld deities, especially Nergal and Shubula.
17 Facts About Ishum
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Ishum was associated with fire, but was not exclusively a fire god unlike Gibil.
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The oldest evidence for the worship of Ishum are theophoric names, already attested in sources from the Early Dynastic period.
4.
Ishum is 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.
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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.
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Ishum was worshiped in Tarbisu in Assyria, where he received offerings alongside Nergal and Las.
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Ishum often appears in enumerations of deities of the underworld, for example in Surpu and on a kudurru of Marduk-apla-iddina I, the "land grant to Munnabittu kudurru".
8.
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.
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Ishum's wife was Ninmug, a goddess of crafts and birth originally worshiped in Kisiga.
10.
Ishum is one of the main characters of the composition Erra and Ishum, known as Epic of Erra.
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Ishum is introduced trying to stop his master Erra and his servants, the Sebitti, from waging war on the inhabitants of Babylonia.
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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.
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Ishum's war is described in very different terms to Erra's, and with its end the period of instability comes to a close.
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The narrative ends with him instructing Ishum to spread the tale of his rampage, but to make it clear that only thanks to his calming presence the world was spared.
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Andrew R George notes that Ishum appears to play the role of Erra's conscience through the entire duration of the story.
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Similarly, the fact that Ishum's parents according to this composition were Shamash and Ninlil is regarded as unusual and likely results from confusion between alternate names of Ninlil and Shamash's wife Aya.
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Ishum appears in the text Underworld Vision of an Assyrian Prince.