town or village

Asshur

• Today Assur

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Events

1. c. 1808 BCShamshi-Adad I takes Assur and builds a kingdom in Upper Mesopotamia
2. c. 1363 BCAshur-uballit I becomes king: Assyria rises as a great power
3. 614 BCThe Medes take Assur

History

Asshur, the city of Ashur or Assur, stood on a spur of land on the west bank of the Tigris at Qal'at Sherqat in northern Iraq, about 100 km south of Mosul. It was the city of the god Ashur, who shared its name, and the land around it took the same name: Assyria. Remains from the second half of the third millennium BC lie beneath its temple of Ishtar. A German expedition of the Deutsche Orient-Gesellschaft, led mostly by Walter Andrae, excavated its temples, palaces and ziggurat from 1903 to 1914.

In the early second millennium BC Ashur was a city-state of merchants who traded with Anatolia; thousands of their letters were found at Kültepe, ancient Kanesh. About 1800 BC Shamshi-Adad I made it part of a large kingdom in northern Mesopotamia, and from the fourteenth century it was the capital of a growing Assyrian state. After Ashurnasirpal II moved the court to Calah in the ninth century BC, Ashur remained the religious centre of the empire, and several kings were buried there.

In the Bible, Asshur is a son of Shem and the people and land of Assyria named after him; Genesis says that out of the land of Shinar "went forth Asshur, and builded Nineveh". Balaam foretells that Asshur will carry the Kenite away captive and that ships from Chittim will afflict Asshur; a psalm counts Assur among Israel's enemies, and Ezekiel lists Asshur among the merchants who traded with Tyre. The city itself is not clearly named, though some read the Asshur of Ezekiel, listed among towns, as the city.

In 614 BC the Medes took and plundered Ashur, as the Babylonian Chronicle records; Nabopolassar arrived too late for the battle and made an alliance with Cyaxares by the city. The Cyrus Cylinder names Ashur among the sanctuaries to which Cyrus returned their gods. The city revived under the Parthians, when a governor built a new palace and the temple of Ashur was restored, but after the Sasanian Persians took it in the mid-third century AD (dates from about 240 to 257 are given) it was abandoned.

Scripture: Gen 10:11; Gen 10:22; Num 24:22; Num 24:24; Ps 83:8; Ezek 27:23

Checked against its sources; not yet read by a historian.

Verses (4)

Num 24:22

Nevertheless the Kenite shall be wasted, until Asshur shall carry thee away captive.

Num 24:24

And ships shall come from the coast of Chittim, and shall afflict Asshur, and shall afflict Eber, and he also shall perish for ever.

Ps 83:8

Assur also is joined with them: they have holpen the children of Lot. Selah.

Ezek 27:23

Haran, and Canneh, and Eden, the merchants of Sheba, Asshur, and Chilmad, were thy merchants.

King James Version