upper world. At Ur, it was the Sun who punished a corrupt
judge for taking bribes and oppressing the people.
Shamash was the god of oracles and was supposed to in-
scribe the signs that the diviners read in the intestines of
sheep. Soothsayers claimed they were descended from a king
of Sippar, who lived before the flood; the diviners were the
most prestigious of the priests in that city of the Sun. From
Assyrian times are preserved a number of questions asked of
the Sun concerning the state and the royal family. The divin-
er read the answers in the entrails of dissected sheep. Proba-
bly a result of this activity was the Sun’s power to control
witches and demons.
Shamash was also invoked to heal the sick, free captives
from bondage, and help women in labor. One prayer reads,
“O Shamash, lofty judge... may the knot that impedes her
delivery be loosed... may she bear. May she remain in life
and walk in health before the godhead.” The Sun, in other
words, brings the unborn to light. He was also asked to deliv-
er victims of spells, curses, and ghosts: “O Shamash, may I
be strong and face the authors of my enchantment!”
The sun god is pictured as an old man with a long beard;
sunbeams radiate from between his shoulder blades. He is
seen sitting on a throne or sometimes on a horse. His special
symbols are a four-pointed star in a disk with flames shooting
out from between the points of the star and, of course, the
winged disk, which was set above representations of royalty.
The study of heavenly bodies, conducted in Mesopota-
mia from at least 2000 BCE, led to a belief in an ordered uni-
verse and in the important position of the sun among the
planets. Thus, with the rise of centralized imperial power in
Assyria and Babylonia, the sun came into prominence as a
symbol of royal power. The lawgiver Hammurabi (c. 1750
BCE) calls Shamash “great judge of heaven and earth” and
proclaims that it was from Shamash that he received his laws.
The sun god is seen seated on a throne, handing Hammurabi
a ring and a staff. The sun temple at Babylon was known as
“the house of the judge of the world.”
Warlike Assyrians claimed Shamash as a great god of
battles, almost the same as their own Ashur. Assyrian kings
called themselves “suns of the world.” Marduk, hero of the
New Year festival at Babylon and a grandson of the high
gods, is shown as a heavily bearded god with sun rays ema-
nating from his shoulders. Thus the Sun in Mesopotamia,
first perceived of as judge, lawgiver, and governor of magic,
illness, and prophecy, grew into an image of the Sun Royal.
THE INDO-EUROPEANS. About the beginning of the second
millennium BCE, people speaking related languages spread
across western Asia into Europe, bringing similar pantheons
into India, Iran, Asia Minor, and most of Europe. Their high
god was a sky god—Dyaus, Pitar, Zeus, or Jupiter. But in
many cases this high god tended to fade out of the pantheon,
leaving the universe to his offspring, sometimes the sun god.
This process, known as solarization, brought the sun to the
fore as creator and ruler of the gods.
The most cherished animal of the Indo-Europeans was
the horse, and they perhaps introduced the chariot to the
western world. From this time on the sun is pictured as driv-
ing a chariot across the sky, and the horse became one of the
sun’s animals, often sacrificed to him.
In ancient Indian and Iranian texts appear the names
Varun:a and Mitra, which seem to mean respectively “the
sky” and “the light of day.” Mitra faded out in India, but in
Iran, as Mithra, he was the subject of many hymns in the sa-
cred writings, the Avesta. Mithra is said to represent celestial
light, which appears before sunrise on the mountains,
whence it crosses the sky in a chariot. He is said to be neither
sun, moon, nor star, but with his hundred eyes he constantly
keeps watch on the world. None can deceive him, so he is
viewed as a god of truth and righteousness. He is the enforcer
of oaths and contracts and is also called “lord of the wide pas-
tures who giveth abundance and cattle.” He combats the
forces of evil, spies out his enemies, swoops down and con-
quers them, and is the ally of the faithful in their wars. Thus
Mithra, though not identified with the sun, shares all the at-
tributes of the Mesopotamian Shamash. When the Persians
conquered Babylon the name Mithra was translated as Sha-
mash. A large number of the names of Persian aristocrats are
compounds of Mithra.
The Greek historian Herodotus relates that the Persians
sacrificed to the sun as well as to earth, fire, and water and
that leprosy was thought of as punishment for a sin against
the sun (Histories 1.138). When Xerxes was leading his huge
army through Asia Minor to attack Greece, he waited on the
Asiatic shore until sunrise and then poured a libation from
a golden cup, which he threw together with a golden scimitar
into the sea (7.54). Xerxes’ army was accompanied by a rider-
less chariot drawn by eight white horses, which Herodotus
says was sacred to Zeus, the sky god. It was followed by a
chariot of the sun, also drawn by white horses. Herodotus
also tells us that along the route were led horses that were
intended to be sacrificed to the sun. Horse sacrifices have
been recorded from India to Ireland and have commonly ac-
companied the coronation of kings.
A true sun hymn occurs in the Avesta: “Unto the undy-
ing, swift-horse sun be propitiation and glorification....
When the sun rises up, the earth, made by Ahura, becomes
clean.... Should the sun not rise up, the demons would
destroy all things.” Every layman in ancient Persia was re-
quired to recite a prayer to the sun at sunrise, at noon, and
at three in the afternoon. Persian deities were established in
Lydia, Cappadocia, and Armenia by Iranian officials, and it
is probably through Persian influence that the sun god be-
came prominent in places like Emesa, Baalbek, and Palmyra
in Syria.
In India, the same divinities, Varuna and Mitra, are
called in the R:gveda “kings of gods and men.” They drive
chariots across the sky and live in heavenly palaces with a
thousand gold columns and a thousand doors. Ten hymns
of the R:gveda are devoted to the sun under the name of8838 SUN