Amurru (god)

Amurru, also known under the Sumerian name Martu, was a Mesopotamian god who served as the divine personification of the Amorites. In past scholarship it was often assumed that he originated as an Amorite deity, but today it is generally accepted that he developed as a divine stereotype of them in Mesopotamian religion. As such, he was associated with steppes and pastoralism, as evidenced by his epithets and iconography. While this was initially his only role, he gradually developed other functions, becoming known as a god of the mountains, a warlike weather deity and a divine exorcist. He is first attested in documents from the Ur III period, chiefly in Sumerian and Akkadian theophoric names. Later he also came to be worshiped in Babylon, Assur and other locations in Assyria and Babylonia. He had his own cult center somewhere in the area known as the Sealand in Mesopotamian texts. Only a single myth about Amurru is known. It describes the circumstances of his marriage to Adgarkidu, the daughter of Numushda, the city god of Kazallu. Other sources attest different traditions about the identity of his wife. The goddess Ashratum is particularly well attested in this role. His father was the sky god Anu and it is presumed that his mother was usually Urash. Amurru was a divine representation of the Amorites, a group inhabiting certain areas west of Mesopotamia. The names Amurru (Akkadian) or Martu (Sumerian) could refer both to the god and to the people. The origin of both these words is unknown, and according to Paul-Alain Beaulieu neither of them has a plausible Sumerian, Akkadian or West Semitic etymology. There is also no indication that either of them ever served as the endonym of the groups they described. In older literature, as late as in the 1980s, it was commonly assumed that Amurru was in origin an eponymous deity of the Amorites themselves. However, the modern consensus is that he was instead a Mesopotamian god representing the westerners. He has been characterized as an "ideological construct.