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Concept
Šauška
Summary
Šauška (Shaushka), also called Šauša or Šawuška, was the highest ranked goddess in the Hurrian pantheon. She was associated with love and war, as well as with incantations and by extension with healing. While she was usually referred to as a goddess and with feminine titles, such as allai (Hurrian: "lady"), references to masculine Šauška are also known. The Hurrians associated her with Nineveh, but she was also worshiped in many other centers associated with this culture, from Anatolian cities in Kizzuwatna, through Alalakh and Ugarit in Syria, to Nuzi and Ulamme in northeastern Mesopotamia. She was also worshiped in southern Mesopotamia, where she was introduced alongside a number of other foreign deities in the Ur III period. In this area, she came to be associated with Ishtar. At a later point in time, growing Hurrian influence on Hittite culture resulted in the adoption of Šauška into the Hittite state pantheon.
In Hurrian myths, many of which are only known from their Hittite translations, Šauška commonly appears either as an ally of her brother Teshub, or as a heroine in her own right. Specific narratives describe her battles against the sea monster Ḫedammu, the diorite giant Ullikummi, the sea god Kiaše and the mountain god Pišaišapḫi. She also appears in a myth about Hašarri, a personified olive tree, who needs to be protected by her from various threats.
Both in the sphere of cult and in myths, Šauška was usually accompanied by her two handmaidens, Ninatta and Kulitta. Other servant deities associated with her appear only in lists of offerings and descriptions of rituals.
The name Šauška has a Hurrian origin and can be translated as "The Great One" or "The Magnificent One." Many Hurrian deities had similarly simple, epithet-like names, for example Allani ("the lady"), Mušuni ("she of justice"), Kumarbi ("he of Kumar") or Nabarbi ("she of Nawar").
The spellings vary between sources. The Bogazköy Archive archive attests multiple, both logographic (dIŠ8-TÁR, dLIŠ and dGAŠAN) and syllabic (no less than eleven variants), the latter present in exclusively Hurrian contexts.
Official source
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