he land and the people--the terminationless form of
/asiru/, which has this meaning, and is applied to Merodach.

[*] Or there may have been three shrines to Assur in each temple
referred to.

As the use of the characters /An-sar/ for the god Assur only appears
at a late date (Jastrow says the eighth century B.C.), this would seem
to have been the work of the scribes, who wished to read into the name
the earlier signification of Ansar, "the host of heaven," an
explanation fully in accord with Jastrow's reasonings with regard to
the nature of the deity. As he represented no personification or power
of nature, he says, but the general protecting spirit of the land, the
king, the army, and the people, the capital of the country could be
transferred from Assur to Calah, from there back to Assur, and finally
to Nineveh, without affecting the position of the protecting god of
the land in any way. He needed no temple--though such things were
erected to him--he had no need to fear that he should suffer in esteem
by the preference for some other god. As the embodiment of the spirit
of the Assyrian people the personal side of his being remained to a
certain extent in the background. If he was the "host of heaven," all
the deities might be regarded as having their being in him.

Such was the chief deity of the Assyrians--a national god, grafted on
to, but always distinct from, the rest of the pantheon, which, as has
been shown, was of Babylonian origin, and always maintained the
characteristics and stamp of its origin.

The spouse of Assur does not appear in the historical texts, and her
mention elsewhere under the title of Beltu, "the lady," does not allow
of any identification being made. In one inscription, however,
Assuritu is called the goddess, and Assur the god, of the star Sib-zi-anna,
identified by Jensen with Regulus, which was apparently the star
of Merodach in Babylonia. This, however, brings us no nearer, for
Assuritu would simply mean "the Assurite (goddess)."

The minor divinities.

Among the hundreds of names which the lists furnish, a few are worthy
of mention, either because of more than ordinary interest, or in
consequence of their furnishing the name of some deity, chief in its
locality, but identified elsewhere with one of the greater gods.

Aa.--This may be regarded either as the god Ea (though the name is
written differently), or as the sun-god assuming the name of his
c