šamšatu

Definition

Šamšatu (Akkadian, related to šamšu "sun"; CAD šamšu meaning 4) is a Babylonian term carrying two related but distinct astral-iconographic senses in the corpus. In its primary attestation it designates the solar-disk emblem of the sun-god Šamaš, one of the three principal astral-deity emblems alongside the crescent uškaru (Sin) and the eight-pointed star (Ištar). In a parallel attestation in the celestial-omen literature it designates the optical phenomenon of parhelia or "mock suns" — additional images of the sun produced by refraction through atmospheric ice crystals.

In Tradition

Assyriological scholarship treats šamšatu as a load-bearing term in the Babylonian system of astral-divine identification. Rochberg presents the solar-disk šamšatu as one of three primary deity emblems anchoring the Mesopotamian identification of deity with celestial body. The parhelia-sense, attested in the omen-compilation ACh Suppl. 2 32, Rochberg cites as exemplar of the numerical-schematic-expansion impulse in omen compilation — running uniformly from one to four mock suns even where the higher numbers fall outside the empirically veridical.

In Practice

For the student of Babylonian astral religion and celestial divination, šamšatu opens onto two complementary registers. As a divine emblem, the šamšatu of Šamaš anchors the king-and-deity iconography on monuments such as the 9th-century BCE stone tablet of Nabû-apla-iddina, where minor gods lower a huge solar disk onto a table in a scene presenting the king to Šamaš. The emblem is grouped with the saw (šaššāru) of Šamaš who "decides decisions" (purussâ parāsu) in Old Babylonian sources, and with the Kassite-period solar cross in Rochberg's §5.4 iconographic survey. As an atmospheric optical phenomenon, šamšatu names the parhelia-omens organized in a one-to-four-mock-sun schematic series; the higher counts are physically dubious, but the omen-compilers extended the schema uniformly anyway. The two senses both derive from "solar manifestation/figure" — the first picking out the engraved image, the second the multiply-imaged sun in the sky — and tracking which sense is active is the disambiguation discipline scholarship demands.

Historical Origin

The emblem-sense is attested in Akkadian-period glyptic onward (Teissier seal no. 81, Collon pl. 135) and prominently on the 9th-century BCE Nabû-apla-iddina stone tablet. The parhelia-sense is attested in the celestial-omen compilation ACh Suppl. 2 32. Modern critical treatment: Rochberg, *The Heavenly Writing* (2004), §5.4 (pp. 218-219) on the emblem; §7.3.3 (p. 290) on parhelia.

Further Reading

• Francesca Rochberg, The Heavenly Writing: Divination, Horoscopy, and Astronomy in Mesopotamian Culture