Anunnaki 10 Shamash, the Sun

Nowadays we tend to give Shamash, the Mesopotamian sun god, a bit less respect than he is probably due. After all, for modern folk, the category of “sun god” is the height of pagan foolishness. After all, why would anyone worship an object which has been held in common by all humans throughout all of history, whose power is so great that even with modern advanced science we still can’t touch it, and which is literally the ultimate source of all life on the planet? But even among sun gods, Shamash takes on a character of his own, becoming more than just a guy carrying a big ball of fire, or maybe just being the big ball of fire, and becoming a stand in for the cosmic order itself, something that was hugely important in the ancient world. Today we look at how he was worshipped, mostly in the words of his actual worshippers.

A lot of his images and normal references are focused around his aspect as a judge and maintainer of order than as the sun itself

I don’t know what it is about this image, but I really, really like it.

This one is super late, almost certainly there is some pretty strong Greek influence here, showing how Shamash continued to adapt even after the end of Mesopotamian civilization