Hurrian goddess of love and war
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.
Name.
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. Logographic spellings also predominate in literary texts, but "Song of Hašarri" is an exception and seemingly consistently employs the syllabic spelling "dŠa-wuu-us-ga". Early Hurrian king of Urkesh and Nawar, Atal-shen, used the logogram dINANNA to write Šauška's name, while later on in Nuzi one logographic spelling was dU. In Mitanni documents, the usual spelling is syllabic, "dŠa-uš-ka-a".
Based on administrative texts of the archives of the Third Dynasty of Ur, the early spelling was "dŠa-u18-ša". In Mari in the Old Babylonian period the name was spelled as "dŠa-ú-úš–an", and was often preceded by the epithet "al-la-e-en", understood as "allai", "lady," equivalent of Sumerian "gašan" and Akkadian "bēltu". The same epithet is attested from other Hurrian texts, sometimes in the variant "allai Ninuwa", "lady of Nineveh." Other Hurrian goddesses, for example Hebat or Pinikir, could be referred to as "allai" too. Additionally, it was the origin of the name of the goddess of the underworld, Allani.
Two alphabetic spellings are attested in Ugaritic texts, "šwšk" and "šušk".
Uncertain attestations.
According to Joan Goodnick Westenholz, it is difficult to tell if full correspondence can be assumed to exist between Hurrian Šauška and Assyrian Ishtar of Nineveh, especially in inscriptions of Shamshi-Adad I, who might have introduced religious innovations in Nineveh to compete with the religious importance of the city of Assur and its manifestation of Ishtar. A different view is presented by Beate Pongratz-Leisten, who understands Šauška and Ishtar of Nineveh to be fully analogous, and as a result, refers to the goddess whose temple existed in Babylon at the end of the second millennium BCE and to Šauška as known from sources from the Hurrian kingdom of Arrapha as one and the same.
It is assumed that Ishtar references in documents from the Old Assyrian trading colony Kanesh are Ishtar of Assur rather than Šauška, but she might nonetheless appear in Assyrian theophoric names attested on tablets from that site.
Daniel Schwemer argues that NIN"-na-garki" (Belet Nagar) from the inscription of Tish-atal was a local form of Šauška. This view has been evaluated critically by Joan Goodnick Westenholz, who remarks that with the exception of their gender these deities do not appear to be similar to each other.
Character.
Šauška was a goddess of love (including sexual love), as well as war. In the former of these two roles, she was believed to be able to guarantee conjugal love, return or deprive of potency, but also turn women into men and vice versa. Especially in Anatolia, she was also closely associated with magic and incantations, and as a result could be invoked as a healing deity. Hittite texts describe her as "taršikantaš" MUNUS-"aš", which can be translated as "the woman of that which is repeatedly spoken," most likely a reference to her role in incantations.
Šauška was also the tutelary goddess of Nineveh, and in Hurrian myths she is often called the "queen" of that city. Other Hurrian texts refer to her as "Ninuwawi", "she of Nineveh," or "Ninuvaḫi", "the Ninevite." The association is also present in Mesopotamian texts: these from the Ur III period label her as "ni-nu-a-kam", "of Nineveh," while an Old Babylonian god list from Uruk mentions her under the name dINANNA "ni-nu-a".
Unlike the Mesopotamian Ishtar, as well as the other "Ishtars" known to Hurrians and Hittites (such as Ishtar of Samuha, possibly the same deity as the enigmatic "Goddess of the Night," DINGIR.GE6), Šauška did not have a pronounced astral character. The role of a divine representation of Venus was instead played by Pinikir in the Hurrian pantheon. Like Šauška, she was associated with Ishtar. A single ritual text pairs them together.
Androgynous or genderfluid characteristics.
While primarily referred to as a goddess, Šauška had both a feminine and masculine aspect and in reliefs from the Yazılıkaya sanctuary appears twice, once among the gods, accompanied also by her handmaidens Ninatta and Kulitta, and once among goddesses. A Hurrian ritual text separately mentions offerings to "male attributes" and "female attributes" of Šauška.
Hittitologist Gary Beckman states that "ambiguous gender identification" was a characteristic of a category he refers to as "Ishtar type" goddesses, encompassing also the likes of Ninsianna and Pinikir.
In visual arts.
Šauška was commonly depicted in the company of and her two attendants, Ninatta and Kulitta, both on reliefs and on cylinder seals.
A Hittite text describing the appearance of statues of various deities mentions two depictions of Šauška, one seated, winged and holding a cup, and another, masculine, also winged and armed with a golden ax. Both were said to be flanked by Ninatta and Kulitta and accompanied by an "awiti", a mythical winged lion.
On a relief from Yazılıkaya, the masculine form of Šauška appears in the procession of male deities (figure designated as 38 in modern reference works), accompanied by Ninatta and Kulitta (figures 36 and 37). While beardless, he wears the same pointed headwear as the other male deities, as well as a robe exposing one leg and pointed shoes. An inscription placed above a gap between figures 55 and 56 in the procession of female deities indicates that originally feminine Šauška was depicted there as well, but this relief is presently missing. A single relief similar to these from Yazılıkaya has however been found in nearby Yekbas.
A further relief of Šauška is known from Malatya, where she is depicted holding an ax and a hammer, and wearing the same type of horned headwear as the male deities. Similar reliefs are also known from other locations, including Ain Dara and Aleppo, though the weapons are not always the same, with clubs and spears also attested. Like the Yazılıkaya reliefs, they tend to show Šauška with one leg exposed. Some of them are winged.
Lapis lazuli figurines of Šauška are known from Carchemish and possibly Alalakh.
Uncertain examples.
Some possible depictions of Šauška are also known from Nuzi, though they are not directly labeled as such in inscriptions from the site or other textual sources. One is a figure of a deity holding an axe and a geometric emblem, dressed in shoes with pointy ends and a robe exposing the abdomen and legs, but lacking any identifiable sex characteristics, which is assumed to fit Šauška's dual nature as both masculine and feminine deity. Additionally, goddesses depicted on eastern Hurrian cylinder seals in company of various animals (lions, goats, bulls, snakes, scorpions) and mythical beasts (lion-dragons, bullmen, sphinx-like and snake-like creates, two-headed griffin demons) are often assumed to be Šauška, her hypostases or similar local deities, though this identification is uncertain due to lack of textual evidence.
Frans Wiggermann additionally considers it possible that some depictions of the weather god accompanied by a naked goddess, usually interpreted as Adad and Shala, instead represent Teshub and his companion, who he assumes to be Šauška.
The naked goddess depicted on the bowl of Hasanlu might be Šauška, as the scenes depicted on it are sometimes interpreted as a representation of myths from the Kumarbi cycle.
Position in the pantheon.
Šauška was the highest ranked goddess in the Hurrian pantheon, as evidenced for example by documents from the kingdom of Arrapha and by the correspondence of the Mitanni king Tushratta. Her status was lower only in Kizzuwatna, where the main Hurrian goddess was instead Hebat, absorbed from the pantheon of Halab (Aleppo) and regarded as the wife of Teshub. Šauška's secondary position compared to Hebat is particularly visible in Hittite lists of divine witnesses of treaties. According to Alfonso Archi, Shaushka was nonetheless one of the three most commonly worshiped unmarried Hurrian goddesses in the west, next to Allani and Išḫara, while according to Gernot Wilhelm her position in Alalakh and Ugarit was the same as in the east. Šauška could be included in (offering lists) dedicated to the circle of Teshub, in which case she was placed between the god Ea and her servants Ninatta and Kulitta, or to these dedicated Hebat, in which case she could be placed between Aya and Shuwala, but she could also head a of her own, which included deities such as Allani, Išḫara and Nikkal.
Family.
Western Hurrians regarded her as Teshub's sister, but their relation in eastern Hurrian pantheons from the Mittani Empire or various kingdoms east of the Tigris is uncertain. They could be worshiped side by side, but Šauška was never explicitly identified as Teshub's spouse.
Marie-Claude Trémouille notes that as the sister of Teshub, she was presumably the daughter of Anu and Kumarbi. However, the first myth in the so-called Kumarbi cycle, which deals with the birth of his children, does not mention her, even though she is referred to as the sister of both Teshub and his brother (and sukkal) Tashmishu in other compositions. It is possible more evidence was present in sections which are not preserved. Mary R. Bachvarova proposes that Šauška might have been born before the storm god. In an alternate tradition, she was the daughter of the moon god, Kušuḫ, likely due to influence of Mesopotamian religion, in which her counterpart Inanna was most commonly viewed as a daughter of the moon god Nanna and his wife Ningal. While Kušuḫ is also attested as the father of Teshub, according to Daniel Schwemer the reference is isolated and it is presently not possible to evaluate its implications.
Šauška was typically regarded as unmarried and childless.
Court.
Ninatta and Kulitta, a dyad of Hurrian musician goddesses always listed together, were her handmaidens, though in the Bronze Age they are only attested in texts from Hattusa and Ugarit. In ritual texts other deities were grouped with Ninatta and Kulitta as members of Šauška's entourage. Examples include Šintal-wuri (Hurrian: "seven-eyed"), Šintal-irti ("seven-breasted"), Šinan-tatukarni ("twofold at [?] love") and Namrazunna (from Akkadian "namru", shining, and "Zunna", a Hurrianized spelling of Suen, name of the moon god; unlike him Namrazunna was female). In one text, Ninatta, Kulitta, Šintal-irti and Namrazunna are grouped together as "first servants," while Šinan-tatukarni, Ali, Halzari and Taruwi are labeled as "last servants." It is assumed that the former group should be understood as bringers of luck, and the latter as having the opposite impact.
Another minor deity, Undurumma, attested with certainty in only one document, was identified as Šauška's sukkal (attendant deity). The same ritual text also mentions other Hurrian sukkals: Immanzizi, Ḫupuštukar, Tenu, Lipparuma and Mukišanu. It is uncertain if Unudurupa (also spelled Unduruwa), associated with Allani in another document, was the same deity as Undurumma.
An association