Jabru was a god who according to Mesopotamian god lists was worshiped in Elam. However, he is not attested in any Elamite sources.

Mesopotamian attestations

While Jabru is described as an Elamite god, he is known exclusively from Mesopotamian texts, and attestations of him are infrequent. An Elamite town named Jabru did exist, but according to the Assyrian Takultu text its tutelary deity was a goddess named Jabrītu. It was located close to the border of Elam and

Babylonia Babylonia (; Akkadian: , ''māt Akkadī'') was an ancient Akkadian-speaking state and cultural area based in the city of Babylon in central-southern Mesopotamia (present-day Iraq and parts of Syria). It emerged as an Amorite-ruled state c. ...

, and appears in an inscription of

Amar-Sin Amar-Sin ( akk, : '' DAmar D Sîn'', after the Moon God Sîn", the "𒀭" being a silent honorific for "Divine"), initially misread as Bur-Sin (c. 2046-2037 BC middle chronology, or possibly ca. 1982–1973 BC short chronology) was the third rule ...

mentioning it was destroyed alongside Huhnur, presumed to be the cult center of

Ruhurater Ruhurater or Lahuratil was an Elamite deity. Character Ruhurater's gender is uncertain, though some researchers refer to him as a male deity. It has been proposed that his name means "(the god who is the) creator (of) man" and that he was connect ...

. According to a

Šurpu The ancient Mesopotamian incantation series Šurpu begins ''enūma nēpešē ša šur-pu t'' 'eppušu'', “when you perform the rituals for (the series) ‘Burning,’” and was probably compiled in the middle Babylonian period, ca. 1350–1050 ...

commentary, Jabru was the Elamite equivalent of the Mesopotamian sky god Anu. However, according to the god list ''

An = Anum ''An = Anum'', also known as the Great God List, is the longest preserved Mesopotamian god list, a type of lexical list cataloging the deities worshiped in the Ancient Near East, chiefly in modern Iraq. While god lists are already known from the ...

'', a god bearing the name Yabnu (''^dia-ab-na'') was the Enlil of Elam. Wilfred G. Lambert concludes that both of them are spellings of the same name. In an Assyrian text known as ''The underworld Vision of an Assyrian Prince'' (VAT 10057), he is mentioned as one of the three gods guarding the corpse of a king, the other two being

Humban Humban ( elx, 𒀭𒃲𒈨𒌍, Humban, ''dhu-um-ban'', also ''dhu-ban'', Huban) was an Elamite god. He is already attested in the earliest sources preserving information about Elamite religion, but seemingly only grew in importance in the neo-Elam ...

and

Napirisha Napirisha (Linear Elamite: ''Napirriša'') was an Elamite deity from the region of Anshan, and was the main deity of the kingdom from at least the late 3rd millennium BCE. In Elamite, his name means "Great (-''ša'') God (''napir'')"; in cuneiform ...

. Alexandre Lokotionov notes that this sequence of gods mirrors the reference to Jabru in Šurpu, and that its inclusion possibly indicates that to the Assyrians the underworld "could have simply been a repository for the exotic and the unusual."

Speculative identification

Due to his presumed similarity to Anu,

Heidemarie Koch Heidemarie Koch (17 December 1943 – 28 January 2022) was a German Iranologist. Life and career Koch was born in Merseburg, Saxony, Prussia, Germany. She studied mathematics as her major between 1963 and 1966. Subsequently, she worked as a tea ...

speculates that Jabru was the father of

, who was sometimes equated by Mesopotamians with

Enlil Enlil, , "Lord f theWind" later known as Elil, is an ancient Mesopotamian god associated with wind, air, earth, and storms. He is first attested as the chief deity of the Sumerian pantheon, but he was later worshipped by the Akkadians, Bab ...

, much like Anu could be viewed as Enlil's father. However, in at least one source Jabru was equated with Enlil rather than Anu. Koch also proposed that the Elamite word ''tepti'' (lord; sometimes written with the divine determinative) might be a title or taboo name of Jabru used as a theophoric element of names. However, the theory about some Elamite gods being merely taboo names for others (

Kiririsha Kiririsha (Elamite: “great lady”) was a major goddess worshiped in Elam. Early scholarship incorrectly identified her as one and the same as Pinikir, an unrelated goddess from a different part of Elam. Character Kiririsha is regarded as on ...

for

Pinikir Pinikir, also known as Pinigir, Pirengir and Parakaras, was an Ancient Near Eastern astral goddess who originates in Elamite religious beliefs. While she is only infrequently attested in Elamite documents, she achieved a degree of prominence in H ...

for Humban) is generally rejected in recent scholarship, and Wouter Henkelman in a more recent publication refers to Koch's assumption as speculative.

References

Bibliography

* * * * * * * * *{{cite book, last=Zadok, first=Ran, title=The Elamite Onomasticon, year=1984, url=http://opar.unior.it/1329/1/Supplemento_40.pdf, access-date=2022-03-25 Elamite gods