The Religion of Babylonia and Assyria

The association of Ramman with Shamash in the name of the old ruler of Assyria, Samsi-Ramman, is not accidental or due to mere caprice. Only such deities are combined in proper names that are, or may be, correlated to one another. Ramman, as the god of storms, is naturally viewed as a power complementary to the great orb of light.[266] The two in combination, viewed as the beneficent and the destructive power, constitute the most powerful elements of nature, whose good will it was most important, especially for a nation of warriors, to secure. Some such thought surely underlies this association of Shamash with Ramman. The Assyrian Ramman differs in no way from the Ramman of Babylonia, but he is much more popular in the north than in the south. The popularity of the god is but a reflection of the delight that the Assyrians took in military pursuits. Ramman is hardly anything more than another Ashur. Tiglathpileser I., who once calls the god Mar-tu, i.e., "the West god,"[267] has left us an admirable description of him. He is the hero who floods the lands and houses of the country's enemies. The approach of the Assyrian troops is compared to an onslaught of Ramman. His curses are the most dreadful that can befall a nation or an individual, for his instruments of destruction are lightning, hunger, and death. Reference has several times been made to the manner in which Tiglathpileser honors Ramman by making him a partner of Anu in the great temple of the latter at Ashur. But the successors of Tiglathpileser are no less zealous in their reverence for Ramman.

It is to Ramman that the kings offer sacrifices during the campaign, and when they wish to depict in the strongest terms the destruction that follows in the wake of an onslaught of the Assyrian troops, they declare that they swept over everything like Ramman. It is natural, in view of this, that Ramman should have been to the Assyrians also the 'mightiest of the gods.'[268] Through the Assyrian inscriptions we learn something of the consort of Ramman.