Remnants, Ruins, and Clues

Circe Invidiosa

A painting of a woman who, out of spite from a broken heart, turns her romantic rival into a monster.

Assur: The Supreme God of the Ancient Assyrians

Assur (also Ashur, Anshar) is the god of the ancient Assyrians who was elevated from a local deity of the city of Ashur to the supreme god of the Assyrian pantheon. His attributes were drawn from earlier Sumerian and Babylonian deities, and so he was, at once, a god of war, wisdom, justice, agriculture, and kingship, among others.

The Assyrian Empire, like the later Roman Empire, had a great talent for borrowing from other cultures. This penchant is illustrated clearly in the figure of Assur, whose character and attributes drew on the Sumerian and Babylonian gods. Assur’s family and history are modeled on the Sumerian Anu and Enlil and the Babylonian Marduk; his power and attributes mirror Anu’s, Enlil’s, and Marduk’s, as do details of his family: Assur’s wife is Ninlil (Enlil’s wife) and his son is Nabu (Marduk’s son). Assur had no actual history of his own, such as those created for Sumerian and Babylonian gods, but borrowed from these other figures to create a supreme deity whose worship, at its height, was almost monotheistic. Scholar Jeremy Black notes:

In spite of (or possibly because of) the tendencies to transfer to him the attributes and mythology of other gods, Assur remains an indistinct deity with no clear character or tradition (or iconography) of his own.

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Assur had power over the kingship of Assyria, but in this, he was no different from Marduk of Babylon. The king of Assyria was his chief priest, and all those who tended his temple in the city of Ashur and elsewhere were lesser priests. Assyrian kings frequently chose his name as an element in their own to honor him: Ashurbanipal, Ashurnasirpal I, Ashurnasirpal II, etc.

Worship of Assur consisted, as with other Mesopotamian deities, of priests tending the statue of the god in the temple and taking care of the duties of the complex surrounding it. Although people may have engaged in private rituals honoring the god or asking for assistance, there were no temple services as one would recognize them in the modern day.

The iconography of Assur is often taken from the Sumerian god An/Anu, a crown or a crown on a throne, but he is as frequently represented as a warrior-god wearing a horned helmet and carrying a bow and quiver of arrows.

He wears a short skirt of feathers and is sometimes depicted within a winged disk (although the association of Assur with the solar disk is contested by a number of modern scholars, among them Jeremy Black). Assur is also sometimes represented standing on a snake-dragon, an image borrowed from the Babylonian Marduk, among other gods.

Early Origins

Assur is first positively attested to in the Ur III period (circa 2112 to circa 2004 BCE) of Mesopotamian history. He is identified as the patron god of the city of Ashur circa 1900 BCE and also gives his name to the Assyrians. From a local, and probably agricultural, god who personified the city, Assur steadily acquired greater and greater attributes.

The scholar E. A. Wallis Budge describes the general progression gods made from spirits, to local deities, to supreme gods:

The oldest of such spirits was the “house spirit” or household-god. When men formed themselves into village communities, the idea of the “spirit of the village” was evolved and later came the “god of the town or city” and the “god of the country”.

Each of the elements, earth, air, fire, and water had its spirit or “god”, the earthquake, lightning, thunder, rain, storm, desert whirlwind, each likewise its spirit or “god”, and of course each plant, tree, and animal.

As time went on, men began to think that certain spirits were more powerful than others and these they selected for special reverence or worship.

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Such was the case with Assur in that he is originally referenced as the god of only the locale surrounding the city, but came to personify and represent the entire nation of Assyria. His city’s history mirrored his rise to fame as Ashur began as a small trading center built on the site of an earlier community founded by Sargon of Akkad (the Great, reign 2334-2279 BCE) but flourished through trade with Anatolia and with other regions of Mesopotamia to become the capital of Assyria by the time of the reign of the Assyrian king Shamashi Adad I (1813-1791 BCE).

Shamashi Adad I drove the Amorites from the region in Assur’s name and secured his boundaries, but he was defeated by the Amorite king Hammurabi of Babylon (reign 1792-1750 BCE), who then controlled the region. Worship of Assur at this time was restricted to the city and the Assyrian lands surrounding it, while Marduk of Babylon was worshiped as the supreme god and the Babylonian work Enuma Elish was considered the authoritative piece on creation and the birth of the gods and humanity.

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Mammoth from Charles Frederick Holder's children's book Marvels of animal life (1885)

Odds and Ends:

THE BAGHDAD BATTERY

In June 1936, Iraqi railway-construction workers involved in earth-moving operations discovered an ancient grave under a stone slab. Over the next two months, the Iraq Antiquities Department removed approximately 613 beads, engraved bricks, clay figurines, and an ancient electric battery dating from between 248 BC and AD 226. Comprised of a copper cylinder and an iron rod, the battery was probably used by Baghdad silversmiths-fifteen centuries before Luigi Galvani's famous experiment in which he produced enough electric current to cause a frog's legs to twitch.

Archaeologist Wilhelm Konig wrote: "Something rather peculiar was found... A vase-like vessel of light yellow clay ... contained a copper cylinder which was held firmly by asphalt... [and] a completely oxidized iron rod.. After all the parts had been brought together and then examined in their separate parts, it became evident that it could only have been an electrical element. It was only necessary to add an acid or an alkaline liquid..."

At the Berlin Museum in Germany, Konig noticed similar cylinders from Iraq; all had iron and bronze rods and asphalt stoppers, which were corroded as if by acid. He surmised that at least ten batteries had been run together to reach a voltage output that was capable of electroplating gold and silver jewelry. In Mesopotamia gold and silver plating goes back 2,000 years, and in Bulgaria, 4,000 years. Museums around the world contain objects in which layers of gold are too thin and smooth to have been applied by beating or gluing. Could they have been electroplated?

Replicas of the batteries were made in two separate experiments conducted in the United States. A current of half a volt was achieved and lasted eighteen days. A 5 percent electrolyte solution, using vinegar, wine, or copper sulphate, was employed.

Owl shaped bronze wine vessel, China, 13th-11th century BC

Street scene in Batavia, modern-day Jakarta, Java, Indonesia

The Swash Channel leads to the main entrance of Poole Harbour in Dorset, and this is where the Swash Channel Wreck lies.

It was found in the 1990s but then forgotten and rediscovered in 2004. Excavations took place between 2005 and 2013, during which several ship parts and a rudder were recovered.

A photomosaic of the Fame wrecksite. By the Bournemouth University

The wreck lies at a depth of 7-9 metres on the edge of the Hook Sands. It covers an area that was larger than thought, spanning 50 m by 40 m with structural remains over 40 m by 20 m. It includes parts of the ship's forecastle, complete with galley and gunports, with the 40-metre port side of the hull surviving in carvel construction. Over 1,000 artefacts have been recovered as of 2010, including various rigging blocks, barrels, pottery and personal items such as shoes, wooden bowls and tankards. The ship has also yielded 5 carvings of baroque style including two mermen, cherubim, and a classical style head carved on top of the 8.4 m long rudder.

The rudder is 8.4m long. The upper section is decorated with the superbly carved head of a man. Such carvings were a long standing tradition on Dutch ships. It is thought to be a Roman soldier or even a Dutch soldier of the time.

Dendrochronology suggests that the hull contains some wood felled between 1619 and 1639 in the Netherlands or Germany, with at least one timber from a tree cut down in the year 1628. The hull had an outer plank sheathing, designed to help protect the main planking from marine organisms. This indicated that the vessel might have been on a voyage to or from the tropics.

Judging by the number of surviving gunports, the ship carried 26 or more carriage-mounted guns, but only 6 could be found, suggesting that others were salvaged before discovery.

The age of the ship could be narrowed down further because, although the ship was not carrying any cargo, the Dutch household ceramics were dated to 1625-1650.

This is what she might have looked like

According to historian Ian Friel, extensive research indicates that the ship was the Fame of Hoorn, "an armed merchantman owned by two men, Hercules Garretson and Cornelius Veene. The vessel's master was called John Jacobson Botemaker, and in all there were some 45 people on board".

"It is not known why the Fame stopped off Poole, but the English Channel can be an inhospitable place in winter and perhaps the crew were seeking to shelter in Studland Bay. If this was the case, it didn't work, because there was a storm, and the ship seems to have dragged its anchor (that is, the anchor would not hold). The Fame was “overset and overwhelmed”, driven onto a sandbank and “broken in pieces and torn up”. “Overset” meant that the ship was knocked on its side, or capsized. Fortunately, the master and crew all escaped alive and got to land." - Ian Friel

So much for the wreck, and as if that weren't enough, in January 2026, the storm Chandra uncovered another section of ship at Studland Bay, thought to be part of a hull, measuring approximately 6 metres long and 2 metres wide. At first glance, it appears to be part of the Fame, but this still needs to be confirmed by dendrochronological analysis.

Isis and Serapis with body of a serpent, between them a Canopus. Greek-Roman period, 332 BCE to 395 AD. Leiden, Museum of Antiquities

MYSTERY HILL (NEW HAMPSHIRE)

Mystery Hill is an American megalithic site, often compared to British sites such as Avebury or Stonehenge, located in New Hampshire some forty miles north of Boston, Massachusetts. The site is a somewhat chaotic collection of structures: walls, cave-like enclosures, and oddly arranged stones, the largest weighing some eleven tons. Lacking the symmetry of most of the European sites, Mystery Hill does possess what are believed to be astronomically significant stone placements such that the site could have been used to measure the major solar movements (solstices and equinoxes). The most interesting structure is the so-called Sacrificial Stone. The flat stone has a channel carved around its perimeter and a possible blood drain at one corner. The opening under the stone would allow a religious functionary to operate during any religious ceremonies.

What has kept Mystery Hill from the kind of recognition given the European sites is its questionable origin. It does not have a history of existence dating to the movement of Europeans in the area (1730s) nor a Native American folklore attached to it. Modern records begin in the early nineteenth century when a man named Jonathan Pattee owned the site. Many assumed he and his family built the site, although at least one structure is known to predate Pattee. In any case, during the nineteenth century and early twentieth century, the area was compromised before any archeologist could document it. In the 1930s William B. Goodwin, the owner at the time, did much irreparable harm to the site.

Apart from Pattee, people have suggested the structure, which is about twenty-five miles from the Atlantic shore, is Viking in origin, a pre-Colombian Irish structure (a theory favored by Goodwin), or an ancient Native American site. Items found at Mystery Hill have been dated to between 1,000 and 3,000 years old, but the Native Americans of the region are not known to have worked in stone; there is no evidence of a megalithic culture in New England.

The cause of Mystery Hill as an ancient site of archeological significance is kept alive by the New England Antiquities Research Association, an amateur archeological association founded in 1964 that seeks to document New England's prehistory. Most current writing about Mystery Hill seems to favor its pre-Columbian European origin.