Tishpak

It is generally agreed by scholars that Tishpak had a foreign (eg. neither Sumerian nor Akkadian) origin.[1] Fritz Hommel suggested in 1904 that he was analogous to the Hurrian god Teshub.[2] This belief was also originally held by Thorkild Jacobsen.[3][4] However, he later abandoned this theory himself and proposed an Akkadian origin for his name.[5]

Martin Stol considers it a possibility that Tishpak's name had Elamite origin,[6] while Manfred Krebernik believes that both Tishpak and his son Nanshak have Elamite names.[7] Frans Wiggermann proposed that Tishpak was one of the deities he describes as "transtigridian snake gods,"[8] a group existing on the boundary between Sumerian/Akkadian and Elamite culture consisting out of gods such as Ninazu, Ningishzida, Ishtaran and the Elamite Inshushinak, who were all associated with snakes, judgment and the afterlife in Mesopotamia, and were grouped with Ereshkigal in god lists.[9]

Tishpak's attributes overlapped with these of Ninazu and included two maces and various snakes and serpentine monsters, especially the dragon mushussu, depicted on seals as his mount.[10] A bronze plough was one of Tishpak's sacred objects held in his main temple in Eshnunna.[11]

Tishpak was first and foremost a warlike protector god of his city. In the poorly preserved Labbu myth Tishpak's divine weapon is a seal, and he's described as capable of causing storms; it's however not certain that he was ever regarded as a weather god, as Ninurta and Marduk, who weren't weather gods, also use atmospheric phenomena as weapons in myths.[12]

One of the tablets from the library of Ashurbanipal narrates Tishpak's triumph over the monster Labbu, described as created by the sea, but designed by Enlil, seemingly to serve as punishment similar to the flood in the Atrahasis myth.[13] The narrative shows a number of similarities to the myth of Anzu and to Enuma Elish.[14]

Tishpak's wife was the goddess Kulla,[15] known as the "Queen of Eshnunna," and in addition to Nanshak some deities similar to Tishpak, such as Ishtaran and Inshushinak, were regarded as their sons in the god list An-Anum.[16] His sukkal was the snake monster bashmu.[17][18]

In Ugarit Tishpak was identified with an obscure figure named gaš[aru] and with Milku,[19] a Hurro-Hittite god whose name had Semitic origin.[20]

The mushussu started to be associated with Marduk after Hammurabi's conquest of Eshnunna.[21]