Jabru was a god who according to Mesopotamian god lists was worshiped in
Elam
Elam () was an ancient civilization centered in the far west and southwest of Iran, stretching from the lowlands of what is now Khuzestan and Ilam Province as well as a small part of modern-day southern Iraq. The modern name ''Elam'' stems fr ...
. 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 ''
Tākultu'' text its tutelary deity was a goddess named Jabrītu. It was located close to the border of Elam and
Babylonia
Babylonia (; , ) was an Ancient history, ancient Akkadian language, Akkadian-speaking state and cultural area based in the city of Babylon in central-southern Mesopotamia (present-day Iraq and parts of Kuwait, Syria and Iran). It emerged as a ...
, and appears in an inscription of
Amar-Sin mentioning it was destroyed alongside Huhnur, presumed to be the cult center of
Ruhurater.
According to a ''
Šurpu'' commentary, Jabru was the Elamite equivalent of the
Mesopotamian god representing the sky,
Anu. However, according to the god list ''
An = Anum'', a god bearing the name Yabnu (''
dia-ab-na'') was instead the "
Enlil
Enlil, later known as Elil and Ellil, is an List of Mesopotamian deities, 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 t ...
of Elam".
Wilfred G. Lambert concludes that both of these theonyms are variant spellings of the same name.
In an
Assyria
Assyria (Neo-Assyrian cuneiform: , ''māt Aššur'') was a major ancient Mesopotamian civilization that existed as a city-state from the 21st century BC to the 14th century BC and eventually expanded into an empire from the 14th century BC t ...
n text known as the ''
Underworld Vision of an Assyrian Prince'' (VAT 10057), Jabru is mentioned as one of the three gods guarding the corpse of a king, the other two being
Humban and
Napirisha. 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 speculates that Jabru was the father of
Humban, who was sometimes equated by Mesopotamians with Enlil, much like how 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 so-called divine determinative) might be a title or
taboo
A taboo is a social group's ban, prohibition or avoidance of something (usually an utterance or behavior) based on the group's sense that it is excessively repulsive, offensive, sacred or allowed only for certain people.''Encyclopædia Britannica ...
name of Jabru used as a theophoric element of personal names. However, the theory about some Elamite gods being merely taboo names for others (
Kiririsha for
Pinikir,
Napirisha 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
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*{{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