Sahar

Sahar (Aramaic śhr, 'moon') is the Aramaean moon god, the West Semitic counterpart in name to the Mesopotamian Sin, yet worshipped under his own Aramaic name. His principal cult places were Nerab, southeast of Aleppo, and Harran in upper Mesopotamia, whose 'Lord' (bʿl ḥrn) the Sam'alian king Bar-Rakib honoured on a stele bearing the crescent standard. The two Nerab funerary stelae (KAI 225–226), erected for the priests Sin-zer-ibni and Si'-gabbari in the seventh century BCE, name him first among the gods and call on him — with Shamash, Nikkal and Nusku — to give a miserable death to any who would disturb the priests' remains. The devotion of the Aramaean population of northern Syria to the moon god, which intensified under Neo-Babylonian patronage of Harran, is regarded as a distinctive feature of Aramaean religiosity.

Domains

• moon
• oaths and curses

Powers

• to govern the waxing and waning of the moon and mark the months
• to strike down those who violate tombs and break sworn agreements

Epithets

• bʿl ḥrn

Sources

• E. Lipiński, The Aramaeans: Their Ancient History, Culture, Religion (Orientalia Lovaniensia Analecta 100), Leuven: Peeters, 2000
• H. Niehr (ed.), The Aramaeans in Ancient Syria (Handbuch der Orientalistik I/106), Leiden: Brill, 2014
• G. Theuer, Der Mondgott in den Religionen Syrien-Palästinas (Orbis Biblicus et Orientalis 173), Freiburg/Göttingen, 2000