Cappadocian names), but he translates it rather as "overseer" or "guardian" of the land and the people--the terminationless form of /aširu/, which has this meaning, and is applied to Merodach. [*] Or there may have been three shrines to Aššur in each temple referred to. As the use of the characters /An-šar/ for the god Aššur only appears at a late date (Jastrow says the eighth century B.C.), this would seem to have been the work of the scribes, who wished to read into the name the earlier signification of Anšar, "the host of heaven," an explanation fully in accord with Jastrow's reasonings with regard to the nature of the deity. As he represented no personification or power of nature, he says, but the general protecting spirit of the land, the king, the army, and the people, the capital of the country could be transferred from Aššur to Calah, from there back to Aššur, and finally to Nineveh, without affecting the position of the protecting god of the land in any way. He needed no temple--though such things were erected to him--he had no need to fear that he should suffer in esteem by the preference for some other god. As the embodiment of the spirit of the Assyrian people the personal side of his being remained to a certain extent in the background. If he was the "host of heaven," all the deities might be regarded as having their being in him. Such was the chief deity of the Assyrians--a national god, grafted on to, but always distinct from, the rest of the pantheon, which, as has been shown, was of Babylonian origin, and always maintained the characteristics and stamp of its origin. The spouse of Aššur does not appear in the historical texts, and her mention elsewhere under the title of Bêltu, "the lady," does not allow of any identification being made. In one inscription, however, Aššuritu is called the goddess, and Aššur the god, of the star Sib-zi-anna, identified by Jensen with Regulus, which was apparently the star of Merodach in Babylonia. This, however, brings us no nearer, for Aššuritu would simply mean "the Assurite (goddess)." The minor divinities. Among the hundreds of names which the lists furnish, a few are worthy of mention, either because of more than ordinary interest, or in consequence of their furnishing the name of some deity, chief in its locality, but identified elsewhere with one of the greater gods. Aa.--This may be regarded either as the god Êa (though the name is written differently), or as the sun-god assuming the name of his consort; or (what is, perhaps, more probable) as a way of writing A'u or Ya'u (the Hebrew Jah), without the ending of the nominative. This last is also found under the form /Aa'u/, /ya'u/, /yau/, and /ya/.