Šauška (Shaushka), also called Šauša or Šawuška, was the highest ranked goddess in the Hurrian pantheon. She was associated with love and war, as well as with incantations and by extension with healing. While she was usually referred to as a goddess and with feminine titles, such as allai, references to masculine Šauška are also known. The Hurrians associated her with Nineveh, but she was also worshiped in many other centers associated with this culture, from Anatolian cities in Kizzuwatna, through Alalakh and Ugarit in Syria, to Nuzi and Ulamme in northeastern Mesopotamia. She was also worshiped in southern Mesopotamia, where she was introduced alongside a number of other foreign deities in the Ur III period. In this area, she came to be associated with Ishtar. At a later point in time, growing Hurrian influence on Hittite culture resulted in the adoption of Šauška into the Hittite state pantheon.
Engraving of a relief from Yazılıkaya near Hattusa (Boǧazkale) depicting Šauška
Šauška accompanied by Ninatta and Kulitta in the procession of deities in Yazılıkaya
Teshub and Hebat on the Yazılıkaya reliefs
Amarna letter EA 23, which mentions a statue of Šauška
Nineveh, also known in early modern times as Kouyunjik, was an ancient Assyrian city of Upper Mesopotamia, located in the modern-day city of Mosul in northern Iraq. It is located on the eastern bank of the Tigris River and was the capital and largest city of the Neo-Assyrian Empire, as well as the largest city in the world for several decades. Today, it is a common name for the half of Mosul that lies on the eastern bank of the Tigris, and the country's Nineveh Governorate takes its name from it.
The reconstructed Mashki Gate of Nineveh (since destroyed by the Islamic State)
Artist's impression of Assyrian palaces from The Monuments of Nineveh by Sir Austen Henry Layard, 1853
View of the village of "Nunia" or "Ninive", published by Carsten Niebuhr in 1778
Village in Nineveh in 2019