Aya

Aya was a Mesopotamian goddess associated with dawn. Multiple variant names were attributed to her in god lists. She was regarded as the wife of Shamash, the sun god. She was worshiped alongside her husband in Sippar. Multiple royal inscriptions pertaining to this city mention her. She was also associated with the Nadītu community inhabiting it. She is less well attested in the other cult center of Shamash, Larsa, though she was venerated there as well. Additional attestations are available from Uruk, Mari and Assur. Aya was also incorporated into Hurrian religion, and in this context she appears as the wife of Shamash's counterpart Šimige. Names Aya's name was written in cuneiform as da-a. It is sometimes romanized as Aia instead. It has Akkadian origin and means "dawn". Sporadically it could be prefixed with the sign NIN, with the variant form Nin-Aya attested in a dedicatory inscription of Manishtushu and in an offering list from Mari. NIN was a grammatically neutral title well attested as a part of theonyms, and in this context can be translated as queen or mistress. It has been suggested that in Aya s case it was used as a sumerogram representing the term bēlat. In Hurrian sources Aya was known as "Ayu-Ikalti". This form of the name was derived from the phrase Aya kallatu, "Aya the bride". Multiple additional names of Aya are attested in god lists. Sherida Sherida (; dŠÈ.NIR-da, also dŠÈ.NIR, Šerida or Šerda) could function as a Sumerian equivalent of Aya's primary name. It has been suggested that it was a loanword derived from Akkadian šērtum, "morning". However, this proposal is not universally accepted.