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Ishum ( Išum; possibly the masculine form of Akkadian išātum, "fire") was a Mesopotamian god of Akkadian origin. He is best attested as a divine night watchman, tasked with protecting houses at night, but he was also associated with various underworld deities, especially Nergal (or Erra) and Shubula. He was associated with fire, but was not exclusively a fire god unlike Gibil. While he was not considered to be one of the major gods, he was commonly worshiped and appears in many . In bilingual texts he could be associated with Sumerian Hendursaga, but this equation is only attested for the first time in the Old Babylonian period, and the rationale behind it remains uncertain. Both of those gods could be regarded as the husband of the goddess Ninmug, though she was primarily associated with Ishum and only secondarily with Hendursaga.
No pictorial representations of Ishum have been identified, and it is uncertain if any specific symbol served as his attribute. However, based on textual sources it is considered possible that he was associated with torches.
According to a Middle Babylonian metrological text, a shrine of Ishum existed in Nippur. He was also worshiped in Tarbisu in Assyria, where he received offerings alongside Nergal and Laṣ.
After the Old Babylonian period, Ishum came to be seen as the sukkal (attendant deity) of Nergal, replacing Ugur. The god list An = Anum is the only source which explicitly refers to Ishum as Nergal's sukkal, but his activity in literary texts is often related to this function. He often appears in enumerations of deities of the underworld, for example in Šurpu (alongside Nergal, Shubula and Šar-ṣarbati) and on a kudurru (boundary stone) of Marduk-apla-iddina I, the "land grant to Munnabittu kudurru" (alongside Nergal, his wife Laṣ, Shubula and the pair Lugal-irra and Meslamta-ea). Shubula appears alongside him particularly commonly in known sources, but the nature of the connection between them is not certain. While it is commonly assumed that Shubula was Nergal's son, Jeremiah Peterson remarks that in the light of recent research it is possible that he was Ishum's son instead. In one text, Ishum and Shubula are called the "gods of Tigris and Euphrates."
When first introduced to the Mesopotamian pantheon, Ishum was not conflated with any Sumerian god of analogous character, similar to other minor gods of Akkadian origin, such as Shullat and Hanish. Starting in the Old Babylonian period, he came to be equated with Hendursaga in bilingual contexts, with the former appearing in Akkadian and the latter in Sumerian formulas. They were also equated with each other in the Weidner and Nippur god lists, and possibly in An = Anum, though due to state of preservation and possible scribal errors the last case is uncertain. However, the reasons behind the association between these two gods are presently unknown. Another god closely related to both of them was Engidudu, who was the divine guardian of the Tabira Gate in the city of Assur. In the Epic of Erra, Engidudu is used as an alternate name of Ishum. In a bilingual Akkadian-Amorite language Lexical lists dated to the Old Babylonian period, Ishum s Amorite counterpart is a deity whose name is not fully preserved, a-a-x-um. While full reconstruction is not possible, Andrew R. George and suggest that the most plausible interpretation is that the name is a derivative of the root ʔwr, "to shine", and thus a cognate of Akkadian urrum, "dawn, daytime", Ugaritic ảr, "light", and Hebrew language ʔōr, "to shine" and ʔōr, "light". On this basis they suggest the restoration a-a-ru-⸢um⸣, pronounced as /ʔārum/. Presumably this figure was a minor god in the Amorite pantheon.
Ishum's wife was Ninmug, a goddess of crafts and birth originally worshiped in Kisiga. They are first attested as a couple in the Old Babylonian period. As in the case of other divine wives, such as Aya and Shala, Ninmug was invoked to intercede with her husband on behalf of worshipers. No children of this couple are known. Ninmug could also be regarded as the wife of Hendursaga, but this was a secondary development based on the equation between him and Ishum. It is possible that in the third millennium BCE, Hendursaga's wife was instead Dumuziabzu, the tutelary goddess of Kinunir (Kinirsha), a city in the state of Lagash, though in that period family relations between deities were often particularly fluid or uncertain.
The oldest known copies come from the Assyrian city of Nineveh and have been dated to the seventh century BCE, but it has been argued that the composition is between 100 and 400 years older than that based on possible allusions to historical events which occurred during a period of calamity which Babylonia experienced roughly between eleventh and eighth centuries BCE. Based on a colophon, it was compiled by a certain Kabti-ilāni-Marduk. Attribution of the text of a myth to a specific author was uncommon in ancient Mesopotamia. It is assumed that the beginning of the poem designates Ishum as the god who revealed the text of the poem to Kabti-ilāni-Marduk in a dream.
Ishum is introduced trying to stop his master Erra and his servants, the Sebitti, from waging war on the inhabitants of Babylonia. Erra dismisses him, noting that it is necessary to regain respect in the eyes of humans, and embarks on a destructive campaign. The following bloodshed is described from the perspective of Ishum, who explains that the chaos wrought by Erra surpasses the capability of other gods or mortal kings. These sections of the poem do not celebrate Erra, but rather focus on the suffering of his victims. Ishum eventually manages to bring an end to the bloodshed by waging a war himself on the inhabitants of Mount Sharshar, seemingly a site associated with the origin of a period of chaos in the history of late second and early first millennium BCE Babylonia which likely inspired this myth. Ishum's war is described in very different terms to Erra's, and with its end the period of instability comes to a close. Erra is seemingly content with the actions of his sukkal and with hearing the other gods acknowledge the power of his rage. The narrative ends with him instructing Ishum to spread the tale of his rampage, but also to make it clear that only thanks to his calming presence the world was spared. Andrew R. George notes that Ishum appears to play the role of Erra's conscience through the entire duration of the story.
Ishum also appears in the text Underworld Vision of an Assyrian Prince. The eponymous figure, Kummâ (relation to any historical figures is uncertain), avoids being killed by Nergal, who is convinced that he insulted his wife, only thanks to the intervention of Ishum.
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