Šala Meaning: Adad's Consort, the Ear of Grain and the Constellation Virgo

Šala was a Mesopotamian goddess, known above all as the wife of the storm god Adad. Through him she was linked with rain and the fertility of crops, and Babylonian astronomers saw her in the night sky as "the ear of grain", the constellation we now call Virgo.

Wife of the storm god

ORACC's guide to Mesopotamian gods describes Šala's primary role as Adad's spouse, and through that role her power over the fertility of crops. She first appears in the Old Babylonian period, when Adad rose to prominence in Babylonia, and she was probably of non-Mesopotamian origin. Ancient god lists equated her with Medimša, the wife of Adad's Sumerian counterpart Iškur, and in the second millennium BC she was merged with Šalaš, the wife of the god Dagan.

The ear of grain in the sky

The Babylonian astronomical compendium MUL.APIN identifies the constellation called the Furrow with "Šala, the ear of grain". The link survives in the name of Virgo's brightest star, Spica, Latin for "ear of grain".

Honoured for nearly two thousand years

Šala was worshipped alongside Adad at major Babylonian and Assyrian centres from the second millennium onwards. The last king of Assyria, Sin-šarru-iškun, invoked her as the powerful wife of Adad who safeguards the life of the people. As late as the Seleucid period, in the third to first centuries BC, scholars at Uruk called on Adad and Šala to protect their tablets, and her statue took part in the city's New Year festival.

How was she shown?

Šala has been identified, though not conclusively, with a nude goddess who appears beside the storm god on Akkadian cylinder seals, sometimes holding lightning bolts or surrounded by rain. Her clearest emblem in the texts is the ear of grain.

Was Šala a goddess of compassion?

Several modern reference works call her one. That description seems to come from modern writing on goddess spirituality, not from any ancient text, and specialist sources do not list compassion among her roles. We describe her by what the evidence shows: wife of Adad, and goddess of the ear of grain.

Šala in jewellery

A Šala design references grain, rain and a goddess still written in the stars. You can see the AURYN Šala charm, read about the grain goddess Ašnan, or return to our guide to Mesopotamian gods and symbols.