ADAD, the name of the storm-god in the Babylonian-As syrian pantheon, who is also known as Ramman ("the thunderer"). It seems that Ramman was the name current in Babylonia, whereas Adad was more common in Assyria. A god Hadad, a prominent deity in ancient Syria, is identical with Adad, whose name is therefore, an importation into Assyria from Aramaic districts. Ramman is identical with Rimmon, known to us from the Old Testament as the chief deity of Damascus. The cult of a specific storm-god in ancient Babylonia is vouched for by the occurrence of the sign Im—the "Sumerian" for Adad-Ram man—as an element in proper names of the old Babylonian period. Through Aramaic influences in Babylonia and Assyria he was identified with the storm-god of the western Semites. The designation Amurru is also given to this god in the religious literature of Babylonia, which describes him as belonging to the Amorite district.
On the one hand he brings on the rain in due season, and causes the land to become fertile ; on the other hand, by the storms that he sends, he brings havoc and destruction. He is pictured on monuments and seal cylinders with the lightning and the thunderbolt, and in the hymns the sombre aspects of the god on the whole predominate. His association with the sun-god, Shamash, imbues him with some of the traits belonging to a solar deity. In the theological lists he follows Shamash. At Erech in the south and Assur in the north Adad is intimately associated with Anu, the sky god. In Syria Hadad is hardly to be distin guished from a solar deity. In Babylonia and Assyria Shamash and Adad became in combination the gods of oracles and of divination in general. In the annals and votive inscriptions of the kings, when oracles are referred to, Shamash and Adad are always named as the gods addressed, and their ordinary designation in such instances is bele biri, "lords of divination." The consort of Adad-Ramman is Shala, while as Amurru his consort is called Ashratum.
In magic rituals the symbol of Ramman is the cypress, and his sacred number is "six," consequently the sixth day of each month was sacred to him. The principal seat of the old Sumero Babylonian cult of the thunder god was Muru (ki), which has not been located, and the cult is mentioned in connection with the cities Padda, Akus, Simurri and Halbaba, all unknown and certainly unimportant places; but a great temple to him and Anu has been excavated at Assur.
See the special study on this deity by Hans Schlobies, Das akkadische Wettergott in Mesopotamien (1925) ; also the article BABYLONIAN AND ASSYRIAN RELIGION.