name might be identical with the word allai, "lady"), and IŠTAR bēlat dūri. Most of these epithets are either Hurrian or Hurrianised, and their meaning is unknown. An exception is bēlat dūri, which means "lady of the city walls" in Akkadian. It is also known that in Ulamme, a Hurrian city like Nuzi located in the kingdom of Arrapha, IŠTAR Ḫumella was associated with Nergal. A further cult center of Šauška known from the Nuzi texts is Lupti, identified with modern Taza Khurmatu. An important document pertaining to worship of Šauška in the Mittani empire is the Amarna letter EA 19, written by Tushratta, king of Mitanni to his father-in-law, pharaoh Amenophis III, which mentions a statue of Šauška meant to help with the recovery of the ailing ruler: Šauška was also worshiped in various cities in Syria. In Ugarit she appears in a ritual dedicated to the local goddess Ashtart. One section of the text pertaining directly to the Hurrian goddess is written in Ugaritic. She was also venerated in Alalakh, though Marie-Claude Trémouille notes that the logogram IŠTAR might instead denote Ishara in sources from that city. Shaushka is however unambiguously attested in personal names, such as Arib-Šauška and Wandi-Šauška. In Emar she appears exclusively in Hurro-Hittite documents, and bears the Hurrian epithet awar(r)iwe, "of the steppe". A genre of Hurrian songs whose name, zinzabuššiya, is derived from that of an unidentified bird, was associated with the worship of Šauška according to Hittite documents. The bird in mention, zinzabu, was also associated with her. Mesopotamian reception It is presently uncertain under what circumstances Šauška and other foreign deities were introduced to the pantheon of Mesopotamia during the Ur III period. Tonia Sharlach notes the areas in which they were originally worshiped form a horseshoe around territories the Ur state controlled, from Upper Euphrates and Khabur triangle to Kirkuk and Diyala. In addition to Šauška, the Hurrian examples include Allatum (Allani) from Zimudar and Shuwala from Mardaman. While foreign deities were generally not worshiped in the official provincial shrines of the Ur III state, Šauška appears to be an exception, as offerings to her took place in the provincial shrine in Umma, where she received linen textiles, possibly clothing meant for a cult state. However, she only rarely received offerings at the royal court. In the Old Babylonian period the worship of Šauška persisted in Isin, where she appears