administrative texts of the archives of the Third Dynasty of Ur, the early spelling was dŠa-u18-ša. In Mari in the Old Babylonian period the name was spelled as dŠa-ú-úš–an, and was often preceded by the epithet al-la-e-en, understood as allai, "lady," equivalent of Sumerian gašan and Akkadian bēltu. The same epithet is attested from other Hurrian texts, sometimes in the variant allai Ninuwa, "lady of Nineveh." Other Hurrian goddesses, for example Hebat or Pinikir, could be referred to as allai too. Additionally, it was the origin of the name of the goddess of the underworld, Allani. Two alphabetic spellings are attested in Ugaritic texts, šwšk and šušk. Uncertain attestations According to Joan Goodnick Westenholz, it is difficult to tell if full correspondence can be assumed to exist between Hurrian Šauška and Assyrian Ishtar of Nineveh, especially in inscriptions of Shamshi-Adad I, who might have introduced religious innovations in Nineveh to compete with the religious importance of the city of Assur and its manifestation of Ishtar. A different view is presented by Beate Pongratz-Leisten, who understands Šauška and Ishtar of Nineveh to be fully analogous, and as a result, refers to the goddess whose temple existed in Babylon at the end of the second millennium BCE and to Šauška as known from sources from the Hurrian kingdom of Arrapha as one and the same. It is assumed that Ishtar references in documents from the Old Assyrian trading colony Kanesh are Ishtar of Assur rather than Šauška, but she might nonetheless appear in Assyrian theophoric names attested on tablets from that site. Daniel Schwemer argues that NIN-na-garki (Belet Nagar) from the inscription of Tish-atal was a local form of Šauška. This view has been evaluated critically by Joan Goodnick Westenholz, who remarks that with the exception of their gender these deities do not appear to be similar to each other. Character Šauška was a goddess of love (including sexual love), as well as war. In the former of these two roles, she was believed to be able to guarantee conjugal love, return or deprive of potency, but also turn women into men and vice versa. Especially in Anatolia, she was also closely associated with magic and incantations, and as a result could be invoked as a healing deity. Hittite texts describe her as taršikantaš MUNUS-aš, which can be translated as "the woman of that which is repeatedly spoken," most likely a reference