Anu

“ Peoples and nations exalt thee, and the awe of thy terror is in the hearts of men, and Spirt-souls, and the dead. Thy soul dwelleth in Tetu, and the awe of thee is in Hensu. Thou settest the visible emblems of thyself in Anu, and the majesty of thy transformations in the holy place. I have come unto thee. Truth is in my heart, and in my breast there is neither craft nor guile. Grant thou that I may have my being among the living, and that I may sail up and down the river among those who are in thy following. ”

“ Some sky-gods have attained the solar connexion because of their rule over the entire expanse of the heavens, just as they have attained the power of wielding lightning and the wind. But we are at a loss to recall any deity originally of distinctive solar attributes who later took the position of a sky-god.
Anu was regarded as head of the triad and the father of En-lil. We are told that the goddess Aruru first shaped man in the image of Anu, who must thus have attained an anthropomorphic condition. He appears also to have been regarded as the conqueror of primeval chaos. ”

“ ANU, a Babylonian deity, who, by virtue of being the first figure in a triad consisting of Anu, Bel and Ea, came to be regarded as the father and king of the gods. Anu is so prominently associated with the city of Erech in southern Babylonia that there are good reasons for believing this place to have been the original seat of the Anu cult. If this be correct, then the goddess Nana (or Ishtar) of Erech was presumably regarded as his consort. The name of the god signifies the “high one” and he was probably a god of the atmospheric region above the earth— perhaps a storm god like Adad (q.v.) ”

“ But thou refusest to give me thy youth. Therefore, thy most cherished desires shall never be fulfilled. Thou shalt be king only in name, of that region where there are no roads for (the passage of) horses and cars and elephants, and good vehicles, and asses, and goats and bullocks, and palanquins; where there is swimming only by rafts and floats.’ Yayati next addressed Anu and said, ‘O Anu, take my weakness and decrepitude. I shall with thy youth enjoy the pleasures of life for a thousand years.’ To this Anu replied, ‘Those that are decrepit always eat like children and are always impure. ”

“ All the earliest gods conceived of by popular tradition as existing from the beginning of things are viewed as manifestations of Anu, or of Anu and Anatum in combination. He gives ear to prayers, but he is not approached directly. The gods are his messengers, who come and give him report of what is going on. [171] He is a god for the gods rather than for men. When his daughter Ishtar is insulted she appeals to her father Anu; and when the gods are terrified they take refuge with Anu. ”

“ The relationship of the various principal gods and their names, titles and offices will appear from the following remarks.
At the head of the Babylonian mythology stands a deity who was sometimes identified with the heavens, sometimes considered as the ruler and god of heaven. This deity is named Anu, his sign is the simple star, the symbol of divinity, and at other times the Maltese cross. In the philosophic theology of a later age, Anu represents abstract divinity, and he appears as an original principle, perhaps as the original principle of nature. ”

“ Thus, according to the legends of one part of Babylonia, Istar was the daughter of the Moon-god, according to those of another part of the country she was the daughter of Anu. Hence in the mythology of a later period she appears sometimes as the daughter of the one deity, sometimes as the daughter of the other.
A companion deity with Anu is Hea, who is god, of the sea and of Hades, in fact of all the lower regions. In some of his attributes he answers to the Kronos of the Greeks, in others to their Poseidon. Hea is called god of the lower region, he is lord of the sea or abyss ”

“ Anu, Inlil, and Ea were born in their turn, for Anshar and Kishar had given them birth.” As the generations emanated one from the other, their vitality increased, and the personality of each became more clearly defined; the last generation included none but beings of an original character and clearly marked individuality. Anu, the sunlit sky by day, the starlit firmament by night ”

“ He represents the universe as the upper and lower regions, and when these were divided the upper region or heaven was called Anu, while the lower region or earth was called Anatu; Anatu being the female principle or wife of Anu. Anu is termed the old god, and the god of the whole of heaven and earth; one of the manifestations of49 Anu was under the two forms Lakhmu and Lakhamu, which probably correspond to the Greek forms Dache and Dachus, see p. ”

“ Nebo is usually called son of Merodach, but in this inscription he is called son of Anu.
In my translation of the legend on K 3454, the sin of Zu is very obscure, and I am quite unable to see through the allusions in the text; but it is quite evident that his sin was considered to be great, as it raises the anger of Bel, and causes Anu to call on his sons in succession to slay Zu; while the sons of the god Anu request that he may be expelled from the company of the gods. ”

“ When, therefore, Anu, Bel, and Ea were invoked, it was equivalent to naming all the powers that influenced the fate of man. They embraced, as it were, the three kingdoms of the gods, within which all the other gods could be comprised. ”

“ I know not whether the similarity in the words Anu, Annu and An results merely from a coincidence, but it is certainly singular that the most ancient temples in Lower Egypt (Heliopolis and Denderah) should be called Annu or An [141] if there be no connection with the Babylonian god Anu.
With regard to Anubis, it is quite certain that the seven stars in Ursa Minor make a very good jackal with pendent tail, as generally represented by the Egyptians (see page 276) , and that they form the nearest compact constellation to the pole of the ecliptic. ”

“ In after times, and in the latter days..., if the temple of the Great Gods, my lords Anu and Vul, and these shrines should become old and fall into decay, may the Prince who comes after me repair the ruins! May he raise altars and sacrifice victims before my tablets and cylinders, and may he set them up again in their places, and may he inscribe his name on them together with my name! As Anu and Vul, the Great Gods, have ordained, may he worship honestly with a good heart and full trust! ”

“ The successive forms Lakhmu and Lakhamu, Sar and Kisar, are represented in some of the lists of the gods as names or manifestations of Anu and Anatu. These lists were compiled at a time when a school of monotheists had risen in Chaldea, and an attempt was made on the part of its adherents to resolve the various deities of the popular creed into forms of “the one god” Anu. In each case there appears to be a male and female principle, which principles combine in the formation of the universe. ”

“ Lugal-zaggi-ṡi calls himself “the priest of Anu,” the god of the city which he had made the seat of his power. Anu for awhile was the god of the supreme State in Babylonia, and therefore supreme god of the whole country. The king, it is true, had come from the north, [pg 312] and his authority had been given him by Bel of Nippur; the old sanctuary of Nippur still claimed the first place in the religion of Northern Babylonia, and the cult of its god retained its ancient hold on the veneration of the people. ”

“ At the close, the king Agumkakrimi appeals to Anu and his consort Anatum, [164] who are asked to bless the king in heaven, to Bel and Belit who are asked to fix his fate on earth, and to Ea and Damkina, inhabiting the deep, [165] who are to grant him long life. As in the beginning of the inscription, the thought of the triad—Anu, Bel, Ea—evidently underlies this interesting invocation, but at the same time the association of a consort with Anu brings the god into closer relationship with his fellows. ”

“ Therefore she was an elemental deity. In later times her attributes appear to have been inherited by Ishtar. According to some authorities Bel was the son of Ea and Dawkina, Bel in this case meaning Merodach. We find her name frequently alluded to in the Magical Texts, but her cult does not seem to have been very widespread.
Anu
We have already alluded to Anu's position in the triad with Ea and Bel in later Babylonian times. When he stands alone we find him taking a more human guise than as the mere elemental god of earlier days. ”

“ Anu offered him the water of life and the bread of life which would have made him immortal, but Ea's son refused to eat or drink, believing, as his father had warned him, that the sky god desired him to partake of the bread of death and to drink of the water of death. ”

“ Further evidence of this may be seen in the fact that Anu, Enlil, and Ea (i.e. Enki) , who are here created together, are the three great gods of the Sumerian Version of Creation; it is they who create mankind with the help of the goddess Ninkharsagga, and in the fuller version of that myth we should naturally expect to find some account of their own origin. ”

“ An intermediate step between Anu viewed as the local deity of Erech (or some other centre) , Bel as the god of Nippur, and Ea as the god of Eridu is represented by the prominence which each one of the centres associated with the three deities in question must have acquired, and which led to each one absorbing the qualities of other gods so as to give them a controlling position in an organized pantheon. For Nippur we have the direct evidence that its chief deity, En-lil or Bel, was once regarded as the head of an extensive pantheon. ”

“ The identification of some of the deities with stars or planets is, moreover, impossible, and if Êa, the god of the deep, and Anu, the god of the heavens, have their representatives among the heavenly bodies, this is probably the result of later development. ”

“ In his remote position on unapproachable summits Anu seems to participate in the calm and immobility of his dwelling. If he is quick in forming an opinion and coming to a conclusion, he himself never puts into execution the plans which he has matured or the judgments which he has pronounced: he relieves himself of the trouble of acting, by assigning the duty to Bel-Merodach, Ea, or Eamman, and he often employs inferior genii to execute his will. “They are seven, the messengers of Anu their king; it is they who from town to town raise the stormy wind ”

“ She is 'the mistress of goddesses.' Attached to her temple there are lands that having been wrongfully wrested from the priests are returned upon royal command, under solemn invocation of the goddess. How her worship came to be transferred to Dêr we do not know. She appears in the inscription in question by the side of a goddess who—following Hommel—is none other than Bau. Dêr is called the city of the god Anu, and we can only suppose that it must at one time have risen to sufficient importance to harbor in its midst a number of deities. ”

“ Anu regarded in this light ceases to be the god par excellence: he becomes the only chief god, and the idea of authority is so closely attached to his name that the latter alone is sufficient in common speech to render the idea of God. Bel would have been entirely thrown into the shade by him, as the earth-gods generally are by the sky-gods, if it had not been that he was confounded with his namesake Bel-Merodach of Babylon: to this alliance he owed to the end the safety of his life, in presence of Anu. ”

“ Not only does humanity turn to Ea: the gods, too, appeal to him in their distress. The eclipse of the moon was regarded by the popular faith as a sort of bewitchment of the great orb through the seven evil spirits. All the heavenly bodies are affected by such an event. Anu is powerless. It is only through Ea that Sin is released, just as though he were a human individual. But Ea is rarely approached directly. At his side stands his son Marduk, who acts as a mediator. ”

“ The principal gods mentioned in these early tablets may be briefly sketched as follows:
56 ANŪ. The sky god and ruler of the highest heaven, whose messengers are evil spirits. The Canaanite town of Beth-anath, mentioned in Joshua, [67] was named for Anat, the wife of Anū.
SEVEN EVIL SPIRITS. These messengers of Anū are elsewhere described as the seven storm-clouds, or the winds, and their leader seems to have been the dragon Tīamat [68] (the deep) , who was defeated by Bel-Merodach in the war of the gods. ”

“ This misfortune happens when Zu robs En-lil of the tablets by means of which law and order are established. En-lil is powerless. The bold act of Zu causes consternation among the gods. Anu calls upon some one to pursue Zu and capture him. The bird dwells in an inaccessible recess in the mountains, and the gods are afraid to approach his nest. The scene that ensues reminds us of the episode of the creation epic, where Anshar calls upon Anu, Bel, and Ea in turn to subdue Tiâmat. ”

“ The terrestrial gods and those of middle-space take refuge in this “heaven of Anu,” when they are threatened by any great danger, but they dare not penetrate its depths, and stop, shortly after passing its boundary, on the ledge which supports the vault, where they loll and howl like dogs. It is but rarely that it may be entered, and then only by the highly privileged—kings whose destiny marked them out for admittance, and heroes who have fallen valiantly on the field of battle. ”