In
Sumerian mythology,
Anu (also
An; from
Sumerian 𒀭
An, "sky, heaven") was a sky-god, the
god of
heaven, lord of
constellations, king of gods,
spirits and
demons, and dwelt in the highest heavenly regions. It was believed that he had the power to judge those who had committed crimes, and that he had created the stars as soldiers to destroy the wicked. His attribute was the royal
tiara. His attendant and minister of state was the god
Ilabrat.
He was one of the oldest gods in the
Sumerian pantheon and part of a
triad including
Enlil (god of the air) and
Enki (god of water). He was called
Anu by the later
Akkadians in Babylonian culture. By virtue of being the first figure in a triad consisting of Anu, Enlil, and Enki (also known as
Ea), Anu came to be regarded as the father and at first, king of the gods. Anu is so prominently associated with the E-anna temple in the city of
Uruk (biblical
Erech) in southern Babylonia that there are good reasons for believing this place to be the original seat of the Anu cult. If this is correct, then the goddess
Inanna (or
Ishtar) of Uruk may at one time have been his consort.
[citation needed]
Sumerian religion[edit]

Ur III Sumerian cuneiform for An
(and determinative sign for deities see: DINGIR)
Anu had several consorts, the foremost being
Ki (earth),
Nammu, and
Uras. By Ki he was the father of, among others, the
Anunnaki gods. By Uras he was the father of
Nin'insinna. According to legends, heaven and earth were once inseparable until An and Ki bore Enlil, god of the air, who cleaved heaven and earth in two. An and Ki were, in some texts, identified as brother and sister being the children of
Anshar and
Kishar. Ki later developed into the Akkadian goddess
Antu (also known as "Keffen Anu", "Kef", and "Keffenk Anum").
[citation needed]
Anu existed in Sumerian cosmogony as a dome that covered the flat earth; Outside of this dome was the primordial body of water known as
Tiamat (not to be confused with the subterranean
Abzu).
[1]
In Sumerian, the designation "
An" was used interchangeably with "the heavens" so that in some cases it is doubtful whether, under the term, the god An or the heavens is being denoted. The Akkadians inherited An as the god of heavens from the Sumerian as
Anu-, and in Akkadian cuneiform, the
DINGIRcharacter may refer either to Anum or to the Akkadian word for god,
ilu-, and consequently had two phonetic values
an and
il.
Hittite cuneiform as adapted from the Old Assyrian kept the
an value but abandoned
il.
Assyro-Babylonian religion[edit]
The doctrine once established remained an inherent part of the
Babylonian-Assyrian religion and led to the more or less complete disassociation of the three gods constituting the
triad from their original local limitations. An intermediate step between Anu viewed as the local deity of
Uruk,
Enlil 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, was once regarded as the head of the
Sumerian pantheon. The sanctity and, therefore, the importance of Eridu remained a fixed tradition in the minds of the people to the latest days, and analogy therefore justifies the conclusion that Anu was likewise worshipped in a centre which had acquired great prominence.
The summing-up of divine powers manifested in the universe in a threefold division represents an outcome of speculation in the schools attached to the temples of Babylonia, but the selection of Anu, Enlil (and later
Marduk), and Ea for the three representatives of the three spheres recognized, is due to the importance which, for one reason or the other, the centres in which Anu, Enlil, and Ea were worshipped had acquired in the popular mind. Each of the three must have been regarded in his centre as the most important member in a larger or smaller group, so that their union in a triad marks also the combination of the three distinctive pantheons into a harmonious whole.
In the astral theology of Babylonia and Assyria, Anu, Enlil, and Ea became the three zones of the
ecliptic, the northern, middle and southern zone respectively. The purely theoretical character of Anu is thus still further emphasized, and in the annals and votive inscriptions as well as in the incantations and hymns, he is rarely introduced as an active force to whom a personal appeal can be made. His name becomes little more than a synonym for the heavens in general and even his title as king or father of the gods has little of the personal element in it. A consort
Antum (or as some scholars prefer to read, Anatum) is assigned to him, on the theory that every deity must have a female associate. But Anu spent so much time on the ground protecting the Sumerians he left her in Heaven and then met Innin, whom he renamed Innan, or, "Queen of Heaven". She was later known as Ishtar. Anu resided in her temple the most, and rarely went back up to Heaven. He is also included in the Epic of Gilgamesh, and is a major character in the clay tablets.
See also[edit]
- Jump up^ Kramer, Samuel N. Sumerian Mythology: a Study of Spiritual and Literary Achievement in the Third Millennium B.C. Philad