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Mesopotamian sky-god, one of the supreme deities; known as An in Sumerian and Anu in Akkadian.
A stele of the Assyrian king Šamši-Adad V (c.815 BCE), making obeisance to the symbols of five deities, including (top) the horned crown of Anu (BM 118892, photo (c) The British Museum).
An/Anu belongs to the oldest generation of Mesopotamian gods and was originally the supreme deity of the Babylonian pantheon. Consequently, his major roles are as an authority figure, decision-maker and progenitor. In heaven he allots functions to other gods, and can increase their status at will; in the Sumerian poemInana and Ebih (ETCSL 1.3.2),Inana claims that "An has made me terrifying throughout heaven" (l.66). On earth he confers kingship, and his decisions are regarded as unalterable.
Later An/Anu came to share or cede these functions, asEnlil and subsequentlyMarduk rose to prominence, but retained his essential character and high status throughout Mesopotamian history. Indeed, when other gods are elevated to a position of leadership, they are said to receive theanûtu, the "Anu-power". For example, inEnūma eliš TT the gods express Marduk's authority over them by declaring: "Your word is Anu!" (Tablet IV, lines 4-6).
An/Anu is sometimes credited with the creation of the universe itself, either alone or withEnlil andEa. Of the three levels of heaven, he inhabited the highest, said to be made of the reddishluludānitu stone (Horowitz 2001: 8-11).
The earliest texts make no reference to An's origins. Later he is regarded as the son ofAnšar and Kišar, as in the first millennium creation epicEnūma eliš (Tablet I, 11-14). In Sumerian texts of the third millennium the goddess Uraš is his consort; later this position was taken by Ki, the personification of earth, and in Akkadian texts by Antu, whose name is probably derived from his own.
An/Anu frequently receives the epithet "father of the gods," and many deities are described as his children in one context or another. Inscriptions from third-millennium Lagaš name An as the father of Gatumdug,Baba andNingirsu. In later literary texts,Adad,Enki/Ea,Enlil,Girra,Nanna/Sin,Nergal and Šara also appear as his sons, while goddesses referred to as his daughters includeInana/Ištar,Nanaya,Nidaba,Ninisinna, Ninkarrak, Ninmug, Ninnibru,Ninsumun, Nungal andNusku. An/Anu is also the head of theAnnunaki, and created the demons Lamaštu, Asag and the Sebettu. In the epicErra and Išum, Anu gives the Sebettu toErra as weapons with which to massacre humans when their noise becomes irritating to him (Tablet I, 38ff).
When Enlil rose to equal or surpass An in authority, the functions of the two deities came to some extent to overlap. An was also sometimes equated with Amurru, and, in Seleucid Uruk, with Enmešara andDumuzi.
Temples and shrines to An/Anu existed in various cities throughout Mesopotamian history. From the third millennium onwards he was worshipped, with some interruptions, together withInana/Ištar at the é-an-na temple inUruk [~/images/Uruk.jpg], and in the Achaemenid and Seleucid periods at the new Reš temple with Antu.
Another important centre for his cult wasDer [~/images/Der.jpg], which, like Uruk, held the title "city of Anu". InLagaš [~/images/Lagash.jpg] a temple to An was established by Gudea (ca. 2144-2124 BCE), while Ur-Namma (ca. 2112-2095 BCE) built a garden and shrine for him atUr [~/images/Ur.jpg]. An also had a "seat" in the main temple ofBabylon [~/images/Babylon.jpg], Esagil, and received offerings atNippur [~/images/Nippur.jpg],Sippar [~/images/Sippar.jpg] andKish [~/images/Kish.jpg]. AtAssur [~/images/Assur.jpg] a double temple for Anu andAdad, é-me-lám-an-na, was built during the Middle Assyrian period (ca. 1350-1050 BCE) and restored by subsequent rulers including Tiglath-Pileser I.
The earliest appearances of An as a specific deity are difficult to identify precisely, due to the multiple readings possible for the sign AN. However, by the mid-third millennium he is definitely attested in the Fara god-list, and in the name of the 27th-century king of Ur, Mesanepada ("Young man, chosen by An"), who also dedicated a bead "to the god An, his lord" (Frayne 2008: E1.13.5.1). In the following centuries cultic activity for An/Anu is attested at Uruk and Nippur, and he begins to occur in royal titles: Lugalzagesi (ca. 2375-50 BCE) and Sargon I (ca. 2334-2279 BCE) both call themselves his priests.
From the second millennium onwards An/Anu is mentioned regularly in literary texts, inscriptions and personal names, although rarely as the central figure – he seems to have always been regarded as rather remote from human affairs. From the Old Babylonian period (ca. 2000-1595 BCE) a Sumerian prayer to An asks him to protect the kingship of Rim-Sin, king of Ur (ETCSL 2.6.9.3) and several royal hymns to An survive (ETCSL 2.4.4.5, an unfortunately fragmentaryadab to An for Šu-Suen;ETCSL 2.5.5.3, anadab to An for Lipit-Ištar;ETCSL 2.5.6.5, anadab to An for Ur-Ninurta).
At around the same time, Anu features for the first time in Assyrian royal inscriptions; Šamši-Adad I (ca. 1813-1781 BCE) boasts that Anu andEnlil called him to greatness (Grayson 1987: A.0.39.1. The god Aššur always retained his pre-eminent position in the Assyrian pantheon, but later kings also sometimes invoked Anu as a source of support or legitimacy.
Sumerian and Akkadian mythological texts portray An/Anu as king and father of the gods. The Old Babylonian compositionGilgameš, Enkidu and the Netherworld (ETCSL 1.8.1.4) refers to the primeval division of the universe in which An received the heavens (lines 11-12), and we see him ruling from here in the flood poemAtrahasis.Inana/Ištar, set upon killing Gilgameš, forcefully persuades her father to hand over the bull of heaven in the Old Babylonian poemGilgameš and the Bull of Heaven (ETCSL 1.8.1.2), as well as in the first-millenniumEpic of Gilgameš (Tablet VI, lines 92ff). InEnūma eliš Anu turns back in fear from Tiamat (Tablet II, lines 105-6), paving the way forMarduk's triumph and elevation above him which characterises Babylonian literature and religious practice in the late second and early first millennium. However, during the fifth century BCE Anu's cult enjoyed a revival at Uruk, and ritual texts describing the involvement of his statue in the localakitu festival survive from the Seleucid period (e.g.,TCL 6, 39;TCL 6, 40;BRM 4, 07).
There are no certain anthropomorphic representations of An/Anu. His symbol is a horned crown, sometimes shown resting on a throne (see below). His animal is the bull.
Sumerianan means "heaven, sky", and An can therefore be seen as the personified heavens. The cuneiform sign AN also has the value DINGIR, 'god' (Akkadianilu(m)), and is used as the determinative for deities, yet in Sumerian An's name is never written with the divine determinative. In Akkadian he is Anu, written logographically asdAN, or spelled syllabically, e.g.da-nu(m). The logogramd60 is also a learned writing for Anu.
An
Anu
Kathryn Stevens
Kathryn Stevens, 'An/Anu (god)',Ancient Mesopotamian Gods and Goddesses, Oracc and the UK Higher Education Academy, 2013 [http://oracc.museum.upenn.edu/amgg/listofdeities/an/]
