ANU

This article appears in Volume V02, Page 157 of the Encyclopedia Britannica.

Encyclopedia Britannica - Main :: ANC-APO

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

ORIGINAL

seat of the Anu cult. If this be correct, then the goddess Nana (or Ishtar) of Erech was presumably regarded as his

consort

CONSORT (Lat. consors, a companion)

. The name of the god signifies the " high one " and he was probably a god of the atmospheric region above the earthperhaps a

storm

god like

Adad

ADAD

(q.v.), or like Yahweh among the ancient Hebrews. However this may be, already in the old-Babylonian period, i.e. before Khammurabi, Anu was regarded as the god of the heavens and his name became in fact synonymous with the heavens, so that in some cases it is doubtful whether, under the term, the god or the heavens is meant. It would seem from this that the grouping of the divine powers recognized in the universe into a triad symbolizing the three divisions, heavens, earth and the watery -deep, was a process of thought which had taken place before the third millennium. To Anu was assigned the

control

CONTROL (Fr. contrdle, older form contre rolle, from Med. Lat. contra-rotulus, a counter roll or copy of a document used to check the original; there is no instance in English of the use of " control " in this, its literal, meaning)

of the heavens, to Bel the earth, and to Ea the waters. 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

ORIGINAL

local limitations. 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

CHIEF (from Fr. chef, head, Lat. caput)

deity, En-lit or Bel, was once regarded as the head of an extensive 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 there-fore justifies the conclusion that Anu was likewise worshipped in a centre which had acquired

great

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, Bel 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, Bel 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, Bel 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

INSCRIPTIONS (from Lat. inscribere, to write upon)

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

ELEMENT (Lat. elementum)

in it. A

consort

CONSORT (Lat. consors, a companion)

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 Antum is a purely artificial producta lifeless symbol playing even less of a part in what may be called
the active pantheon than Anil.
For works of reference see BABYLONIAN AND ASSYRIAN RELIGION. (M. JA.)

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