Spouses Ki, "earth," is well attested as Anu's spouse. Her name was commonly written without a divine determinative, and she was usually not regarded as a personified goddess. Another of Anu's spouses was
Urash. According to Frans Wiggermann, she is his most commonly attested wife. She is well attested starting with the
Sargonic period and continues to appear as a wife of Anu often until the
Old Babylonian period. A different, male, deity named
Urash served as the tutelary god of
Dilbat. Wiggermann proposes that while Ki, as generally agreed, represented earth as a cosmogonic element, Urash was a divine representation of
arable land. He suggests translating her name as "
tilth," though its etymology and meaning continue to be a matter of debate. A single Neo-Assyrian god list known from three copies appears to combine Ki and Urash into a single deity,
dki-uraš. An early incorrect reading of this entry was
dki-ib, which early Assyriologist
Daniel David Luckenbill assumed to be a reference to the
Egyptian god
Geb, an identification now regarded as impossible. The goddess
Antu is also attested as a wife of Anu. Her name is etymologically an Akkadian
feminine form of Anu. The god list
An = Anum equates her with Ki, while a lexical text from the Old Babylonian period – with Urash. There is evidence that like the latter, she could be considered a goddess associated with the earth. She is already attested in the third millennium BCE, possibly as early as in the Early Dynastic period in a god list from
Abu Salabikh, though no references to her are known from Uruk from before the first millennium BCE, and even in the
Neo-Babylonian period she only appears in a single letter. However, she is attested as Anu's wife in documents from the Seleucid period from this city, and at that point in time became its lead goddess alongside her husband. An inscription on a votive figurine of king
Lugal-kisalsi (or Lugal-giparesi), who ruled over Uruk and Ur in the twenty-fourth century BCE, refers to
Nammu as the wife of Anu. Julia Krul proposes that this was a traditional pairing in Early Dynastic Uruk, but according to Frans Wiggermann no other direct references to Nammu as Anu's wife are known. A possible exception is an Old Babylonian incantation which might refer to her as "pure one of An," but this attestation is uncertain. In older literature, an epithet of
Ashratum was often translated as "bride of An," but this is now considered to be a mistake. The Sumerian term used in it,
é-gi4-a, equivalent of Akkadian
kallatum, meant both "
daughter-in-law" and "bride," but the latter meaning relied on the social practice of fathers picking the brides of their sons. As an epithet of goddesses, it denotes their status as a daughter-in-law of a specific deity. For example,
Aya was often called
kallatum due to her position as the daughter-in-law of Sin and wife of his son
Shamash. A goddess named Ninursala is described as Anu's
dam-bànda, possibly to be translated as "concubine," in the god list
An = Anum. According to Antoine Cavigneaux and Manfred Krebernik, she is also attested in an Old Babylonian god list from
Mari.
Children Many deities were regarded as Anu's descendants, and he could be called "the father of the great gods." It has been argued that Anu's primary role in the Sumerian pantheon was as an ancestor figure, and that the term
Anunna (also Anunnaki, Anunna-anna), which referred to various Mesopotamian deities collectively, means "offspring of Anu" and designates specific gods as particularly prominent.
Ishkur (Adad), the weather god, was consistently regarded as a son of Anu. While some literary texts may refer to Enlil as his father instead, this view was less common and is no longer attested in any sources later than the
Old Babylonian period. The only source to directly name his mother places Urash in this role. Another god frequently regarded as Anu's son was
Enki. Nammu was the mother of Enki in the local tradition of
Eridu and in the myth
Enki and Ninmah, but a hymn from the reign of
Ishme-Dagan confirms that a tradition in which his mother was Urash instead also existed. In texts dedicated to Ishkur, he and Enki could be referred to as twins, but no analogous epithet can be found in compositions which focus on the latter god, according to Daniel Schwmer because due to his higher rank in the pantheon he would not benefit from being called the brother of a comparatively lower ranked deity.
Enlil could be called a son of Anu, as already attested in an inscription of
Lugalzagesi. Xianhua Wang proposes that this development was meant to reconcile a northern tradition, in which the king of the gods was Enlil, with a southern one, where the same role was played by Anu, though even in the south
Lagash seemingly belonged to this proposed Enlil tradition. Another source which presents Enlil as Anu's son is the myth
Enki and the World Order, which also specifies that he was the older brother of Enki. However, Enlil's parentage was variable. The tradition in which his ancestors were the so-called
Enki-Ninki deities is now considered conventional by Assyriologists, though materials pertaining to it are difficult to interpret. Enki, the ancestor of Enlil, is not to be confused with the god Enki, as indicated by the different spelling of their names in
cuneiform. In yet another tradition, Enlil's father was
Lugaldukuga, but the texts placing him in this role are relatively late. It is first attested in the god list
An = Anum, most likely composed in the
Kassite period.
Amurru (Martu) was universally regarded as a son of Anu.
Dietz Otto Edzard argued that the fact he was not regarded as a son of Enlil instead might stem from his secondary role in Mesopotamian religion. It is also possible that the comparisons between him and Ishkur contributed to the development of this genealogy. It has additionally been argued that a variant writing of Amurru's name, AN.dMARTU (AN.AN.MAR.TU) represents a conjoined deity consisting of Amurru and Anu. However, according to Paul-Alain Beaulieu it most likely should simply be read as the Akkadian phrase
dIl Amurrim, "the god of
Amurru," as indicated by a Hurrian translation known from a bilingual text from
Emar,
de-ni a-mu-ri-we, which has the same meaning. Texts from the reign of
Rim-Sîn I and
Samsu-iluna identify the love goddess
Nanaya as a daughter of Anu. This notion is also present in an inscription of
Esarhaddon. Paul-Alain Beaulieu speculates that Nanaya developed in the context of a local theological system in which Anu and Inanna were viewed as a couple, and that she was initially regarded as their daughter. However, as noted by Olga Drewnowska-Rymarz, direct references to Nanaya as the daughter of Inanna are not common, and it is possible this epithet was not treated literally, but rather as an indication of closeness between them. Furthermore, Nanaya could also be regarded as a daughter of the male Urash, and was sometimes specifically called his firstborn daughter. In late sources,
Nisaba could be called a daughter of Anu. However, as noted by Wilfred G. Lambert at least one text "seems to imply a desire not to have Anu as Nisaba's father," and instead makes her the daughter of
Irḫan, in this context identified with Ea and understood as a cosmic river, "father of the gods of the universe." While
Inanna (Ishtar) could be regarded as the daughter of Anu and Antu, the view that she was a daughter of
Nanna and
Ningal is agreed to be the most commonly attested tradition regarding her parentage. While the "Standard Babylonian" version of the
Epic of Gilgamesh, an astronomical text and the
Hymn to the Queen of Nippur refer to her directly as Anu's daughter, according to Paul-Alain Beaulieu it is not impossible that these statements do not reflect parentage but merely indirect descent, with an implied genealogy in which Anu was the father of Enlil, grandfather of Nanna and great-grandfather of Inanna. Furthermore, the hymn in mention also addresses her as a daughter of the moon god.
Ishtaran was at least sometimes described as a son of Anu and Urash, and as a result the Old Babylonian
Nippur god list associates him with
Uruk. He also could be referred to as
Anu Rabu (AN.GAL), "the great Anu," but Wouter Henkelman proposes this epithet is instead a sign that a connection existed between him and the Elamite god
Napirisha, whose name was written with the same combination of cuneiform signs. It is possible that in the late first millennium BCE attempts at
syncretizing Ishtaran and Anu were made during a period of cooperation between the theologians from Uruk, Nippur and
Der, but direct evidence is presently lacking. Further deities attested as children of Anu include the medicine goddesses
Ninisina and
Ninkarrak (also directly identified as daughters of his wife Urash),
Bau (who could be called his firstborn daughter), the weaver goddess
Uttu (in a single source), the messenger god
Papsukkal,
Geshtinanna (in a hymn of
Shulgi, which also mentions Urash as her mother), the fire god
Gibil (and through association with him also
Nuska), Šiḫṭu, the divine representation of the planet
Mercury (in Seleucid Uruk), and possibly the male
Urash. Whether Anu was the father of
Shara in the tradition of his cult center,
Umma, cannot be determined with a certainty, as the most direct reference, the phrase
aia DINGIR ù-TU-zu in a hymn, has two possible translations: "your father An who engendered you," or "your divine father who engendered you." Additionally, some references to Anu as the father of a specific deity might be metaphorical or indirect, as in the case of Nanna (typically a son of Enlil and
Ninlil) or
Nungal. Anu could also be regarded as the father of various demons.
Lamashtu was viewed his daughter. A group of seven, eight or nine
Asakku demons called "the sons of Anu" is also known. In a text referred to as the
Nippur Compendium by modern researchers, Latarak is identified both as an Asakku and as a son of Anu. The
Epic of Erra describes the
Sebitti as his creations, subsequently given to the eponymous god as weapons.
Ancestors The earliest texts do not discuss Anu's origin, and his preeminence is simply assumed. In later traditions, his father was usually
Anshar, whose spouse was
Kishar. Another tradition most likely regarded
Alala and
Belili as his parents. A larger group of his ancestors, arranged into multiple generations, is known from mythological and scholarly sources. Wilfred G. Lambert coined the term "Theogony of Anu" to refer to arrangements of these deities collectively. At least five versions are known from incantations, though in three out of five the first pair are Duri and Dari, and the last – Alala and Belili. A slightly different version is known from the god list
An = Anum, though there are differences between individual copies as well. Lambert proposes that initially at least two different traditions existed, but they were later combined into a list patterned on those associated with Enlil. At least in some cases, long lists of divine ancestors were meant to help avoid the implications of divine incest, which were hard to reconcile with strong incest taboos attested from various periods of Mesopotamian history. Duri and Dari likely represented time understood as a primary force in creation, and their names are derived from an Akkadian phrase meaning "ever and ever." The pairing of Alala and Belili was most likely based entirely on both of their names being
iterative, and elsewhere they occur in unrelated roles independently from each other. Further attested pairs of deities regarded as ancestors of Anu include Egur and Gara, whose character is unknown,
Lahmu and
Lahamu, derived from the name of a type of aquatic mythical creature, two deities whose names were written logographically as dALAM possibly representing another of the known pairs or associated with the underworld, and Enurulla and Ninurulla, the "lord" and "lady" of the "primeval city," whose inclusion in Anu's family tree most likely reflected "the importance of the city in ancient Mesopotamian thought." The genealogy of gods presented in the
Enūma Eliš is a derivative of the lists of Anu's ancestors from earlier sources. The pairs listed in this composition are
Apsu and
Tiamat, Lahmu and Lahamu, and Anshar and Kishar. The first of them is not attested in any earlier sources. The god list
An = Anum refers to Nammu as the "mother who gave birth to Heaven and Earth,"
dama-tu-an-ki, but as noted by Frans Wiggermann, the terms
an and
ki were most likely understood collectively in this case. A similar reference is known from an exorcism formula assumed to predate the
Middle Babylonian period. There is no indication that this act of creation involved a second deity acting as Nammu's spouse. She appears in a variant of Anu's genealogy in
An = Anum, though as remarked by Lambert, she was "pushed out (...) into a kind of appendix." Due to the sparse attestations of Nammu it is assumed today that she "was not generally acknowledged outside Eridu." A single prayer to
Papsukkal might allude to a tradition in which Anu was a son of
Enmesharra. In another text, Anu and Enlil receive their positions from this deity, not necessarily peacefully. Due to his connection with various ancestral deities, Anu could be occasionally associated with the
underworld. One
Assyrian explanatory text mentions Antu making funerary offerings for him. However, according to Julia Krul, it is impossible to tell how widespread the recognition of this aspect of his character was, and broad statements about Anu being outright identified with deities of the underworld in the theology of Seleucid Uruk should be generally avoided.
In Hurrian tradition While it is often assumed that
Hurrian Alalu was the father of Anu, similar to his Mesopotamian counterpart Alala, and that Kumarbi was in turn viewed as Anu's son, it has also been argued that two separate lineages of gods appear in the prologue of the
Kumarbi myth, and therefore that Alalu and Anu should not be regarded as father and son in Hurrian sources. Kumarbi is directly referred to as Alalu's "seed" in the
Song of Kummarbi. He also addresses himself as "Alalu's son" in another myth belonging to the same cycle,
Song of Ḫedammu. The order of deities in international treaties also supports the notion that Alalu and Kumarbi belong to the same line, but Anu does not. Hittitologist
Gary Beckman notes that the two lines were seemingly only united with the birth of the new generation of gods (
Teshub,
Tashmishu and others), a result of Kumarbi's castration of Anu, which resulted in a "burden," Anu's seed, being placed inside him. The process is poetically compared to production of
bronze from
tin and copper.
Attendants Ninshubur, the "archetypal vizier of the gods," was primarily associated with Inanna, but she could also be described as the sukkal (divine vizier, attendant deity) of Anu. The association between her and Anu is attested from the reign of
Third Dynasty of Ur onward. Her role as a popular intercessory deity in
Sumerian religion was derived from her position as a servant of major deities, which resulted in the belief that she was capable of mediating with her masters, both with Inanna and with Anu, on behalf of human petitioners. Another deity who could be placed in the same role was
Ilabrat. In texts from the second millennium BCE, Ninshubur and Ilabrat coexisted and in at least some cases Ninshubur's name, treated as masculine, was a logographic spelling of Ilabrat's, for example in
Mari in personal names. It has been proposed that the variance in Ninshubur's gender is related to syncretism with him. The goddess
Amasagnudi could be regarded as Anu's sukkal too, as attested in a single Old Babylonian lexical text.
Kakka is also attested in this role in a few cases, though in the
Enūma Eliš he is the sukkal of Anshar instead. In later periods, other sukkals of Anu were eclipsed by Papsukkal, originally associated with the god
Zababa, whose rise was likely rooted simply in the presence of the word sukkal in his name. In the context of the so-called "antiquarian theology" relying largely on god lists, which developed in
Uruk under
Achaemenid and
Seleucid rule, he was fully identified with Ninshubur and thus became Anu's sukkal and one of the eighteen major deities of the city. He was not worshiped in this city earlier.
Foreign equivalents According to a
Šurpu commentary, Anu's
Elamite counterpart was
Jabru. However, according to the god list
An = Anum, a god bearing the name Yabnu (
dia-ab-na) was the "Enlil of Elam." Wilfred G. Lambert concluded that Jabru and Yabnu should be considered two spellings of the same name. While Jabru is described as an Elamite god in Mesopotamian sources, no known
Elamite texts mention him. In the god list
Anšar = Anum, one of the names of Anu is Hamurnu, derived from the
Hurrian word referring to heaven. However, while Hurrians did worship
earth and heaven, they did not regard them as personified deities. Furthermore, Anu appears under his own name in Hurrian mythology. While Robert Monti argues that the Canaanites seem to have ascribed Anu's attributes to
El, no equivalents of Anu were actually present in the pantheons of various
ancient Syrian states. Both the head of the hinterland pantheon,
Dagan, and the head of the coastal pantheon, El, were regarded as analogous to Enlil, rather than Anu. Monti additionally describes a god he refers to as "Shamem" as the most direct equivalent to Anu in the Canaanite pantheon and as a personification of the sky, but this name was a title of the weather god
Baal which developed into a separate deity,
Baalshamin, and
Aramaic texts indicate that he was viewed as an equivalent of Hadad, rather than Anu, further east. It is sometimes proposed that in the
Hellenistic period Anu was identified with the Greek god
Zeus, but most Assyriologists consider this possibility to be uncertain, one exception being
Eleanor Robson. Julia Krul points out authors who propose it do not clarify whether they mean if "the Seleucids made such an equation themselves (...), or that the Urukean priest-scholars convinced their new kings of the similarity between the two gods (...), or even that they genuinely believed that Anu and Zeus were the same." No direct evidence of any of these possibilities is available. According to
Walter Burkert, a researcher of ancient Greek religion, direct literary parallels exist between Anu and the Zeus. According to him, the scene from Tablet VI of the
Epic of Gilgamesh in which Ishtar comes before Anu after being rejected by Gilgamesh and complains to her mother Antu, but is mildly rebuked by Anu, is directly paralleled by a scene from Book V of the
Iliad. In this scene,
Aphrodite, who Burkert regards as the later Greek development of Ishtar, is wounded by the Greek hero
Diomedes while trying to save her son
Aeneas. She flees to
Mount Olympus, where she cries to her mother
Dione, is mocked by her sister
Athena, and is mildly rebuked by her father
Zeus. Not only is the narrative parallel significant, but so is the fact that Dione's name is a feminization of Zeus's own, just as
Antu is a feminine form of
Anu. Dione does not appear throughout the rest of the
Iliad, in which Zeus's consort is instead the goddess
Hera. Burkert therefore concludes that
Dione is clearly a
calque of Antu. An equivalence between Anu and
Ahura Mazda has been proposed based on the assumption that non-Persian subjects of the
Achaemenid Empire might have viewed the latter simply as a sky god. == Worship ==