Everything about Anath totally explained
» For the organization abbreviated as ANAT, see Australian network for art and technology.
Anat, also
‘Anat is a major northwest
Semitic goddess.
‘Anat in Ugarit
In the
Ugaritic Ba‘al/
Hadad cycle ‘Anat is a violent war-goddess, a virgin in Ugarit (
btlt 'nt) though the sister and lover of the great
Ba‘al known as
Hadad elsewhere. Ba‘al is usually called the son of
Dagon and sometimes the son of
El. ‘Anat is addressed by
El as "daughter". Either one relationship or the other is probably figurative.
‘Anat's titles used again and again are "virgin ‘Anat" and "sister-in-law of the peoples" (or "progenitress of the peoples" or "sister-in-law, widow of the Li’mites").
In a fragmentary passage from
Ras Shamra ‘Anat appears as a wild and furious warrior in a battle, wading knee-deep in blood, striking off heads, cutting off hands, binding the heads to her torso and the hands in her sash, driving out the old men and townsfolk with her arrows, her heart filled with joy. "Her character in this passage anticipates her subsequent warlike role against the enemies of Baal".
’Anat boasts that she's put an end to
Yamm the darling of El, to the seven-headed serpent, to Arsh the darling of the gods, to Atik 'Quarrelsome' the calf of El, to Ishat 'Fire' the bitch of the gods, and to Zabib 'flame?' the daughter of El. Later, when Ba‘al is believed to be dead, she seeks after Ba‘al "like a cow for its calf" and finds his body (or supposed body) and buries it with great sacrifices and weeping. ‘Anat then finds
Mot, Ba‘al/Hadad's supposed slayer and she seizes Mot, splits him with a sword, winnows him with a sieve, burns him with fire, grinds him with millstones and scatters the remnants to the birds.
Text
CTA 10 tells how ‘Anat seeks after Ba‘al who is out hunting, finds him, and is told she'll bear a steer to him. Following the birth she brings the new calf to Ba‘al on Mount Zephon. But nowhere in these texts is ‘Anat explicitly Ba‘al/Hadad's consort. To judge from later traditions
‘Athtart (who also appears in these texts) is more likely to be Ba‘al/Hadad's consort. But of course northwest Semitic culture permitted more than one wife and liaisons outside marriage are normal for deities in all pantheons.
In the
North Canaanite story of
Aqhat, the protagonist Aqhat son of the judge
Danel (Dn'il) is given a wonderful bow and arrows which was created for ‘Anat by the craftsman god Kothar-wa-Khasis but which was given to Dan[i]el for his infant son as a gift. When Aqhat grew to be a young man, the goddess ‘Anat tried to buy the bow from Aqhat, offering even immortality, but Aqhat refused all offers, calling her a liar since old age and death are the lot of all men. He then added to this insult by asking what would a woman do with a bow?
Like
Inanna in the
Epic of Gilgamesh, ‘Anat complained to El and threatened El himself if he didn't allow her to take vengeance on Aqhat. El conceded. ‘Anat launched her attendant Yatpan in hawk form against Aqhat to knock the breath out of him and to steal the bow back. Her plan succeeds, but Aqhat is killed instead of merely beaten and robbed. In her rage against Yatpan, (text is missing here) Yatpan runs away and the bow and arrows fall into the sea. All is lost. ‘Anat mourned for Aqhat and for the curse that this act would bring upon the land and for the loss of the bow. The focus of the story then turns to Paghat, the wise younger sister of Aqhat. She sets off to avenge her brother's death and to restore the land which has been devastated by drought as a direct result of the murder. The story is unfortunately incomplete. It breaks at an extremely dramatic moment when Paghat discovers that the mercenary whom she's hired to help her avenge the death is, in fact, Yatpan, her brother's murderer. The parallels between the story of ‘Anat and her revenge on Mot for the killing of her brother are obvious. In the end, the seasonal myth is played out on the human level.
Gibson (1978) thinks Rahmay 'The Merciful', co-wife of El with
Athirat, is also the goddess ‘Anat but he fails to take into account the primary source documents. Most Ugaritic scholars point out that the dual names of deities in Ugaritic poetry is an essential part of the verse-form and that two names for the same deity are traditionally mentioned in parallel lines. In the same way
Athirat, is called
Elath (meaning "The Goddess") in paired couplets. The poetic structure can also be seen in early Hebrew verse forms.
‘Anat in Egypt
Anat first appears in
Egypt in the 16th dynasty (the Hyksos period) along with other northwest Semitic deities. She was especially worshipped in her aspect of a war goddess, often paired with the goddess
`Ashtart. In the
Contest Between Horus and Set, these two goddesses appear as daughters of
Re and are given in marriage to the god
Set, who had been identified with the Semitic god
Hadad.
During the
Hyksos period Anat had temples in the Hyksos capital of
Avaris and in Beth-Shan (Palestine) as well as being worshipped in
Memphis. On inscriptions from Memphis of 15th to 12th centuries
BCE, Anat is called "Bin-Ptah", Daughter of
Ptah. She is associated with Reshpu, (
Canaanite:
Resheph) in some texts and sometimes identified with the native Egyptian goddess
Neith. She is sometimes called "
Queen of Heaven". Her iconography varies, but she's usually shown carrying one or more weapons.
In the
New Kingdom Ramesses II made ‘Anat his personal guardian in battle and enlarged Anat's temple in
Pi-Ramesses. Ramesses named his daughter (whom he later married) Bint-Anat 'Daughter of Anat'. His dog appears in a carving in Beit el Wali temple with the name "Anat-in-vigor" and one of his horses was named
‘Ana-herte 'Anat-is-satisfied'.
Anat in Mesopotamia
In
Akkadian the form one would expect
Anat to take would be
Antu earlier
Antum. This would also be the normal feminine form that would be taken by
Anu, the Akkadian form of
An 'Sky', the
Sumerian god of heaven. Antu appears in Akkadian texts mostly as a rather colorless consort of Anu, the mother of
Ishtar in the
Gilgamesh story, but is also identified with the northwest Semitic goddess ‘Anat of essentially the same name. It is unknown whether this is an equation of two originally separate goddesses whose names happened to fall together or whether Anat's cult spread to Mesopotamia where she came to be worshipped as Anu's spouse because the Mesopotamia form of her name suggested she was a counterpart to Anu.
It has also been suggested that the parallelism between the names of the Sumerian goddess,
Inanna, and her West Semitic counterpart,
Ishtar, continued in Canaanite tradition as Anath and
Astarte, particularly in the poetry of
Ugarit. The two goddesses were invariably linked in Ugaritic scripture and are also known to have formed a triad (known from sculpture) with a third goddess whose was given the name/title of
Qadesh (meaning "the holy one"}.
‘Anat in Israel
The goddess ‘Anat is never mentioned in Hebrew scriptures as a goddess, though her name is apparently preserved in the city names
Beth Anath and
Anathoth. Anathoth seems to be a plural form of the name, perhaps a shortening of
bêt ‘anātôt 'House of the ‘Anats', either a reference to many shrines of the goddess or a plural of intensification. The ancient hero
Shamgar son of ‘Anat is mentioned in
Judges 3.31;5:6 which raises the idea that this hero may have been imagined as a demi-god, a mortal son of the goddess. But John Day (2000) notes that a number of
Canaanites known from non-Biblical sources bore that title and theorizes that it was a military designation indicating a warrior under ‘Anat's protection.
Asenath "holy to Anath" was the wife of the Hebrew patriarch Joseph.
In
Elephantine (modern
Aswan) in Egypt, Jewish mercenaries, c.
410 BC, make mention of a goddess called Anat-Yahu (Anat-Yahweh) worshiped in the temple to
Yahweh originally built by Jewish refugees from the Babylonian conquest of Judah.
Anat and Athene
In a
Cyprian inscription (
KAI. 42) the Greek goddess
Athêna Sôteira
Nikê is equated with ‘Anat (who is described in the inscription as the strength of life :
l‘uzza hayim).
Anat is also presumably the goddess whom
Sanchuniathon calls
Athene, a daughter of El, mother unnamed, who with
Hermes (that is
Anubis) councelled El on the making of a sickle and a spear of iron, presumably to use against his father
Uranus. However, in the Baal cycle, that rôle is assigned to
Asherah /
‘Elat and ‘Anat is there called the "Virgin."
(External Link
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Possible late transfigurations
The goddess ‘Atah worshipped at
Palmyra may possibly be in origin identical with ‘Anat. ‘Atah was combined with ‘Ashtart under the name
Atar into the goddess ‘Atar‘atah known to the Hellenes as
Atargatis. If this origin for ‘Atah is correct, then Atargatis is effectively a combining of ‘Ashtart and ‘Anat.
It has also been proposed that
(Indo-)Iranian Anahita meaning 'immaculate' in
Avestan (
a 'not' +
ahit 'unclean') is a variant of
‘Anat. It is however unlikely given that the Indo-Iranian roots of the term are related to the Semitic ones and although - through conflation - Aredvi Sura Anahita (so the full name) inherited much from
Ishtar-
Inanna, the two are considered historically distinct.
In the Book of Zohar, ‘Anat is numbered among the holiest of angelic powers under the name of Anathiel.
‘Anat in popular culture
Further Information
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