Anshar

He hears the news, cries out “Woe!” and bites his lip. That is the first time the Babylonian creation epic lets Anshar do anything more than exist, and it is a very human reaction for a god whose name means the whole of heaven.

Anshar belongs to the story’s second breath. In the opening lines of Enuma Elish, before heaven had a name, the fresh waters of Apsu and the salt waters of Tiamat mingled, and out of them came Lahmu and Lahamu. While those two were still growing, a further pair was made that outstripped them: Anshar and Kishar. They lengthened their days and multiplied their years. Their son was Anu, who equalled his father, and Anu fathered Nudimmud, better known as Ea, who was stronger still than his grandfather. Each generation outdoes the last. The poem states it plainly and leaves the reader to work out what that means for the oldest ones.

The names carry the cosmology on their surface. AN.ŠÁR is written with the signs for heaven and for totality, KI.ŠÁR with earth and totality, so the couple are, word for word, the whole sky and the whole ground. Britannica calls them the twin horizons of sky and earth, and N. K. Sandars rendered the birth line as the lines of sky and earth stretched where horizons meet. Other lists give Anu different parents, a pair called Alala and Belili, which is a reminder that the genealogy was a scholarly construction and not a single fixed creed.

Then comes the crisis. The young gods are noisy, Apsu plots to silence them, Ea kills Apsu, and Tiamat, goaded, raises an army: eleven monsters with poison in their veins instead of blood, giant serpents, the scorpion-man, the savage dog, and over them her new consort Qingu with the Tablet of Destinies fastened to his breast. Ea walks to Anshar with this report and delivers it in full. The old god’s answer is not comfort but blame. You started this war, he tells Ea. You killed Apsu. Now find Tiamat’s equal.

Ea calms him with praise, addressing him twice over as “deep mind, who decrees destiny”, and Anshar sends him to soothe Tiamat with an incantation. Ea sees what she is planning, stops, falls silent and turns back. Anshar, in intense fury, sends his own son Anu, the strongest arm he has. Anu goes the same road, sees the same thing and comes back with almost the same words. Her cry was too loud. He was afraid.

What follows is one of the quietest scenes in the epic. Anshar lapses into silence, staring at the ground. He nods to Ea and shakes his head. Around him the Igigi and the Anunnaki sit tight-lipped, and no god will go out against Tiamat. The king of the gods, the father of the great gods, is angry in his heart and has no one left to send.

Ea has one card left, his own son. He calls Marduk into a private room and tells him to go before Anshar and calm him with a look. Marduk walks into the presence of the old king, and Anshar, seeing him, is filled with satisfaction. He kisses Marduk on the lips and takes away his fear. The young god promises that Anshar will soon tread on Tiamat’s neck, and then names his price: an assembly, an exalted destiny, and the right to decree destinies himself in place of all of them. It is the power Anshar’s own epithet claims for him, and he agrees to hand it over.

Anshar’s last great act as king is to throw a party. He summons his vizier Kakka and sends him to Lahmu and Lahamu, the gods his fathers, to bring every god to his presence to sit at table, eat grain and drink ale, and fix Marduk’s destiny. They come, kiss one another in the assembly, strain the sweet liquor through their drinking straws and grow merry and carefree, and in that mood they make Marduk their champion. Heaven’s constitution was changed over beer.

The rest of the epic belongs to Marduk, but Anshar keeps appearing at the edges of it. Marduk, facing Tiamat, accuses her of stirring up trouble against Anshar, king of the gods. His victory is described as victory for Anshar over all his foes. When he returns, Anshar embraces him and proclaims his title, Victorious King. In the naming ceremony at the end it is Anshar who first gives Marduk the exalted name Asalluhi, and Anshar, Lahmu and Lahamu each call him by three of his names before telling the younger gods to do the same. The old king presides over his own replacement and seems pleased about it.

Outside the epic the record thins sharply. Nicole Brisch, writing for the Ancient Mesopotamian Gods and Goddesses project, finds no evidence of any cult place or worship of Anshar and Kishar, and describes them as belonging to an invented mythology whose purpose was a new cosmology for Marduk. Their iconography is unknown. Anshar may appear in two Sumerian literary texts, though the identification is not secure. Nobody seems to have prayed to him. Scholars used him instead, as a piece in the grammar of the gods: god lists could equate him with Anu, and in Neo-Babylonian Uruk Anshar and Kishar were identified with Anu and his consort Antu. Later expository and ritual texts list him among defeated primordial figures, alongside Asag, Enmesharra and Qingu, and one broken tablet of the Seleucid or Parthian period, which calls him the father of Anu, may describe his death at the hands of Enki.

His most consequential afterlife came from Assyria. From the reign of Sargon II the scribes began writing the name of Ashur, the national god, with the signs AN.ŠÁR, and under Sennacherib that spelling became standard. The aim was seniority: in the Babylonian genealogy Marduk was Anshar’s great-grandson, so a god written as Anshar outranked him. Assyrian copies of Enuma Elish from Assur and Nineveh then put Ashur into Marduk’s role while keeping the old king in his place, which left the poem with two gods called Anshar, the ancestor and the hero. W. G. Lambert thought the change superficial and said it left the plot in chaos; others read it as deliberate. Ashur is a separate god with his own page and his own history. The primordial Anshar was simply the spelling he borrowed.

The name outlived cuneiform. The Neoplatonist Damascius, writing in the sixth century CE and drawing on the older Greek writer Eudemus, set out a Babylonian genealogy in which, after Tauthe and Apason and the pairs that followed, came Kissare and Assoros, and from them Anos, Illinos and Aos: Anu, Enlil and Ea. The order is recognisably the epic’s, though Damascius gives Anshar Enlil as a son as well.

Anshar’s power, such as it is, is the power of seniority. He decrees destiny, he convenes the assembly, he names the king, and the gods of every later generation call him father. His weakness is the same thing seen from the other side. Every generation after him is stronger, his son and his grandson both turn back from Tiamat, and when the danger is real the most he can do is stare at the floor and then give his authority to someone younger. The epic never pretends otherwise.

Frequently Asked Questions

Who is Anshar in Mesopotamian mythology?

Anshar is a primordial Mesopotamian god whose name means “the whole of heaven”. In the Babylonian creation epic Enuma Elish he and his consort Kishar, “the whole of earth”, are born after Lahmu and Lahamu and become the parents of the sky god Anu. He serves as king of the gods until the rise of Marduk.

What does Anshar do in the Enuma Elish?

When Ea tells him that Tiamat has raised an army of monsters, Anshar sends first Ea and then Anu to confront her, and both turn back. Anshar falls silent until Ea brings his son Marduk, whom Anshar kisses and accepts as champion. Anshar then sends his vizier Kakka to summon the gods to a banquet where they make Marduk their king, and after the victory he gives Marduk the name Asalluhi.

Who are Anshar’s parents and children?

In Enuma Elish Anshar and Kishar are born after Lahmu and Lahamu, in the line descending from Apsu and Tiamat. Their son is Anu, who fathers Ea, who in turn fathers Marduk. The Greek writer Damascius gives a similar genealogy in which Kissare and Assoros are the parents of Anos, Illinos and Aos, meaning Anu, Enlil and Ea.

Was Anshar worshipped?

There is no evidence of temples, cult places or worship devoted to Anshar as a primordial god, and no image of him is known. He appears almost entirely in Enuma Elish and in scholarly god lists, which sometimes equate him with Anu.

Are Anshar and Ashur the same god?

No. Ashur was the national god of Assyria, while Anshar is a primordial god of the Babylonian creation epic. From the reign of Sargon II, Assyrian scribes wrote Ashur’s name with the same signs as Anshar, AN.ŠÁR, so that Ashur would rank above Marduk, and an Assyrian version of Enuma Elish put Ashur in Marduk’s role.

Related Entries

Tiamat, Apsu, Anu (Mesopotamian), Enki, Marduk, Kingu, Ashur, Enlil, Anunnaki, Igigi, Asag, Mushhushshu, Girtablilu, Kumarbi, Uranus, Cronus