Anu (Mesopotamian)

Region/Culture: Mesopotamia and Ancient Near East
Mythos: Sumerian Mythology, Akkadian/Assyrian/Babylonian Mythology, Mesopotamian Mythology
Primary Type/Nature: Gods and Deities
Mythical Attributes: The personified sky and king of the gods, who allots divine offices in heaven and confers legitimate kingship on earth.
Role in Mythos: The supreme but remote authority of the pantheon, inhabiting the highest heaven and handing down decrees regarded as unalterable.
Relation to Humans: Humans owed their kings to him, since rightful rule was held to flow from his sanction, yet he was acknowledged in prayer far more often than he was actively worshipped. When he dealt with a mortal directly, as with the sage Adapa, the encounter decided the fate of more than one person.

Far above the two lower heavens, on a floor of reddish luludānitu stone, stands a throne that mostly sits still. The god who owns it has little need to move. He speaks, and the duties of the other gods are reassigned. He inclines his head, and a man a thousand miles below becomes fit to be king. This is An to the Sumerians, Anu to the Akkadians who came after, and the word is also the ordinary word for the sky. He is the sky thinking, deciding, presiding.

He belongs to the oldest layer of the Mesopotamian gods, the generation before the gods who actually run things. In the Sumerian telling the primeval waters, Nammu, bring forth An the sky and Ki the earth, and the two lie pressed together until their son Enlil, the wind, forces them apart. An rises and keeps the sky for his portion. Enlil carries off the earth. From that first separation the cosmos takes its shape, and An takes his distance, which he never really loses.

What he holds is authority in its purest, least active form. In the assembly of the gods he assigns offices and can lift a lesser god’s rank with a word, and the decisions he hands down are treated as fixed and past appeal. He is called the father of the gods, and the title is close to literal. Inscriptions from third-millennium Lagash name him father of Gatumdug, of Baba, of Ningirsu, and later texts make much of the pantheon his children one way or another. His consort is Antu, a feminine echo of his own name, sometimes called Uras. The Anunnaki, those grave judges of the dead, are counted among his descendants.

Picturing him is the problem. The Mesopotamians rarely showed Anu as a figure at all. By the close of the third millennium his sign had settled into a horned crown resting on a seat or a temple platform, the same crown that marked kings and high priests as bearers of supreme authority. The headgear stood in for the god. His other emblems were the star-shaped cuneiform sign that simply means “god,” the sacred number sixty, and a celestial bull. To go looking for his face is to come away with a chair, a crown, and a number.

His house on earth was the Eanna at Uruk, the House of Heaven, and there is a quiet irony in what became of it: the temple raised for the sky god was in time given over to Inanna, the restless goddess of love and war, while Anu withdrew further into the background. He was honored in name and seldom approached in practice. Prayers acknowledged him and then moved on to gods who might actually answer.

When he does step into a story, it is usually because someone wants the one thing only he can grant. In the Epic of Gilgamesh his daughter Ishtar, humiliated by the hero, climbs to heaven and demands the Bull of Heaven to loose on his city. Anu objects. He warns that the creature’s release will bring seven years of famine to Uruk. She threatens to break the gates of the underworld and raise the dead to devour the living, and he relents. The bull comes down, the heroes kill it, and afterward it is Anu, with Ea and Shamash, who rules that one of the two men must die for the offense. The cost lands on Enkidu.

The pattern repeats. In the tale of Adapa, a mortal sage breaks the wing of the south wind and is summoned to Anu’s court to answer for it. There Anu offers him the bread and water of eternal life. Adapa, warned beforehand by the cunning god Ea that the offer would be poison, refuses it, and so loses immortality for all humankind over a misunderstanding at the threshold of heaven. When the monster Anzû steals the Tablet of Destinies, the document that encodes the decrees of the universe, it is Anu who commands the assembled gods to bring it back. He does not chase it himself. He issues the order, and order is restored beneath him.

That is the shape of his power and its limit at once. His authority is total and his involvement is minimal. He grants kingship and fixes fates and parcels out the offices of heaven, yet across thousands of years of myth he rarely lifts a hand, fights a battle, or takes a wound. In time he ceded his foremost place first to Enlil and then, in Babylon, to Marduk, who absorbed his functions while leaving his rank untouched. He is never overthrown. He simply comes to matter more as a source than as an actor, the way a signature matters more than the hand that holds the pen.

His weakness is the underside of his greatness. A god who decides everything and does almost nothing depends wholly on others to carry out his will, and a remoteness that begins as majesty ends as near-irrelevance to the people who once built him the first great temple. He kept his throne to the end of Mesopotamian religion, on through Assyria and into the Seleucid age, when a new sanctuary at Uruk briefly returned him to the heart of his old city’s worship. The sky never stopped being his. It just stopped, for long stretches, having anything it needed to say.

Frequently Asked Questions

Who is Anu in Mesopotamian mythology?

Anu is the personified sky and the king of the gods in Mesopotamian religion, known as An in Sumerian and Anu in Akkadian. He belongs to the oldest generation of gods and is called the father of the gods, the source of legitimate authority for both deities and human kings. Despite his supreme rank, he is a remote figure who rarely acts directly in the myths.

What is Anu the god of?

Anu is the god of the sky and of supreme authority itself. In heaven he allots offices to the other gods and can raise their status; on earth he confers kingship, and his decisions are regarded as unalterable. His name is also the ordinary Sumerian and Akkadian word for “sky.”

What is Anu’s symbol?

Anu’s main symbol is the horned crown of divinity, often shown resting on a throne or temple platform rather than worn by a depicted figure. His other emblems include the star-shaped cuneiform sign meaning “god,” the sacred number sixty, and a celestial bull. The Mesopotamians rarely portrayed Anu as a body, letting the crown stand in for the god.

What role does Anu play in the Epic of Gilgamesh?

In the Epic of Gilgamesh, Anu gives the Bull of Heaven to his daughter Ishtar after she demands it to punish Gilgamesh, though he first warns that its release will cause seven years of famine in Uruk. After Gilgamesh and Enkidu kill the bull, Anu joins Ea and Shamash in decreeing that one of the two heroes must die, and the punishment falls on Enkidu.

Why was Anu rarely worshipped despite being king of the gods?

Anu was acknowledged as the supreme god but became increasingly remote over time, so worshippers honored him in name while directing active prayer and ritual to gods who seemed more likely to respond. His chief temple, the Eanna at Uruk, was eventually given over to the goddess Inanna. He retained his high rank throughout Mesopotamian history even as Enlil and later Marduk took over his practical functions.