Anat

• 1. Introduction

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  Anat earned an unusual compliment from El, the head of the divine assembly in Ugarit. El said to her: "I know you, my daughter, that you are a manly sort, and that none are emotional as you." Those words, preserved on clay tablets from Ugarit, a Bronze Age city on the coast of modern Syria, describe a goddess of warfare and hunting.

  Anat's name appears in at least five ancient writing systems. Most researchers trace her origins to the Amorite culture of upper Mesopotamia. From there, her cult traveled far: she was worshiped in Egypt, attested in Phoenician inscriptions, and left faint traces in the Hebrew Bible.

  How did a warrior goddess from the river valleys of Mesopotamia come to be worshiped in Egyptian temples? What happened when she faced not an army but death itself? And why did an entire century of scholarship describe her in terms the original texts almost entirely fail to support?

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• 2. Hanat of Suhum

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  Hanat, a goddess worshiped in the land of Suhum in Mesopotamia, is the oldest documented candidate for Anat's forerunner. A city in that region bore her name. It has been identified with modern Anah in Iraq. In cuneiform, the city's name could be preceded by the divine sign, marking it as directly named after the goddess.

  Texts from Old Babylonian Mari record that Hanat received two sheep in an offering list from the reign of King Zimri-Lim. Women from the royal palace offered oil to her specifically; she appears as the last of eight deities in a list documenting that custom. Official letters from the area included a formula: "Dagan and Hanat are well." The formula treated the two deities as the principal guardians of the land.

  Her temple in the city of Hanat bore the ceremonial Sumerian name E-shuzianna, meaning "house, true hand of heaven." That naming convention originated among the Sumerians and Akkadians. It outlived the decline of Sumerian as a spoken language. The practice spread through the Mesopotamian cultural sphere, reaching Assyria, the Diyala basin, the kingdom of Mari, and the city of Harran.

  Hammurabi of Babylon patronized the temples of the city of Hanat, a fact recorded in a later inscription from the area. Wilfred G. Lambert argued that Hanat and Anat were the same deity; several other Assyriologists, including Gebhard J. Selz and Volkert Haas, accepted that identification. The Arabic word anwat, meaning "force" or "violence," has been proposed as a cognate of her name. In first-millennium inscriptions from the area, her name was written simply as an-at.

  Hanat appears in four types of theophoric names for women and ten types for men in the Mari texts. One bearer of such a name, a certain Habdi-Hanat, was assigned to manufacture a throne for Dagan in Mari itself.

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• 3. The Warrior of Ugarit

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  In the standard Ugaritic list of deities, Anat appears between Athirat and Shapash. She held a central place in the city's pantheon and received regular offerings. Both the local Ugaritic language and the Hurrian language appear in documents recording her cult.

  The epithet btlt was applied to Anat more than to almost any other deity. As of 2008, scholars had identified it in forty-nine passages. Only the epithet aliyn Baal, meaning "Baal the mighty," was more widely attested across the Ugaritic corpus. The term is usually translated as "maiden" and marks its recipient as young and nubile. It does not imply virginity in the modern sense. An Akkadian cognate, batultu, appears primarily in legal texts and refers to a woman's age rather than her sexual or marital status.

  Anat was described using both a sword and a bow. Sources including KTU 1.114 and KTU 1.22 also portray her as a huntress. Peggy L. Day and Mark Smith both observed that her characteristic pursuits were ones Ugaritic culture classified as masculine. Dennis Pardee called her a "tomboy goddess," a characterization Izak Cornelius also adopted.

  Textual sources describe Anat as winged and capable of flight. A cylinder seal from the region shows a winged goddess wearing a horned helmet, standing on a bull, and holding a lion. Whether every such image necessarily depicts Anat is uncertain. Other local goddesses could have been depicted with wings through the influence of Mesopotamian iconography.

  Seventeen individuals bearing theophoric names invoking Anat have been identified in Ugaritic texts. One of them was a king of the nearby city of Siyannu. Among Ugaritic goddesses, only Shapash attracted more theophoric namesakes, with sixty-six individuals. Wilfred H. van Soldt observed that Anat appears in personal names far less often than her prominence in the myths would suggest.

  A further sequence of epithets in the text KTU 1.108 calls her "mistress of kingship," "mistress of dominion," and "mistress of the high heavens." Dennis Pardee suggested that the fourth epithet in that sequence, vocalized as kuptu, may mirror her connection to the atef crown in Egyptian sources.

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• 4. A Contested Character

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  Past scholarship described Anat as a "patroness of wanton love" and a "fertility goddess." These terms appeared in publications through the late twentieth century. Jo Ann Hackett argued that such characterizations reflected an exaggeration of the link between fertility and female deities in ancient Near Eastern studies. She called the label an example of perceiving women "in terms of biological functions," derived from contemporary speculation rather than from the available ritual texts.

  Julia M. Asher-Greve noted that the fertility category should be understood as an "innovation of early modern work in comparative religion." It was not an accurate reflection of ancient religious practice. Theodore J. Lewis found that KTU 1.96, once cited as evidence for a sexually active Anat, does not name the goddess at all. The older reading was based on a photograph later described as "washed out and epigraphically useless."

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• 5. Ally of Baal

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  Yam, Baal's rival for the kingship of the gods, sent messengers to the divine assembly. Anat and Ashtart together stopped Baal from attacking them. Anat seized his right hand; Ashtart seized his left. The scene is a textbook case of Ugaritic poetic parallelism. The Baal Cycle, preserved on tablets KTU 1.1-6, uses their paired names across multiple passages.

  A section of the Baal Cycle describes Anat confronting a human army and gloating through the battle while her heart filled with joy. She attached the heads of warriors to her back and girded their hands to her waist. Baal sent her a message of peace, which finally brought her to a halt.

  When Baal's messengers Gapnu and Ugar bring word of his troubles, Anat responds by cataloguing her past victories. The list names Yam twice under different titles, followed by Tunnanu, a sea serpent. It also includes a creature called "the twisting serpent" and one described as "the dominant one who has seven heads." Other adversaries she names include Arsh, Atik, Dhabibu, and a flame-demon called Ishatu. Wayne T. Pitard noted that Yam's presence in this list is difficult to reconcile with the narrative's focus on Baal defeating the sea god.

  Anat attempts to pressure El into granting Baal a palace of his own and fails. She then helps Baal approach Athirat, who might intercede with El as a mediator. When Athirat notices them approaching, she reacts with alarm, then relaxes when she realizes they carry gifts. Anat asks her to speak to El on Baal's behalf.

  After Baal is killed by Mot, the sun goddess Shapash discovers the body. Shapash and Anat carry the corpse to Mount Saphon for burial. Anat tells El that Baal is dead and that a substitute king must be found. She also remarks that Athirat will be pleased, either from antagonism toward Baal or because she can now appoint a new ruler.

  When the tablets resume after a gap estimated at roughly thirty lines, Anat confronts Mot and kills him. She threshes his remains with a blade and winnows them with a sieve. She burns them in a fire, grinds them with a millstone, and scatters the result for birds to eat. John Gibson argued this was not a reflection of an agricultural ritual. In the final surviving fragment of the Baal Cycle, Mot is mentioned as complaining to Baal about his treatment at Anat's hands.

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• 6. The Bow and the Consequences

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  The craftsman god Kothar-wa-Khasis gave a bow to Aqhat, the son of a legendary king named Danel. Anat desired it. The Epic of Aqhat, preserved on tablets KTU 1.17-19, records what happened next.

  Aqhat refused to give it up. His response at KTU 1.17 VI 40 remains ambiguous. It can be read as a question, "now do womenfolk hunt," or as an ironic statement. Either way, Anat perceived the refusal as impiety. She went to El and requested permission to punish him. El granted it.

  Anat then invited Aqhat on a hunt. In secret, she arranged with a man named Yatipan, described as a "Sutean warrior," to kill him. Yatipan carried out the killing, but the bow was broken in the assault. Aqhat's body was devoured by birds of prey. Unnamed messengers told Danel that Anat was responsible for his son's disappearance.

  The surviving fragments of the narrative focus on Aqhat's burial and the revenge quest of his sister Pughat. At one point Yatipan encounters Pughat and mistakes her for Anat, prompting him to boast about the killing. No surviving section of the text records any consequences for Anat.

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• 7. Ramesses and the Nile

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  Ramesses II named a daughter Bint-Anat, meaning "daughter of Anat." He named a war hound "Anat is strength." He named a sword after the goddess as well. His inscriptions call him her "beloved" and refer to her as his mother, though the qualities he attributed to her were purely martial.

  A statue from his reign, found at a temple in Tanis, shows Anat with her hand on Ramesses' shoulder. An accompanying inscription identifies both figures. One of his successors, Ramesses III, referred to Anat as the goddess who protected him in battle. A temple dedicated to her in Beisan was built during Ramesses III's reign.

  Anat likely arrived in Egypt through contact with the Hyksos, who ruled the Nile Delta for approximately one century with Avaris as their capital. Christiane Zivie-Coche notes that as of 2011, no material evidence placed her in Egyptian religious contexts before the reign of Ramesses II. Other foreign deities, including Resheph and Haurun, had appeared in Egyptian records as far back as the reign of Amenhotep II.

  Egyptian artists portrayed Anat wearing the atef crown, a headdress associated with Upper Egypt. She is depicted carrying a spear and shield, a fenestrated battle axe, or sometimes the was-scepter. A second temple dedicated to her has been identified at the Temple of Hibis in the Kharga Oasis.

  A thirteenth-century BCE ostracon records a festival of Anat held in Gaza. It is a copy of a letter from a scribe named Ipuy to a garrison commander named Bak-en-amun. The details of the festival itself are not preserved. Anat's presence in the Egyptian pantheon lasted into the Roman period. She appears among the deities at the Dendera Temple complex and alongside Khonsu and Mut on a Greco-Roman style stele.

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• 8. Cyprus, Canaan, and After

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  Four inscribed votive objects dedicated to Anat have been found at Idalion on Cyprus. Two are particularly telling. One is a horse binder dated to the seventh century BCE. The other is a spearhead dated to the fifth or early fourth century BCE. A bilingual Phoenician-Greek inscription from Larnakas tis Lapithou equates Anat with "Athena Soteria Nike." Peggy L. Day proposed that the equation rested on both goddesses being regarded as non-sexually active in their traditions. Walter Burkert noted iconographic parallels between martial statuettes called Palladion found in Greece and comparable figures from Syria.

  Shamgar ben Anat, named at Judges 3:31, is the only certain reference to the goddess in the Hebrew Bible. Shamgar is credited with killing six hundred Philistines, and most researchers treat the account as a late addition to the Book of Judges. Nili Shupak proposed that "ben Anat" was a cognomen marking its bearer as a warrior dedicated to the goddess. Other military theophoric names of the same form are documented. The place names Beth-Anath appear at Joshua 19:38 and Judges 1:33. A similar form, bn nt, appears on an arrowhead dated to the eleventh century BCE. It also appears on a seal with a Hebrew inscription dated to the eighth or seventh century BCE.

  In Mesopotamia, the city of Anat remained her main cult center into the eighth century BCE. A stela from around 760 BCE, bearing the name of Shamash-resh-usur, governor of Suhu, depicts Anat alongside Ishtar and Adad. His son Ninurta-kudurri-usur later renovated the E-shuzianna temple. His inscription records that the Assyrians had once desecrated a statue of Anat and hidden it away. Ninurta-kudurri-usur described the goddess as "the perfect lady, most exalted of the goddesses, most powerful of the goddesses."

  The name Anat, written in Hebrew script, is commonly given to girls in present-day Israel. It is one of the Biblical names introduced by the Zionist Movement and was not documented among earlier Jewish communities. A deity whose name first appeared in cuneiform from a city on the Euphrates is still carried by people today.

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