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Anunna reminds one forcibly of the god Anu and of the goddess Anunit, and the element ak is quite a common afformative in Babylonian substantives, conveying a certain emphatic meaning to the word.
The symbol is either a simple circle, a quartered disk a four-rayed orb of a more elaborate character. San or Sansi had a wife, Ai, Gula, or Anunit, of whom it now follows to speak. Al, GULA, or ANUNIT. Ai, Gula, or Anunit, was the female power of the sun, and was commonly associated with San in temples and invocations.
After Babylon came the old sanctuaries in the ancient religious centers of the south, the temples to Shamash and his consort at Sippar and Larsa, the temples to Sin at Ur and Harran, to the old Ishtar or Anunit at Agade, to Nanâ in Erech.
At that time there was already a sanctuary to Anunit within the precincts of E-Babbara. Members of the Cassite dynasty devote themselves to the restoration of this sanctuary. Through a subsequent invasion of the nomads, the cult was interrupted and the great statue of Shamash destroyed.
So one of these predecessors, Zabu, restores the temple of Shamash at Sippar, and that of Anunit at Agade. Hammurabi, besides his work at Sippar, builds a temple to Innanna at Hallabi. Babylon, however, is the beloved city of Marduk, and upon its beautification and improvement Hammurabi expends his chief energy.
It is curious that the eight-rayed star became at an early period the universal emblem of divinity: but perhaps we can only conclude from this the stellar origin of the worship generally, and not any special pre-eminence or priority of Anunit over other deities.
Still another name of the goddess is Anunit, which appears to have been peculiar to the North Babylonian city Agade, and emphasizes her descent from "Anu," the god of heaven. Her temple at Agade, known as E-ul-mash, is the object of Sargon's devotion, which makes her, with Bel and Shamash, the oldest triad of gods mentioned in the Babylonian inscriptions.
In Agade Anunit has a similar rôle; in Lagash Nina was the determiner of fate, and the mother of the goddesses. +762+. These names appear to be titles signifying 'mistress, 'lady, and this is probably the meaning of the name of the great goddess who finally ousted or absorbed her sisters, Ishtar.
From the same list we learn that there was a temple to Marduk in Ashur in which the cult of the Shamash, Sarpanitum, Ramman, Ninib, Anunit was also carried on; similarly, in the temples of Ashur, of Gula, and of Ninib, other gods were worshipped.
But the name which finally displaces all others, is Ishtar. Where the name originated has not yet been ascertained, as little as its etymology, but it seems to belong to Northern Babylonia rather than to the south. In time, all the names that we have been considering Innanna, Nanâ, and Anunit became merely so many designations of Ishtar.
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