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Updated: June 18, 2025
Others, like Anshar-gal and Enshar, seem to be pure abstractions perhaps only 'variants' of Anshar, and the number ten may have some mystical significance that escapes us.
Evidently, then, just as the Babylonian theologians sought to glorify Marduk at the expense of Bel, so Assyrian theologians, or such as stood under Assyrian influences, did not hesitate to replace Marduk by their own favorite, Anshar. In the chapter on the 'Cosmology' we will have occasion to come back to this point.
Arch., xviii. 19. See Jensen, Kosmologie, pp. 224, 225. Cory's Ancient Fragments, p. 58. See above, pp. 198, 199. See above, pp. 198, 199. I avoid the term "Sumerian" here, because I feel convinced that the play on Anshar is of an entirely artificial character and has no philological basis. See below, pp. 421-423. IIR. 54, no. 3.
This is indicated by the occurrence of the triad Anu, Bel, and Ea as early as the days of Gudea, and it is this triad which in the creation epic follows upon the older series symbolized by Anshar and Kishar.
Then follows the successive generation of two pairs of deities, Lakhmu and Lakhamu, and Anshar and Kishar, long ages separating the two generations from each other and from the birth of the great gods which subsequently takes place. Quaestiones de primis principiis, cap. 125; ed. Kopp, p. 384.
Anshar, Alala, Belili, Lakhmu, and Du'ar were such deities. To each of these an associate was given, in accord with the established doctrine of 'duality' that characterizes the more advanced of the ancient Semitic cults in general.
Marduk's declaration is then repeated. Upon hearing the message Lakhmu and Lakhamu and "all the Igigi" are distressed, but are powerless to avert the coming disaster. The formal declaration of war having been sent, the followers of Anshar assemble at a meal which is realistically described: They ate bread, they drank wine. The sweet wine took away their senses.
Their revolt at the ordered "way" of the gods was a necessary preliminary to the incorporation of the Dragon myths, in which Ea and Marduk are the heroes. Here they appear as entirely beneficent gods of the primaeval water, undisturbed by storms, in whose quiet depths the equally beneficent deities Lakhmu and Lakhamu, Anshar and Kishar, were generated.
In a second form it was Bel to whom the victory was ascribed, and this Bel of the triad, we have seen, was En-lil, the chief god of Nippur; but both Anshar and Bel must give way to the patron deity of the city of Babylon Marduk. Anshar-Ashur, the head of the Assyrian pantheon, could not be tolerated by the Babylonian priests as a power superior to Marduk.
Tiâmat has transferred to Kingu and the eleven monsters all authority, and it is only after they are defeated that Tiâmat but Tiâmat alone enters the fray. The rage of Tiâmat is directed against Anshar, Kishar, and their offspring. Anu, Bel, and Ea, while standing at the head of the latter, are not the only gods introduced.
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