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While in the list above referred to, Lakhmu and Lakhamu are put in a class with Anshar and Kishar, in the creation epic they form a separate class, and Delitzsch has justly recognized, in this separation, the intention of the compilers to emphasize an advance in the evolution of chaos to order, which is the keynote of the Babylonian cosmology.
On the other hand, it is difficult to suppose that Anshar should have played so significant a part in Babylonian traditions and yet find no mention in the text of the rulers of Babylonia.
The third tablet is taken up with the preliminaries for the great contest, and is interesting chiefly because of the insight it affords us into Babylonian methods of literary composition. Anshar sends Gaga to the hostile camp with the formal announcement of Marduk's readiness to take up the cause of the gods.
It is unfortunate that the second tablet is so badly preserved. We are dependent largely upon conjecture for what follows the failure of Anu's mission. From references in subsequent tablets, it seems certain that Anshar sends out Ea as a second messenger and that Ea also fails.
The two in combination represent a pair like Lakhmu and Lakhamu. As the latter pair embrace the world of monsters, so Anshar and Kishar stand in the theological system for the older order of gods, a class of deities antecedent to the series of which Anu, Bel, and Ea are the representatives.
The message proper begins as follows: Anshar your son has sent me, The desire of his heart he has entrusted to me. Tiâmat, our mother is full of hate towards us, With all her might she is bitterly enraged. The eleven associates that Tiâmat has ranged on her side are again enumerated, together with the appointment of Kingu as chief of the terror-inspiring army.
The supposition that Ashur was not, therefore, the original name of the god receives a certain measure of force from this consideration. Moreover, there are indications that there actually existed another form of his name, namely, Anshar. This form Anshar would, according to the phonetic laws prevailing in Assyria, tend to become Ash-shar.
By a play upon his name, resting upon an arbitrary division of Anshar into An and Shar, the deity becomes the 'one that embraces all that is above. The element An is the same that we have in Anu, and is the 'ideographic' form for 'high' and 'heaven. Shar signifies 'totality' and has some connection with a well-known Babylonian word for 'king. The natural consort to an all-embracing upper power is a power that 'embraces all that is below'; and since Ki is the ideographic form for 'earth, it is evident that Ki-Shar is a creation of the theologians, introduced in order to supply Anshar with an appropriate associate.
If, as has been made plausible by Hommel, Nineveh, the later capital of the Assyrian empire, represents a settlement made by inhabitants of a Nineveh situated in the south, there is no reason why a southern deity bearing the name Anshar should not have been transferred from the south to the north. The attempt has been made to explain the change from Anshar to Ashur.
Moreover, Assyria had her priests and schools, and we are permitted to see in the introduction of Anshar in the creation epic, a concession that reflects the influence, no doubt indirect, and in part perhaps unconscious, but for all that, the decided influence of the north over the south.
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