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Ana, like Il and Ra, is thought to have been a word originally signifying "God," in the highest sense. The root occurs probably in the Annedotus and Oannes of Berosus, as well as in Philo-Byblius's Anobret.
Among the countries under his sway are enumerated Elam, Persia, Assyria, Cilicia, Coele-Syria, Syria of Damascus, Phoenicia, Galilee, Gilead, Bashan, Judsea, Philistia, Goshen, and Egypt generally. The passage of Berosus is of a more partial character.
Nebuchadnezzar, it is plain, was not content with such a measure of severity as was needed to secure his own interests, but took a pleasure in the wanton infliction of suffering on those who had provoked his resentment. On the other hand, we obtain from the native writer, Berosus, one amiable trait which deserves a cursory mention.
And Herodotus does indeed give us this history; nay, and Berosus, who wrote of the affairs of Chaldea, makes mention of this king Sennacherib, and that he ruled over the Assyrians, and that he made an expedition against all Asia and Egypt; and says thus: 5.
Now I have for witnesses to what I have said, all those that have written Antiquities, both among the Greeks and barbarians; for even Manetho, who wrote the Egyptian History, and Berosus, who collected the Chaldean Monuments, and Mochus, and Hestieus, and, besides these, Hieronymus the Egyptian, and those who composed the Phoenician History, agree to what I here say: Hesiod also, and Hecatseus, Hellanicus, and Acusilaus; and, besides these, Ephorus and Nicolaus relate that the ancients lived a thousand years.
The world has, unhappily, lost the work of Berosus, the Babylonish priest, who, under the Seleucidæ, did for Chaldæa what Manetho was doing almost at the same moment for Egypt. Berosus compiled the history of Chaldæa from the national chronicles and traditions. The loss of his work is still more to be lamented than that of Manetho.
We are better, or, rather, less ill, informed, in the case of the first Chaldee Empire. The fragments of Berosus give us some knowledge of its beginnings, so far, at least, as the story was preserved in the national traditions, and the remains by which tradition can be tested and corrected are more numerous than in the case of Susiana.
It is perhaps contained also in the word by which Berosus designates this same creature Oannes which may be explained as Hoa-ana, or "the god Hoa."
The last of the Athenian philosophers, Damascius, has certainly left us some information as to the Babylonish deities which seems to have been taken from authentic sources. This, together with a few fragments from the work of Berosus, is all that Hellenic tradition has handed down to us.
This is what Berosus relates concerning the forementioned king, as he relates many other things about him also in the third book of his Chaldean History; wherein he complains of the Grecian writers for supposing, without any foundation, that Babylon was built by Semiramis, queen of Assyria, and for her false pretense to those wonderful edifices thereto buildings at Babylon, do no way contradict those ancient and relating, as if they were her own workmanship; as indeed in these affairs the Chaldean History cannot but be the most credible.
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