Anu
Sumerian deity
Anu (Akkadian: 𒀭𒀭 akkDAN, Anu‹m› or Ilu or An (Sumerian: 𒀭 AN, from 𒀭 an "Sky, Heaven") is the divine personification of the sky, supreme God, and ancestor of all the deities in ancient Mesopotamian religion. Anu was believed to be the supreme source of all authority, for the other gods and for all mortal rulers.
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Quotes about Anu
edit- Upon the hill of heaven and earth, An spawned the Anuna gods.
- Anonymous, Debate between Sheep and Grain (mid to late 3rd millennium BCE). [1]
- An lifted his head in pride and brought forth a good day.
- Anonymous, Debate between Winter and Summer (mid to late 3rd millennium BCE). [2]
- Even the gods took fright at the Deluge,
they left and went up to the heaven of Anu,
lying like dogs curled up in the open.- Anonymous, Epic of Gilgamesh, The Flood, Tablet VI, Third Dynasty of Ur ( c. 2100 BCE).
- [T]he great lady of heaven delivered those words to An. Having heard those words, An slapped his thighs in [annoyance], his voice filled with sighs of grief: "What has my child done? She has become greater than me! What has Inana done? She has become greater than me! From now on, the normal length of daylight becomes shorter, and daylight converts to night-time. From today, when the day's watch is three units long, daylight is equal to night-time." And now, when day began, it was indeed so.
- After the E-ana was captured by Inanna, in Inanna and An by Anonymous, Old Babylonian period, at The Electronic Text Corpus of Sumerian Literature.
- Father, let me have the Bull of Heaven
To kill Gilgamesh and his city.
For if you do not grant me the Bull of Heaven,
I will pull down the Gates of Hell itself,
Crush the doorposts and flatten the door,
And I will let the dead leave
And let the dead roam the earth
And they shall eat the living.
The dead will overwhelm all the living!- Inanna to Anu, in the Epic of Gilgamesh, Tablet VI, Third Dynasty of Ur ( c. 2100 BCE).
- My brother, I want to tell you something -- pay attention to my speech. [...] Utu, my twin, I want to tell you something -- pay attention to my speech. [...] My spouse, has made love to me, has kissed me. I wanted [the E-ana] for him. [...] But majestic An would not give him E-ana. The heavens are ours, the earth is ours: E-ana should be captured from An.
- Váruṇa is clearly comparable to the Sumerian deity An. Just as Váruṇa is often styled a king in the Ṛgveda, and is king of both gods and men, or all that exists, so An is associated with the highest authority on earth, that kingship.
- Levitt, S. H. (2012). Vedic-ancient Mesopotamian interconnections and the dating of the Indian tradition. Annals of the Bhandarkar Oriental Research Institute, 93, 137-192.
