Atanua

Atanua ('Dawn') is the consort of Atea and the mother of the races of the Marquesan pantheon. She arose out of the two cosmogonic struggles — Atea's defeat of Tanaoa (Darkness) and Ono's destruction of Mutu-hei (Silence) — and was taken by Atea to wife, bearing the host of lesser deities and the human lineage; Marquesan genealogies traced the people of Hiva back to the progenitors Atea and Atanua. In one tradition her miscarriage gave the sea its origin, the oceans filled with her amniotic fluid.

Domains

• dawn and daybreak
• motherhood of gods and the human lineage

Powers

• Embodiment of the dawn
• Maternal generativity (mother of the races)

Epithets

• Atanua

Relations

• spouse: Atea
• mother of: Tiki

Sources

• E. S. Craighill Handy, The Native Culture in the Marquesas (Bishop Museum Bulletin 9, 1923); Roland B. Dixon, Oceanic Mythology (Mythology of All Races vol. 9, 1916), ch. I.