Anshar
Mesopotamian · deity · primordial · Recorded classification
Anshar is heaven taken as a totality — not the sky-god Anu, who is his son, but the whole of the upper region considered as one thing. He and Kishar are almost confined to Enuma Elish; outside that poem they scarcely appear. Within it they are the rung between Lahmu and Lahamu and the working gods, and Anshar chairs the increasingly desperate assembly that sends first Anu and then Ea against Tiamat, before Marduk takes the job. Assyrian theology later read his name as Ashur's, which is a promotion with imperial motives behind it.
Parentage
Variant accounts
- Assyrian theology identified Anshar with Ashur.Under the Assyrian empire the national god Ashur was written and understood as Anshar, which promoted him to the head of the Enuma Elish genealogy and let an Assyrian recension put him in Marduk's place. The two are kept as separate records here, with the identification recorded on both: it is a theological move of a particular period, not an original identity.Reference treatment of the Assyrian recension of Enuma Elish and the Anshar-Ashur identification. (secondary)
Domains
- sky
- sovereignty
Relations
- spouse: KisharBrother and husband of Kishar; heaven entire to her earth entire.Oracc AMGG: Kishar is the female principle, sister and wife of Anshar. (secondary)
- father of: AnuFather of Anu.Enuma Elish, tablet I: Anshar and Kishar are the parents of Anu. (primary)
Sources
- Anshar, 'the entirety of heaven', is the second primordial pair of Enuma Elish with his sister and wife Kishar, son of Lahmu and Lahamu and father of Anu, presiding over the assembly that confronts Tiamat.: Enuma Elish, tablets I-II. (primary); Oracc AMGG, 'Anšar and Kišar'. (secondary)