Anat (, ), Anatu, classically Anath (; ʿnt; ʿĂnāṯ; ; ; Egyptian: ꜥntjt) was a goddess associated with warfare and hunting, best known from the Ugaritic texts. Most researchers assume that she originated in the Amorite culture of Bronze Age upper Mesopotamia, and that the goddess Ḫanat, attested in the texts from Mari and worshiped in a city sharing her name located in Suhum, should be considered her forerunner.
In Ugarit, Anat was one of the main goddesses, and regularly received offerings, as attested in texts written both in the local Ugaritic language and in Hurrian. She also frequently appears in myths, including the Baal Cycle and the Epic of Aqhat. In the former, she is portrayed as a staunch ally of the weather god Baal, who assists him in his struggle for kingship, helps him with obtaining the permission to obtain a dwelling of his own, and finally mourns and avenges his death at the hands of the personified death, Mot. The precise nature of the relation between Anat and Baal is uncertain, and the conventional views that they were lovers, siblings or both remain a matter of dispute among researchers. Another deity who frequently appears alongside her is Ashtart. Interactions between Anat and the sun goddess Shapash and moon god Yarikh are described in myths as well. In Hurrian ritual texts, she appears alongside deities such as Šimige, Aštabi and Nupatik. Elsewhere in the Levant and in nearby regions of inland Syria, Anat's status apparently was not equally high, though she is nonetheless attested in Emar, Hazor and elsewhere.
At some point in time in the Bronze Age, either during the reign of Hyksos or shortly after its end, Anat was introduced to Egypt, and achieved a degree of prominence during the reign of Ramesses II, whose devotion to her is well attested. Evidence for Egyptian worship of Anat is also available from various sites in Palestine which were controlled by the pharaohs in the Bronze Age. She remained a part of the Egyptian pantheon as late as in the Roman period. In the first millennium BCE, she also continued to be worshiped in Suhum in Mesopotamia. She is also attested in a number of Phoenician inscriptions. Most of them come from Cyprus. They indicate that on this island an association developed between her and the Greek goddess Athena based on their similar character. References to the goddess Anat in the Hebrew Bible are limited and uncertain, with most scholars agreeing they appear only vestigially in theophoric names and place names.
Anat was characterized as a fertility goddess associated with human sexuality in early scholarship, but despite the occasional modern support, this view is no longer the consensus among experts. Proposed etymologies of her name and interpretations of texts she appears in are a subject of criticism. The view that goddesses of Ugarit and other nearby areas were interchangeable and had no individual traits, which often shaped early publications about Anat, is also no longer accepted.
Origin According to Wilfred G. Lambert, Anat should be identified with the goddess Ḫanat (a transcription without the breve below the first consonant, Hanat, is also in use) known from the texts from Mari, and originally worshiped further south, in Suhum. While Jean-Marie Durand argues against this connection, and his view has also been adopted by Lluís Feliu, Lambert's theory has been accepted by a number of other researchers, including Wilfred G. E. Watson, Gebhard J. Selz, Volkert Haas and Daniel Schwemer. Multiple Assyriologists, including Andrew R. George and Julia M. Asher-Greve, outright refer to the goddess from Suhum, still worshiped there in later periods, simply as Anat, and it has been pointed out that her name, while originally rendered as Ḫanat in documents pertaining to this area, is written as an-at in inscriptions of local origin from the first millennium BCE.
In the light of Lambert's theory, Anat, like her presumed forerunner Ḫanat, would be an Amorite deity in origin.
Multiple etymologies of Anat's name have been proposed. While none have been conclusively proven, the view it is a cognate of the Arabic word ‘anwat, "force" or "violence," is considered plausible. Peggy L. Day notes that this proposal and the view that Anat and Ḫanat are analogous "dovetail" each other. Lambert assumed that Ḫanat's name could refer to the Ḫanaeans (Ḫana), an Amorite group. Similarly, Durand derives it from ḫana, which he considers to be a label analogous to Bedouin. However, Ḫanat's homonymous cult center apparently was not located in the lands considered the territory of the Ḫanaeans.
Older theories A number of proposals regarding the origin of Anat's name are no longer considered plausible in modern scholarship due to relying entirely on incorrect past evaluations of her character. One such example is Ariella Deem's suggestion that it was derived from a purely hypothetical root *’nh, "to make love." While in the past scholarship Anat was described as a "patroness of wanton love," or as a "fertility goddess," these views started to be challenged in scholarly publications in the 1990s and are no longer accepted today by most researchers. Sometimes similar labels can nonetheless be found even in more recent publications.
Jo Ann Hackett notes that the connection between fertility and female deities has been historically exaggerated in the studies of religions of the Ancient Near East and considers such a characterization an example of perceiving women "in terms of biological functions" formed largely based on contemporary speculation, rather than on the available ritual texts and other primary sources. Julia M. Asher-Greve notes this category is one of the examples of terms which should be considered "innovations of early modern work in the study of comparative religion" rather than an accurate reflection of religion in antiquity. It has been pointed out by other authors that in Anat's case, alleged references to a connection with fertility depend on dubious translations of hapax legomena and filling of lacunae. According to Theodore J. Lewis, one such attempt is Edward Lipiński's treatment of the text KTU 1.96, meant to present her as a sexually active "fertility" goddess Michael C. Astour remarked critically that Lipiński's translation explained "practically every noun by 'penis'" to accomplish this. More recent research revealed that the text does not mention Anat at all.
Ḫanat in the Mari texts The worship of Ḫanat is well attested in texts from Old Babylonian Mari. She was particularly venerated in the land of Suhum, where a city named Ḫanat (later Anat) was located. Its name could be written with the dingir sign preceding it (dḪa-na-atki, Bit dḪa-na-atki), which indicates it was directly named after the goddess. It has been identified with modern Anah in Iraq. One of the Mari texts mentions a temple of Ḫanat, presumed to be located in the city named after her. Later documents from Suhum indicate that a temple dedicated to the local goddess bore the ceremonial Sumerian name E-šuzianna, "house, true hand of heaven." The tradition of assigning such names of houses of worship originated in southern Mesopotamia among the Sumerians and Akkadians, but it outlived the decline of Sumerian as a vernacular language, and spread to other areas within the Mesopotamian cultural sphere, including Assyria and the basin of the Diyala River in the north, the kingdom of Mari and the city of Harran in the west and to a smaller degree Elam in the east. Hammurabi of Babylon patronized the temples of the city of Ḫanat according to a later inscription of Ninurta-kudurri-usur, son of the local ruler Šamaš-reš-uṣur known from a stele found in Babylon.
In an offering list from the reign of Zimri-Lim, Ḫanat appears as the recipient of two sheep. The same document lists a number of other deities worshiped in Mari, such as Numushda, Ishara and Ninkarrak. Oil offerings to Ḫanat were apparently made by women from the royal palace. She is the last of the eight deities mentioned in a list presumed to document this custom. The formula "Dagan and Ḫanat are well" occurs in a letter from Buqāqum, a royal official active in Ḫanat. A legal text mentions that a certain Pulsī-Addu from Sapīratum (a settlement in Suhum) after losing a lawsuit meant to establish the ownership of a patch of land was obliged to swear an oath by a group of deities including Ḫanat, as well as Dagan and Itūr-Mēr, and by king Zimri-Lim to guarantee that he will not attempt to press the same claims again. Ḫanat's presence in this text most likely simply reflects the fact that she was associated with the area which was the object of the conflict, while Dagan and Itūr-Mēr were respectively the head of the local pantheon and the god most commonly invoked in oaths.
Ḫanat is also mentioned in a letter from Šamaš-nasir, an official from Terqa, to Zimri-Lim, in which he relays an oracular declaration of Dagan to the king. Its subject is a verdict pronounced by the local god for Tishpak, the god of the kingdom of Eshnunna, after Yakrub-El relays to him that Ḫanat is threatened by the latter's actions. The interactions between the gods reflect the political situation of the period, with Dagan representing Mari and Yakrub-El and Ḫanat respectively Terqa and Suhum, while Tishpak stands for Eshnunna, whose troops presumably were a threat for the latter of the two dependencies of Zimri-Lim's kingdom.
Ḫanat appears in four types of theophoric names of women and ten types of names of men in the Mari texts. Some of the attested bearers of such names were deportees from the area roughly between Mount Abdulaziz and the Sinjar Mountains. A certain Ḫabdi-Ḫanat was at one point tasked with manufacturing a throne for Dagan in Mari itself. An individual bearing the name Ummi-Ḫanat is also attested outside this corpus, but it is presumed that the text, even though it mentions Eshnunna, pertains to Suhum.
Anat in the Ugaritic texts Anat was one of the main goddesses in the pantheon of Ugarit, a city located in the north of modern Syria on the Mediterranean coast whose religion was closely related to that of Mari. According to the Ugaritic texts, Anat resides on a mountain known under the name ‘Inbubu, whose location remains unknown. An association between her and Mount Saphon, while also known, is infrequently attested. In the standard Ugaritic list of deities, she is placed between Athirat and Shapash. In the analogous text written in syllabic cuneiform, her name is rendered as da-na-tu4.
In Ugarit Anat was regarded as a warrior goddess, though she was not the only deity cast in this role. She is described using both a sword and a bow. Additionally, sources such as KTU 1.114 and KTU 1.22 attest that she was portrayed as a huntress as well. However, Theodore J. Lewis points out that due to relying on an incorrect collation of the tablet KTU 1.96, a number of older publications overestimated the degree to which Anat was portrayed as belligerent by ascribing cannibalistic tendencies to her. Lewis' conclusion is also accepted by other researchers today. In reality, as discovered during the digitalization of Ugaritic texts currently stored in Damascus, the text does not mention the goddess at all, as it is not plausible that ‘nn is a mistake for ‘nt. The older reading was based not on inspection of the object itself, but rather on an old photo which from a modern perspective is "washed out and epigraphically useless." While the meaning of the rest of the text remains uncertain, Gregorio del Olmo Lete suggests that it might be an incantation against the casting of an evil eye (‘nn hlkt). This proposal is also accepted by Gebhard J. Selz.