chapter 2 Theological and Ideological Aspects of the Anu Cult

The previous chapter provided an overview of the historical development of the Anu cult and the sources that reflect its practical organisation. We will now look at the evidence for the theological considerations that shaped the new pantheon and cultic worship at Uruk, and the legitimation strategies employed by the cult’s priest-scholars for their new religious programme.1

2.1 Antiquarian Theology

As we have just seen, the pantheon of Uruk was not only altered after 484BC with respect to Ištar’s replacement by Anu as the city’s patron deity, but it underwent an extensive transformation. Many deities were newly introduced, others abandoned. A striking aspect of those changes was what Paul-Alain Beaulieu has dubbed “antiquarian theology”: gods and goddesses were revived who had not been actively worshipped at Uruk in many centuries, and the priests made use of theological handbooks dating back to the second millen- nium BC to find such deities and learn about their attributes and relationships.2 Beaulieu has demonstrated that the priests of Anu primarily made use of the god lists An = Anum and An = Anu ša amēli to determine the most important gods of the new pantheon.3 The servant god Papsukkal, who was a relatively important divine messenger and gatekeeper in different Assyrian and Babylo- nian cities, but had never worshipped at Uruk before, was introduced as Anu’s vizier because he is equated in An = Anum with the original vizier of An, Nin- šubur.4 The obscure goddess Amasagnudi, listed in the same section of An = Anum (I 46) as Papsukkal’s consort, was reunited with her spouse. Another example are the many minor goddesses who, according to the ritual texts,5

1 The topics in this chapter are also the subject of a thorough study by Angelika Berlejung (2009). 2 Beaulieu 1992, 68. 3 Beaulieu 1992, 55–60. 4 An = Anum I 41–42 (Litke 1998, 26); see §5.2.2.1. 5 TU 42+ obv. 12′–13′; 25′; rev. 10′–13′; KAR 132 II obv. 7.

© koninklijke brill nv, leiden, 2018 | doi: 10.1163/9789004364943_004 80 chapter 2 accompanied Ištar during her akītu processions and who, as mentioned earlier, are all listed in An = Anum among the lesser deities and servants of Ištar: Nini- gizibarra and Ninsigaranna (A = A IV 73–74), Šešantur (IV 97), En(me)uranna (IV 98), Šilabat, Igibarluti, Kabilusig, Ada, and Esapar (IV 137–141). Whether or not they already served Ištar in the Eanna cannot be determined, since they are not mentioned in the administrative texts on which the study of the pan- theon of Neo-Babylonian Uruk depends. Still, it is more likely that the priests of Uruk perused An = Anum to find every single one of Ištar’s divine subjects and thus provide her with as grand and complete a retinue as possible for her festive induction into the Irigal.6 The familiarity of the scholars of late Babylonian Uruk with An = Anum and their interest in it is further demonstrated by the fact that several tablets of the compendium have been found in the tablet collection of the Šangû-Ninurta family. More specifically, several references to it occur in the colophons of Anu- ikṣur. He and his son Anu-ušallim enjoyed replacing the names Anu and Antu with the names of the primordial deities with whom Anu and Antu are equated in An = Anum and other obscure, archaic gods and goddesses. With those little ‘rebuses’, they could demonstrate both their proficiency in cuneiform writing and their intimate knowledge of the theological associations established in the classical god list. Moreover, they emphasized the profound antiquity of Anu and Antu themselves and, indirectly, the subordination of Ištar and Marduk to them, since the latter belonged to a younger divine generation.7 These refer- ences to An = Anum suggest that Anu-ikṣur, and probably his father and brother as well, were directly involved in the development of the new Anu pantheon and its underlying theological structures.8 Playful spellings of divine names are not found in the tablets of Iqīša, but his contribution to the Anu cult clearly speaks from several works in his posses- sion.9 Like the esoteric colophons just described, several of Iqīša’s texts are typi- cal examples of Babylonian ‘hermeneutics’, which usually involved speculative or mystical interpretations of the different logograms in Sumerian divine and

6 It is important to keep in mind, however, that An = Anum may have been a significant, but cer- tainly not the only source for the pantheon of Seleucid Uruk. The worship of certain deities will also have been influenced by sociocultural and demographic factors, such as the pres- ence of nomadic tribes and traders from other parts of the Near East and, most importantly, the influence of West-Semitic and Hellenistic culture on late first-millennium Babylonia. 7 Berlejung 2009, 79–80. 8 Farber 1989a, 239–240; Frahm 2002, 86–88. 9 Frahm 2002, 90.