Antu (goddess)

Antu () or Antum was a Mesopotamian goddess regarded as the feminine counterpart and spouse of the sky god, Anu. She was sometimes identified with the earth rather than the sky, though such references are not common. While already attested in the third millennium BCE, she was only a minor goddess, and only came to be worshiped commonly in Uruk in the Achaemenid and Seleucid periods due to religious reforms which elevated her and Anu to the position of tutelary deities of the city. At some point Antu was also incorporated into Hurrian religion, in which she was understood as a primeval deity. In the so-called "Standard Babylonian" edition of the Epic of Gilgamesh Antu is addressed as the mother of Ishtar, but this tradition was not commonly adhered to. Antu's name is etymologically an Akkadian feminine derivative of the theonym Anu. The cuneiform sign representing the latter name, AN, in addition to designating the sky god could also function as an ordinary noun, read as either /an/, "heaven", or /dingir/, "deity". Antu accordingly functioned as the feminine counterpart of Anu. She was also regarded as his spouse. Cases of Anu and Antu being equated with each other are attested too. Paul-Alain Beaulieu interprets this as an indication the cuneiform sign AN could be used as a logogram (sumerogram) to represent the name of Antu. However, as noted by Manfred Krebernik it is also possible that the sky was at some point envisioned as an androgynous being in Mesopotamian tradition. A small number of sources, including the god list An = Anum, treat Antu as deified earth (ki/erṣetum). An Old Babylonian lexical list, Diri, equates her with Urash, an earth goddess also associated with Anu. It has also been suggested that the phrase AN URAŠ occurring on seals from the Kassite period, agreed to represent a compound of two theonyms, might also have been understood as "Anu-Antu". Antu might have also played the role of earth in formulaic references to Anu, representing the sky, inseminating the ground with his rains.