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154-556: 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

308-532: A common parent language . Because language change can have radical effects on both the sound and the meaning of a word, cognates may not be obvious, and it often takes rigorous study of historical sources and the application of the comparative method to establish whether lexemes are cognate. Cognates are distinguished from loanwords , where a word has been borrowed from another language. The English term cognate derives from Latin cognatus , meaning "blood relative". An example of cognates from

462-518: 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

616-424: A " tomboy goddess," a characterization also employed by Izak Cornelius. In response to her threat, El describes Anat so: "I know you, my daughter, that you are a manly sort, and that none are emotional as you." It has been suggested that Anat was also regarded as a " mistress of animals ," in part based on pendants from Ugarit showing a goddess depicted in the pose associated with this archetypal motif, but this view

770-412: A blade, winnows them with a sieve , burns them in a fire, grinds them with a millstone , and finally scatters them for birds to eat. It has been argued that this scene reflected an annual agricultural ritual. According to John Gibson this is unlikely, as Anat's actions are simply meant to illustrate that the destruction of Mot was complete and thorough. In a later section of the myth, when El learns in

924-422: A bow from the craftsman god Kothar-wa-Khasis . Anat apparently desires to obtain it and asks the human to give it to her, but she is rebuked. It is not clear if Aqhat's reaction to her demand ( ht tṣdn tỉnṯt ; KTU 1.17 VI 40) should be interpreted as a question ("now do womenfolk hunt?") or an ironic remark ("now womenfolk hunt!"). Anat demands permission to punish him for what she perceives as impiety from El, which

1078-504: 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

1232-539: A city wall with one known fortified gate, though four gates are believed to have existed. Since the Late Bronze Age about 50 meters have been eroded from the north end of the site by the Nahr Chbayyeb river. The southern slope of the tell is covered by orange groves, preventing excavation. A brief investigation of a looted tomb at the necropolis of Minet el-Beida was conducted by Léon Albanèse in 1928, who then examined

1386-412: A close semantic parallel. A further well attested epithet of Anat is ybmt l’imm , known from ten passages, but there is no consensus regarding its translation. The element l’imm is usually interpreted as a common noun meaning "peoples" or "nations," though Dennis Pardee treats it as the name of a deity, analogous to Lim which is known from theophoric names from Mari. However, according to Alfonso Archi

1540-463: A club aloft, portrayed in a typical Near Eastern and Egyptian artistic style as well as a stela bearing a dedication to Baal of Sapan. Numerous statues, stelai—some offered by Egyptians—and sixteen stone anchors were found as votive offerings in this vicinity. Both temples are composed of a pronaos (porch) and a naos (sanctuary proper), aligned from north-northeast to south-southwest. The Temple of Dagan has 4–5-meter-thick foundation walls. Remnants of

1694-617: A common origin, but which in fact do not. For example, Latin habēre and German haben both mean 'to have' and are phonetically similar. However, the words evolved from different Proto-Indo-European (PIE) roots: haben , like English have , comes from PIE *kh₂pyé- 'to grasp', and has the Latin cognate capere 'to seize, grasp, capture'. Habēre , on the other hand, is from PIE *gʰabʰ 'to give, to receive', and hence cognate with English give and German geben . Likewise, English much and Spanish mucho look similar and have

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1848-404: A dedicated hoe, hints at its potential role as the residence of the city's chief priest. Among a cache of seventy-four bronze items uncovered beneath a doorway threshold inside the house, was an elegant tripod adorned with pomegranate-shaped pendants. Two nearby areas, Ras Ibn Hani and Minet el Beida, parts of the city of Ugarit, have also been excavated. Ras Ibn Hani, on a promontory overlooking

2002-452: A defensive fortress. A "royal palace", elite housing, and tombs were found. About 169 cuneiform tablets, most in the Ugaritic language, were also found. One of the two ports of ancient Ugarit (the other, Ra’šu, is unlocated but suggested to be Ras Ibn Hani) was located 1.5 kilometers west of the main city, at the natural harbor of Minet el Beida (Arabic for "White Harbor"). The 28 hectare site

2156-490: A different god to fill his place. The surviving sections pose a problem for interpreters, as apparently even though Anat has previously buried Baal, she is actively looking for him afterwards. It has been suggested that she only buried a substitute, rather than the real Baal. When the story resumes after the coronation of a temporary king, Attar , followed by a large lacuna (estimated to be around 30 lines), Anat threatens Mot. She kills him, and subsequently threshes his remain with

2310-462: A dog. Anat and Ashtart are also referenced again in one of the final lines of the tablet. According to Mark Smith's interpretation,. the reference presumably indicates that they are seeking the ingredients needed to cure El's hangover caused by his drunkenness. The drunkenness is described in the same myth. It is commonly assumed that Anat was introduced to Egypt by the Hyksos , who settled there during

2464-434: A dream that Baal is alive, he tells Anat to call Shapash to look for him. The sun goddess reassures Anat that she will try to find him, and receives a blessing in return. The rest of the column is missing. In the final surviving fragment of the text, which establishes that Baal gained El's favor and his position was no longer threatened, Anat is mentioned by Mot ( resurrected after their earlier confrontation)), who complains to

2618-574: A festival of Anat celebrated in Gaza alongside the attestations connected to the Egyptian reception of this goddess It is known from an Egyptian ostracon dated to the thirteenth century BCE, a copy of a letter from a scribe named Ipuy to a certain Bak-en-amun, a garrison host commander. It describes the state of affairs in the area under his supervision, but details of the festival of Anat are not preserved. While

2772-508: A field. At that time the region was part of the Alawite State , not in Syria. The discovered area was the necropolis of Ugarit located in the nearby seaport of Minet el-Beida . Excavations have since revealed a city with a prehistory reaching back to c. 6000 BC. The site covers an area of about 28 hectares with a maximum height of 20 meters at the top of the acropolis. The site is surrounded by

2926-462: A further Egyptian artifact presumed to come from Gaza is connected to the worship of Anat, it might not be authentic. It is a situla mentioning Anat in an inscription. Egyptian theophoric names invoking her are also known, one example being Anat-em-heb, "Anat in her festival", constructed in an analogous way to similar names invoking native deities such as Amun or Horus . Anat is characterized as warlike in Egyptian sources, similar to Ugarit. She

3080-458: A goddess of Syrian origin at all. She instead agrees with the proposal that Qetesh was a goddess who developed in Egypt, even though her name is derived from a root known from Semitic languages , qdš . Izak Cornelius characterizes the importance assigned to the stela in past scholarship as "exaggerated". Additionally, as early as 1955, at the time of its original publication, it has been pointed out that

3234-513: A major supplier and transporter of food supplies. A letter from Egyptian pharaoh Merenptah referred to a missive sent by the ruler of Ugarit: So you had written to me: “Could I not have demanded my needs [from] the Great King, the king of Egypt, my lord? I demand this request: [In] the land of Ugarit there is a severe hunger (bi-ru-ú dan-niš): May my lord save [the land of Ugarit], and may the king give grain (ZÍZ.AN.MEŠ) to save my life … and to save

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3388-411: 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,

3542-1831: A poetic narrative, letters, legal documents such as land transfers, a few international treaties, and a number of administrative lists. Fragments of several poetic works have been identified: the " Legend of Keret ", the "Legend of Danel ", the Ba'al tales that detail Baal - Hadad 's conflicts with Yam and Mot , among other fragments. ( Shamshi-Adad dynasty 1808–1736 BCE) (Amorites) Shamshi-Adad I Ishme-Dagan I Mut-Ashkur Rimush Asinum Ashur-dugul Ashur-apla-idi Nasir-Sin Sin-namir Ipqi-Ishtar Adad-salulu Adasi (Non-dynastic usurpers 1735–1701 BCE) Puzur-Sin Ashur-dugul Ashur-apla-idi Nasir-Sin Sin-namir Ipqi-Ishtar Adad-salulu Adasi ( Adaside dynasty 1700–722 BCE) Bel-bani Libaya Sharma-Adad I Iptar-Sin Bazaya Lullaya Shu-Ninua Sharma-Adad II Erishum III Shamshi-Adad II Ishme-Dagan II Shamshi-Adad III Ashur-nirari I Puzur-Ashur III Enlil-nasir I Nur-ili Ashur-shaduni Ashur-rabi I Ashur-nadin-ahhe I Enlil-Nasir II Ashur-nirari II Ashur-bel-nisheshu Ashur-rim-nisheshu Ashur-nadin-ahhe II Second Intermediate Period Sixteenth Dynasty Abydos Dynasty Seventeenth Dynasty (1500–1100 BCE) Kidinuid dynasty Igehalkid dynasty Untash-Napirisha Twenty-first Dynasty of Egypt Smendes Amenemnisu Psusennes I Amenemope Osorkon

3696-404: A ram as a peace offering, in this passage appearing alongside Ilib, two Baals (of Ugarit and of Aleppo ), Yarikh , Pidray and Dadmiš . In an entry ritual (an Amorite practice well known from Mari) of Ashtart , which took place over the course of multiple days, Anat received the snout and neck of an unidentified animal following the offerings of gold and silver to Shapash, Yarikh and Gaṯaru on

3850-499: A request from the Egyptian king to send a physician to Ugarit. From the late 13th century into the early 12th century BC, the entire region, based on contemporary texts, including Hititte areas, the Levant, and the eastern Mediterranean, faced severe and widespread food shortages, potentially from plant diseases . Ugarit received a number of desperate pleas for food from other realms. The food shortage eventually reached Ugarit, previously

4004-452: A sea monster), Atik ( ‘tk , the " calf of El" or alternatively the "divine calf," Ḏabību ( ḏbb ; described as a daughter of El and presumed to be demonic in character), and Ishatu (' išt , flame, a female demon described as dog-like, possibly representing a concept analogous to dogs of individual deities known from Mesopotamian god lists such as An = Anum ). Wayne T. Pitard points out that the inclusion of Yam among Anat's defeated adversaries

4158-406: A seal found in modern Syria is necessarily Anat. It is possible that due to the influence of iconography of Mesopotamian Ishtar , other local goddesses could be depicted with wings too. Some researchers, among them Silvia Schroer, employ terms such as "Anat- Astarte type" when describing figures depicted in art to mitigate this problem. It has been postulated that the character of Ugaritic deities

4312-412: A similar meaning, but are not cognates: much is from Proto-Germanic *mikilaz < PIE *meǵ- and mucho is from Latin multum < PIE *mel- . A true cognate of much is the archaic Spanish maño 'big'. Cognates are distinguished from other kinds of relationships. An etymon , or ancestor word, is the ultimate source word from which one or more cognates derive. In other words, it

4466-432: A terracotta depiction of Hathor , bronze tools and weaponry, cylinder seals, stone weights, remnants of banded dye-murex shells used in the production of purple dye , and inscribed tablets. The site is thought to have been largely evacuated before it was burned (resulting in a thick ash layer) and destroyed as few valuables were found in the residences or in the southern palace. About 130 cuneiform tablets were found in

4620-454: A total of twenty-two attestations, but it is not certain if it refers to a specific deity. At the same time, Wilfred H. van Soldt remarked that Anat appears in theophoric names much less frequently than her importance in myths would indicate. Anat is also present in Hurrian offering lists from Ugarit , according to Daniel Schwemer , possibly because she had no close equivalent among the Hurrian deities , unlike other well-attested members of

4774-573: A type of official, specifically a tax collector . Modern researchers often compare Anat to deities such as the Mesopotamian Inanna and Annunitum and the Hurrian Šauška . However, Jo Ann Hackett critically evaluated presenting the character of Anat and Inanna as identical. It has been suggested that Ba’alat Bahatīma, "lady of the houses" (or "of the temple," "of the palace"), might be an epithet of Anat. However, it has also been proposed that she

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4928-608: A woman's age, it appears to be used "without prejudice to her sexual or marital status." Aicha Rahmouni points out that while the Akkadian evidence does imply a woman referred to as a batultu would likely be expected to be chaste according to social norms of the period, there is no indication that Ugaritic deities were bound by identical norms. She proposes that the use of ardatum , similarly conventionally translated as "maiden" (in order to refer to various goddesses in Mesopotamia), offers

5082-432: A year, allowing a tight synchronism. The latest datable text was from the reign of Kassite ruler Meli-Shipak II (c. 1186–1172 BC) about the time of the destruction of Ugarit. An example of the archive involving one ton of copper: Thus Kušmešuša, king of Alašiya, say to Niqmaddu, king of Ugarit, my son. All is well with me, my households, my countries, my wives, my sons, my troops, my horses and my chariots.… In exchange of

5236-409: 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. The worship of Ḫanat is well attested in texts from Old Babylonian Mari . She

5390-413: Is verb–subject–object , subject-object-verb (VSO)&(SOV); possessed–possessor (NG) (first element dependent on the function and second always in genitive case); and noun – adjective (NA) (both in the same case (i.e. congruent)). Apart from royal correspondence with neighboring Bronze Age monarchs, Ugaritic literature from tablets found in the city's libraries include mythological texts written in

5544-480: Is also no longer accepted. 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

5698-413: Is also possible that all members of the Ugaritic pantheon were referred to as siblings in a less direct sense, as members of a single social group. Ashtart frequently appears in Ugaritic texts alongside Anat, and the pairing of these two goddesses has been described as "fairly standard." An incantation against snakebite refers to them together as Anat-wa-Ashtart and states that both of them resided on

5852-411: Is better attested in association with Ashtart . It has been pointed out that ancient Egyptians typically depicted deities introduced from other areas according to local norms, and their attributes more directly reflected their character rather than their origin. The pharaoh Ramesses II was particularly devoted to Anat, according to Wilkinson, because of her warlike character. He referred to himself as

6006-558: Is described as "warrior of Anat" ( mhr ‘nt ) in two passages. Anat appears in multiple Ugaritic myths, where she is typically portrayed as the main ally of Baal . Theodore J. Lewis based on these texts has characterized her as "without doubt the most vivid of the Ugaritic goddesses." Anat is portrayed in her usual role in the Baal Cycle , a well known Ugaritic narrative poem preserved on the tablets KTU 1.1–6. Sometimes, labels such as Baal-Anat cycle are used to refer to this work. Anat

6160-424: Is difficult to explain, as a well known section of the narrative focuses on Baal, rather than her, defeating the sea god . According to Pitard, the reference might indicate the existence of a separate tradition which is otherwise not preserved in known texts. After learning that the source of Baal's anguish is not a new enemy but the lack of his own dwelling, Anat disrespectfully attempts to pressure El to grant Baal

6314-428: Is evidence, including an epithet directly referring to that relation, that Baal was regarded as the son of Dagan , who never occurs in association with Anat. She is consistently called a daughter of El instead, with Athirat being presumed to be her mother. If the disputed role of Baal and Anat as lovers is accepted, the words "sister" and "brother" might be used in a figurative sense to refer to them in that capacity. It

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6468-428: Is first mentioned when El summons her to perform a ritual whose precise character is uncertain, but which according to John Gibson might have been meant to prevent her from actively supporting Baal. Later, when Yam , Baal's rival for the position of king of the gods , sends his messengers to the divine assembly, Anat and Ashtart prevent the weather god from harming them. She seizes his right hand (KTU 1.2 I 40), while

6622-592: Is most commonly rendered as " maiden " in English. Other proposals include "virgin," "girl" and "adolescent." However, it is now agreed that the term, even if translated as "virgin," does not refer to virginity in the modern sense, but simply designates her as young and nubile. The proposal that btlt had a more precise meaning, "young woman who did not yet bring forth male offspring," is considered baseless. An Akkadian cognate , batultu , occurs chiefly in legal contexts, and it has been pointed out that while it does refer to

6776-434: Is not universally accepted. Textual sources describe Anat as winged and capable of flight, which is commonly employed to identify possible depictions of her among the works of art from Ugarit. One possible example is a cylinder seal showing a winged goddess in a helmet decorated with horns and a knob, standing on a bull and holding a lion. However, it cannot be established with certainty that every winged goddess depicted on

6930-598: Is presumed to indicate that she was not commonly worshiped in the Kingdom of Israel . 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,

7084-492: Is regular. Paradigms of conjugations or declensions, the correspondence of which cannot be generally due to chance, have often been used in cognacy assessment. However, beyond paradigms, morphosyntax is often excluded in the assessment of cognacy between words, mainly because structures are usually seen as more subject to borrowing. Still, very complex, non-trivial morphosyntactic structures can rarely take precedence over phonetic shapes to indicate cognates. For instance, Tangut ,

7238-648: Is strength") and his sword after the goddess. One of his successors, Ramesses III, referred to Anat as the goddess responsible for protecting him in battle. Anat retained her role in the Egyptian pantheon through the first millennium BCE, up to the period of Roman rule. She is also among the deities depicted in the Dendera Temple complex from the Roman period. She also appears on a stele in Greco-Roman style alongside Khonsu and Mut. The association between Anat and Ashtart

7392-477: Is the source of related words in different languages. For example, the etymon of both Welsh ceffyl and Irish capall is the Proto-Celtic * kaballos (all meaning horse ). Descendants are words inherited across a language barrier, coming from a particular etymon in an ancestor language. For example, Russian мо́ре and Polish morze are both descendants of Proto-Slavic * moře (meaning sea ). A root

7546-444: Is the source of related words within a single language (no language barrier is crossed). Similar to the distinction between etymon and root , a nuanced distinction can sometimes be made between a descendant and a derivative . A derivative is one of the words which have their source in a root word, and were at some time created from the root word using morphological constructs such as suffixes, prefixes, and slight changes to

7700-452: Is to treat the three goddesses equally. However, Peggy L. Day points out that before the Hellenistic period , there is no other evidence for the merging of Anat with other goddesses in the Egyptian tradition. The evidence is limited to this single work of art, which she considers to be unusual. Christiane Zivie-Coche rejects the view that Qetesh was a hypostasis of Anat (or Ashtart), or even

7854-630: Is well attested in Egypt, and it is presumed that it was a direct adaptation of northern ideas about these two goddesses. Both of them could be regarded as daughters of Ra or Ptah . However, they are not always explicitly described as sisters. The myth Contest of Horus and Set for the Rule , dated to the period of the New Kingdom , is assumed to refer to both Anat and Astarte as prospective brides of Set. This interpretation has been questioned in Egyptology since

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8008-420: Is well reflected in the epithets applied to them. In Anat's case the most frequently occurring one is btlt , which is also overall the second best attested divine epithet in the entire Ugaritic corpus, after ‘ali’yn b’l ( aliyn Baal ; "Baal the mighty"). As of 2008, it has been identified in a total of forty nine passages. Its exact translation was a subject of scholarly controversy in the past, though today it

8162-501: 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

8316-563: The Amarna letters found in Akhenaten's capital of Egypt from the mid-14th century BCE were written in Ugarit. Most of the letters were broken and their reading proved difficult, but some information was recovered. The population of Ugarit in this period is estimated to be between 7,000 and 8,000 individuals. The kingdom of Ugarit controlled about 2,000 km on average. In the mid-14th century BC, Ugarit

8470-789: The Paraguayan Guarani panambi , the Eastern Bolivian Guarani panapana , the Cocama and Omagua panama , and the Sirionó ana ana are cognates, derived from the Old Tupi panapana , 'butterfly', maintaining their original meaning in these Tupi languages . Cognates need not have the same meaning, as they may have undergone semantic change as the languages developed independently. For example English starve and Dutch sterven 'to die' or German sterben 'to die' all descend from

8624-627: The Second Intermediate Period . They ruled the Nile Delta for approximately one century, with Avaris serving as their capital. Richard H. Wilkinson cites the name of the ruler Anat-her as evidence for the Hyksos worshiping Anat. However, according to Christiane Zivie-Coche, the attestations of this goddess tied to the Hyksos are limited to a single theophoric name. She suggests that available evidence instead indicates that foreign deities from

8778-576: The atef crown in Egyptian sources. In an offering list described as "Sacrifice to the gods of Mount Saphon," which possibly documents rites which took place over the course of the two months following the winter solstice , ‘Iba’latu and Ḫiyyāru (roughly corresponding to the period between the 21st of December and the 20th of February according to Dennis Pardee), Anat is the recipient of rams, similar to many other deities listed, such as Shapshu , Arsay , Išḫara and Kinnaru . Another ritual text mentions

8932-520: The messengers of Baal , Gapnu (also spelled Gupan) and Ugar, approach her, which makes her worried if a new enemy is challenging Baal's authority, prompting her to recall battles she took part in previously (KTU 1.3 III 36 - 47). Among the enemies she lists are Yam, listed twice (once under his main name and once as Nahar), Tunnanu (a sea serpent ), further serpentine sea monsters ( bṯn ‘qltn , "the twisting serpent" and šlyṭ d šb ‘t r’ašm , "the dominant one who has seven heads"), Arsh ( ‘arš ; possibly also

9086-476: The "beloved" of this goddess and called her his mother. His inscriptions generally assign warlike traits to her rather than motherly ones. A statue from his reign depicts Anat with her hand placed on his shoulder. It comes from a temple located in Tanis. Both the goddesses and the pharaoh are identified in an accompanying inscription. He also named one of his daughters ( Bint-Anat , "daughter of Anat"), his war hound ("Anat

9240-540: The 1970s. Objections to the translation were also raised in Ugaritic studies: Neal H. Walls suggested in 1992 that interpreting this text might involve a misunderstanding. According to Mark Smith, as of 2014, no evidence has been provided to settle the academic dispute in favor of this view. Anat and Ashtart appear alongside a third goddess, Qetesh , in the inscription on the so-called " Winchester College stele", which depicts only one figure, despite three names being listed. This object has been used to argue that Qetesh, like

9394-547: 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

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9548-534: The Egyptian pharaohs Senusret III and Amenemhet III have also been found. However, it is unclear at what time these monuments were brought to Ugarit. The city reached its golden age between 1500 BC and 1200 BC, when it ruled a trade-based coastal kingdom, trading with Egypt, Cyprus, the Aegean (primarily Crete), Syria, the Hittites, cities of the Levant (including Ashkelon ), and much of the eastern Mediterranean. Five of

9702-848: The Elder Siamun Psusennes II Twenty-third Dynasty of Egypt Harsiese A Takelot II Pedubast I Shoshenq VI Osorkon III Takelot III Rudamun Menkheperre Ini Twenty-fourth Dynasty of Egypt Tefnakht Bakenranef ( Sargonid dynasty ) Tiglath-Pileser Shalmaneser Marduk-apla-iddina II Sargon Sennacherib Marduk-zakir-shumi II Marduk-apla-iddina II Bel-ibni Ashur-nadin-shumi Nergal-ushezib Mushezib-Marduk Esarhaddon Ashurbanipal Ashur-etil-ilani Sinsharishkun Sin-shumu-lishir Ashur-uballit II Cognate In historical linguistics , cognates or lexical cognates are sets of words that have been inherited in direct descent from an etymological ancestor in

9856-449: The Emar corpus needs to be taken into account when evaluating the prominence of deities in the local system of beliefs, as relatively few genres of texts are represented among tablets from the site. William W. Hallo and Hayim Tadmor identified a possible reference to Anat in theophoric names in a lawsuit from Tel Hazor with the element ḫa-nu-ta. The text has been dated to the period between

10010-579: The Land of Hatti, and all my ships are in the Land of Lukka ? ... Thus, the country is abandoned to itself. May my father know it: the seven ships of the enemy that came here inflicted much damage upon us. Eshuwara, the senior governor of Cyprus, responded: As for the matter concerning those enemies: (it was) the people from your country (and) your own ships (who) did this! And (it was) the people from your country (who) committed these transgression(s) ... I am writing to inform you and protect you. Be aware! At

10164-753: The Late Bronze levels, so little is known about earlier occupation. Ugarit was associated with the Great Kingdom of Yamhad (Halab, Aleppo) in Northern Syria. Ugarit is also mentioned in the Mari Archive . In the Middle Bronze, evidence indicate that Ugarit had contacts with the Egyptian Middle Kingdom. A carnelian bead can be inscribed with the name of Senusret I . A stela and a statuette from

10318-530: 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

10472-525: The Mediterranean 5 kilometers south of the city, was discovered during commercial construction in 1977. Salvage excavation occurred in 1977 followed by regular excavation which has continued to the present by a Syrian-French team led by A. Bounni and J. Lagarce. Occupation began in the mid-13th century BC. Abandoned along with Ugarit, it was re-occupied in the Hellenistic period, including the construction of

10626-941: The Phoenician and Ugaritic systems were not wholly independent inventions. A Unicode block for Ugaritic has been defined. The existence of the Ugaritic language is attested to in texts from the 14th through the 12th century BC. Ugaritic is usually classified as a Northwest Semitic language and therefore related to Hebrew , Aramaic , and Phoenician , among others. Its grammatical features are highly similar to those found in Classical Arabic and Akkadian . It possesses two genders (masculine and feminine), three cases for nouns and adjectives ( nominative , accusative , and genitive ); three numbers: ( singular , dual , and plural ); and verb aspects similar to those found in other Northwest Semitic languages. The word order in Ugaritic

10780-706: The Proto-Indo-European *nókʷts 'night'. The Indo-European languages have hundreds of such cognate sets, though few of them are as neat as this. The Arabic سلام salām , the Hebrew שלום ‎ shalom , the Assyrian Neo-Aramaic shlama and the Amharic selam 'peace' are cognates, derived from the Proto-Semitic *šalām- 'peace'. The Brazilian Portuguese panapanã , (flock of butterflies in flight),

10934-507: The Temple of Baal encompass sections of an enclosing wall, a likely courtyard altar, monumental steps leading to the elevated pronaos and naos, and another presumed altar within the naos. The temple was destroyed, possibly by an earthquake, in the mid 13th century and not rebuilt. The Temple of Dagan was also destroyed at that time but was rebuilt. Another significant structure within the Acropolis

11088-573: 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

11242-526: 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

11396-418: The body of Baal, and helps her bring the deceased weather god to Mount Saphon for his burial. Afterwards, Anat announces Baal's death to El, who decides that it will be necessary to appoint a substitute king. She also remarks that the situation will make Athirat rejoice (KTU 1.6 I 39-43), either due to the presumed antagonism between her and Baal or because she will be able to display her authority by appointing

11550-449: The casting of an evil eye ( ‘nn hlkt ). This proposal is also accepted by Gebhard J. Selz. It has been pointed out by multiple authors, including Peggy L. Day and Mark Smith, that the fact that Anat engages in pursuits which in Ugaritic culture were viewed as typically masculine, namely warfare and hunting, constitutes "gender inversion" of the roles human women were expected to take in society. Less formally, Dennis Pardee labeled her as

11704-471: The citizens of the land of Ugarit. The last king of Ugarit, Ammurapi (circa 1215 to 1180 BC), was a contemporary of the last known Hittite king, Suppiluliuma II . The exact dates of his reign are unknown. However, a letter by the king is preserved, in which Ammurapi stresses the seriousness of the crisis faced by many Near Eastern states due to attacks. At this time Ugarit possessed a large army and navy and both joined with Hittite forces to try and stem

11858-510: The city's primary temples dedicated to Baal and his father, Dagan. Though the existing remnants date to the Late Bronze Age, these temples might have their origins in the Middle Bronze Age. Stelai discovered in this area portray or name these gods, affirming their identification for the respective cults. Within the Temple of Baal, discoveries include the Baal with Thunderbolt depicting Baal holding

12012-448: The city's ruins, archaeologists have studied various attributes of Ugaritic civilization just before their destruction and compared artifacts with those of nearby cultures to help establish dates. Ugarit contained many caches of cuneiform tablets inside of libraries that contained a wealth of valuable information. The destruction levels of the ruin contained Late Helladic IIIB pottery ware, but no LH IIIC (see Mycenaean period ). Therefore,

12166-500: The date of the destruction of Ugarit is crucial for the dating of the LH IIIC phase in mainland Greece . Since an Egyptian sword bearing the name of pharaoh Merneptah was found in the destruction levels, 1190 BC was taken as the date for the beginning of the LH IIIC. A cuneiform tablet found in 1986 shows that Ugarit was destroyed sometime after the death of Merneptah (1203 BC). It is generally agreed that Ugarit had already been destroyed by

12320-408: The deities mentioned in the corpus recovered from this site was prepared by Gary Beckman and published in 2002. It did not include Anat at all, though in 1996 there was identified a possible reference to a toponym derived from her name. The proposal that a theophoric name invoking her, Anat-ummī, in present the text Emar 216:6 (and passim) is also accepted today. Mark Smith notes that the nature of

12474-555: The destruction date of Ugarit. It is important to remember that the chronology of the ancient Near East and that of the ancient Egypt are not yet perfectly synchronized. A large number of arrowheads were recovered from the destruction level in 2021. Their typology has not been published as yet. Early in the excavations a partial text of the Ugarit King List, in Ugaritic, was found. Later, complete renditions in Akkadian were discovered. They list twenty six rulers, all deified. Only

12628-415: The early 12th century BC. A tablet from the 14th century BC found in the Amarna archives , EA 89, Rib-Hadda of Byblos likening the palace at Tyre to the grandeur found in the palace within Ugarit's walls. The palace was well constructed, predominantly crafted from stone, with preserved ashlar blocks reaching heights of up to 4 meters. Wooden crossbeams were also incorporated, inserted into slots within

12782-532: The eighteenth and sixteenth centuries BCE. A single theophoric name, Anati, is also known from Byblos . Furthermore, a document from the reign of Ramesses II mentions a man from an unspecified location in modern Syria. He bore the name bn ‘nt , and served as a ship captain . Ugarit Ugarit ( / j uː ˈ ɡ ɑː r ɪ t , uː -/ ; Ugaritic : 𐎜𐎂𐎗𐎚 , ʾUgarītu ) was an ancient port city in northern Syria about 10 kilometers north of modern Latakia . At its height it ruled an area roughly equivalent to

12936-440: The eighth year of Ramesses III (1178 BC). Recent radiocarbon work, combined with other historical dates and the eclipse of January 21, 1192, indicates a destruction date between 1192 and 1190 BC. Bay , an official of the Egyptian queen Twosret , in a tablet (RS 86.2230) found at Ras Shamra, was in communication with Ammurapi , the last ruler of Ugarit. Bay was in office from approximately 1194–1190 BC. This sets an upper limit on

13090-441: The element lim , while theophoric, should be treated simply as a religious understanding of the concept of the clan or similar traditional social structure. Its persistence in known sources might only reflect a pastoralist lifestyle (or memory of it) which relied on the social bonds denoted this way. References to Lim are uncommon in Ugaritic texts, and the presumed deity shows no apparent connection to Anat. A single passage in

13244-515: The end Ammurapi begs for forces from the Hittite viceroy at Carchemish, the enemy having captured Ugarit's other port, Ra’šu , and was advancing on the city. To the king, my lord say, thus Ammurapi, your servant.… I wrote you twice, thrice, [new]s regarding the enemy! … May my lord know that now the enemy forces are stationed at Ra’šu, and their avant-guard forces were sent to Ugarit. Now may my lord send me forces and chariots, and may my lord save me from

13398-460: The eponymous king's son, but the name of the goddess is only a restoration of a lacuna. In the past, it was proposed that Shapash or one of the Kotharat might be meant instead. Steve A. Wiggins calls the evidence mustered in favor of the former view "compelling," and notes that the only problem is the lack of other texts where the sun goddess is described as a btlt . The same composition is also one of

13552-539: The establishment of the Kingdom of Ugarit . The city had close connections to the Hittite Empire , in later times as a vassal, sent tribute to Egypt at times, and maintained trade and diplomatic connections with Cyprus (then called Alashiya ), documented in the archives recovered from the site and corroborated by Mycenaean and Cypriot pottery found there. The polity was at its height from c.  1450 BC until its destruction in c. 1185 BC; this destruction

13706-641: 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. The only references to Anat in the Hebrew Bible are indirect, and are limited to toponyms and theophoric names, which

13860-419: The forces of this enemy! The ruler of Carchemish sent troops to assist Ugarit, but Ugarit had been sacked. A letter sent after Ugarit had been destroyed said: When your messenger arrived, the army was humiliated and the city was sacked. Our food in the threshing floors was burnt and the vineyards were also destroyed. Our city is sacked. May you know it! May you know it! By excavating the highest levels of

14014-453: The gift which you had sent me, I sent to you thirty-three (ingots of) copper; their weight is thirty talents and six-thousand and five-hundred shekels. One small tablet written in Cypro-Minoan was found on the surface of the tell. While it traditionally has been assumed that syllabic texts are in the Akkadian language and alphabetic texts are in Ugaritic it has been suggested that much of

14168-515: 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

14322-504: The goddesses were not fused together. The trilingual Sumero - Hurro -Ugaritic version of the Weidner god list from Ugarit treats Anat, whose name is repeated in both of the latter columns, as analogous to the Mesopotamian god Saĝkud , who belonged to the circle of either Ninurta or Anu . The name of this deity might be derived from an ordinary Sumerian noun, which possibly referred to

14476-457: The gods;" n’mn is the masculine form of the same word). Anat appears alongside Ashtart in KTU 1.114. During a banquet organized by El, Yarikh, who in this composition behaves like a dog, possibly due to engaging in alcohol consumption , receives pieces of meat from her and Ashtart. The goddesses are subsequently rebuked by a nameless servant of El, who complains that they offer choice cuts of meat to

14630-402: The heavens, Anat was never regarded as an astral deity . Rahmouni suggests the word kpṯ is most likely a cognate of Akkadian kupšu , a type of headdress which is also mentioned in divine epithets. Gregorio del Olmo Lete instead argues that its probable meaning is " firmament ", based on the parallel with šmm rmm , and that its Akkadian cognate would be kabāsu , "to trample." Rahmouni argues

14784-534: The high heavens" ( b’lt šmm rmm ) and "the mistress of the kpṯ " ( b’lt kpṯ ), whose enumeration is a poetic parallelism and is meant to highlight the position and authority of the goddess in the local pantheon. The mlk-drkt word pair is also known from other poetic contexts. It has also been suggested that the parallelism of the terms drkt and šmm rmm might be reflected in the names Derketo and Semiramis known from late antique sources. Gebhard J. Selz remarks that despite one of these epithet associating her with

14938-569: The inscription would indicate that the author was not fully familiar with the hieroglyphic script . This led Cornelius to tentatively propose that the inscription might be a forgery . The provenance of the stela remains unknown, and it is now lost. Anat was worshiped in Emar , a city located on the banks of the Euphrates in modern Syria, though her importance there was small, especially in comparison with her status in Ugarit. The earliest academic survey of

15092-521: The language of the Xixia Empire, and one Horpa language spoken today in Sichuan , Geshiza, both display a verbal alternation indicating tense, obeying the same morphosyntactic collocational restrictions. Even without regular phonetic correspondences between the stems of the two languages, the cognatic structures indicate secondary cognacy for the stems. False cognates are pairs of words that appear to have

15246-424: The largest being that of the household of Urtēnu, a merchant with trading ties as far afield as Emar . This area of the tell was under military control at the time and about 100 tablets were found in the rubble from military construction. Later excavation found several hundred tablets in the actual home. One tablet mentions the enthronement of Kassite ruler Kadashman-Harbe II (c. 1223 BC) whose rule lasted less than

15400-407: The late 15th century. This port town, featuring an urban layout akin to the city of Ugarit, displays irregular street formations. Dwellings were structured around courtyards with adjacent rooms, including provisions like wells, ovens, and occasionally subterranean tombs. Besides residential spaces and shrines, warehouses were present for storing diverse goods earmarked for import or export. One of them

15554-448: The later rulers are supported by texts or known synchronisms. Given that Ugarit was abandoned between the Middle and Late Bronze Ages it is thought that the earliest names on the list were more on the order of tribal chiefs than kings. After its destruction in the early 12th century BC, Ugarit's location was forgotten until 1928 when a peasant accidentally opened an old tomb while plowing

15708-429: The latter proposal is improbable because parallel epithets do not need to be semantically analogous, and additionally because Ugaritic ṯ typically corresponds to Akkadian š , not s , making both the translation and the proposed cognate difficult to accept. This view is also supported by Dennis Pardee, who additionally remarks that Anat's association with the kpṯ , which he vocalizes as kupṯu , might mirror her link to

15862-467: The letters bear no relation to Mesopotamian cuneiform signs; instead, they appear to be somehow related to the Egyptian -derived Phoenician alphabet . While the letters show little or no formal similarity to the Phoenician, the standard letter order (seen in the Phoenician alphabet as ʔ, B, G, D, H, W, Z, Ḥ, Ṭ, Y, K, L, M, N, S, ʕ, P, Ṣ, Q, R, Š, T) shows strong similarities between the two, suggesting that

16016-453: The local pantheon. In one of them, she receives a ram after Aštabi (a warrior god) and Šimige (the sun god). In another similar list she is instead preceded by Nupatik . She also appears in a Hurrian ritual dealing with the anointing of deities, which otherwise only mentions members of the Hurrian pantheon. Texts from Ugarit attesting to the worship of Ugaritic deities such as Anat, alongside Hurrian ones, have been argued to indicate that

16170-782: The main mound of Ras Shamra. Beginning in 1929 excavations of Ugarit were conducted by a French team called the Mission de Ras Shamra led by archaeologist Claude Schaeffer from the Musée archéologique in Strasbourg . Work continued until 1939 when it was interrupted by the outbreak of World War II. The French excavation, now the Mission Archeologique Française de Ras Shamra-Ougarit, resumed in 1950, led again by Claude Schaeffer until 1970. At that point, directorship passed to Jean Margueron. After 44 excavation seasons all of

16324-583: The modern Latakia Governorate . It was discovered by accident in 1928 with the Ugaritic texts . Its ruins are often called Ras Shamra (also Ras Shamrah) after the headland where they lie. Ugarit saw its beginnings in the Neolithic period, the site was occupied from the end of the 8th millennium BC and continued as a settlement through the Chalcolithic and Bronze Ages . It was during the late bronze age that Ugarit experienced significant growth, culminating in

16478-521: The mountain Inbubu ( inbb ), otherwise associated only with Anat, while Ashtart was instead believed to dwell in Mari . Another similar text similarly invokes them together, after the pairs Baal and Dagan and Yarikh and Resheph . The importance of Ashtart is considered secondary compared to Anat in these sources and in the broader corpus of Ugaritic texts. However, Dennis Pardee stresses that while closely associated,

16632-572: The north, such as Anat, only came to be commonly worshiped in Egypt during the subsequent reign of the Eighteenth Dynasty . She proposes that recovering the former Hyksos territory increased the frequency of interactions with various cultures of the Mediterranean coast and the broader Ancient Near East , among them Ugarit . This in turn led to more foreign influences finding their way into Egyptian religion, culture and language. As of 2011, there

16786-400: The northern palace. After the destruction the site was occupied by simple residences, termed a village by the excavators. Aegean style pottery and loom weights were found in this Iron Age I level. Scribes in Ugarit appear to have originated the " Ugaritic alphabet " around 1400 BC: 30 letters, corresponding to sounds, were inscribed on clay tablets. Although they are cuneiform in appearance,

16940-475: The numerous finds and their findspots were collated. In 2005 the excavation became a joint French and Syrian effort led by Valérie Matoïan and Khozama Al-Bahloul. These continued until being ended due to the Syrian Civil War. Archaeologists have defined a number of occupation strata at the site based on the excavations: A number of areas lay within the fortifications of Ugarit. In the northwest section

17094-467: The oncoming enemy, eventually having to fall back from Anatolia to the Syrian border. Ammurapi's response to an appeal for assistance from the king of Alashiya highlights the desperate situation that Ugarit and other cities faced: My father, behold, the enemy's ships came (here); my cities(?) were burned, and they did evil things in my country. Does not my father know that all my troops and chariots(?) are in

17248-457: 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

17402-415: The other goddess - seizes his left hand. This passage is one of the multiple identified examples of poetic parallelism , employing the names of Anat and Ashart side by side. Subsequently Anat appears in the section of the story focused on Baal striving to be granted a permission to have a palace built for himself. She apparently confronts a human army in a passage which remains poorly understood. Afterwards,

17556-466: The other two deities, had to be a major goddess in a similar area of ancient Syria. In particular, attempts were made to identify her with Athirat based on the incorrect view that she, Anat, and Ashtart were the three major goddesses of Ugarit. This theory disregards the position of Shapash in the city's pantheon. Additionally, while Anat and Ashtart do appear together in Ugarit, there is no parallel group that would also include Athirat. A different proposal

17710-437: The past, but the fact that Anat knows about the decision before Baal and later relays it to him is regarded as evidence in its favor. It is still possible that Anat is not present when the verdict itself is pronounced by El. After Baal's death at the hands of Mot , Anat mourns him. She also shows concern about the fate of the people (KTU 1.6 I 6). Shapash , the sun goddess, is the first to notice her despair when she discovers

17864-529: The period covered by the Ugaritic corpus) and Egypt, though a skeptical approach should be retained. Regardless of Anat's relation to Baal, there is no evidence that she was ever regarded as the mother of his daughters attested in Ugartic tradition ( Pidray , Tallay and Arsay ). Ugaritic texts also refer to Anat to as Baal's sister, though Aicha Rahmouni notes that it has been called into question if they were envisioned as biologically related. She points out that there

18018-503: The permission to have a palace built for himself (KTU 1.3 V 27–32). She fails in this effort. Subsequently she assists the latter god in convincing Athirat to act as a mediator on his behalf. On the way to the sea shore where Athirat can be found, they apparently discuss an event during which Baal was dishonored in some way, possibly by Yam. The details are unclear and parts of the text are missing. When Athirat notices that they are approaching, she reacts with fear or anger (KTU 1.4 II.12–21);

18172-413: 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

18326-605: The pharaohs, the clergy of Ptah and ordinary citizens could all be involved in their veneration. Two temples dedicated to Anat have been identified in Egypt, one in Tanis (part of the temple complex of Mut ) and another as the Temple of Hibis in the Kharga Oasis . The Egyptians also built a temple dedicated to her in Beisan during the reign of Ramesses III . Izak Cornelius additionally lists

18480-437: The possibility that individual texts might allude to sexual encounters between Baal and Anat, but concludes that the weather god "did not have a wife in any real sense." Mark Smith argues that while there is no direct evidence for these two deities being viewed as a couple in the Ugaritic texts, the matter should be left open due to the scarcity of sources and possible evidence from other Northwest Semitic-speaking areas (postdating

18634-447: 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

18788-570: 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

18942-409: The revenge of his sister Pughat against Yatipan, who at one point mistakes her for Anat and starts boasting about his recent endeavors. Surviving fragments indicate that Anat herself does not face repercussions. Due to the presence of the word btlt , which is a very common epithet of Anat, it has been proposed that a verse from Epic of Keret (KTU 1.15 II 27) refers to her as a wetnurse of Yaṣṣib,

19096-402: The sacrifice of multiple bulls and rams to Anat. Additionally, a burnt offering of a bull and a ram to "Anat of Ṣaphon " is singled out near the end of the tablet. Anat of Saphon receives the same offering according to another source, listing the sacrifices made to her, as well as Ilib , El , Baal and Pidray , in the temple of Baal. In the same source she is also the recipient of a bull and

19250-983: The same Indo-European root are: night ( English ), Nacht ( German ), nacht ( Dutch , Frisian ), nag ( Afrikaans ), Naach ( Colognian ), natt ( Swedish , Norwegian ), nat ( Danish ), nátt ( Faroese ), nótt ( Icelandic ), noc ( Czech , Slovak , Polish ), ночь, noch ( Russian ), ноќ, noć ( Macedonian ), нощ, nosht ( Bulgarian ), ніч , nich ( Ukrainian ), ноч , noch / noč ( Belarusian ), noč ( Slovene ), noć ( Serbo-Croatian ), nakts ( Latvian ), naktis ( Lithuanian ), nos ( Welsh/Cymraeg ), νύξ, nyx ( Ancient Greek ), νύχτα / nychta ( Modern Greek ), nakt- ( Sanskrit ), natë ( Albanian ), nox , gen. sg. noctis ( Latin ), nuit ( French ), noche ( Spanish ), nochi ( Extremaduran ), nueche ( Asturian ), noite ( Portuguese and Galician ), notte ( Italian ), nit ( Catalan ), nuet/nit/nueit ( Aragonese ), nuèch / nuèit ( Occitan ) and noapte ( Romanian ). These all mean 'night' and derive from

19404-452: The same Proto-Germanic verb, *sterbaną 'to die'. Cognates also do not need to look or sound similar: English father , French père , and Armenian հայր ( hayr ) all descend directly from Proto-Indo-European *ph₂tḗr . An extreme case is Armenian երկու ( erku ) and English two , which descend from Proto-Indo-European *dwóh₁ ; the sound change *dw > erk in Armenian

19558-492: The scene has been summarized as "a stereotyped response to bad news." However, her mood improves when she realizes that Anat and Baal bear gifts for her, and do not intend to smite her or any other deities. Anat asks her on Baal's behalf to implore El to grant the permission she was herself unsuccessful at obtaining earlier (KTU 1.4 III 33-36). She then seemingly joins Athirat and her servant Qodesh-wa-Amrur in their journey to El's dwelling. This interpretation has been questioned in

19712-535: The second day. However, there is no indication that the label Gaṯarūma (which appears to describe the other three deities) also applied to her. Seventeen individuals bearing theophoric names invoking Anat have been identified in known Ugaritic texts, one among them being a king of nearby Siyannu . This makes her the second most popular goddess in that regard after Shapash, present in the names of sixty-six individuals. The element ʾilat ("goddess;" attested as an epithet of both Athirat and Anat) occurs more often, with

19866-486: The senior god grants her. She invites Aqhat to a hunt, but in secret she orders a certain Yatipan (described as a " Sutean warrior") to kill him. However, as a result of his assault the bow is broken, which enrages Anat further. Aqhat's body is subsequently devoured by birds of prey , and unnamed messengers inform Danel that Anat is complicit in his disappearance. The rest of the narrative apparently deals with Aqhat's burial and

20020-429: The south-central archives of the palace—and examples of practice writing by young scribes. Below ground, beneath two northern rooms, lay family tombs—three large chambers constructed with corbelled vaults—found devoid of any contents. The vanished upper floor likely accommodated the private quarters of the royal family, accessed via twelve staircases. The Acropolis, positioned in the Ugarit's northeastern section, housed

20174-405: 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 a-na-tu 4 . 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

20328-455: The stone masonry. A thick layer of plain plaster covered the walls. To the west of the palace was a set aside 10,000 square meter Royal Zone. Archaeological findings within the ruins have included a variety of artifacts including ivory carvings, stone stele, figurines, and numerous tablets. These tablets were discovered in archives located across the palace; their contents encompass reports on outlying regions, judicial records—particularly from

20482-462: 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

20636-405: The syllabic writing, especially in administrative documents, is actually in "a jargon where an Akkadian dialect is hard to detect given the great amount of Ugaritic elements it contained". The Royal Palace was constructed over several major phases between the 15th and 13th centuries BC. It comprised rooms arranged around courtyards, encompassing 6,500 square meters before the city's destruction in

20790-546: The tell. Numerous cuneiform tablets have been found. By the Late Bronze age Ugarit had a thriving dual-scribal system. Primarily it used the East Semitic Akkadian language which acted as the lingua franca throughout the region for diplomacy, business, and administrative purposes. In parallel, there was scribal activity in the local Northwest Semitic Ugaritic language. A few scribes are known to have worked in both writing systems. A number of archives were found,

20944-512: The text KTU 1.108 refers to Anat as gṯr , possibly "the powerful." According to Rahmouni gṯr is most likely a scribal mistake for the feminine form gṯrt , while Dennis Pardee proposes that in this case it is an otherwise unattested noun , " power ," instead of the adjective well known from other texts. An entire sequence of otherwise unknown epithets is listed in the following verses of the same tablet: "the mistress of kingship" ( b’lt mlk ), "the mistress of dominion" ( b’lt drkt ), "the mistress of

21098-407: 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

21252-430: The texts attesting that Anat was regarded as beautiful. Comparisons to her appearance could be employed to praise the beauty of literary characters, in this case Huray, a mortal princess. The term usually employed to highlight this quality of Anat is n’mt , a superlative form of n’m , which can mean "good" or "beautiful" depending on context. This term was also applied to the moon god Yarikh ( n’mn ‘lm , "most handsome of

21406-550: The two traditions functionally merged and that the religious life of the city was " transcultural ." It is agreed that a close connection existed between Anat and Baal , but its nature continues to be disputed. Past scholarship is commonly criticized for speculation about her presumed status as his wife. No evidence exists for a spousal relationship between Anat and any other deity in the Ugaritic texts, while possible indications of sexual relations with other deities, or lack of them, are not interpreted uniformly. Daniel Schwemer accepts

21560-409: 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. A number of proposals regarding

21714-464: The weather god about his treatment at her hands. Another long Ugaritic narrative work, the Epic of Aqhat (KTU 1.17-19), also features Anat, though for the most part it focuses on humans rather than gods. Many details of the plot are uncertain due to the state of preservation of the tablets. The eponymous character is the son of a legendary king, Danel . At an early point in the narrative, Danel's son receives

21868-500: Was a distinct deity. The meaning of the name was possibly analogous to Mesopotamian Belet Ekallim . Ba’alat Bahatīma might have also been a title of a different Ugaritic goddess, possibly Pidray or Athirat. A further deity sometimes argued to be identical with Anat is Rahmay, known from KTU 1.23, a myth about Shahar and Shalim . However, evidence in favor of this theory is absent from any known Ugaritic texts. A minor deity named ṯmq , who might correspond to Mesopotamian Sumuqan ,

22022-420: Was also called "the mistress of heaven." It has been argued that this title might be related to her epithet known from the Ugaritic text KTU 1.108, b’lt šmm rmm , 'mistress of the high heavens.' In visual arts, she was portrayed wearing the atef , a type of crown associated with Upper Egypt , and wielding either a spear and a shield, a fenestrated battle axe, or possibly the was-scepter . However, this utensil

22176-508: Was an acropolis with the temples of Dagon and Baal . In the west was the Royal Zone, including the Royal Palace . A fortress protecting the latter area was excavated, with the earliest elements dating back to the Middle Bronze Age. To the west of that lies the modern village of Ras Shamra. There were densely populated residential areas to the east of the Royal Zone and on the southern slope of

22330-417: 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 ,

22484-481: Was discovered still housing eighty shipping jars that remain remarkably intact. Artifacts discovered in the port indicate the predominance of native Ugaritians within the local populace, accompanied by a significant presence of various foreign communities such as Egyptians , Cypriots , Hittites , Hurrians , and Aegean peoples. Among the discoveries were Cypriot pottery (both imported and locally crafted), Mycenaean pottery , ivory cosmetic containers from Egypt,

22638-403: Was excavated between 1929 and 1935 by Claude Schaeffer. The site is currently a military port and unavailable for excavation. Its name in the Late Bronze Age is believed to have been Maʾḫadu. Archaeological excavations carried out on the southern side of the bay, now reduced in size due to alluvial fill, unveiled remnants of a settlement established in the 14th century BC, and perhaps earlier, in

22792-424: Was no material evidence for the presence of Anat in religious contexts before the reign of Ramesses II . Other deities sharing her origin, such as Resheph and Haurun , had already appeared in records dating further back, to the times of Amenhotep II . In the past, it was often argued that the worshipers of foreign deities were chiefly prisoners of war brought to Egypt, but textual sources instead indicate that

22946-405: 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

23100-490: 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 ( Ḫa-na-at, Bit Ḫa-na-at ), 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

23254-506: 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 ,

23408-477: Was possibly caused by the purported Sea Peoples , or an internal struggle. The kingdom would be one of the many that fell during the Bronze Age Collapse . Gibala ( Tell Tweini ), the coastal city at the southern edge of the Ugarit kingdom was also destroyed at this time. Based on archaeological soundings, the site was occupied beginning in the eighth millennium BC. Essentially all archaeology has focused on

23562-676: Was ruled by king Ammittamru I . A letter (EA45) sent by him, probably to Amenhotep III (1388–1351 BC) expresses warm diplomatic relations between the two. During the reign of his son Niqmaddu II (c. 1350–1315 BC) Ugarit became a vassal of the Hittite Empire , mainly through the Hittite ruler's viceroy in Karkemiš and then, with the Hititte collapse, directly under Karkemiš. Diplomatic relations with Egypt continued, as evidenced by two letters send by Niqmaddu II (EA49) and his wife Ḫeba (EA48), probably sent to Akhenaten (1351–1334 BC). The former includes

23716-539: Was the House of the High Priest, situated west of the Temple of Dagan. This large, two-story residence, largely well-constructed, contained tablets containing mythological poems. Some tablets demonstrated writing exercises and included syllabic and bilingual lexicons, implying the building's use as a center for scribe training. Its proximity to the primary temples and the discovery of bronze tools, particularly four small adzes and

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