Anzu
(around 2500 BC, now in the British Museum )
Anzu (also Zu ; Sumerian an an x (IM) -dugud ) is the name of a being in Mesopotamian mythology and means mighty cloud . The Akkadian term is a loan word , the original meaning of which is unclear. The Sumerian name is Imdugud .
Description and illustrations
Anzu looked very strange, which even became proverbial, kīma ansî šanu nabnīta (Tukulti-Ninurta epic). Benno Landsberger assumes that he had the face of a bat ( pān Anzî ). It had a beak like a saw (Anzu Mythos SB), which does not agree with the usual pictorial representations with a lion's head.
The first glyptic evidence of the mythological predecessor of Anzu dates from the epoch Ed II (2550 BC) to Ed IIIa (2500 BC). Anzu is initially represented iconographically similar to the lion eagle of the Akkad and Neo-Sumerian times.
The very rare motif of a lion eagle hovering over two lions , which was incorporated twice on the Gudeastele, comes from the reign of Gudea . The classification of the Anzu as a lion eagle made in this context is not certain, as that derivation refers to the partially unclear text of the Gudeastele.
“His brick form“ box ”on which he had scratched a drawing and his stamp (?), Which he had deeply impressed, (bore) an anzu, the emblem of his master ( Ningirsu ); he decorated it to a standard (?). "
On the basis of other depictions of the earlier type of lion eagle, for example from the time of Eannatum , the Assyriologists consider it likely that the mentioned Anzu on the Gudeastele is a lion eagle. In later epochs the representations of Anzu correspond to a lion kite .
Goldsmith and Gould, on the other hand, consider the Mari figurine to be the image of a bat.
myth
See also
literature
- Helmut Freydank u. a .: Lexicon of the Old Orient. Egypt * India * China * Western Asia , VMA-Verlag, Wiesbaden 1997 ISBN 3-928127-40-3
- Brigitte Groneberg : The gods of the Mesopotamia. Cults, Myths, Epen , Artemis & Winkler, Stuttgart 2004 ISBN 3-7608-2306-8
- B. Hruška 1975, The Mythical Eagle Anzu in Literature and Presentation of Ancient Mesopotamia . Budapest.
Web links
Dubbing
-
Attempts to reconstruct the spoken Akkadian . Here the Anzu epic recorded by Claus Wilcke with transcription. School of Oriental and African Studies , University of London website , available at by-nc-nd
Individual evidence
- ↑ William W. Hello, William L. Moran 1979. The First Tablet of the SB Recension of the Anzu-Myth. Journal of Cuneiform Studies 31/2, 70
- ↑ Dietz-Otto Edzard and a .: Real Lexicon of Assyriology and Near Eastern Archeology , Vol. 5 . de Gruyter, Berlin 1999, ISBN 3-11-007192-4 , p. 121.
- ↑ Lion eagle depiction no. 14 : "Type A" as a crouching lion eagle .
- ↑ Lion kite illustration: Illustration no. 25 according to Dietz-Otto Edzard u. a .: Real Lexicon of Assyriology and Near Eastern Archeology, Vol. 8 . de Gruyter, Berlin 1997, ISBN 3-11-014809-9 , pp. 243-244.
- ↑ Naomi F. Goldsmith, Edwin Gould 1990. Sumerian Bats, Lion-Headed Eagles, and iconographic Evidence for the Overthrow of a Female-Priest Hegemony. Biblical Archaeologist 53/3, 142-156