More on Anat
Aug. 4th, 2007 07:07 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
ikhet_sekhmetThe last of my notes from The Violent Goddess by Arvid S. Kapelrud.
In the chapter "Anat's Character and Task", Kapelrud divides Anat's functions into several categories:
- Goddess of war and battle
- The violent goddess (ie off the battlefield, in incidents such as her bloody threat to El and her murder of Aqhat)
- Goddess of lamentation and mourning (that is, ritual mourning, as for Aqhat and Baal)
- Goddess of love and fecundity
- The winged goddess
If there was a Ugaritic theogony, it hasn't yet been found. The family relationships between the gods aren't 100% clear. In the Ras Shamra texts, El calls Anat "my daughter" and Anat calls El "my father", but this may only be "an honorary title"; for example, Baal calls his fellow gods his "brothers", and calls Anat "sister", even though they have different fathers. Similarly, though Baal has daughters, it's not absolutely clear that their mother is Anat.
Because of Anat's close association with Baal, W.F. Albright suggested that Anat might be Baal's will personified. (Is there a parallel here with the Hindu deity Durga, the personified collective power of the gods?) However, they're opponents in the story of Aqhat. In one text, Baal and Anat mate in the form of bull and cow, and Anat gives birth to a calf.
Kapelrud concludes: "She covered so many sides of human life that her worshippers were confronted with her on each cross-road of their lives... She was the right goddess [to worship] in nearly every situation. It is thus no wonder that she was worshipped over practically the whole Middle Eastern area. The violent goddess was close to women's and men's hearts."
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Kapelrud, Arvid S. The Violent Goddess: Anat in the Ras Shamra Texts. Universitets-forlaget, Oslo, 1969.
In the chapter "Anat's Character and Task", Kapelrud divides Anat's functions into several categories:
- Goddess of war and battle
- The violent goddess (ie off the battlefield, in incidents such as her bloody threat to El and her murder of Aqhat)
- Goddess of lamentation and mourning (that is, ritual mourning, as for Aqhat and Baal)
- Goddess of love and fecundity
- The winged goddess
If there was a Ugaritic theogony, it hasn't yet been found. The family relationships between the gods aren't 100% clear. In the Ras Shamra texts, El calls Anat "my daughter" and Anat calls El "my father", but this may only be "an honorary title"; for example, Baal calls his fellow gods his "brothers", and calls Anat "sister", even though they have different fathers. Similarly, though Baal has daughters, it's not absolutely clear that their mother is Anat.
Because of Anat's close association with Baal, W.F. Albright suggested that Anat might be Baal's will personified. (Is there a parallel here with the Hindu deity Durga, the personified collective power of the gods?) However, they're opponents in the story of Aqhat. In one text, Baal and Anat mate in the form of bull and cow, and Anat gives birth to a calf.
Kapelrud concludes: "She covered so many sides of human life that her worshippers were confronted with her on each cross-road of their lives... She was the right goddess [to worship] in nearly every situation. It is thus no wonder that she was worshipped over practically the whole Middle Eastern area. The violent goddess was close to women's and men's hearts."
__
Kapelrud, Arvid S. The Violent Goddess: Anat in the Ras Shamra Texts. Universitets-forlaget, Oslo, 1969.
