Ivory bas-relief Ugarit-Ras Shamra 1550-1200/1150 BCE. Drawing © Stéphane Beaulieu after Pope 1977: Plate XI. Used with permission.

About the bas-relief: Early excavators at Ugarit unearthed a few exquisite ivory furniture panels, one of which shows a goddess nursing two princes. Since Anat is the only female deity whom the Ugaritic poems describe as actually flying, this beautifully winged goddess is probably Anat.

Goddess Anat
Warrior Virgin of the Ancient Levant

Young and impetuous Anat was one of the great goddesses of the ancient Levant, the area now occupied by Israel, Transjordan, and Syria. In mythic poems from the ancient city of Ugarit on the coast of Syria, she had a very active role, but the other important source for the polytheistic religion of the area, the Hebrew Bible, almost ignores her. Anat may once have been worshipped throughout the Levant, although she was probably more important in the north than in the south. However, by the Late Bronze Age (1550-1200 BCE), to judge from Ugarit, her cult seems to have begun to die out even in the north, as her attributes and functions were slowly taken over by other great goddesses.

According to Ugaritic poems dated to the latter part of Bronze Age (about 2000-1200 BCE), Anat was certainly a warrior goddess. Like Hindu Kali, she suspended severed hands and heads about her person and exulted in battle:

Anat's soul was exuberant,
as she plunged knee-deep in the soldiers' blood,
up to her thighs in the warriors' gore … (Coogan 1978:91).

Not only did Anat delight in warfare, but she also enjoyed hunting. When she asked foolhardy, young prince Aqhat to give her his beautiful bow, he refused her request in a very insulting manner:

… bows are for men!
Do women ever hunt? (Coogan 1978:37).

Not surprisingly, ruthless Anat had him killed.

Contrary to the norms of patriarchal Ugarit, Anat behaved as if she were male, not female. She was an aggressive advocate for Baal, the god of storm and rain. On his behalf she threatened her father El, the ruler of the cosmos:

I'll smash your head,
I'll make your gray hair run with blood,
Your gray beard with gore …. (Coogan 1978:95)

She also ruthlessly destroyed Mot, the god of drought, sterility, and death, in order to release Baal from his clutches.

Despite her seemingly masculine nature, however, Anat did have a soft, almost motherly side, especially with regard to Baal. When she was searching for Baal after Mot had swallowed him, the poem comments:

Like the heart of a cow for her calf,
like the heart of a ewe for her lamb,
so was Anat's heart for Baal. (Coogan 1978:111)

Further, she was one of "the two wet nurses of the gods" (Coogan 1978:66). In this capacity, she probably validated royal heirs, but she was no mother goddess. Indeed, in the Ugaritic poems, her usual epithet was "Virgin."

Anat was not, however, a virgin in our sense. Rather, the word indicates that she was a young and marriageable woman who had not yet borne a child (Day 1991:145). As a perpetual teenager, Anat could indulge in culturally masculine activities. More important, she could cross sex-role boundaries precisely because she was not "a reproductive 'fertility goddess'" (Day 1991:53).

The Anat Stele, © 2003 Sage Starwalker. After N. Wyatt, Ugarit Forschungen, 16 (1985) 328.

Ugaritic cultic texts make clear that Anat was still venerated in the northern Levant during the Late Bronze Age (about1550-1200/1150 BCE). She also had a later, if a somewhat ambiguous, role in other areas of the ancient Levant. Although the Hebrew Bible, the Old Testament, never refers to Anat as a deity, she does appear in it occasionally in place and personal names. In all probability, the places named for Anat boasted important temples or shrines to the goddess (Day 2000:133). The Hebrew Scriptures also record two personal names containing the word Anat, the more interesting being that of the "judge" Shamgar ben Anat, "a champion in Israel" (Judges 3:31; 5:6). A number of scholars have put forward theories about the phrase "ben Anat, son of Anat." Most convincing, however, is the hypothesis that "ben Anat" was a military designation, since a number of known Canaanite warriors also carried the same title. The warrior goddess was probably their guardian deity (Day 2000:134).

It was also in the Late Bronze Age that Anat achieved her greatest status, when she became an Egyptian war goddess, especially important to the warlike Ramesside pharaohs. Indeed, the "great" warrior king Ramses II (1304-1237 BCE) regarded her as his patron deity (Patai 1990:62). In addition, some Egyptian reliefs of the Ramesside Age (1300-1200 BCE) are dedicated to Canaanite goddesses, and some mention Anat by name. At the bottom of one, there is a depiction, with inscription, of a ritual offering to Anat (Westenholz 1998:80,#28).

In the Iron Age, from 1200 BCE on, at least one Israelite/Jewish community in exile seems to have revered Anat. It was a military colony in Upper Egypt. At the end of the fifth century BCE, a member of that community wrote letters mentioning Anat along with "Yaho," that is, Yahweh (Patai 1990:65-66). It is possible that, in the colony, Anat was Yahweh's consort. In addition, some evidence left on the island of Cyprus by the Phoenicians, the descendants of the Canaanites, refers to Anat and suggests that she was venerated there, where, later, she seems to have been identified with Greek Athene (Oden 1976:32). Otherwise, Anat did not survive as a separate deity, but may have been assimilated into the "Syrian Goddess" of Roman times.

References & Suggested Readings
+ Coogan, Michael D., translator, 1978. Stories from Ancient Canaan. Louisville, KY: Westminster
+ Day, John 2000. Yahweh & the Gods & Goddesses of Canaan. Sheffield, UK: Sheffield Academic Press
+ Day, Peggy L. 1991. "Why Is Anat a Warrior & a Hunter?" 141-146 in The Bible & the Politics of Exegesis, ed. D. Jobling. Cleveland, OH: Pilgrim
+ Oden, R.A., Jr. 1976. "The Persistence of Canaanite Religion," Biblical Archaeologist 39:31-36
+ Patai, Raphael 1990. The Hebrew Goddess: Third Enlarged Edition. Detroit, MI: Wayne State University
+ Pope, Marvin H., 1977. Song of Songs: A New Translation with Introduction and Commentary. NY: Doubleday, Anchor Bible.
+ Stuckey, Johanna H. 2000. "The Great Goddesses of the Levant," Bulletin of the Canadian Society for Mesopotamian Studies 37 27-48, available from the Canadian Society for Mesopotamian Studies, c/o R.I.M. Project, University of Toronto, 4 Bancroft Ave., Toronto, Ontario M5S 1A1, (416) 978-4531
+ Westenholz, Joan G. 1998. "Goddesses of the Ancient Near East 3000-1000 BC," 62-82 in Ancient Goddesses: The Myths & the Evidence, eds. Lucy Goodison & Christine Morris. Madison. WI: University of Wisconsin

Graphic Credits
+ Ivory bas-relief, Ugarit-Ras Shamra, 1550-1200/1150 BCE. Drawing © Stéphane Beaulieu after Pope 1977: Plate XI. Used with permission. All rights reserved.
+ The Anat Stele, Copyright © 2003 Sage Starwalker. All rights reserved. After N. Wyatt, Ugarit Forschungen, 16 (1985) 328.