Anzu

Summary

Anzu is a great bird of Mesopotamian myth, a lion-headed eagle who lives in the mountains and whose cry shakes the earth. The Sumerian dictionary glosses him "a mythological eagle", and he is carved on a stone macehead from the mid-third millennium BCE. Two stories face each other: in one he grants a hero a good destiny, in the other he steals destiny itself from the gods.

In the Sumerian poem about Lugalbanda, father of Gilgamesh, the young man is left alone in the Zabu mountains after his brothers march on towards Aratta, and he resolves to win the bird's favour. He finds the Anzud's nest in Enki's great tree while the parents are away hunting; he kneads honey cakes for the chick, feeds it salt meat and sheep's fat, paints its eyes with kohl and sets a sprig of white cedar on its head. Anzud returns carrying a live bull in his talons and a dead bull on his shoulders, calls his chick and gets no answer, and he and his wife cry out so that the gods of the mountains creep into crevices like ants. Then he sees the nest decorated like a god's dwelling, rejoices and says: "I am the prince who decides the destiny of rolling rivers.. My father Enlil brought me here. He let me bar the entrance to the mountains as if with a great door. If I fix a fate, who shall alter it?" He promises to fix a fate for whoever did this. Lugalbanda comes out, greets him and calls him father and his wife mother; the bird offers him boats full of silver, arrows that never miss, Ninurta's helmet and Dumuzi's butter, and he refuses everything, asking instead for strength in his thighs to run and never tire. Anzud grants it, flies above him to show him his brothers' army, warns him to tell no one of the fate he has been given, and returns to his nest.

In the Akkadian epic Anzu stands watching Enlil; when Enlil bathes he takes the Tablet of Destinies, on which the nature and fate of living beings are written, and flies off with it to his mountain. The rites stop, the world falls silent, and the Igigi are thrown into disarray. Anu calls for someone to kill Anzu; the gods refuse one after another, until Ea says he will appoint Anzu's captor and calls the great mother, who sends her son Ningirsu, Ninurta in the later version. Each time the hero shoots, Anzu uses the tablet's knowledge to order the arrow back to what it came from, the reed to its canebrake and the feathers to their bird, until Ninurta, on Ea's advice, cuts off his wings, kills him and returns the tablet to his father.

The idea both stories turn on is the fixing of destiny. The bird who tells Lugalbanda "If I fix a fate, who shall alter it?" is the bird who, in the epic, steals the tablet by which all fates are fixed. In the first he gives what is asked to the one who honoured his house and keeps the boundary between his world and the human one, sending the boy back to his brothers. In the second he takes what is not his and the world falls silent, until his wings are cut and the tablet returns to its place. The power over destiny is the same; the difference is between giving it and stealing it.

We read the name in the Arabic tongue like this. Anzû is Sumerian anzud, sometimes written an-zu. The Sumerian essay reads it Zû, taking the first sign as the sign for a god, and derives it from Arabic ʿazza, to be mighty and overcome; Lane records the Arab proverb man ʿazza bazza, "whoever overcomes takes the spoil", which is what Anzu did with the tablet. If the first sign is kept as part of the name, it has ʿ-n-z in order, and cuneiform does not write ʿayn: Arabic ʿanz, which Lane gives as the female eagle, and the female of the vulture and the hawk. This is a reading proposed on the method, supported by the fact that the Sumerian dictionary glosses anzud itself as an eagle. The name is the bird's name, and the essay's ʿazza is its quality.

Linguistic Root

Anzu, ʿanz and ʿazza

Lane gives ʿanz as a she-goat, and also "the female eagle", "the female vulture", the female of the bustard and "the female of the hawk", plural ʿunūz. Hebrew has a bird of prey called ʿozniyyāh, listed beside the eagle among the forbidden birds of Leviticus and Deuteronomy; BDB says it is akin to the vulture and its root unknown, and Strong derives it from ʿōz, "strength". Hebrew thus joins the name of a bird of prey and the sense of strength in one word, as this reading does.

ʿAyn drops in Akkadian, becoming a glottal stop or a vowel, as the sound-change laws state, and Sumerian writing has no sign for it, so what remains of ʿanz is n and z, the letters of the name. Lane gives ʿazza as to be mighty and strong, and to overcome and subdue, hence the proverb man ʿazza bazza. The limit of both readings is the final d of Sumerian anzud, which neither ʿanz nor ʿazza explains.

Imdugud and the essay's readings

The Sumerian essay reads the old writing IM.DUGUD in Sumerian: im, wind, and dugud, heavy, giving "heavy wind", the storm cloud; then in Arabic as amma + thaqula, the one who heads for the heavy, and dujā, the wind of heavy darkness, which it ranks first. It also reads Anzu as An + zu, "the one who knows heaven", which is why he stole the tablets. For Zû it lists further readings: zāza, to shake, zaʿʿa, to cry out, and dhū, the one with wings, all placed after ʿazza.

Historical Context

Anzu appears often in texts and images as a lion-headed eagle; one of the oldest images is a mid-third-millennium stone macehead in the British Museum. The Sumerian dictionary also glosses the word as a figurine of a lion-headed eagle. His Akkadian epic was a favourite of scribal education: five manuscripts were found at Huzirina, modern Sultantepe in south-eastern Turkey, and Ninurta's fight with him was carved on the walls of Ninurta's temple at Kalhu. Assyrian court scholars took from the story that the Tablet of Destinies could be rewritten: omens were warnings of what the gods intended, and prayer and lament could persuade them to change what was written.

Family and connections

Key Mythic Narratives

The trophy on the chariot

In Angim Ninurta brings the Anzud bird out of the halub-haran tree and hangs it on the front guard of his chariot, among his other trophies: the Six-headed Wild Ram, the Dragon and the Seven-headed Serpent. In Lugal-e the mace Šar-ur lists it among those Ninurta has slain in the mountains.

The Anzu chick and the turtle

In a broken Sumerian poem the Anzu chick speaks after Ninurta's weapon has struck it: the me left its hand and returned to the abzu, and the Tablet of Destinies returned to the abzu. The chick then leads Ninurta to Enki, who honours the hero; the hero covets the world, and Enki traps him with a turtle made of clay.

The bird's advice

Before they part, Anzud tells Lugalbanda not to tell his comrades the fate he has fixed for him, nor explain it to his brothers, for "fair fortune may conceal foul". When his brothers ask how he crossed the rivers alone, he says he stepped over them, drank them like water from a waterskin, and ate the acorns of the mountain.

Symbolic Reading

The Sumerian essay reads Anzu as "the knower of heaven's secrets", which is why he stole the tablets, and reads Imdugud as the heavy storm cloud, making him the thunderbird, noting that the pairing of bird and storm is common in Semitic mythologies. In the texts this shows in his cry that shakes the Lulubi mountains, in the mist and storm loosed against him in battle, and in the wing he sheds in the clash of the storm.

Cross-Cultural Parallels

Simurgh lives on a mountain as Anzud does, protects Zāl whom his father abandoned, and gives him a feather to burn when he is in trouble. Anzud gives Lugalbanda, left behind by his brothers, a strength that takes him back to them. Both birds give the abandoned hero what he needs and return him to his people. The theft from the gods meets the story of Prometheus: he stole fire and gave it to humans, Anzu stole the tablet for himself, and in both stories the thief is punished. The Sumerian essay compares Anzu with the Arabian ʿAnqāʾ and the Indian Garuḍa.