#anatu

sometimes a light party is two healers, a black mage, and an angsty vampire (paladin)

GPOSE YEAR IN REVIEW 2023 ~ The War of the Magi

you can achieve incredible things when the brainrot is real

"Astarte Plaque" from Tell es Safi Source: Bliss & Macalister, Excavations in Palestine, London, 1902, Plate 67 No. 15s Via: "Star of David" Blog Tell es-Safi / Gath, Palestine (Tel Tzafit Park, Israel) c. 800 BCE Current location unknown, likely stolen from place of origin and lost. Modern rendition by OP:

"They" can refer to Louhi, Balor, Anatu, and Leanashe right?

Balor is a good boy: exhibit A

Louhi @yloiseconeillants​, Anatu @lilbittymonster​ and Leanashe @hermits-hovel​ all get to experience his whimsy :3

bonus:

How funny that you should ask!  I am literally giving a paper this week at an international conference that discusses this very subject.  So, uh, great question!  Here’s my condensed answer — if you want to read the paper I’m giving me, PM me your e-mail address. :-)

(Context: the Anat description in question is translated here.)

Anat is a fascinating character, and people’s understandings of her have changed dramatically over time.  For a while, she was treated as a promiscuous “fertility goddess” (along with, y’know, every other female goddess, because women are all about the fertility, amiright?).  But in fact, we have no clear instances where she has sex — all the evidence was based on interpretations of textual gaps and ambiguities.

What we do have is her epithet: “batulatu Anat.”  Over and over, she’s identified as a batulatu (related to Hebrew “betulah” and Akkadian “batultu”).  Now, the meaning of this word is somewhat debated; sometimes it gets translated as “virgin,” but we have evidence that it didn’t mean quite that, e.g. marriage contracts that refer to a woman with prior children as a batultu.  But what it definitely does not indicate is a married woman, or a sexually active woman.  There’s a line in 2 Samuel 13 where Amnon is lusting after his half-sister Tamar — “but she was a betulah, so it seemed impossible to do anything to her.” (Note: I’m revising my older translation/interpretation here.) In other words, a betulah is someone with whom sex would be impossible — someone who isn’t yet in the realm of sexual women.

To me, that fact — the fact that Anat isn’t someone to be lusted after, because she isn’t sexually accessible — is why she can, quite literally, get away with murder.  There is an archetype of the murderous woman in the ancient Near East, but she’s a dangerous being who needs to be punished; the topic of my paper compares Anat to Jezebel, who ends up being killed for transgressing those gender boundaries.  We see a similar backlash in the Descent of Inanna/Ishtar, where a goddess overstepping her boundaries leads to her punishment (turning her into meat hanging on a hook), and in all the incantations against the devouring Lamashtu.

Anat escapes the backlash, however, because she’s not part of the overarching metaphor that marks female power as “unnatural.”  Sex is metaphorically like eating, which makes women metaphorically food, and thus “naturally” in the position of prey rather than predator.  But the metaphor only applies to sexualized women, those who “entice the appetite” — and Anat is not one of them.

Babylon was the capital of the biggest, richest empire in all of Mobius, thousands of years ago. The city was widely known for its riches, its architecture, its advanced technology. Naturally many people wanted a part of that life. So they began flocking towards the ever growing city. As it goes when many people come to the same city with high hopes and dreams, some ended up being disappointed. Some arrived too late. Some ended up on the streets. The City of Babylon was split into districts of different political importance and standing. Imagine you’re an immigrant. You enter the city over a bridge towards a blue gate, bigger and more pompous than anything you’ve ever seen. But behind the gate you don’t find a comfy home and a pile of golden coins. You find a road with many doors that are locked to you. The first gate is the only one you may pass. It leads to the commoners district. A place where people work hard for their daily bread, but most are happy nontheless. Houses are so close to each other that some alleyways are hardly even wide enough to accommodate more than one person walking through them. All you see are windows, hardly ever doors. The entrances of the buildings face away from the busy street to give the residents privacy. Houses have small courtyards that connect 2 - 4 houses with each other. Neighbours cook and chat together in the courtyard. They play board games. Children play. And when night falls everyone returns into their bedrooms.  Some have even taken to living on their roofs in summer.

It’s a simple life but not a bad one. Hidden in the shadows of the crowded commoners district however are the slums. I don’t need to explain to you what the slums are. The poor. The sick. Thieves. Murderers. The abandoned. A place almost devoid of hope. The only thing people from these two districts have in common is their hope to one day cross the river that splits the great city in two halves. Because on the other side lies their promised land. The University district. - Reserved for those who have the funds and status to study languages, architecture or the arts. The Royal district. - Reserved for the Royal Family and their staff.

The Temple district. - Reserved for the priestesses and their staff. Lead by the most beloved mortal figure in all of Babylon. The high Priestess Anatu. Which brings me to point two of this lore post:

Now it was no mistake of mine, or an attempt for a cool segway into the religion topic that I placed “Royal district” beneath “Temple district”. In fact these were sorted by their political importance. That’s right. Babylon my be ruled by a King and his Queen. But even the King is bound to listen to the words of the High Priestess as she is the voice of the gods and thus the most powerful mortal woman in the Empire of Babylon:

Meet the high priestess Anatu: