Anzili or Enzili
[Piotr Taracha: ''Religions of Second Millennium Anatolia''. Wiesbaden 2009, p. 56.] was a
Hittite goddess who was worshipped in Tamita and Zapišḫuna. Her name is sometimes written with the
Sumerogram
A Sumerogram is the use of a Sumerian cuneiform character or group of characters as an ideogram or logogram rather than a syllabogram in the graphic representation of a language other than Sumerian, such as Akkadian, Eblaite, or Hittite. Th ...
IÅ TAR or the compound IÅ TAR-''li''.
In Ḫurma, the goddess Anzili was considered the partner of the
Weather god of Zippalanda, but she is also attested as the partner of the Weather god of
Šarišša.
In Kuliwišna she was worshiped with the local weather god and the
LAMMA-tutelary god.
Along with the goddess Zukki, Anzili was involved in rituals to aid childbirth. Anzili and Zukki are among the many Hittite deities, whose temporary disappearance is the topic of myth (compare
Telipinu, the
Sun goddess of Arinna
The Sun goddess of Arinna, also sometimes identified as Arinniti or as Wuru(n)šemu, is the chief Goddess of Hittite mythology. Her companion is the weather god Tarḫunna. She protected the Hittite kingdom and was called the "Queen of all lands. ...
,
Inara, the ,
Ḫannaḫanna, the , and various weather gods, including the weather god of Kuliwišna). The standard pattern is that the deity disappears as a result of their anger and they have to be mollified in order to bring them back. In the case of Anzili and Zukki, the goddesses are so angry that they put their shoes on the wrong feet - left on right and right on left - and they put their clothes on back to front, so that their cloak pins are on the back. Then they both departed from mankind. The back-to-front clothes of the goddesses might be understood as a symbol of the symbolic destruction of the cosmic order which results from the goddesses' departure.
[Volkert Haas, Heidemarie Koch: ''Religionen des alten Orients: Hethiter und Iran''. Göttingen 2011, pp. 270 f.]
References
Bibliography
*
Volkert Haas
Volkert Haas (1 November 1936 – 13 May 2019) was a German Assyrologist and Hittitologist.
__NOTOC__ Life
Volkert Haas studied Assyrology and Near Eastern archaeology at the Free University of Berlin and the University of Marburg from 1963 to ...
: ''Geschichte der hethitischen Religion'' (= ''
Handbuch der Orientalistik.'' Band 1.15). Brill, Leiden 1994, .
* Volkert Haas,
Heidemarie Koch: ''Religionen des alten Orients: Hethiter und Iran''. Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, Göttingen 2011, .
*
Piotr Taracha: ''Religions of Second Millennium Anatolia''. Harrassowitz Verlag, Wiesbaden 2009, {{ISBN, 978-3-447-05885-8.
Hittite deities
Childhood goddesses