Anzu, the eagle with a lion's head who is the incarnation of chaos, is one of the most frequently occurring Mesopotamian monsters in both written and visual sources. He appears in many epics, written in both Sumerian and Akkadian.
The Myth of Anzu is the most widespread, and is also frequently referred to in other epics, such as Erra and Išum. It is written in Akkadian and belongs to a series of tales usually known by modern scholars as the "Ninurta Cycle", whose main protagonist is the warrior god, son of Ellil.
The first version of the Anzu myth probably dates from the early second millennium BC, but many copies, including the Huzirina manuscripts, date from the Neo-Assyrian period, i.e., the 8th and 7th centuries BC. This late version covers three Tablets and runs to approximately 550 lines.
- Tablet 1, for which there is no manuscript in the CAMS/GKAB corpus, portrays Anzu watching at Ellil. He steals the "Tablet of Destinies", on which the nature and fate of all living beings is written, while Ellil is having a bath. Anzu then flees to the mountains, where he lives, and silence falls upon the world.
- In Tablet 2, Ninurta is eventually sent against Anzu. But he and his companions have the greatest difficulties in fighting Anzu. Thanks to Anzu's knowledge of the nature of all things and living beings, he uses incantations to turn back time and make the arrows revert to their constituent parts (see STT 1, 19 [/cams/gkab/P338336/]). Ninurta then seeks Ea's advice, who suggests cutting Anzu's wings. Anzu will then utter an incantation to bring back his wings and feathers, but will fail because the wings are stuck to the ground with the arrows.
- Tablet 3 shows how Ninurta kills Anzu, following Ea's guidance (see STT 1, 23 [/cams/gkab/P338340/]), and reclaims the "Tablet of Destinies". But at this point, it seems that he refuses to give it back to Ellil. Unfortunately the passage is very fragmentary in all surviving manuscripts. However, when the story starts again, Ninurta is back with Ellil and has returned the Tablet. He is then celebrated by the other gods and he is called by different names referring to his life, deeds and powers, just as the god Marduk is in the final Tablet of Enūma Eliš.
There are five manuscripts of the Myth of Anzu in Huzirina but no other in the CAMS/GKAB 'libraries'. Some of these are duplicates (e.g., STT 1, 23 and 25 [/cams/gkab/P338340,P338342/]), implying that the myth probably was one of the classics of scribal education. There is unfortunately only one colophon, where neither the name of the scribe nor his rank or status is preserved.
Further reading
Marie-Françoise Besnier, 'The Myth of Anzu', The Geography of Knowledge, The GKAB Project, 2019 [http://oracc.museum.upenn.edu/cams/gkab/scribalapprenticeship/literaryworks/anzu/]