Introduction
Anshar is the god personifying the horizon of the heavens, son of Lahmu and Lahamu, whose union with his sister-consort Kishar (horizon of the earth) produced Anu, the eventual head of the pantheon.
Family
Father of the Sky
Anshar's name, meaning roughly "whole sky" or "totality of the heavens," reflects his cosmological role as a boundary-marking deity in the generational sequence leading from the primordial pair Apsu and Tiamat to the great gods. In the Enuma Elish, Anshar is also the one who, alarmed by Tiamat's rising threat, first calls upon his descendants — Ea, then Anu, then finally Marduk — to confront her.
Mesopotamian religion spans Sumerian, Akkadian, and Babylonian sources composed and recopied across nearly three thousand years, so names, genealogies, and even a deity's role often shift between traditions (Sumerian An/Enki/Inanna alongside their Akkadian/Babylonian forms Anu/Ea/Ishtar); the account above follows the most widely attested version, usually as consolidated in the Babylonian Enuma Elish or the standard Akkadian Epic of Gilgamesh.