Introduction
Anzu is a monstrous lion-headed eagle, once trusted enough to guard Enlil's own chamber, who betrayed that trust by stealing the Tablet of Destinies while Enlil bathed.
Family
- No further family relationships recorded in this tree.
Theft and Downfall
Anzu's theft of the Tablet of Destinies granted him tremendous, if temporary, power and threw the cosmic order into crisis until Ninurta (or, in variant Babylonian tellings, Marduk) tracked him down and killed him, restoring the tablet and, with it, stability to the divine hierarchy — a myth structurally similar to the later Enuma Elish's own narrative of chaos, theft of authority, and its heroic restoration.
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.