Anat Anat ( or ) or Anath ( ; Hebrew and Phoenician ענת , " ‘ Anāt " ; Ugaritic " ‘ nt " ; Greek Αναθ , " Anath " ; Egyptian " Antit " , " Anit " , " Anti " , or " Anant " ) is a major northwest Semitic goddess . ‘ Anat in Ugarit . In the Ugaritic Ba ‘ al / Hadad cycle ‘ Anat is a violent war - goddess , a virgin in Ugarit ( " btlt ' nt " ) though the sister and lover of the great Ba ‘ al known as Hadad elsewhere . Ba ‘ al is usually called the son of Dagon and sometimes the son of El . ‘ Anat is addressed by El as " daughter " . Either one relationship or the other is probably figurative . ‘ Anat ' s titles used again and again are " virgin ‘ Anat " and " sister - in - law of the peoples " ( or " progenitress of the peoples " or " sister - in - law , widow of the Li ’ mites " ) . In a fragmentary passage from Ugarit ( modern Ras Shamra ) , Syria ‘ Anat appears as a fierce , wild and furious warrior in a battle , wading knee - deep in blood , striking off heads , cutting off hands , binding the heads to her torso and the hands in her sash , driving out the old men and townsfolk with her arrows , her heart filled with joy . " Her character in this passage anticipates her subsequent warlike role against the enemies of Baal " . ’ Anat boasts that she has put an end to Yam m the darling of El , to the seven - headed serpent , to Arsh the darling of the gods , to Atik ' Quarrelsome ' the calf of El , to Ishat ' Fire ' the bitch of the gods , and to Zabib ' flame ? ' the daughter of El . Later , when Ba ‘ al is believed to be dead , she seeks after Ba ‘ al " like a cow for its calf " and finds his body ( or supposed body ) and buries it with great sacrifices and weeping . ‘ Anat then finds Mot , Ba ‘ al / Hadad ' s supposed slayer and she seizes Mot , splits him with a sword , winnows him with a sieve , burns him with fire , grinds him with millstones and scatters the remnants to the birds . Text " CTA " 10 tells how ‘ Anat seeks after Ba ‘ al who is out hunting , finds him , and is told she will bear a steer to him . Following the birth she brings the new calf to Ba ‘ al on Mount Zephon . But nowhere in these texts is ‘ Anat explicitly Ba ‘ al / Hadad ' s consort . To judge from later traditions ‘ Athtart ( who also appears in these texts ) is more likely to be Ba ‘ al / Hadad ' s consort . But of course northwest Semitic culture permitted more than one wife and liaisons outside marriage are normal for deities in all pantheons . In the North Canaanite story of " Aqhat " , the protagonist Aqhat son of the judge Danel ( Dn ' il ) is given a wonderful bow and arrows which was created for ‘ Anat by the craftsman god Kothar - wa - Khasis but which was given to Dan [ i ] el for his infant son as a gift . When Aqhat grew to be a young man , the goddess ‘ Anat tried to buy the bow from Aqhat , offering even immortality , but Aqhat refused all offers , calling her a liar because old age and death are the lot of all men . He then added to this insult by asking what would a woman do with a bow ? Like Inanna in the Epic of Gilgamesh , ‘ Anat complained to El and threatened El himself if he did not allow her to take vengeance on Aqhat . El conceded . ‘ Anat launched her attendant Yatpan in hawk form against Aqhat to knock the breath out of him and to steal the bow back . Her plan succeeds , but Aqhat is killed instead of merely beaten and robbed . In her rage against Yatpan , ( text is missing here ) Yatpan runs away and the bow and arrows fall into the sea . All is lost . ‘ Anat mourned for Aqhat and for the curse that this act would bring upon the land and for the loss of the bow . The focus of the story then turns to Paghat , the wise younger sister of Aqhat . She sets off to avenge her brother ' s death and to restore the land which has been devastated by drought as a direct result of the murder . The story is unfortunately incomplete . It breaks at an extremely dramatic moment when Paghat discovers that the mercenary whom she has hired to help her avenge the death is , in fact , Yatpan , her brother ' s murderer . The parallels between the story of ‘ Anat and her revenge on Mot for the killing of her brother are obvious . In the end , the seasonal myth is played out on the human level . Gibson ( 1978 ) thinks Rahmay ' The Merciful ' , co - wife of El with Athirat , is also the goddess ‘ Anat but he fails to take into account the primary source documents . Most Ugaritic scholars point out that the dual names of deities in Ugaritic poetry is an essential part of the verse - form and that two names for the same deity are traditionally mentioned in parallel lines . In the same way Athirat , is called Elath ( meaning " The Goddess " ) in paired couplets . The poetic structure can also be seen in early Hebrew verse forms . Anat in Egypt . Anat first appears in Egypt in the 16th dynasty ( the Hyksos period ) along with other northwest Semitic deities . She was especially worshiped in her aspect of a war goddess , often paired with the goddess ` Ashtart . In the " Contest Between Horus and Set " , these two goddesses appear as daughters of Re and are given in marriage to the god Set , who had been identified with the Semitic god Hadad . During the Hyksos period Anat had temples in the Hyksos capital of Avaris and in Beth - Shan ( Palestine ) as well as being worshipped in Memphis . On inscriptions from Memphis of 15th to 12th centuries , Anat is called " Bin - Ptah " , Daughter of Ptah . She is associated with Reshpu , ( " Canaanite " : Resheph ) in some texts and sometimes identified with the native Egyptian goddess Neith . She is sometimes called " Queen of Heaven " . Her iconography varies , but she is usually shown carrying one or more weapons . The name of Anat - her , a shadowy Egyptian ruler of this time , is evidently derived from " Anat " . In the New Kingdom Ramesses II made ‘ Anat his personal guardian in battle and enlarged Anat ' s temple in Pi - Ramesses . Ramesses named his daughter ( whom he later married ) Bint - Anat ' Daughter of Anat ' . His dog appears in a carving in Beit el Wali temple with the name " Anat - in - vigor " and one of his horses was named " ‘ Ana - herte " ' Anat - is - satisfied ' . Anat in Mesopotamia . In Akkadian , the form one would expect " Anat " to take would be " Antu " , earlier " Antum " . This would also be the normal feminine form that would be taken by " Anu " , the Akkadian form of An ' Sky ' , the Sumerian god of heaven . Antu appears in Akkadian texts mostly as a rather colorless consort of Anu , the mother of Ishtar in the Gilgamesh story , but is also identified with the northwest Semitic goddess ‘ Anat of essentially the same name . It is unknown whether this is an equation of two originally separate goddesses whose names happened to fall together or whether Anat ' s cult spread to Mesopotamia , where she came to be worshipped as Anu ' s spouse because the Mesopotamian form of her name suggested she was a counterpart to Anu . It has also been suggested that the parallelism between the names of the Sumerian goddess , Inanna , and her West Semitic counterpart , Ishtar , continued in Canaanite tradition as Anath and Astarte , particularly in the poetry of Ugarit . The two goddesses were invariably linked in Ugaritic scripture and are also known to have formed a triad ( known from sculpture ) with a third goddess who was given the name / title of Qadesh ( meaning " the holy one " ) . ‘ Anat in Israel . The goddess ‘ Anat is never mentioned in Hebrew scriptures as a goddess , though her name is apparently preserved in the city names Beth Anath and Anathoth . Anathoth seems to be a plural form of the name , perhaps a shortening of " bêt ‘ nātôt " ' House of the ‘ Anats ' , either a reference to many shrines of the goddess or a plural of intensification . The ancient hero Shamgar son of ‘ Anat is mentioned in Judges 3 . 31 ; 5 : 6 which raises the idea that this hero may have been imagined as a demi - god , a mortal son of the goddess . But John Day ( 2000 ) notes that a number of Canaan ites known from non - Biblical sources bore that title and theorizes that it was a military designation indicating a warrior under ‘ Anat ' s protection . Asenath " holy to Anath " was the wife of the Hebrew patriarch Joseph . In Elephantine ( modern Aswan ) in Egypt , the 5th century Elephantine papyri make mention of a goddess called Anat - Yahu ( Anat - Yahweh ) worshiped in the temple to Yahweh originally built by Jewish refugees from the Babylonian conquest of Judah . These suggest that " even in exile and beyond the worship of a female deity endured . " The texts were written by a group of Jews living at Elephantine near the Nubian border , whose religion has been described as " nearly identical to Iron Age II Judahite religion " . The papyri describe the Jews as worshiping Anat - Yahu ( or AnatYahu ) . Anat - Yahu is described as either the wife ( or paredra , sacred consort ) of Yahweh or as a hypostatized aspect of Yahweh . Anat and Athene . In a Cyprian inscription ( " KAI . " 42 ) the Greek goddess Athêna Sôteira Nikê is equated with ‘ Anat ( who is described in the inscription as the strength of life : " l ‘ uzza hayim " ) . Anat is also presumably the goddess whom Sanchuniathon calls Athene , a daughter of El , mother unnamed , who with Hermes ( that is Thoth ) counselled El on the making of a sickle and a spear of iron , presumably to use against his father Uranus . However , in the Baal cycle , that rôle is assigned to Asherah / ‘ Elat and ‘ Anat is there called the " Virgin . " Possible late transfigurations . The goddess ‘ Atah worshipped at Palmyra may possibly be in origin identical with ‘ Anat . ‘ Atah was combined with ‘ Ashtart under the name " Atar " into the goddess ‘ Atar ‘ atah known to the Hellenes as Atargatis . If this origin for ‘ Atah is correct , then Atargatis is effectively a combining of ‘ Ashtart and ‘ Anat . It has also been proposed that ( Indo - ) Iranian Anahita meaning ' immaculate ' in Avestan ( " a " ' not ' + " ahit " ' unclean ' ) is a variant of " ‘ Anat " . It is however unlikely given that the Indo - Iranian roots of the term are related to the Semitic ones and although — through conflation — Aredvi Sura Anahita ( so the full name ) inherited much from Ishtar - Inanna , the two are considered historically distinct . In the Book of Zohar , ‘ Anat is numbered among the holiest of angelic powers under the name of Anathiel . As a modern Hebrew first name . " Anat " ( ענת ) is a common female name in contemporary Israel , though many Israelis — including many of the women so named themselves — are not aware of it being the name of an ancient goddess . The name had not been used among Jews prior to the advent of Zionism . According to Abraham Vered , researcher of Israeli popular culture , the popularity of the name might also derive from an attempt to emulate the ( etymologically unconnected ) European name " Annette " .