The god Anu, chief god of the Uruk pantheon, is the first god of ths list. Unlike the god lists studied during the first phase of scribal education, the order of the list is clearly organised and structured.
First all the names of a deity are given, which is a way of celebrating his immense powers and universal character. Second, his divine spouse is introduced with all her names; third, their children are all mentioned. When the couple's household or entourage is also cited, they are sometimes mentioned between the husband and wife.
The list is divided into two columns: the left one provides the most common name of the god, while the right one gives the rarer one(s). If the latter were not known, the scribe wrote ŠU ("the same") in the right column (e.g., SpTU 4, 182 [/cams/gkab/P348775]).
AN = Anu is known from the early second millennium onwards. By the first millennium, it comprised nearly 2000 names across seven Tablets, and thus became a more or less comprehensive list of the Mesopotamian pantheon. In Uruk, the junior āšipu Anu-ikṣur PGP copied down the third Tablet of the Series (SpTU 1, 126+ [/cams/gkab/P348547]).
All manuscripts in the CAMS/GKAB corpus come from Uruk, at least one of which dates from the early Hellenistic period (SpTU 4, 182 [/cams/gkab/P348775]). During this period, according to Paul-Alain Beaulieu, AN = Anu was more than a learning tool, but also served as an ideological reference to the most ancient, thus genuine, religion. In this way the Uruk scholarly elite reinstated Anu as ruler of the Mesopotamian pantheon, following the list's hierarchy. Anu's preeminence also features in other early Hellenistic manuscripts from Uruk (e.g., SpTU 3, 72 [/cams/gkab/P348675]).
Likewise, some deities, such as the goddess Amašuhalbi (e.g., in SpTU 4, 182 [/cams/gkab/P348775]), had only occurred in lexical texts until that point. But they now started to be mentioned in administrative documents, which thus witness the reinstatement of their cult. In this way the Uruk elite established its Babylonian identity through the preservation of an ancient tradition, though artificial in some respects.
Marie-Françoise Besnier
Marie-Françoise Besnier, 'The god list AN = Anu', The Geography of Knowledge, The GKAB Project, 2019 [http://oracc.museum.upenn.edu/cams/gkab/Scribalapprenticeship/Lexicallists/PhaseII/AN=Anu/]