Anammelech

Anam'melech (Heb., Anamme'lek, עֲנִמֶּלֶך, Sept. Α᾿νημέλεχ, Vulg. Anamelech) is mentioned, together with Adrammelech, as a god whom the people of Sepharvaim, who colonized Samaria, worshipped by the sacrifice of children by fire (2Ki 17:31). No satisfactory etymology of the name has been discovered. The latter part of the word is the Hebrews for king, but as the former part is not found in that language (unless it be for the Arabic sanam, a statue, Gesenius, Thes. Heb. p. 1052), the whole is probably foreign. Reland (De vet. ling. Persarum, § 9) renders it king of grief (from the Persic); but Hyde (Rel. vet. Persar. p. 131) understands it as referring (from עֲנָאּ i. q. שׂן, sheep) to. the Arabian constellation Cepheus, containing the shepherd and the sheep. Benfey (Monatsnamen einiger alter Volker, p. 188) proposes the name of the Persian goddess Ananit or that of the Ized Aniran as containing the first part of the title Anammelech. So Rawlinson (Herodotus, 1, 498), who understands the female power of the sun to be meant, derives it from the name of the Asssyrian goddess Anunit. Other conjectures are still more fanciful. The same obscurity prevails as to the form under which the god was worshipped. The Babylonian Talmud states that his image had the figure of a horse; but Kimechi says that of a pheasant or quail (Carpzov's Apparatus, p. 516). SEE ADRAMMELECH.