ANAMME'LECH (T119)3/, 2 Kings xvii. 31) is mentioned, together with Adrammelech, as a god of the people of Sepharvaim, who colonized Samaria. He was also worshipped by the sacrifice of children by fire. No satisfactory etymology of the name has been discovered. Hyde (Rel. Vet. Persar. p. 128) considers the first part of the word to be the NV or tr sheep, and the latter to be king (although, from his rendering the compound Teens Rex, it is not at all clear in what relation he considered the two elements to stand to each other). He takes the whole to refer to the constellation Cepheus, or to that part of it in which are the stars called by the Arabs the shepherd and the sheep (ar seal Ganam ), which Ulug Beg terms the stars of the flock (Kawdkibul Fizzy). This theory is erroneously stated both by Gesenius and Winer (by the former in his Thesaurus, and by the latter in his Real worterbuch), who make out that the constellation Cepheus itself is called by the Arabs the shepherd and his sheep. Hyde certainly does not say so ; and al Qazwint (in Ideler's Untersuchusgen fiber die Sternnamen, p. 42) expressly assigns the name
of 'the shepherd' to the star in the left foot of Cepheus ; that of the sheep' (al Agndm, as he calls it) to those between his feet ; and that of the flock' to the one on his right shoulder. The most that can be said of Hyde's theory is, that it is not incompatible with the astrology of the Assyrians. Gesenius, in the etymology he proposes, considers the first part of the name to be the Arabic can= ' with a change of r into V, which is not unusual in Aramaic (see Ewald's Hcbr. Grammar, §. 106). The latest etymology proposed is that by Benfey (AIonatsnamen einiger alter Volker, p.
who suggests that the first part of the word may be an abbreviation of the name of the Persian goddess Anahn, or of that of the Ized ilnimn. 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 Kimchi says that of a pheasant, or quail (Carpzov's Apparatus, p. N.