Most researchers assume that she originated in the Amorite culture of Bronze Age upper Mesopotamia, and that the goddess Ḫanat, attested in the texts from Mari and worshiped in a city sharing her name located in Suhum, should be considered her forerunner.

Anat was characterized as a fertility goddess associated with human sexuality in early scholarship, but despite the occasional modern support, this view is no longer the consensus among experts.

[12] While Jean-Marie Durand argues against this connection, and his view has also been adopted by Lluís Feliu,[12] Lambert's theory has been accepted by a number of other researchers, including Wilfred G. E. Watson,[1] Gebhard J. Selz,[13] Volkert Haas[11] and Daniel Schwemer.

[17] A number of proposals regarding the origin of Anat's name are no longer considered plausible in modern scholarship due to relying entirely on incorrect past evaluations of her character.

"[17] While in the past scholarship Anat was described as a "patroness of wanton love," or as a "fertility goddess," these views started to be challenged in scholarly publications in the 1990s and are no longer accepted today by most researchers.

[23] Jo Ann Hackett notes that the connection between fertility and female deities has been historically exaggerated in the studies of religions of the Ancient Near East[24] and considers such a characterization an example of perceiving women "in terms of biological functions"[25] formed largely based on contemporary speculation, rather than on the available ritual texts and other primary sources.

[37] A legal text mentions that a certain Pulsī-Addu from Sapīratum (a settlement in Suhum) after losing a lawsuit meant to establish the ownership of a patch of land was obliged to swear an oath by a group of deities including Ḫanat, as well as Dagan and Itūr-Mēr, and by king Zimri-Lim to guarantee that he will not attempt to press the same claims again.

[38] Ḫanat's presence in this text most likely simply reflects the fact that she was associated with the area which was the object of the conflict, while Dagan and Itūr-Mēr were respectively the head of the local pantheon and the god most commonly invoked in oaths.

[12] The interactions between the gods reflect the political situation of the period, with Dagan representing Mari and Yakrub-El and Ḫanat respectively Terqa and Suhum, while Tishpak stands for Eshnunna, whose troops presumably were a threat for the latter of the two dependencies of Zimri-Lim's kingdom.

[52] However, Theodore J. Lewis points out that due to relying on an incorrect collation of the tablet KTU 1.96, a number of older publications overestimated the degree to which Anat was portrayed as belligerent by ascribing cannibalistic tendencies to her.

"[54] While the meaning of the rest of the text remains uncertain, Gregorio del Olmo Lete suggests that it might be an incantation against the casting of an evil eye (‘nn hlkt).

[13] It has been pointed out by multiple authors, including Peggy L. Day and Mark Smith, that the fact that Anat engages in pursuits which in Ugaritic culture were viewed as typically masculine, namely warfare and hunting, constitutes "gender inversion" of the roles human women were expected to take in society.

"[56] It has been suggested that Anat was also regarded as a "mistress of animals,"[57][13] in part based on pendants from Ugarit showing a goddess depicted in the pose associated with this archetypal motif, but this view is not universally accepted.

[77] This view is also supported by Dennis Pardee, who additionally remarks that Anat's association with the kpṯ, which he vocalizes as kupṯu, might mirror her link to the atef crown in Egyptian sources.

[67] Daniel Schwemer accepts the possibility that individual texts might allude to sexual encounters between Baal and Anat, but concludes that the weather god "did not have a wife in any real sense.

[144] She also remarks that the situation will make Athirat rejoice (KTU 1.6 I 39-43), either due to the presumed antagonism between her and Baal or because she will be able to display her authority by appointing a different god to fill his place.

[148] In the final surviving fragment of the text, which establishes that Baal gained El's favor and his position was no longer threatened, Anat is mentioned by Mot (resurrected after their earlier confrontation)[146]), who complains to the weather god about his treatment at her hands.

[150] The rest of the narrative apparently deals with Aqhat's burial and the revenge of his sister Pughat against Yatipan, who at one point mistakes her for Anat and starts boasting about his recent endeavors.

[156] Due to the presence of the word btlt, which is a very common epithet of Anat,[64] it has been proposed that a verse from Epic of Keret (KTU 1.15 II 27) refers to her as a wetnurse of Yaṣṣib, the eponymous king's son, but the name of the goddess is only a restoration of a lacuna.

[166] In the past, it was often argued that the worshipers of foreign deities were chiefly prisoners of war brought to Egypt, but textual sources instead indicate that the pharaohs, the clergy of Ptah and ordinary citizens could all be involved in their veneration.

'[172] In visual arts, she was portrayed wearing the atef,[173] a type of crown associated with Upper Egypt,[174] and wielding either a spear and a shield, a fenestrated battle axe, or possibly the was-scepter.

[187] Mark Smith notes that the nature of the Emar corpus needs to be taken into account when evaluating the prominence of deities in the local system of beliefs, as relatively few genres of texts are represented among tablets from the site.

"[191] The identification of individual deities of the region in art is considered difficult without accompanying inscriptions,[191] in part due to lack of documents providing information about the composition of the local pantheon of a given location, even for well known sites like Megiddo.

[17] However, in a more recent summary of plausible proposals regarding the identity of this presently anonymous deity, Gary Beckman only lists Resheph, who he considers a likely (though nonetheless speculative) option himself due to his presence in many theophoric names and his warlike character.

[14] A stela found in Babylon [33] inscribed with the name of Šamaš-reš-uṣur, who served as the governor of Suhu around 760 BCE, is presumed to depict Anat alongside other deities following a proposal of Antoine Cavigneaux and Bahija Khalil Ismail from 1990.

[8] The Greek version refers to "Athena Soteria Nike" instead of Anat,[218] presumably due to the shared marital nature and, according to Peggy L. Day, the characterization of both as "non-sexually active, non-reproductive goddesses.

"[8] Comparisons between Anat and Athena have also been made by modern researchers of Greek religion, such as Walter Burkert, who highlighted the similarities in iconography of martial deities excavated in Greece (especially statuettes referred to with the term Palladion) and Syria.

[224] While it is conventionally assumed that Anat-Bayt’el was one of the main deities of Tyre, Karel van der Toorn has called into question if the name has Phoenician origin at all due to the lack of other attestations from this city and nearby areas.

[230] Most researchers agree that the single verse which mentions Shamgar ben Anat and his victory over six hundred Philistines was a late addition to the Book of Judges, and that it most likely represents an entirely fictitious account, possibly inspired by better known feats attributed to Samson or soldiers of David.

[8] This view has been criticized by Peggy L. Day, who, following an earlier study by Jo Ann Hackett, points out that the popularity of such theories in past scholarship is tied to the notion that goddesses were interchangeable and had no discernible individual traits.