Macedonia (ancient kingdom)
The Classical Greek historians Herodotus and Thucydides reported the legend that the Macedonian kings of the Argead dynasty were descendants of Temenus, king of Argos, and could therefore claim the mythical Heracles as one of their ancestors as well as a direct lineage from Zeus, chief god of the Greek pantheon. Contradictory legends state that either Perdiccas I of Macedon or Caranus of Macedon were the founders of the Argead dynasty, with either five or eight kings before AmyntasI. The assertion that the Argeads descended from Temenus was accepted by the "Hellanodikai" authorities of the Ancient Olympic Games, permitting Alexander I of Macedon () to enter the competitions owing to his perceived Greek heritage. Little is known about the kingdom before the reign of AlexanderI's father Amyntas I of Macedon () during the Archaic period.
Anu
According to Walter Burkert, an expert on ancient Greek religion, direct parallels also exist between Anu and the Greek god Zeus. In particular, the scene from Tablet VI of the "Epic of Gilgamesh" in which Ishtar comes before Anu after being rejected by Gilgamesh and complains to her mother Antu, but is mildly rebuked by Anu, is directly paralleled by a scene from Book V of the "Iliad". In this scene, Aphrodite, the later Greek development of Ishtar, is wounded by the Greek hero Diomedes while trying to save her son Aeneas. She flees to Mount Olympus, where she cries to her mother Dione, is mocked by her sister Athena, and is mildly rebuked by her father Zeus. Not only is the narrative parallel significant, but so is the fact that Dione's name is a feminization of Zeus's own, just as "Antu" is a feminine form of "Anu". Dione does not appear throughout the rest of the "Iliad", in which Zeus's consort is instead the goddess Hera. Burkert therefore concludes that "Dione" is clearly a calque of Antu.