As you've mentioned, namespace works for anything, not just for functions and objects.
As Greg has pointed out, static means too many things already.
Namespaces provide a uniform and consistent way of controlling visibility at the global scope. You don't have to use different tools for the same thing.
When using an anonymous namespace, the function/object name will get mangled properly, which allows you to see something like "(anonymous namespace)::xyz" in the symbol table after de-mangling, and not just "xyz" with static linkage.
As pointed out in the comments below, it isn't allowed to use static things as template arguments, while with anonymous namespaces it's fine.
More? Probably, but I can't think of anything else right now.
