The Genesis Cypher (Warner & Lopez Book 6)

by Dean Crawford

  It took only moments to establish a video link with Hellerman inside the ARIES facility, the uber–geek already quivering with excitement and putting his lunch down as Ethan de–briefed him.

  ‘You got into the Secret Archives?’ Hellerman gasped, his face so close to the camera Ethan thought his head might pop through the laptop’s screen. ‘And into the secret bit of the Secret Archives they don’t tell people about?’

  ‘Yeah, we got in and we got out again,’ Ethan replied. ‘Unfortunately, we weren’t the only people in there looking for the tablet.’

  ‘Who else was there?’

  ‘A Russian agent,’ Lopez replied from behind Ethan. ‘Highly trained, although he seemed to be working alone.’

  ‘For now,’ Ethan added. ‘They’re on our trail so he’s bound to call in support, and he knew my name.’

  Hellerman nodded thoughtfully. ‘If the Russians are onto the same trail it could be something to do with your work of a couple of years ago in Peru. I’ll have them checked out. You got a description?’

  Ethan listed everything he could remember about the Russian agent, Hellerman noting it all down before updating them.

  ‘We managed to identify an individual who we believe may be the go–between for Russian traffickers working in Syria,’ he said. ‘This guy is called Muhammar Hussein and he’s working out of Beirut, Lebanon.’

  Ethan looked at the image of a greasy, overweight man wearing garish jewellery and an expensive suit.

  ‘He looks the part,’ Lopez said in disgust. ‘You think you can set up a meet?’

  ‘Already on it,’ Hellerman confirmed. ‘Beirut’s your next stop and I’ll fill you in on the details once we’ve got our agents to contact Hussein’s people.’ Hellerman began virtually salivating again as he looked expectantly at Ethan.

  ‘The tablet?’

  Ethan shifted to one side as Lopez carefully held the tablet out for Hellerman to see, her hands protected by latex gloves. The scientist gasped, one hand over his mouth as he stared at the artefact as though he were looking into the eyes of God.

  ‘Do you have any idea how old that is?’ he asked rhetorically.

  ‘If any of the previous investigations we’ve done are anything to go by, probably several thousand years,’ Ethan replied. ‘But right now we’re not interested in how old it is. We need to know what’s written on it and why the Vatican would hide it so deep in their archives?’

  Hellerman used his computer to record an image of both sides of the tablet before he scrutinized them in great detail, his brow furrowed and his chin resting on his balled fists as he read the text. His lips mumbled a near–silent stream of inaudible words.

  Lopez leaned in alongside Ethan’s shoulder.

  ‘In English, Jo.’

  ‘Sorry,’ Hellerman roused himself. ‘This is fascinating, although the cuneiform being used on the reverse side is of an archaic form.’

  ‘There’s any other kind?’ Ethan asked.

  Hellerman looked as though he was about to launch into an extensive oratory on the ancient history of the Sumerian peoples when he saw the impatient look on Ethan’s face.

  ‘Russian agents are looking for us,’ Lopez reminded him. ‘They have guns and other nasty stuff, y’know?’

  ‘Right, of course,’ Hellerman said. ‘Okay, so this tablet is at least five thousand years old and commemorates the founding of the city of Nippur in ancient Babylon, which is now Iraq. The fertile crescent, as the area is known to archeologists, was where civilization first emerged as far as we know. What’s special about this tablet is that the inscriptions prove that it predates most of the others found at Nippur by almost a thousand years, and what it says is even more important.’

  Hellerman lifted his finger as he read from his computer screen, tracing a line from his perspective of right to left as he spoke.

  ‘It describes the Great Flood,’ he said finally. ‘It describes the judgement of the gods upon mankind, and the survival of an ark.’

  Ethan blinked. ‘That’s from the Bible, isn’t it?’

  ‘No, actually,’ Hellerman replied. ‘The entirety of the Bible’s legends are all taken from much older religions, of which there were many. You’ll recall from previous investigations that it was Buddha who fed the five thousand with nothing more than what he held in his hands, thousands of years before Christianity was conceived. The Hindu god Vishnu was part of a triune religion with Shiva and Krishna, just like the Father, Son and Holy Ghost. Krishna was born on December 25th of a virgin in a stable and was the subject of an infanticide assassination plot by an evil king. He predicted that he would die to attone for the sins of humanity and was promptly killed and resurrected, and all of it long before Christianity.’

  ‘And the flood myth has the same origin?’ Lopez assumed.

  ‘It’s identical and shared by most ancient mythologies,’ Hellerman confirmed. ‘The Dravidian king Manu in the Matsya Purana and the Utnapishtim episode in the Epic of Gilgamesh both describe an ancient flood that wiped out mankind but for a chosen few. The ancient Greeks have two similar myths from a later date; The Deucalion and Zeus’s flooding of the world in Book I of Ovid’s Metamorphoses. The flood also shows up in Bergelmir in Norse Mythology, in the lore of the K’iche’ and Maya peoples in Mesoamerica, the Lac Courte Oreilles Ojibwa tribe of Native Americans in North America, the Muisca people and the Canari Confederation in South America. Virtually every ancient society records a sort of genesis story ending in a global flood that matches the Sumerian original, so there’s nothing in either of the Bible’s Testaments that is true or even original. However, I’ve never encountered a record quite this old that may actually be the origin of the entire myth.’

  ‘What does the tablet actually say?’ Lopez asked.

  Hellerman squinted at the images of the tablet and spoke slowly as he once again traced the path of the carvings in the ancient clay.

  ‘There are some lines missing due to damage, but the text picks up as: the gods An, Enlil, Enki and Ninhursanga created the black–headed people and comfortable conditions for the animals to live and procreate. Their kingship descends from heaven and the first cities are founded: Eridu, Bad–tibira, Larak, Sippar, and Shuruppak.’

  Hellerman paused as he read.

  ‘The next bit is missing from other Sumerian tablets and some Akkadian versions: The gods decide not to save mankind from an impending flood. Zi–ud–sura, the king and gudug priest, learns of this. Ea, or Enki in Sumerian, the god of the waters, warns the hero, Atra–hasis, of the impending disaster and gives him instructions for the ark.’

  Hellerman traced downward slowly, speaking but his gaze lost as though he had returned to distant times himself.

  ‘A terrible storm rocks the huge boat for seven days and seven nights, then the sun god Utu appears and Zi–ud–sura creates an opening in the boat, prostrates himself, and sacrifices oxen and sheep. The flood ends, the animals disembark and Zi–ud–sura prostrates himself before the sky god An and the chief of all gods, Enlil, who give him eternal life and take him to dwell in Dilmun for preserving the animals and the seed of mankind.’

  Ethan leaned back and frowned. ‘So what’s the big deal? There’s nothing written on that tablet that’s worth killing over, or for the Vatican to bury the artefact in their archives.’

  ‘Isn’t there?’ Hellerman asked. ‘It’s just these sorts of evidences that have eroded the power of the church across the globe, year on year, decade upon decade. The Vatican itself is seen now as more out of touch with humanity than it has ever been, and sciences like archeology have long proven that the Bible is not an historical record but a work of fiction. This would be just another nail in the coffin of all religions.’

  Lopez shook her head.

  ‘There must be something else,’ she said. ‘I can’t believe that Russia would have gone to such lengths to get hold of this just to sink the Catholic Church. And why would they also go after it now, just as we’re looking for it?�
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  Ethan thought back to their investigation in Peru, where they had come to realize the extraordinary correlation between the worship of supposed sun gods around the world. Long thought to be an extension of ancient man’s dependence and worship of the sun in the sky, an entirely new hypothesis had emerged that in fact the gods they had worshipped were in act beings of light, or beings who emerged from conditions of brilliant light. Even the relatively recent Biblical depictions of saints with halos of light were themselves borrowed from older images of holy men with the sun encircling their heads, which in turn were evolved from images of pure sun worship.

  ‘We were once told by an expert that the supposed fallen angel Lucifer was in fact not the bad guy in history,’ Ethan said, an idea forming in his mind. ‘That the Bible had again twisted the truths in an older tale or myth of some kind.’

  ‘True,’ Hellerman said cautiously. ‘The word Lucifer in the original Hebrew actually means “light” or person of light. The modern appearance of the Biblical Satan, or Lucifer, is actually all borrowed from older pagan traditions and amalgamated by early Christians to demonize the older legends. Lucifer’s trident actually belonged to the Roman God Neptune, and Satan’s goat–like appearance was due to the Romans’ worship of the goat as a sign of natural happiness, of the return of spring as goats frolicked in fields, and a source of food in its meat and milk. The Christians just took all the things the hated Romans worshipped and turned them on their heads.’

  ‘Where are you going with this?’ Lopez asked Ethan.

  Ethan thought for a moment, not sure of his direction but letting his instincts do the talking.

  ‘Beings of light,’ he echoed. ‘When we were last in Egypt, and remember that it’s Egyptian hieroglyphics that got us into this, we were told that Akhenaten, one of the pharaohs, abolished all of the old religions during his reign and began worshipping only the sun instead.’

  Hellerman nodded, warming to the theme. ‘And Akhenaten was an unusual pharaoh to say the least, and not just in his thinking. His physical features were abnormal, his skull elongated considerably more than was natural.’

  ‘How much do we know about this Sumerian god, An?’ Ethan asked.

  ‘He was supposedly a Sumerian God of all Gods, the father of all Gods, who brought creation to the earth and who wielded the ilu sebattu, the Seven Gods of destruction who were used to destroy mankind.’

  Ethan considered that for a moment. ‘Kind of like the Four Horsemen?’

  Hellerman shrugged. ‘I guess. The sebattu were considered the most notorious and dangerous of all the Sumerian gods’ weapons. You think that maybe that’s what’s got so many people interested in recovering this tablet?’

  ‘I doubt it,’ Ethan replied. ‘If there was some kind of super weapon behind all of this there would have been wars across the Middle East for it and…’

  Ethan broke off mid–sentence as he looked at Lopez.

  ‘There have been wars across the Middle East,’ she pointed out. ‘For thousands of years.’

  ‘For money,’ Ethan agreed, ‘for power, for oil, but never something like this. What the hell might combine the flood myth with a weapon of great destruction? If there was anything in the idea scientists would have found evidence of it by now. This must be about something else and these sun gods might be at the heart of it. Is there anything else on the tablet?’

  Hellerman read across the final lines of cuneiform script on the rear of the tablet as Lopez turned it over in her hands.

  ‘Mankind is saved, blah blah blah, prosperity grows and mankind thrives, there are great wars across the Middle…’

  Hellerman broke off as he read, his eyes flicking from right to left as his jaw opened and he leaned back in his seat. ‘Now that’s interesting.’

  ‘What?’ Lopez asked.

  Hellerman read for a moment longer and then spoke softly.

  ‘Then shall the prophecies be fulfilled, and shall the Watchers once more come.’

  ‘The Watchers? Who are they?’

  ‘The lords of An,’ Hellerman replied. ‘The Annunaki, the supposed extra–terrestrial fathers of Sumerian culture.’

  ***

  XXI

  ‘Aisha mentioned somebody called the The Watchers,’ Lopez said. ‘Who are they?’

  Ethan had no idea who The Watchers were, but Hellerman appeared more than well versed in their history.

  ‘The Watchers appear throughout the historical mythology of just about every major civilization on earth,’ he explained. ‘They feature heavily in the Bible as what are referred to as fallen angels, which has often been cited by ancient astronaut theorists as our ancestors mistaking alien encounters for angels.’

  ‘I’d never heard of them before until we met Aisha,’ Lopez said, ‘and I grew up in a traditional Catholic town in Mexico.’

  ‘That’s because they appear only in the original Hebrew versions of the Bible,’ Hellerman explained. ‘Way back in 325 CE, a gathering of powerful Christian Bishops called the Council of Nicaea in Turkey decided that the Bible needed some adjusting. Essentially, they stripped out anything that did not support the divinity of Jesus Christ or which seemed to suggest the existence of other powers in the universe greater than that of their single god, Yawheh in the Hebrew tradition. This meant that some thirty–seven books from the Bible were removed to give us the foundation of the version that became the gospel canon for Christianity.’

  ‘Can’t let facts get in the way of the party line,’ Lopez said wryly.

  ‘Indeed,’ Hellerman said, ‘many of the books describe Jesus as anything but divine, others that he was married, had children, conducted a life completely normal. Many scholars have come to realize that based on the fact that Jesus’s entire life story appears to be based on previous legends like so much else in the Bible, it is likely that he never existed at all.’

  ‘Seriously?’ Ethan uttered. ‘How would that even be possible? He’s got to be the most famous person in history, even if you don’t need to believe in the stories of miracles.’

  ‘The miracles were all attributed to other supposedly divine leaders thousands of years before Christianity,’ Hellerman explained. ‘The problem is that the figure we know as Jesus Christ appears nowhere in history. He only appears in the Bible, which is a bit like saying Hercules was a real figure although he only appears in Greek artwork. The truth is that despite supposedly living in first Century Palestine, the best recorded century of ancient history, and supposedly being famous across entire regions and known to kings, we have no evidence of him being alive, ever, anywhere.’

  ‘So, if that’s true, where the hell did the story of his life come from?’ Lopez asked.

  ‘Sun worship,’ Hellerman replied with a shrug. ‘He cometh on clouds, he is the light of the world, and so on. Christianity was preceded by Mithraism, a similar cult that worshipped the sun as a giver of life and warmth. Followers of Mithras worshipped the fact that the sun descended into the underworld for three days before being reborn on December 25th. Mithras was born of a virgin, was mankind’s salvation, water was a strong symbol associated with him and he would sign with water the foreheads of his followers in the manner of modern baptisms. The cult was eradicated by the Christians, who used the popular convention of absorbing existing religions into their own over time and adopting their customs as their own, complete with false histories. It’s why the New Testament contains no eye–witness records of the life of Jesus – the authors write as though they were there, but in fact the first of the gospels was written at least a century after the supposed Crucifixion.’

  Hellerman gestured to the images of the tablet.

  ‘It’s why the Vatican likes to bury as many artefacts as this as they can, to further muddy the waters of history and erase any evidence of mankind’s past before Christianity, including the early books of their own Bible.’

  ‘The Book of Enoch was one of them,’ Ethan said as he remembered previous conversations about the ver
y same subject. ‘It describes angels descending from the heavens on flaming wheels within wheels, that they had the likeness of a man and so on.’

  ‘Which again is interpreted by some as evidence of alien encounters in mankind’s ancient history,’ Hellerman confirmed. ‘All of these encounters are of course unsupported by evidence, but it’s the sheer number of them that stagger researchers looking into the phenomena, and the way in which the same legends manifest themselves across different regions, even different continents.’

  ‘And these Annunaki are the earliest we know of?’ Lopez asked.

  Hellerman nodded.

  ‘According to Sumerian creation myth, they were the founders of their culture. An was the chief God of Sun and Sky, and his name means The Shining One. Anunnaki were, according to this, the Sons of Light, just as Lucifer’s original name meant a being of light. The Anunnaki were culturally and technically advanced people who lived in the Middle East around 8200 BCE, which precedes our own technologically advanced civilizations by several thousand years. Their primary goal was to establish an agricultural center for learning and training of the local population. Early Sumerians described themselves as being always nurtured by the Annunaki. The important thing here is that the associations made then remained with later civilizations. The Annunaki’s character and functions formed the base for the Egyptian, Greek and Roman pantheon of Gods. Ancient God Ninlil was the God of War, just like the Biblical Nimrod, which just like Osiris became linked with constellation of Orion, and Orion features heavily in Egyptian lore and their megastructures.’

  ‘How so?’ Ethan asked.

  ‘The pyramids,’ Hellerman explained. ‘They’re not just massive monoliths to power. They’re a map.’