The Missing Lands

by Freddy Silva

  Enoch is allowed to see the Anu's other abodes, which totalled seven because he describes reaching a final, and highest, location called Seventh Haven. Here he accompanies two guardians whom he describes as messengers,38 otherwise known as Watchers. The original term watcher comes from Aramaic and means ‘to be awake’.39 Later Greek translators used egregoroi, which carries two meanings: 'those who watch or guard' and 'those who are awake'. Thus the Watchers are awake or enlightened people performing supervisory roles, exactly as the name implies.

  In the Book of Enoch as well as the Book of Daniel, the Watchers are described as angels, leading to the misunderstanding they were ethereal beings. To clarify, the early Greek version calls them aggelos — messengers — and since humans observed and interacted with them, they must have been physical people. The Dead Sea Scrolls compiled by the Essenes incorporates all three interpretations, stating how “the angels of the Lord descended upon earth — those who are named the Watchers — that they should instruct the children of men, that they should do judgment and uprightness upon earth.”40

  The Watchers were distinguishable from humans insofar as they possessed knowledge of the mechanics of nature and how to manipulate it, thus they were compared to gods — a view held by the Egyptians, who referred to them as both Urshu (Watchers) and Neterw (elements of nature or gods).

  GODS WITH SHINING SKIN

  Like a wide-eyed traveler, Enoch continues walking into the abode of the Anu, accompanied by the Watchers whom he describes as having the appearance of men but far taller; Sumerian figurines even depict them with elongated heads. Once inside the assembly he describes how the Lord of Anu, to allay Enoch's trepidation and make him feel at home, asks one of the main Watchers by the name Mika-el to "strip Enoch of his clothes and anoint him with fine oil, and dress him like ourselves."41

  The oil had an odor like myrrh and gave the Watchers' skin a lustrous, luminous quality, hence their nickname Elohim, Shining Ones. Enoch further describes them as white or light-skinned — much as the antediluvian gods are described elsewhere — implying the Anunaki heralded from more northerly or southerly latitudes. Clearly it was a genetic trait because a later remark by Enoch adds another layer to their physical description. It is of his grandson Lamech, whose wife gives birth to a son whose body was "white as snow and red as the blooming of a rose; and the hair of his head was in long locks which were as white as wool, and his eyes... lighted up the house like the Sun. His father Lamech was afraid of him... he resembles the sons of the Lord."42

  The implications are tantalizing. For the descendents of Enoch to look like the Anunaki, Enoch himself must have been part of that bloodline, a highly likely scenario if we recall that Hebrew Enoch is none other than Mesopotamian Enmed-uranna, the antediluvian magician-king of Sippar, whose Anu lineage is reflected in his surname.

  Or did Mrs. Lamech have a fruitful encounter with one of the Anu? Gossip abounds.

  There is a second point to consider with regard to the Watchers’ physical appearance. In Enoch's other apocryphal work, Books of Adam and Eve, he mentions how one couple leaving the enclosure at Gar-sag for the first time, for the valley below, noticed a change in the substance of their bodies, how living at lower altitude made them appear denser than before.43 Siberian and Iranian peoples made the same observation, claiming the ancestors were less dense, their skin was pale or radiant, their hair often white. The Kalmucks and Tibetans of Central Asia go so far as to say these peoples’ bodies gave off light to the point where they were compared to stars. They lived for hundreds of years, fed by the fruit of a forgotten tree, but the more they associated with the physical world the denser they became, and consequently their lifespan shortened to resemble that which humans consider normal. This is a culturally shared notion even among people in remote places such as Vanuatu in the South Pacific.44

  One gets the impression the Watchers were humanoid yet not entirely of Earth.

  Let's return to Enoch's account. He describes the grand assembly of the Anu as consisting of forty-nine lords overseen by Lord Anu himself. That's seven groups of seven sages. The four central Watchers of the assembly are "Mika-el, the kind and patient one; Rapha-el who is responsible for treating illnesses and wounds among the people here; the third was Gabri-el, and the fourth was Uri-el who is responsible for dealing with those who are selected to receive an extension to their normal life-span."45 These would become known in the Bible as archangels.

  Sumerian figurine depicting Lord Anu himself.

  Enoch describes how the Watchers/Anunaki were split into groups of seven and given responsibility and jurisdiction over an assigned Earthly precinct, to attend to the raising of humans from their primitive state. Each was given additional responsibilities and chores while living at Gar-sag: Gabri-el was in charge of the walled enclosure containing the central buildings of the Anu as well as a special garden from which all manner of fruit trees and shrubs were grafted to seed places in the lowlands where humans would learn to grow their own crops. Gabri-el — GBR in its original form, root of the word governor — was Governor of paeri-daeza, the garden of the gods, as well as overseer of other People of the Serpent who lived there.46 And here is where the Bible has it all wrong concerning the garden of Eden, upon which this fragment is based: when Eve is talking to a serpent about eating the fruit from the Tree of Knowledge she is actually talking with Gadre-el, a Serpent person, one of the Watchers living in the compound at Gar-sag. 47

  THE LOCATION OF GAR-SAG

  But where are Gar-sag and Mount Ardis located? Several writers have attempted to place it at Mount Hermon in Lebanon, some well reasoned,48 others with a need to justify the borrowed biblical narrative, after all, the slant given by the Hebrews to the Book of Enoch includes shifting the assembly of the Anu from the Middle East to the Levant in order to justify a religious dogma. However, as far as we know, all the original cities in the region founded by the Anu were located in Mesopotamia, well to the east.

  There is one point worth considering in this argument. Hermon may be a transliteration of Armen, a Watcher who lent his name to Armenia,49 thus it can be posited that the original assembly of the Anu may have been located along the northwestern extremity of Mesopotamia. Enoch himself describes one region of the Anu as highly volcanic, from whose peaks he saw a kind of ocean, which could feasibly be the Caspian Sea as seen from the volcanoes of northern Armenia. Enoch further tells us that the assembly was located in a secluded environment on a tall mountain yet with a climate pleasant enough to grow fruit trees. On another journey he appears to be describing a region above the Earth from the vantage point of a space rocket: “I saw that the winds spread out the heights of heaven, and are stationed between heaven and earth; they are the pillars of heaven. And I saw the winds which cause the sky to turn and the orb of the sun to revolve, and all the stars.... I saw the paths of the angels; I saw at the ends of the earth the firmament of the heavens above.”50

  It's an account full of paradoxes, yet it is possible that by the time Enoch's words were compiled the originals were no longer accessible, let alone translatable. We are given lots of salivating detail about the home of the Anunaki but, like a missing land, it remains stubbornly out of sight.

  Ninlil in council with other Anunaki.

  In time Enoch receives advance notice of an impending global deluge from the Lords of Anu, and how his great-grandson Noah would be further instructed on what to do because the event would occur in his lifetime, not Enoch's. The Lords of Anu clearly had foreknowledge of a danger lurking in the sky, demonstrating their proficiency at astronomy, while at the same stroke validating the statement made earlier about ancient Egyptian sages learning of the great flood two hundred years in advance and preparing accordingly by building pyramids and other safe houses to protect the knowledge, to be recovered afterwards by another group of Shining Ones, the Aku Shemsu Hor.

  Although everyone was destined to perish, the Lords of Anu promised Enoch there would be exceptions: "all th
e children of men may not perish through all the secret things which the Watchers have disclosed and have taught their sons."51

  THE FALL OF (SOME) WATCHERS

  How did the Watchers, who taught the civilizing sciences to humans then returned after a global catastrophe to do so again, traits generally associated with educated and gentle people, become depicted in the Bible as demons? Overlapping traditions, religious dogma and a smattering of translation errors have obfuscated the original narrative, so let’s examine the facts in the available source material and clarify this important point.

  Miniature figurines may not seem like supporting evidence, but in this matter they might just be. Sets of alloy figurines depicting Apkallu were found buried in the foundations of Mesopotamian buildings as a prevention to ward off evil spirits. Clearly if such apotropaic guardians were protecting people's homes they could hardly have been terrorists too. The figurines were called massarê, meaning Watchers. The term is applied in Akkadian ritual texts and incantations, just as it is in Aramaic as yryn (wakeful ones), the other term given to guardian Watchers.52 These protective massarê were still employed in the magical defence of later Neo-Assyrian palaces, as seen in relief along the walls, even as free-standing sculptures made of stone or precious metal.53

  One of the most tantalizing images of an antediluvian Earth appears in the Book of Giants, a component of the Book of Enoch discovered among the Dead Sea Scrolls. It is also, frustratingly, one of the most damaged. The fragments give the impression of a world populated by ordinary people, and by god-like people of very tall stature — the Watchers — who possessed secret knowledge of science and the hidden mechanics of nature. It is clear from Enoch's eyewitness reporting that the Watchers were adamant on maintaining a strict code of behavior and a distance between themselves and humans, as instructed by the Lords of Anu.

  The trouble began when a group of two hundred Watchers reneged on this explicit mandate by intervening directly in human affairs. They abandoned their abode at Gar-sag to live among humans, teaching secret things to undeveloped, unsophisticated hunter-gatherers which inevitably led to their corruption.54 The names of nineteen defectors are recorded in the Book of Enoch, led by “Shemhazah [who] taught spell-binding and the cutting of roots; Hermoni taught the loosening of spells, magic, sorcery and sophistry. Baraqel taught the auguries of the lightning; Kokabiel taught the auguries of the stars; Zikiel taught the auguries of fire-balls; Arteqif taught the auguries of earth; Simsel taught the auguries of the sun; Sahrel taught the auguries of the moon. And they all began to reveal the secrets to their [earthly] wives.”55 This may not seem so egregious, but as recent history will attest, even accidental contact with secluded aboriginal people at a different stage of development can corrupt the tribe's natural evolution and cause irreversible harm. Simply stated, advanced knowledge and inexperience make poor bedfellows.

  As did taller Watchers with shorter human women. A ringleader by the name Yeqon led a smaller group astray by copulating with such women, who predictably gave birth to what can only be described as abominations. The Watchers’ progeny were an unfortunate group of misfits called nephilim (giants), who ran amok throughout the land,56 and while ordinary people did not seem unnerved by the appearance of the Watchers, they were certainly disturbed by the nephilim.

  Obviously an incompatible genetic pairing existed between Watchers and humans, and explains why so many offspring of the gods in post-diluvial civilizations — kings, queens, pharaohs — interbred for practical reasons.

  A few renegade Watchers were seduced by Earth and exploited its bounty. Their advance knowledge made them arrogant, they pushed the boundaries of their powers by undertaking genetic experiments with animals such as donkeys, asses, goats and sheep, followed by a program of miscegenation that resulted in monsters, many of which turned on their makers.

  It is widely accepted among academics that humans mostly foraged for food for the best part of 300,000 years. The sudden domestication of whole species of wild animals and plants c.8000 BC is one of the great conundrums of history because it played an enormous part in the development of human civilization. Animals and plants became objects of organized agricultural and material activity without a known precedent. Is it possible this evolutionary leap is proof of the Watchers’ original experiments, corrected after the great cleansing? Skeletal remains of wolf, wild boar, auroch, bezoar, moufflon and wild cat have been unearthed in Jericho, the city of giants, buried in a ten-thousand-year old sedimentary layer, yet in a layer barely a hundred years younger these species have been replaced with the domesticated dog, cat, pig, sheep, goat and cow — an unprecedented evolutionary leap.

  Interbreeding with human women led to similar disastrous consequences, they begat monstrous beings. Lacking wisdom, these offspring barbarians ran amok, killed people for sport, and eventually perished through they own foolishness. This genetic breeding program, with haunting parallels to our present era, is claimed to have caused great corruption upon the Earth, and numerous world myths share the belief that this catastrophic experiment precipitated the cleansing of the world. The myths agree that a disintegrating meteor was merely the tool; the cause was the will of the Lords of Anu over the forces of nature combined with the timing of a near-Earth space object. As the Lord of Anu himself confided in Enoch, '"the things which you see at rest and in motion were completed by me. I will tell you now… what things I created from the non-existent, and what visible things from the invisible. Not even to my Watchers have I told my secrets."57

  Yet the Watchers had powers of their own, particularly the gifts of clairvoyance and telepathy, as exemplified by Mahway, a nephilim of the renegade Watcher Barakel. After a shamanic dream, he reveals to the other renegades their demise by a flood. The dream was deliberately induced by the Anunaki Ohya, who shows the giant a stone tablet with all the nephilim names carved upon it, drowned in water along with the roots of two hundred trees burned by fire. It is interesting how a frightened Mahway turns to Enoch for an interpretation of this prophetic vision, placing the scribe in the same time frame. Mahway and his monsters await Enoch’s advice,58 but all they receive is a confirmation of their demise, and hope they repent for their licentiousness, because the land and its human victims are crying out, complaining about their misdeeds and the harm they have inflicted.59

  The renegade Watchers crossed the line, and the problem wasn't confined to Mesopotamia, it was global. The Wichita of Oklahoma recall in their mythology how, before the flood, there existed people with supernatural powers, and through their ability to control the forces of nature, death was unknown; some lived to be an extraordinary amount of years. This was one of the things that led to a terrible imbalance in nature and society. The stories also describe how the wife of a chief was impregnated and gave birth to four monsters who played with other children at first, but as they grew in stature into giants, they took to violence and other barbaric acts. Such perversions of nature were seen as omens that a reckoning was imminent.60 Legends among the Hopi and Zuni describe how few, if any, of the pregnant human mothers survived giving birth to babies who emerged the size of grown infants from the womb. Similar stories exist in the tradition of the Yaghan of Tierra del Fuego.

  Enoch was brought before the Lords of Anu, at a location undisclosed even to his peers, to witness the four main Watchers decrying the actions of the renegades: “Asael... has taught wrong-doing, and sins upon the earth, and all manner of guile in the land; he revealed the eternal mysteries prepared in heaven and made them known to men, and his abominations the initiates among children of men make for themselves.”61 For the corruption of humanity with physical perversions, the sharing of restricted information, and the manufacture of weapons, a number of renegades were rounded up and imprisoned by Uri-el.62 The leader of the group, Satanail, was incarcerated in one of the desolate penal volcanic regions; another, Azazel, was not so lucky, he was bound hand and foot and tossed into a cave, sealed in, and dumped into lava. Although Uri-el a
nd Gabri-el made a concerted effort to curb the lawlessness, the nephilim abominations were still out of control. In an emotional appeal to the Lord of Anu, Uri-el expresses his frustration, he senses that something is being kept from the other Watchers overseeing operations at Gar-sag. At this point we discover that the Lord of Anu possessed the power of prediction, for he was aware of the impending global disaster, whereupon he instructs Enoch, "Tell [Noah] from me, 'Hide yourself', and inform him of what is to happen, that all the Lowlands will be destroyed in a flood which will wipe out everything on it. And give him instructions on how he may escape so that his descendents may be preserved for all time."63

  The Lord of Anu also sends another Watcher, Sariel, to warm Lamech and Noah: “Heal the earth which the Watchers have ruined, and announce the healing of the earth, that I shall heal its wounds and that the children of men shall not altogether perish on account of the mysteries which the watchers have disclosed and taught.... The whole earth has been devastated by the works of the teaching of Asael.”

  Meanwhile Gabri-el is instructed to “go to the giants [Nephilim], the bastard offspring, the children of fornication, and destroy those sons of the Watchers from among the sons of men... that they should not expect to live an eternal life, but that each one should live five hundred years”64

  AFTER THE FLOOD

  An unspecified period passes after the flood. The groups of Seven Apkullu are no longer taking part in spreading knowledge, replaced instead by two-third Apkallu beings — part human, part divine.65 Their lineage endured in many royal households well into historic times, for example, Nebuchadnezzar I, king of Babylon, described himself as a "seed preserved from before the flood;"66 the architect of Angkor is described as half human, half divine; the lineage of the Aku Shemsu Hor continued into 14th century BC Egypt through Amenhotep III, and his son Akhenaten.