There Were Giants Upon the Earth
Page 7
A massive wall surrounded the city—the archaeologists found its remains over a length of more than 10 kilometers (more than six miles). It embraced the city's two sections—a residential one, and a sacred precinct where they discovered the earliest 'ziggurat'—a platform, raised in stages serving as a base for a temple. By the time of its excavation it was more like an artificial mound of no less than seven strata of rebuilding. On top, upon an artificially made platform, there stood a temple. Called E.Anna (= 'House/Abode of Anu') it is also known to archaeologists as the White Temple because—another unusual feature, a first—it was painted white (Fig. 38, a reconstruction). Next to the E.Anna were remains of two other temples. One, painted red, was dedicated to the goddess In.anna, Anu's Beloved' (better known by her later Akkadian name Ishtar). The other standing was a temple dedicated to the goddess Ninharsag.
Without doubt, the archaeologists' spade brought to light the city of Gilgamesh, who had reigned there circa 2750 B.C. (or even earlier by another chronology). The archaeologists' finds echoed literally the very words of the Epic of Gilgamesh—
About all his toil he [Gilgamesh]
engraved on a stone column:
Of ramparted Uruk, of the wall he built,
Of hallowed E.Anna, the pure sanctuary.
Behold its outer wall, which is like a copper band,
Peer at its inner wall, which none can equal!
Gaze upon the stone platform, which is of old;
Go up and walk around on the walls of Uruk,
Approach the E.Anna and the dwelling of Ishtar!
Among the "small finds" in the 3200-2900 B.C. stratum were sculpted objects that were designated 'The Most Prized' in the Iraq
Figure 38
Museum in Baghdad—a life-size marble sculpture of a woman's head (Fig. 39)—nicknamed "The Lady from Uruk"—that had once been fitted with a golden headdress and eyes made of precious stones, and a large (more than 3 ft. high) sculpted alabaster vase that depicted a procession of adorants bearing gifts to a goddess. All at once, Sumer's art of more than 5,000 years ago matched the beauty of Greek sculpture of 2,500 years later!
At the southernmost part of Sumer, where the Tigris and Euphrates Rivers come together in marshlands bordering the Persian Gulf, a site locally called Abu Shahrain had attracted the attention of the British Museum as early as 1854. One of its experts, J. E. Taylor, reported after preliminary diggings that the effort was "unproductive of any very important results." He did bring back with him some of the "unimportant" finds—some mud bricks with writing on them. Fifty years later, two French Assyriologists determined from those bricks that the site was ancient Eridu; its name meant 'House in the Faraway Built', and it was Sumer's first city.
Figure 39
It took two world wars and the time in-between for the first methodical and continuous archaeological excavations to take place at the site, under the auspices of the Iraqi Directorate General of Antiquities. As the archaeologists dug away occupation stratum after occupation stratum from the latest on top to the earliest at the bottom, they uncovered no less than seventeen levels above the first one; they could count time backward as they kept excavating: 2500 B.C., 2800 B.C., 3000 B.C., 3500 B.C. When the spades reached the foundations of Eridu's first temple, the date was circa 4000 B.C. Below that, the archaeologists struck virgin mud-soil.
The city's original temple, which had been rebuilt time and time again, was constructed of fired mud bricks and rose upon an artificial level platform. Its central hall was rectangular in shape, flanked on its two longer sides by a series of smaller rooms—a model of other temples in millennia to come. At one end there was a pedestal, perhaps for a statue. At the other end a podium created an elevated area; the astounded excavators discovered there, at levels VI and VII, large quantities of fish bones mixed with ashes—leading to the suggestion that fish were offered there to the god.
The excavators should not have been puzzled: The temple was dedicated to the Sumerian god E.A, whose name meant "He Whose Home Is Waters." It was he, as his autobiography and many other texts make clear, who had waded ashore from the Persian Gulf at the head of fifty Anunnaki spacemen who had come to Earth from their planet. Customarily depicted with outpouring streams of water (Fig. 40), it was he who was the legendary Oannes. In time—as explained in the preamble of the Atra-Hasis epic—Ea was granted the epithet En.ki—'Lord [of] Earth'. And it was he who had alerted Utnapishtim/Ziusudra of the coming Deluge, instructing him to build the waterproof boat and be saved.
* * *
Though wholly unintended, the unearthing of Eridu opened the way to archaeological confirmation of one of Sumer's most basic 'myths'—the
Figure 40
coming of the Anunnaki to Earth and the establishment by them of Cities of the Gods in pre-Diluvial times.
It was in 1914 that one of the early 'Sumerologists', Arno Poebel, made known the astounding contents of a tablet kept in a fragments-box catalogued 'CBS 10673' in the collection of the Philadelphia University Museum. Less than half preserved (Fig. 41), this remainder of the original Sumerian Deluge record provides on the obverse side the bottom , part of the first three columns of text; and turned over, it retains on the reverse the upper part of columns IV-VI.
The extant lines in the latter section relate how Ziusudra had been forewarned (by the god Enki) about the Deluge and the boat he was instructed to build, how the Deluge had raged for seven days and seven nights, and how the gods led by Enlil granted Ziusudra "life, like a god"—thus his name, "He of Prolonged Lifedays."
The obverse columns I—III, however, considerably expand the tale. The text describes the circumstances of the Deluge and the events that preceded it. Indeed, the text harks back to the time when the Anunnaki had come to Earth and settled in the Edin—a tale that has led some to call this text The Eridu Genesis. It was in those early days, when the
Figure 41
Anunnaki brought 'Kingship' down from Heaven, the text asserts (in column II) that five Cities of the Gods were founded:
After the [ . . . ] of Kingship
was brought down from heaven,
After the lofty crown and throne of kingship
were lowered from heaven,
[ . . . ] perfected the [...],
[ . . . ] founded [. . . ] cities in [ . . . ],
Gave them their names,
allocated their pure places:
The first of these cities, Eridu,
to the leader, Nudimmud, was given.
The second, Bad-Tibira, he gave to Nugig.
The third, Larak, to Pabilsag was given.
The fourth, Sippar, he gave to the hero Utu,
The fifth, Shuruppak, to Sud was given.
The disclosure that some time after they had arrived on Earth—but long before the Deluge—the Anunnaki established five settlements is a major revelation; that the cities' names, and names of their god-rulers, are stated, is quite astounding; but what is even more amazing about this list of Cities of the Gods is that four of their sites have been found and excavated by modern archaeologists! With the exception of Larak, whose remains have not been identified though its approximate location has been ascertained, Eridu, Bad-Tibira, Sippar, and Shuruppak have been found. Thus, as Sumer, its cities, and its civilization have been brought back to light, not only the Deluge but events and places from before the Deluge emerged as historical reality.
Since the Mesopotamian texts assert that the Deluge devastated the Earth and all upon it, one may well ask how those cities were still extant after the Deluge. For the answer—provided by the same Mesopotamian texts—we have to pull away the curtains of time and obscurity and reveal the full story of the Anunnaki, "Those Who From Heaven to Earth Came."
As before, it will be the ancient texts themselves that will tell the story.
THE LAND OF ‘EDEN’
The name Shumer by which southern Mesopotamia was known in ancient times stems from Akkadian inscriptions about the kingdom of 'Shum
er and Akkad'—a geopolitical entity formed after the installation of the Semitic-speaking Sargon I (Sharru-kin = The Righteous King') as ruler of Greater Sumer, circa 2370 B.C. (When the kingdom of David split up after his death to the kingdoms of Judea and Israel, the northern region was affectionately called Shomron—'Little Shumer'.)
Stemming from the Akkadian (and Hebrew) verb meaning 'to watch/to guard', the name Shumer identified the realm as "Land of the Watchers" or "Land of the Guardians"—the gods who watch over and safeguard Mankind. The term matched the ancient Egyptian word for 'gods'—Neteru—which stemmed from the verb NTR and meant "to guard, to watch over." According to Egyptian lore, the Neteru came to Egypt from Ur-Ta, the 'Ancient Place'; their hieroglyphic symbol was a miners' ax:
NETERU
Before Sumer & Akkad, when there were only Cities of the Gods in the land, it was called E.din—'Home/Abode of the Righteous Ones"— the biblical Eden; the term stemmed from the determinative Din.gir that preceded gods' names in Sumerian. Meaning the 'Just/Righteous Ones', its pictographic depiction displayed their two-stage rocketships:
V
When Kingship
Was Brought Down
from Heaven
Cities—urban centers of population—are a hallmark of advanced civilization. The Sumerian tablet that relates the tale of the first five cities on Earth is thus the record of the start of advanced civilization on Earth.
Cities imply specialization between farming and industry, have buildings and streets and marketplaces, develop commerce and trade, entail transportation and communications, need record-keeping—read- » ing, writing, and arithmetic. They also require an organized society and laws, have an administrative hierarchy, appoint or anoint a Chief . Executive; in Sumer, and thereafter virtually everywhere else, that was a Lu.gal—literally "Big Man," rendered 'King' in translation. The Sumerians denoted these elements of advanced knowledge and the sum total of civilization in the term Nam.lugal.la, a term usually translated 'Kingship'. And Kingship, the Sumerians asserted, was brought down to Earth from the heavens.
Held to be a divine institution, Kingship required that the king, to be legitimate, had to be chosen (or actually anointed) by the gods. Accordingly, throughout the ancient world, the succession of kings was meticulously recorded in King Lists. In Egypt, as we have seen, they were arranged by dynasties; in Babylonia and Assyria, in Elam and Hatti and Persia and beyond—and in the Bible with its two Books of Kings—the King Lists named successive rulers, giving their lengths of reign and occasionally a brief biographical note. In Sumer, where kings ruled in numerous city-states, the main list was arranged by the royal cities that served as the land's central or 'national' capital at any given time—a function that rotated from one major city to another. And Sumer's most famous and best preserved King List begins with the statement "When Kingship was brought down from Heaven"—a statement that matches the opening verses of the tale of the pre-Diluvial Cities of the Gods, that we have just quoted: "After the [... ] of Kingship was brought down from heaven, after the lofty crown and throne of Kingship were lowered from heaven."
Those assertions, it should be clear, were not meant just to enshrine Kingship with divine status; a fundamental tenet of Sumerian history and teachings was that Kingship was actually, and not just figuratively, brought down to Earth from the heavens—that the Anunnaki (= 'Those who from Heaven to Earth came') actually began their civilized presence on Earth in five settlements, as stated in tablet CBS-10673. Though the name of the god who made the grants is missing in that tablet, one can say with certainty that it was Enlil, who followed Enki in coming to Earth—a detail recognized by the statement that "The first of these cities, Eridu, to the leader Nudimmud (= Ea/Enki) was given." Furthermore, each one of the others who were granted a city—Nugig 1= the Moon god Nannar/Sin), Pabilsag (= Ninurta), Utu (- Shamash), and Sud (= 'The Medic', Ninmah)—was not just a high-ranking member of the Sumerian pantheon, but was related to Enlil. It was after Enlil's arrival that Enki's initial outpost (Eridu) was expanded to five (then eight) full-fledged settlements.
The connection between those first of Cities of the Gods and the bringing down of civilization to Earth from the heavens is restated in several other Sumerian documents dealing with pre-Diluvial events. Two of the key documents can be seen by anyone who visits the Ashmolean Museum of Art and Archaeology in Oxford, England—a museum that traces its beginning to the donation, in 1683, by Elias Ashmole, of twelve cartloads of antiquarian collectibles that the official history of the Museum describes as "a Noah's ark of rarities." The original collection diversified and grew over the centuries to become an official institution of the University of Oxford. Throngs do not wait in line to enter it; it has no Mona Lisa to attract multitudes or moviemakers. But among the objects it houses are two pricesless archaeological finds of utmost importance to the history of Mankind and our planet; and both record the Deluge, alias "Noah's Flood." They, or copies of them, in all probability served as a source for the writings of Berossus.
Figure 42
Catalogued as WB-62 and WB-444 by Stephen Langdon in Oxford Editions of Cuneiform Texts (1923), the two clay Sumerian artifacts belong to the private collection that Herbert Weld-Blundell—an English journalist, explorer, and archaeologist—donated to the museum in 1923. WB-444 is the better known of the two, for while WB-62 looks like the 'usual' kind of clay tablet, WB-444 is a rare, remarkable and beautiful four-sided prism of baked clay (Fig. 42). Known as The Sumerian King List, it details how Sumer's capital was first in the city of Kish, then moved to Uruk and to Ur, changed to Awan, returned to Kish, transferred to Hamazi, returned to Uruk and then to Ur, and so on, ending in the city called Isin. (The last entry dates the document to a king named Utu-Hegal, who reigned in Uruk circa 2120 B.C.—more than 4,100 years ago.)
But those kings, the prism's text clearly states, began to reign only after the Deluge, "when Kingship was lowered [again] from heaven." The initial portion of the prism lists kings in five ^re-Diluvial Cities of the Gods, assigning to each ruler lengths of reign that baffle scholars. This is what it says:
Nam.lugal an.ta e.de.a.ba
[When] Kingship from heaven was lowered,
Erida.ki nam.lugal.la
In Eridu was Kingship.
Erida.ki A.lu.lim Lugal
[In] Eridu Alulim was king,
Mu 28,800 i.a
28,800 years [he] reigned.
A.lai.gar mu 36,000 i.a
Alalgar 36,000 years reigned;
2 Lugal
2 kings
Mu.bi 64,800 ib.a
Its 64,800 years reigned.
And, continued in translation only:
Eridu was dropped,
Kingship to Bad-Tibira was carried.
In Bad-Tibira Enme.enlu.anna reigned 43,200 years;
Enme.engal.anna reigned 28,800 years;
Dumuzi, a shepherd, reigned 36,000 years;
3 kings reigned its 108,000 years.
Bad-Tibira was dropped,
Kingship to Larak was carried.
In Larak En.sipazi.anna reigned 28,800 years;
1 king reigned its 28,800 years.
Larak was dropped,
Kingship to Sippar was carried.
In Sippar Enme.endur.anna became king,
and reigned for 21,000 years.
1 king reigned its 21,000 years.
Sippar was dropped,
its Kingship to Shuruppak was carried.
In Shuruppak Ubar-Tutu became king,
and reigned its 18,600 years.
5 cities were they;
8 kings reigned 241,200 years.
The Flood swept thereover.
After the Flood had swept thereover,
When Kingship was lowered [again] from heaven,
the Kingship was in Kish.
etc., etc.
This usual rendering of WB-444's first lines is misleading in one key respect: In the original clay document, the numbers of the lengths of reign ar
e given in Sar units (using the numeral sign for '3,600'): Alulim's reign in Eridu is not stated '28,800 years', but "8 Sars"; Alalgar's reign was not '36,000 years', but "10 Sars," and so on down the list of the pre-Diluvial rulers. The Sar units in this prism are the very Saros of Berossus. Significantly, the Sar unit of reign applied only to the pre- Diluvial rulers in the Cities of the Gods; the unit of count changes to regular numbers in the post-Diluvial part of the document.
No less significant is the fact that this list of rulers names the very same first five cities, in the exact same order, as does tablet CBS-10673; but rather than naming the gods whose cult center' each city was, WB-444 lists the 'kings'—administrators—of each such city. As a major study by William W. Hallo (The Antedeluvial Cities) has established, both documents record a canonical tradition regarding the start of civilization ('Kingship') on Earth, beginning in Eridu and ending in Shuruppak at Deluge time.