How can this conclusion be reconciled, say, in the case of the tenth ruler, the hero of the Deluge, if the Bible (re. Noah) lists him as a son of Lamech, and the Sumerian texts (re. Ziusudra) as a son of Ubar- Tutu? The explanation lies in demigod tales, from Bath-Enosh (the
Figure 72
mother of Noah) all the way to Olympias (the mother of Alexander):
Assuming the identity of the husband, a god did it!
Such an explanation admirably affirms the child's demigod status while it absolves the mother of adultery.
An interesting example that illustrates the universality of this explanation comes to us from Egypt, where some of the best known Pharaohs bore theophoric names with the suffix MSS (also rendered MES, MSES, MOSE) that meant 'Issue/offspring of'—such as Thothmes ('Issue of the god Thoth'), Ramses ('Issue of the god Ra'), etc.
A case in point occurred when Egypt's famed 18th dynasty Pharaoh Thothmes I died in 1512 B.C. He left behind a daughter (Hatshepsut) mothered by his legitimate spouse, and a son mothered by a concubine. Seeking to legitimize his assumption of the throne, the son (thereafter known as Thothmes II) married his half-sister Hatshepsut. The marriage produced only daughters; and when Thothmes II died (in 1504 B.C.) after a short reign, the only male heir was a son not by Hatshepsut, but by a harem girl.
Since the boy was too young to rule, Hatshepsut was appointed co-regent with him. But then she decided that kingship was rightfully hers alone and assumed the throne as a full-fledged Pharaoh in her own right. To justify and legitimize that, she came out with a claim that while Thothmes I was her nominal father, she was actually conceived when the god Amon (= 'The Unseen Ra')—disguising himself as the husband-king—was intimate with her mother.
On Hatshepsut's orders, the following statement was included in Egypt's royal annals to record her demigod origins:
The god Amon took the form of his majesty the king,
the husband of this queen.
Then he went to her immediately,
and he had intercourse with her.
These are the words which the god Amon,
Lord of the Thrones of the Two Lands,
spoke thereafter in her presence:
'Hatshepsut-by-Amon-created'
shall be the name of this daughter of mine
whom I have planted in your body . ..
She will exercise beneficial kingship
in this entire land.
Hatshepsut died as Queen of Egypt in 1482 B.C., whereupon the 'boy'—thereafter known as Thothmes III—finally became Pharaoh. Her great and magnificent funerary temple at Deir-el-Bahari, on the Nile's western side opposite ancient Thebes (today's Luxor-Karnak), still stands; and on its inner walls, the story of Hatshepsut's demigod birth is told in a series of murals accompanied by hieroglyphic writing.
The murals start with a depiction of the god Amon, led by the god Thoth, entering the nighttime chamber of queen Ahmose, wife of Thothmes I. The accompanying hieroglyphic inscriptions explain that the god Amon was disguised as the queen's husband:
Then entered the glorious god, Amon himself,
Lord of the thrones of the Two Lands,
having taken the form of her husband.
"They (the two gods) found her (the queen) sleeping in the beautiful sanctuary. She awoke at the perfume of the god [and] merrily laughed * in the face of his majesty." As Thoth discreetly left, Amon—
Enflamed with love, hastened toward her.
She could behold him, in the shape of a god,
as he came nearer to her.
She exulted at the sight of his beauty.
Both enamored, god and queen had inercourse:
His love entered into all her limbs.
The place was filled with the god's sweet perfume.
The majestic god did to her all that he wished.
She gladdened him with all of herself;
she kissed him.
Attributions of liaisons by Ra that endowed future Egyptian Pharaohs with demigod status go back, in fact, to earlier dynastic times. A tale, inscribed on papyrus may even solve a mystery concerning Egypt's 5th dynasty in which three related Pharaohs succeeded each other without being fathers-sons. According to that tale, they were conceived when the god Ra mated with the wife of the high priest of his temple. When the pangs of childbirth began, it was realized that the woman carries a triplet and would have a very difficult time giving birth. So Ra summoned four 'birth goddesses' and appealed to his father, Ptah, to assist in the births. The text describes how all those gods assisted as the wife of the high priest gave birth, in succession, to three sons who were named Userkaf, Sahura, and Kakai. Historical records show that the three of them indeed reigned in succession as Pharaohs, forming the Fifth Dynasty; they were a Demigod Triplet.
Besides providing Egyptologists with an explanation of that odd dynasty, the tale also offers an explanation for a bas-relief, discovered by archaeologists, that depicts the Pharaoh Sahura as a baby suckled by a goddess—a privilege limited to those of divine birth. Such 'divine suckling' was also claimed by Hatshepsut to further her claim to divinely ordained kingship: she asserted that the goddess Hathor (nicknamed 'Mother of gods') suckled her. (A successor, the son of Thothmes III, also claimed to having been divinely suckled.)
A claim of direct demigod status as a result of intercourse with a god in disguise was then made by the famed Ramses II by recording in the royal annals the following revelation that the great god Ptah himself made to the Pharaoh:
I am thy father.
I assumed my form as Mendes, the Ram Lord,
and begot thee inside thy august mother.
If such a claim to having been fathered by not just one of the gods but by the head of the pantheon looks too far fetched, recall our explanation that the god called Ptah by the Egyptians was none other than Enki.
And to assert a fathering by Enki was not outlandish at all.
* * *
As one takes a sweeping view of the Mesopotamian tales of the gods, there come into focus the different personalities of the half-brothers Enki and Enlil—in every respect, including matters of sexual behavior.
Anu, we have earlier mentioned, had quite a harem of concubines in addition to his official spouse, Antu; indeed, the mother of Ea/Enki, Anu's firstborn son, was one such concubine. When Anu and Antu came to Earth on a state visit (circa 4000 B.C.), a special city, Uruk (the biblical Erech), was built to accommodate them. During the visit Anu took a special liking to Enlil's granddaughter, who was called thereafter In.Anna (= Anu's Beloved')—with hints, in the texts, that Anu's "loving" was not just grandfatherly.
And in these respects, Enki and definitely not Enlil, had his father's genes. Of his six sons, only Marduk is clearly identified as mothered by Enki's official spouse Dam.ki.na (= 'Lady [who] to Earth Came'); the other five sons' mothers are mostly unnamed and could have been concubines or (see hereunder) chance encounters. By comparison, Enlil—who had a son by Ninmah back on Nibiru when both were unmarried—had sons (two) only by his spouse, Ninlil.
A long Sumerian text that its first translator, Samuel N. Kramer, named Enki and Ninhursag: A Paradise Myth, details Enki's repeated sexual intercourses with his half-sister Ninharsag/Ninmah in (unsuccessful) attempts to have a son by her, and then his intercourses with the female offsprings of those liaisons. (Ninharsag—a medical officer— had to inflict Enki with painful maladies to make him stop.) As often as not, these Enki tales extolled the god's mighty penis.
Enki was not averse to keeping sex within the family: A long text dealing with Inanna's visit to Eridu (to obtain from Enki the vital Me) describes how her host attempted (unsuccessfully) to get her drunk and seduce her; and another text, recording a voyage from Eridu to the Abzu, relates how Enki did succeed to have sex with Ereshkigal (Inanna's elder sister and future wife of Enki's son Nergal) aboard their boat.
When such escapades resulted in the birth of offspring, young gods or goddesses were born; for demigods to be bor
n, the intercourse had to be with Earthlings; and of that too there was no shortage . . . We can begin with Canaanite tales of the gods, where El (= 'The Lofty One'— 'Cronos' of eastern Mediterranean lore) was head of the pantheon. The tales include a text known as The Birth of the Gracious Gods; it describes how El, strolling on the seashore, met two Earthling females bathing. The two women were charmed by the size of his penis and had intercourse with him, resulting in the birth of Shahar (= 'Dawn') and Shalem (= 'Complete' or 'Dusk').
Though called 'gods' in the Canaanite text, the two were, by definition, demigods. An important epithet-title of El was Ab Adam— translated 'Father of Man' but also meaning 'Father of Adam,' which, literally taken, may mean just that: Progenitor and actual father of the individual the Bible calls Adam, as distinct from the prior references to "The Adam" species. And this leads us directly to Adapa, the legendary Model Man of Mesopotamian texts.
A pre-Diluvial demigod known as "Man of Eridu," his name, Adapa, identified him as the "Wisest of Men." Tall and big of size, he was most clearly identified as a son of Enki—a son of whom Enki was openly proud, whom he appointed as Chief of Household in Eridu, and to whom he granted "wide understanding"—all manner of knowledge, including mathematics, writing, and craftsmanship.
The first "Wise Man" on record, Adapa might have been the elusive Homo sapiens sapiens who appeared on the human scene some 35,000 years ago as 'Cro-Magnon Man', as distinct from the cruder Neanderthals. It has been speculated (with no convincing conclusion) whether 'Adapa' could have been the actual person the Bible calls 'Adam' (as distinct from 'The Adam' species). I, for one, wonder whether he could have been the En.me.lu.anna of the pre-Diluvial Sumerian King Lists—a name translatable as 'Enki's Man of Heaven'—for the most memorable and unique event concerning Adapa was his celestial journey to visit Anu on Nibiru.
The Tale of Adapa begins by giving the reader the sense of a very long ago time, at the beginning of events, when Ea/Enki was involved in Creation:
In those days, in those years,
by Ea was the Wise One of Eridu
created as a model of Man.
The tale of Adapa reverberated in Mesopotamian life and literature for ages. Even in later Babylon and Assyria, the expression "Wise as Adapa" was used to describe someone highly intelligent. But so was another aspect of the Adapa tale, according to which Ea/Enki deliberately granted one but withheld another divine attribute from this Model of Man, though his own son:
Wide understanding he perfected for him;
Wisdom he had given him;
To him he had given Knowledge—
Everlasting life he had not given him.
As word reached Nibiru of the unusually wise Earthling, Anu asked to see Adapa. Complying, Enki "made Adapa take the way to Anu, and to heaven he went up." But Enki was concerned lest Adapa, while on Nibiru, be offered the Bread of Life and the Water of Life—and attain the longevity of the Anunnaki after all. To prevent that from happening, Enki made Adapa look wild and shaggy, dressed him shabbily, and gave him misleading instructions:
As you stand before Anu,
they will offer you bread;
it is Death—do not eat!
They will offer you water;
it is Death—do not drink!
They will offer you a garment—
put it on.
They will offer you oil—
anoint yourself with it.
"You must not neglect these instructions," Enki cautioned Adapa; "to that which I have spoken, hold fast!"
Taken aloft by "the Way of Heaven," Adapa reached the Gate of Anu; it was guarded by the gods Dumuzi and Gizidda. Let in, he was brought before Anu. As Enki had predicted, he was offered the Bread of Life—but fearing death, refused to eat it. He was offered the Water of Life, and refused to drink it; he did put on the clothes he was offered, and anointed himself with the oil given him. Puzzled and bemused, Anu asked him: "Come now, Adapa—why did you not eat, why did you not drink?" To which Adapa answered: "Ea, my master, commanded me 'you shall not eat, you shall not drink'."
Angered by the answer, Anu sent an emissary to Enki, demanding an explanation. The inscribed tablet is too damaged here to be legible, so we don't know Enki's response. But the tablet does make it clear that Adapa, having been found "worthless" by Anu, was returned to Earth and started a line of priests adept at curing diseases. Wise and intelligent, a son of the god Enki Adapa was—yet as a mortal he died.
The scholarly debate whether the biblical 'Adam' was 'Adapa' is yet to be settled. But clearly, the biblical narrator had the tale of Adapa in mind when writing the story of the two trees in the Garden of Eden—the Tree of Knowing (of which Adam ate) and the Tree of Life (of which he was precluded). The warning to Adam (and Eve), "the day you shall eat thereof surely you shall die," is almost a quote from Enki's warning to Adapa. So is the deity's concern, expressed to unnamed colleagues, regarding the risk of Adam eating also from the Tree of Life (Genesis 3:22-24):
And Yahweh Elohim said:
Behold, the Adam is become as one of us
to know good and evil;
And now, what if he put forth his hand
and took also of the Tree of Life,
and ate, and lived forever?
So "Yahweh Elohim expelled him from the Garden of Eden . .. and placed at the east of the Garden of Eden the Cherubim, and the flaming sword which revolveth, to guard the way to the Tree of Life."
We do not know whether Enki's warning to Adapa—to avoid the Water and Bread of Life lest he dies—was an honest one, or part of the deliberate decision to give Adapa Wisdom but not "Everlasting life." We do know, however, that the warning to Adam and Eve, that they will "surely die" were they to eat of the Tree of Knowing, was untrue. God, as the Serpent told them, lied.
It is an episode to be kept in mind as the issues of Immortality will come to the fore.
* * *
According to the WB-62 king list, Enmeluanna was followed by En.sipa.zi.anna (= 'Shepherd Lord, Heavenly Life') and then by Enmeduranna/Enmeduranki, whose tale matches that of the biblical Enoch. Different and ambiguous names are then given by the Mesopotamian sources for the biblical Lamech, the most certain of which is the Ubar-Tutu in the Epic of Gilgamesh (and thus probably the Obartcs of Berossus). Nothing, apart from this mention in the Epic of Gilgamesh, is known about that predecessor of Ziusudra/ Utnapishtim. Was he a demigod, or the hapless Lamech who had doubts about the true parentage of Noah?
The 'transgressions' by the Igigi or "Watchers" that so upset Enlil were in fact begun by none other than Enki himself. They resulted, as the varied sources make clear, in numerous demigod offspring; but only a handful of them are named and listed. Were they the instances in which Enki himself, bearing the epithet En.me, was involved?
The riddle of Patriarch-Demigods in pre-Diluvial times runs all the way to Noah and the Deluge; but the enigma of our ancestral "seed" does not end there, for—as the Bible states (and Mesopotamian sources confirm)—the intermarriage that began before the Deluge continued "also after that."
We will soon find that other gods—and goddesses!—were eager intermarriage partners in the post-Deluge times.
WORDS AND THEIR MEANING
Readers of transliterated Sumerian texts may find a small'd' prefixing a deity's name—e.g., dEnki, dEnlil. Called a 'determinative', it identifies the name as that of a god (or goddess). The d is shorthand for the two-syllable word Din.gir. Literally meaning 'Righteous Ones [of the] Rocketships', it was depicted pictographically as a rocket with a command module (see sidebar "The Land of 'Eden'" on page 82). Simplified, the designation 'god/divine' was rendered by a 'star' sign that was read An and evolved further to a crosslike wedgemark (see illustration); it was read llu in Akkadian (i.e., Babylonian, Assyrian)—from which the singular El in Canaanite or Hebrew and the plural Elohim in the Bible.
While explaining that in the tale of Adam's creation, etc., the Elohim of the Bible were the Sumerian Anunnaki, this a
uthor (as unambiguously stated in Divine Encounters) envisions God (with a capital 'G') as a universal cosmic Creator of All, who acts through emissaries—'gods' with a small 'g'. The existence of the Elohim/Anunnaki 'gods' with a small 'g' is confirmation of the existence of their creator, God with a capital 'G'.
The encompassing divine name "Yahweh" was explained to Moses as meaning Eheyeh asher eheyeh—"I will be whoever I will be"—God could "be" (act through) Enki in one instance, or "be" through Enlil in another instance, etc. When the Hebrew text states Elohim, Anunnaki 'gods' are spoken of; and when the Bible employs the term Yahweh Elohim, it should be recognized as meaning 'When Yahweh acted as/ through one of the Elohim'.
Other unorthodox understandings of biblical words suggested in my writings, include the term Olam. It is commonly translated 'Forever/ Everlasting/of old'; but stemming from the root verb that means "To hide," Olam (I wrote) could mean a physical 'Hidden Place' of God, as in Psalm 93:2—"Thou art from Olam"—the 'Hidden Place,' the unseen planet Nibiru.
There Were Giants Upon the Earth Page 17
