XI
There Were Giants
Upon the Earth
There were giants upon the Earth
in those days and thereafter too.
With a few (by now familiar) words—highlighted above—the Bible extended the pre-Diluvial epic events involving the demigods, to post- Diluvial days; one can even say, from prehistoric and legendary ages to historical times.
The reader knows by now that Genesis verse 6:4 does not say 'giants'—it says Neftlim, and that I was the schoolboy who questioned the teacher on his explanation of 'giants' rather than the 'Those who have come down' meaning. In retrospect, I realized that the teacher did not invent the 'giants' interpretation, and that there had to be a reason why the scholars assigned by King James I of England to translate the Hebrew Bible used the term 'giants': They relied on earlier translations of the Hebrew Bible—in Latin known as the Vulgate, dating back to the 4th and 6th centuries A.D. and a prior Greek translation (the Septuagint) done in Alexandria, Egypt, in the 3rd century B.C. And in both those early translations, the word Nefilim is rendered "gigantes." Why?
The answer is given in the Bible itself. The term Nefilim, first employed in Genesis 6:4, is used again in the Book of Numbers (13:33), in the tale of the scouts that Moses sent ahead to scout Canaan as the Israelites readied to enter it at the end of the Exodus. Selecting twelve men, one from each tribe, Moses told them: "Go up from the Negev (the southern dry plain) unto the hills, and see the country—what is it like, and who are the people that dwell therein—are they strong or are they weak? Many or a few? And what is the land in which they dwell, is it good or bad? And what are the cities that they inhabit—are they in open fields, or are they fortified?"
Proceeding as instructed, the twelve scouts, "Coming up from the Negev, reached Hebron, where Achiman, Sheshai, and Talmai, the descendants of Anak, were." And when the scouts returned, they said to Moses:
We came unto the land whither thou didst send us,
and truly doth it flow with milk and honey . . .
But the people who dwell in the land are strong,
and the cities are large and fortified;
and we even saw there the children of Anak.
We did see there the giants,
the sons of Anak—the Nefilim,
the children of Anak of the Nefilim;
and we were like grasshoppers in our eyes,
and so were we in their eyes.
The singular Anak is also rendered in the plural, Anakim, in Deuterenomy 1:28 and 9:2, when Moses encouraged the Israelites not to lose heart because of those fearsome "descendants of Anak"; and again in Joshua 11 and 14, in which the capture of Hebron, the stronghold of the "Children of the Anakim," was recorded.
As those verses equate the Nefilim with the Anakim, they also depict the latter (and thus the former) as giantlike—so big that average Israelites were like grasshoppers in their eyes. Capturing their fortified strongholds, with particular attention to Hebron, was a special achievement in the Israelite advance. When the fighting was over, the Bible states, "There remained not Anakim in the land of the Children of Israel except those who were left over in Ghaza, Gath, and Ashdod" (Joshua 11:23). The uncaptured strongholds were all cities of a Philistine coastal enclave; and therein lie additional reasons for equating the Anakim with giants—for King David's giantlike Philistine adversary Golyat ('Goliath' in English) and his brothers were descendants of the Anakim who remained in the Philistine city of Gath. According to the Bible, Goliath was more than nine feet tall; his name became a synonym for 'giant' in Hebrew.
The name Gol-yat, of unknown origin, may well contain a hitherto unnoticed connection to the Sumerian language, in which Gal meant 'Large/big/great'—as discussed in greater detail in ensuing paragraphs.
It was only after concluding that the biblical Nefilim were the Anunnaki of Mesopotamian lore that it dawned on me that Anakim was simply a Hebrew rendering of the Sumerian/Akkadian Anunnaki. If this original insight yet simple equation has not yet been universally adopted, the reason can only be the established view that whereas the Anakim as sons of the Hebronite Anak could have existed, the Anunnaki gods—don't we all know?—were just a myth .. .
The Anakim-Anunnaki connection finds additional corroboration in an unusual choice of terminology in Joshua 14:15. Describing the capture of Hebron as the feat that brought the fighting in Canaan to an end, the Bible had this to say about the city (per the King James translation): "And the name of Hebron before was Kiriath Arba, which Arba was a great man among the Anakim."
More modern English translations of this statement offer some variations regarding the identity of Arba. The New English Bible renders it "Formerly the name of Hebron was Kiriath-Arba; this Arba was the chief man among the Anakim." The New American Bible translates "Hebron was formerly called Kiriath-arba, for Arba, the greatest among the Anakim." And the new Tanach Jewish Bible says, "The name of Hebron was formerly Kiriath-arba, [Arba] was the great man among the Anakites."
The translation problem stems from the fact that the Hebrew text describes Arba as "the Ish Gadol of the Anakim." Literally translated, Ish unambiguously means a male Man; but Gadol could mean both 'Big/Large' as well as 'Great'. So, was the intention of this descriptive epithet to say that Arba was a Big Man in size—a 'Goliath'—or a Great Man—an outstanding leader?
As I was reading and re-reading this verse, it struck me that I have come across this exact term—Ish Gadol—before: In the Sumerian texts! For in them, the term that denoted 'king' was Lu.gal—literally Lu (= 'Man') + Gal (= 'Big/Great') = Ish-Gadol. And, as in the Hebrew, the term had its ambiguous double meaning: Big/Large Man or 'King' (= 'GreatMan').
And here another thought occurred: Was there perhaps no ambiguity—was this 'Arba', descendant of the Anunnaki, a demigod who was both large/big and great?
The pictograph from which the cuneiform signs for Lugal evolved showed the symbol for Lu to which a crown was added (Fig. 73), and it does not indicate size. We don't have a picture of Arba (whose name literally meant 'He who is Four'); but we do have ancient depictions of Sumerian kings; and in the Early Dynastic period they were depicted as
Figure 73
Figure 74
big fellows (for example, Fig. 74). Other examples from Ur, circa 2600 B.C., are the depictions on a wooden box known as 'The Standard of Ur' with panels on its two sides, one (the 'War Panel', Fig. 75) showing a scene of marching soldiers and horse-drawn chariots, and the other (the 'Peace Panel') of civilian activities and banqueting; the person who stands out by his big size is the king—the Lu.gal (Fig. 76, portion of panel).
(It might be relevant to mention here that when the Israelites decided to have a king, the one chosen—Saul—was picked because "when he stood among the people, he was taller than any of the people from his shoulder and upward." I Samuel 10:23.)
Of course, not all kings in antiquity were giantlike. A Cannanite Big One, Og the King of Bashan, was so unusual that the Bible makes a point of it. Arba—descended from the Anakim/Anunnaki—stood out because he was Isb Gadol. Though not a king, the demigod Adapa—son of Enki—was described as big and robust. If such 'Big
Man' demigods inherited that genetic trait from their divine parents, one would expect depictions of gods and men to also show the deities as relatively giantlike; and that was actually the case.
Figure 78
It can be seen, for example, in a 3rd millennium depiction from Ur of a naked Lugal, bigger than the people bearing offerings behind him, pouring a libation to an even bigger seated goddess, Fig. 77. Similar depictions have been found in Elam; and the same 'ratio' of king-to- deity is also seen in a depiction of a big Hittite king offering a libation to an even bigger god Teshub (Fig. 78). Another perspective of this theme can be seen in Fig. 51, in which a lesser deity introduces a king to a seated god who—were he to stand up—would be at least one-third taller than the others.
Such bigness, one finds, was not limited to male gods; Ninmah
/ Ninharsag (who in her old age was nicknamed 'The Cow') was depicted as hefty (Fig. 79). More famous for her size, even in her younger days,
Figure 79
Figure 80
was the goddess Ba'u (Fig. 80), the spouse of the god Ninurta; her epithet was Gula (= 'The Big One').
There were, indeed, giants upon the Earth in pre-Deluge times, and thereafter too. Luckily, the great archaeological discoveries of the past two centuries enable us to identify them and to bring them to life— even as they died.
* * *
In spite of its statement that the Gibborim—Heroes, 'Mighty Men' (alias demigods)—continued into post-Diluvial times, the Bible makes hardly any mention of them until the Israelite return to Canaan. It was only then, when Moses recounted who had inhabited Canaan, that the Bible mentions the Anakim and a sub-group called Repha'im (a term that might mean 'Healers') who per Deuteronomy 2:11 "as Anakim are considered." Most (except for certain 'Children of Anak') were replaced by a variety of tribe-nations who repopulated those lands after the Deluge.
According to the Bible, it was of Noah's three sons—Shem, Ham, and Japhet—who had survived the Deluge with their wives, that Mankind re-emerged: "It is of them that the whole Earth was overspread," the Bible stated as it launched a list of their descendant-nations (Genesis, chapter 10). And in that long and comprehensive list, only one sole heroic figure called Nimrod is named.
Stemming from Kish (misspelled 'Kush'), Nimrod "was a Mighty Hunter by the grace of Yahweh"; it was he "who was the First Hero in the land" per the Genesis verses that we have already quoted. We mentioned earlier the scholarly assumption, upon the discovery and decipherment of the cuneiform tablets, that 'Nimrod' (whose domains included Erech in the land of Shine'ar) was the famed Sumerian Gilgamesh, king of Erech/Uruk—an incorrect assumption, as it turned out. But the Hebrew epithets applied to Nimrod—a Gibbor, a Hero, a Mighty hunter—unmistakably links him to the plural Gibborim of Genesis 6:4, and thus identifies him as one of the continued line of demigods. (In Sumerian iconography, it was Enlil who was depicted as the granter of a hunting bow to Mankind, Fig. 81).
Figure 81
The assertion that Nimrod was "brought forth" in Kish can serve as an invaluable clue regarding his identity; it lurks, I believe, unrecognized among the demigods associated with the god Ninurta. It certainly links these biblical verses to the Sumerian King List, where it is stated in regard to the post-Diluvial period:
After the Flood had swept thereover,
when kingship was lowered (again) from heaven,
the kingship was in Kish.
Kish was not one of the pre-Diluvial cities that were rebuilt exactly where they had been once Mesopotamia was habitable again; it was a new city, intended as a neutral capital, whose establishment followed the creation of separate regions for the contending Anunnaki clans.
The Deluge calamity that befell the Earth—a colossal tidal wave caused by the collapse of the ice sheet over Antarctica—unavoidably overwhelmed the Abzu with its gold-mining facilities in southeastern Africa. But as nature would have it, the calamity that destroyed one side of the Earth had beneficial effects on the other side: In the Lands Beyond The Seas that we now call South America, the powerful avalanche of water exposed extremely rich veins of gold in the (now called) Andes mountains, and filled riverbeds with easily collected gold nuggets. As a result, the gold that Nibiru needed could be obtained there without the toil of mining. Preempting Enki, Enlil sent his son Ishkur/Adad to take charge of the golden territory. Control of the repopulated olden lands thus became a pressing issue for the 'deprived' Enki's clan; the suggested creation of distinct regions and clearly delineated territories was an attempt at peacemaking by Ninmah.
Before Kingship was reinstated on Earth after the Deluge, a text dealing with the matter states, "The great Anunnaki gods, the deciders of destinies, sat in council, made decisions concerning the Earth, and established the four regions." The allocation of three regions matched the three biblical nation-state branches emanating from the three sons of Noah; its purpose and result was to allot Africa (and the Hamitic peoples) to Enki and his sons, and Asia and Europe (Semitic and Indo-European peoples) to Enlil and his sons. A Fourth Region, territory of the gods alone, was set aside for a new, post-Diluvial Spaceport; located in the Sinai peninsula, it was placed under the aegis of the neutral Ninmah, earning her the epithet Nin.harsag (= 'Lady/Mistress of the Mountain peak'). Called Til.mun (= 'Place/ Land of the Missiles'), it was the place to which Ziusudra and his wife were taken after the Deluge.
The principal aim of forming the regions—a 'share and share alike' arrangement between and within the Anunnaki clans—was not readily attained. Discord and strife soon broke out among the Enki'ites; Egyptian lore recalled it as first the struggle for dominion between Seth and Osiris, leading to the killing of Osiris, then in revenge warfare between Horus (born of the semen of Osiris) and Seth. Enki's son Marduk (Ra in Egypt) repeatedly tried to establish himself in Enlilite territories. A relatively peaceful era—negotiated by Ninmah— was again shattered by a rivalry between Enki's sons Ra/Marduk and Thoth/Ningishzidda. It took another millennium to restore Earth and Mankind to stability and prosperity, making possible Anu's state visit to Earth, circa 4000 B.C.
The Bible asserts that the fourth-generation descendant of Shem was named Peleg (= 'Division'), "because in his time was the Earth divided"; in The Wars of Gods and Men I have suggested that this was a reference to the establishment of the three separate regions of civilization—of the Euphrates/Tigris, the Nile, and the Indus Rivers. Peleg was born, according to the Bible, 110 years after the Deluge; using the 'times sixty' formula, it would date the birth of Peleg to circa 4300 B.C. (10,900-6,600) and the "division" to circa 4000 B.C.
With the creation of Mankind's civilizations, Enlil's post-Diluvial headquarters in Ni.ihru (Nippur in Akkadian)—established precisely where the pre-Diluvial city had been, but no longer Mission Control Center—became the overall religious capital, a kind of 'Vatican'. It was then that a luni-solar calendar, the Calendar of Nippur, with a cycle of twelve Ezen (= 'Festival') periods—the origin of 'months'—was fixed. That calendar, begun in 3760 B.C., is still followed as the Jewish Calendar to this day.
And then the gods "mapped out the city of Kish, laid out its foundations." It was intended as a national capital, a kind of 'Washington D.C.'; and it was there that the Anunnaki started the line of post- Diluvial kings by "bringing down from heaven the scepter and crown of kingship."
* * *
The excavations conducted at the site of ancient Kish, described in our chapter 4, have corroborated varied Sumerian texts that named the god Ninurta as that city's titular deity, giving rise to the thought that perhaps he was the 'Nimrod' who was Yahweh's "Mighty Hunter." But the Sumerian King List actually named the first ruler in Kish; regrettably we still don't know it, because the inscription is damaged right there, leaving legible only the syllables Ga.—.—.ur. What is clearly legible is the statement that he reigned for 1,200 years!
The name of the second ruler in Kish is entirely damaged, but his reign lasted a clearly written 860 years. He was followed on the throne of Kish by ten legibly named kings with reigns lasting 900, 840, 720, and 600 years. Since these are numbers clearly divisible by 6 or 60, the unanswered question is whether these are factual reign lengths, or did the ancient copying scribes misread them, and it should have been 200 (or 20) for Ga.—.—.ur, 15 instead of 900 for the next one, etc. Which was it?
The 1,200 year reign of Ga.—.—.ur, if correct, places him in the category of the pre-Diluvial biblical Patriarchs (who lived almost 1,000 years each), and his immediate successors somewhat ahead of Noah's sons (Shem lived to 600). If Ga.--.--.ur was a demigod Gibbor, 1,200 years in his case might be plausible. So would be the 1,560 years attributed to the 13th king in Kish, Etana, regarding whom the King List makes the long notation: "A shepherd, he who to heaven ascended, who consolidated the countries." In this case, the royal notat
ion is supported by discovered literature, including an ancient two-tablet text relating
The Etana Legend, for he was indeed a king who "to heaven ascended."
A benevolent ruler, Etana was despondent by the lack of a male heir, caused by his wife's pregnancy difficulties that could be cured only by the heavenly Plant of Birth. So he appealed to his patron god Utu/ Shamash to help him obtain it. Shamash directed him to an "eagle's pit"; and after overcoming varied difficulties the Eagle took Etana aloft to the "Gate of Anu's heaven."
As they rose ever higher, the Earth below them appeared ever smaller:
When he had borne Etana aloft one beru,
the Eagle says to him, to Etana:
"See, my friend, how the land appears!
Peer at the sea at the side of the mountain house—
The land has become a mere hill,
the wide sea is just like a tub."
Rising a second beru (a measure of distance as well as degrees of the celestial arc), the Eagle again urged Etana to look down:
"My friend,
Cast a glance at how the Earth appears!
There Were Giants Upon the Earth Page 18
