Does it all mean that the 'queen' entombed in PG-800 was the goddess Inanna? It could have, were it not for the fact that Inanna/Ishtar was alive centuries later, when the Evil Wind overwhelmed Sumer; we know that because she and her hurried escape are clearly described in the Lamentation Texts. And she was also active many centuries later— into Babylonian and Assyrian times, in the 1st millennium B.C.
But if not Inanna—who?
Figure 138
WHEN 'IMMORTALS' DIED
The 'Immortality' of the Anunnaki gods, we have already observed, was in reality a great longevity that can be attributed to their Nibiruan life cycle. The notion of gods (or even demigods) as immortals has come to us from Greece; the discovery of Canaanite 'myths' at their capital Ugarit (on Syria's Mediterranean coast) showed where the Greeks got the idea.
By listing the ancestor couples on Nibiru, the Anunnaki acknowledged that they were long dead. In the very first 'Paradise' tale of Enki and Ninmah, she afflicts him with maladies (to stop his sexual shenanigans) that bring him to the brink of death—allowing that gods can get sick and die. Indeed, the very arrival of Ninmah the doctor and her group of nurses admits illness among the Anunnaki. The deposed Alalu, swallowing Anu's 'Manhood', died of poisoning. The evil Zu was captured and executed.
Sumerian texts described the death of the god Dumuzi, who drowned when escaping from Marduk's 'sheriffs'. His bride, Inanna, retrieved his body, but all she could do was mummify it for a hoped- for future resurrection; various later texts refer to Dumuzi as a resident of a 'Netherworld'. Inanna herself, going uninvited to her sister's Lower World domain, was put there to death—"a corpse, hung from a stake." Two android rescuers retrieved her body and with a 'Pulser' and an 'Emitter' brought her back to life.
When the nuclear Evil Wind began blowing toward Sumer, the gods and goddesses—neither immune nor immortal—hurriedly escaped in panic. The god Nannar/Sin tarried, and was afflicted with a limp. The great goddess Bau of Lagash refused to leave her people, and the Day of the Calamity was her last day: "On that day, as if she were a mortal, the Storm by its hand seized her," a lamentation text states.
In the Babylonian version of Enuma elish—that was read publicly during the New Year festival—a god named Kingu (namesake of the leader of Tiamat's host) is killed to obtain blood for Man's creation.
In Sumer, the death of gods was as accepted as tales of their being born. The question is, Where were they buried?
XVI
The Goddess Who
Never Left
Our question, 'Who was buried in PG-800?' would have sounded strange to Sir Leonard Woolley were he still alive to hear it. For as soon as he had reached its burial chamber—on January 4, 1928—he sent to the University Museum in Philadelphia a Western Union telegram that said (in translation from the Latin that he used for secrecy):
I found the intact tomb stone built and vaulted over with bricks
of Queen Shubad adorned with a dress in which gems flower
crowns and animalfigures are woven together magnificently i
with jewels and golden cups. Woolley.
"The intact tomb of Queen Shubad." How did Woolley know this answer to the mystery as soon as he had found the chamber? Did the buried VIP have a name tag saying "Queen Shubad"? Well, in a manner of speaking, she did: Four cylinder seals were found in PG-800, one near the wardrobe chest and three inside the tomb chamber, depicting females banqueting. One of the three near the body was inscribed with four cuneiform signs (Fig. 139) that Woolley read Nin.Shu.ba.ad and translated 'Queen Shubad'—for though Nin signified goddess', Woolley took it to mean 'queen', because as he and everyone else knew, gods and goddesses existed only mythically and had no physical body to be buried. His assumption that this was the personal seal of the buried VIP has
been taken for granted, though the reading of her name has since been changed to Nin-Pu.a.bi. (It is noteworthy that the University Museum in Philadelphia, on reopening the Royal Tombs of Ur exhibit in March 2004, changed the title from 'Queen Puabi' to 'Lady Puabi'.)
The scene depicted on this seal, in two 'registers' is that of females banqueting; since tumblers are shown raised by the celebrants, they were probably drinking wine. In each register, there are two seated female celebrants and several female attendants/servants. The second and third seals found inside the tomb chamber also depicted, in two registers, two female celebrants—drinking beer with long straws, or having wine and food, served by attendants and entertained by a harp player. None of these two seals had any writing.
The fourth cylinder seal, found lying against the wardrobe chest outside the tomb chamber, also depicted banqueting scenes, with female celebrants and attendants. We have already pointed out that the name inscribed on it, A.bara.ge (= 'The Water Purifier of the Sanctuary') identified its owner as a high-ranking holder of the office of Cupbearer. We can additionally note here that he or she had to be a 'royal' per se, for he/she was a namesake of a famed king of Kish, En.me.bara.ge.si—
Figure 139
a demigod, who was credited with reigning 900 years (see chapter 11).
Apart from suggesting that the VIP buried in PG-800 was 'Queen Shubad', Woolley had no information to offer about her. There is no mention in Mesopotamian records of a queen by that name (whether Shubad or Puabi). In so far as she was a Nin—a goddess—named Puabi, there is no such name in the God Lists either. If not an unlisted epithet—of which each deity had galore—it could have been a local or family nickname; so we will have to resort to detective tactics to unravel her identity.
The script-sign for Nin on the seal is absolutely clear and requires no further elaboration (see Fig. 57). Breaking down the epithet-name Pu.a.bi by its components, we find that the first one, read PU, was written with sign number 26a in the Sumerian Sign List—and it was another word for Sud—'One who gives succor'—a nurse, a medic. This finding reinforces our earlier conclusion based on the medical 'tweezers' that the VIP entombed in PG-800 was a healer, as Ninmah/Ninharsag, Ninlil (Enlil's spouse) and Bau (Ninurta's spouse) were; and our guess is that she was directly related to one of them, and thus an Enlilite.
The second component, read A as in cuneiform sign number 383, meant 'Large/Much'; and BI, sign number 214, meant a certain variety of beer. So Nin Pu.a.bi literally meant a Nin, a goddess, who was "Healer [of] Much Beer." It is a nickname that matched the banqueting and beer drinking depicted on the the second cylinder seal found near Puabi's body (Fig. 140), Indeed, the depictions on all of the six 'female' seals found in the Royal Tombs show banqueting ladies who differ in certain aspects—age, hairdo, dress, and stature. Since the seal cutters might have tried to make the individual seals as true portraits as possible, these small details deserve attention. Especially intriguing is the PG-800 seal (see Fig. 139) in which, in the upper register, a younger goddess (the host?) sitting on the right next to the inscribed title/name, and a more matronly goddess, more elegantly dressed, and with an elaborate hairdo (the guest?) sits on the left. Was this an actual portrait of the tomb's occupant and her more matronly and hefty guest?
Figure 140
It's a possibility to be kept in mind, for the physical size of the hostess (and her guest) are relevant to their ultimate identification because some of the skeletal remains from several Ur tombs, including PG-800 and PG-755, were examined by the then leading British anthropologist, Sir Arthur Keith.
In regard to Shubad/Puabi, this is how he began his written report that formed part of Woolley's 1934 book on the Royal Tombs of Ur:
An examination of the Queen's remains has led me to form the following conclusions concerning her:
The Queen was about forty years of age at the time of her death;
she was approximately 1.510 m. (5 feet) in stature;
her bones were slender and her feet and hands small;
she had a large and long head.
In estimating her age, Sir Arthur was baffled by the fact that dental and other aspects of her skeletal rema
ins indicated a much younger age than forty. As to her stature, let us note that it is comparable to that of Inanna in the Mari photograph, Fig. 86.
While the skull, badly fractured, might have been compressed by soil pressure to appear longer and narrower than what it really had been, Sir Arthur concluded on the basis of detailed measurements that the queen could not be a Sumerian—that she was "a member of a highly dolichocephalic race" ('dolichocephalic' is having a head disproportionately longer than it is wide). Even more so, he was astounded and puzzled by the overall size of the head and the extraordinarily large cranial (brain) capacity:
We have only to measure the frontal, parietal, and occipital bones along the midline of the vault to realize how large the capacity of the skull must have been . . . The cranial capacity could not have been less than 1600 cubic cm.—250 c.cm. above the mean for European women.
"The remains," he wrote, "left no doubt that the Queen had an uncommonly capacious skull." After providing details of the rest of her bone remains, Sir Arthur's overall conclusion was that her head was unusually large, while her body, hands, and feet, compared to the size of the head, was rather small "though stoutly made."
To use Sumerian terminology, one can say that she had the head of a Gal and the body of a Banda . . .
Sir Arthur also examined the skeletal remains of the male in PG-755, referring to him as "Prince Mes-kalam-dug." Comparing the two, he observed that "except for her large cranial capacity, Queen Shub-ad was intensely feminine in her physical characterization; in Mes-kalam-dug the bones in the body were fashioned as a very robust male." His bones were much thicker than hers; "the right arm was particularly thick and strong in the Prince." All told, Sir Arthur concluded, "the bones of the Prince—alas! all of them are only fragmentary now—show him to have been a strongly built, powerful man, about 5 ft. 5 in. or 5 ft. 6 in. (1.650-1.675 meters) in height. . . He was a strong-necked man."
The skull of the 'Prince' had "the exact same cephalic index as in Queen Shub-ad" (i.e., the length to width proportion)—markedly elongated—and the cranial capacity (the brain size) was "well above the average size for Sumerians." Racially, Sir Arthur wrote, "I would name him, for lack of a better [word], Proto-Arab."
Fractured skull and bone remains from several other Early Dynastic tombs were examined; Sir Arthur's main conclusion was that they too were "Proto-Arabs." In an overall summary, he noted that the remains of the 'Queen' and the 'Prince' stood out from the others:
Of particular interest is it to observe the fine physique and the rich brain endowments of Queen Shub-ad and of the Prince Mes-kalam-dug.
The latter was an exceptionally strong man physically, and if we may rely on size of brain as an index of mental capacity—then was the Prince not only physically strong, but also a man of superior capacity.
The Queen's cerebral endowment was exceptional, and if we can trust physical development of the body as a clue to sexual mentality, then we may infer that she was a very feminine woman.
In complete agreement with all the other aspects that we have found, Sir Arthur thus accurately described
• A heroic demigod in PG-755, a "strongly built powerful man" with a "superior cerebral capacity"
and was right on the mark about the
• "Very feminine" smallish 'Queen' with an "uncommonly - capacious skull" in PG-800.
The skeletal remains and physical findings concerning the 'Prince' in PG-755 completely fit his identification as Mes.kalam.dug, whom we have established as a son of the goddess + demigod couple who began the First Dynasty of Ur; but we still face the enigma of the VIP in PG-800: Bejewelled and Inanna-like in stature, yet not Inanna ... Who could she be, and who was entombed next to her in the emptied PG-789?
* * *
Regarding the occupant of PG-800 we have established the following points that can lead to her identification:
· A cylinder seal next to her body identified her as Nin.Puabi—the goddess 'Puabi'.
· The retainers and attendants buried with her were themselves high- ranking courtiers, even a king, indicating that she was of greater importance than they—that she was a goddess—confirming her Nin title.
· Gold was used in this burial even for common, daily-use utensils— emulating the only other instance on record: Anu and Antu's visit to Earth ca. 4000 B.C.
· Those utensils were embossed with the same emblem—a 'rosette'—with which the Anu-visit utensils were embossed. This suggests that the female buried in PG-800 was 'Of the House of Anu'—a direct linear descendant of Anu. Such a direct genealogical link to Anu could be through his sons Enki and Enlil or his daughters Ninmah and Bau.
· An implement found in the tomb, that has to be of the hardest metal—a hoe—was made of the soft metal gold, i.e., for symbolic purposes. The only recorded prior instance of that was the Sacred Hoe with which Enlil cut the ground to establish the Duranki Mission Control Center in Nippur. The hoe clue suggests that the VIP in this tomb was an Enlilite, associated with Nippur and not with Enki and Eridu. This eliminates Enki and leaves only three—Enlil, Ninmah, or Bau—as the direct genealogical link of'Puabi' to Anu.
· Possessing a symbolic golden medical instrument (the 'Tweezers') links Puabi to a tradition of giving medical succor—as Ninmah and Bau were; it still leaves the male Enlil in contention because his spouse, Ninlil, was also a nurse.
· Since it would seem improbable that the youthful-looking Puabi would have been one of the Olden Ones who had come to Earth from Nibiru, we cannot consider Ninmah or Bau or Ninlil themselves, and must look at theirfemale descendants.
· Since the known Earthborn daughters of Ninmah were fathered by Enki, they are ruled out; we are left with daughters of Enlil + Ninlil or of Bau + Ninurta.
· Enlil + Ninlil had male sons (Nannar/Sin and Ishkur/Adad) born on Earth, and several daughters, including the goddess Nisaba (mother of king Lugalzagesi) and the goddess Nina (mother of king Gudea). Since Nina lived long enough to be one of the deities fleeing the later Evil Wind, she is eliminated as a 'Puabi' candidate. So does Nisaba, having still lived later, in Gudea's time.
· Bau (= 'Gula', the 'Big One'), youngest daughter of Anu, was married to Enlil's Foremost Son Ninurta. They had seven daughters of whom little is known except for Ninsun, spouse of the famed Lugalbanda; their famous son was Gilgamesh, so it had to be the mother, Ninsun, (rather than her smallish spouse) who bequeathed to Gilgamesh the physique of her father, Ninurta, and the heftiness of her mother, Bau/Gula.
· If claims by 'Ur-III' kings that Ninsun was their mother are valid, Ninsun herself could not be 'Puabi' (who was entombed during the 'Ur I' period).
· Going down the descendants' lines we arrive at the next Earthborn generation—a step in accord with Puabi being "in her forties" (per Sir Arthur Keith)—if she were Earthborn. The second Earthborn generation of known goddesses were Nannar/Sin's daughter Inanna, and a daughter of Ninsun + Lugalbanda named Nin.e.gula.
· Inanna (for reasons already given) could not be 'Puabi'. Yet Puabi's jewelry, beaded cape, the choker and its symbols, the all- silver harp, her great "femininity" (per Sir Arthur), etc.—and her stature—bespeak "Inanna"; so if Nin.Puabi was not Inanna herself, she had to be otherwise linked to Inanna.
· Inanna had a known son (the god Shara) but no daughter; but she could—and did—have a granddaughter; Since Inanna, according to Lugalbanda's claim, was his mother, a daughter of Lugalbanda would have also been a granddaughter of Inanna, carrying her 'femininity' and love of jewelry traits.
· But the daughter of Lugalbanda would also be a granddaughter of Bau/Gula, for Lugalbanda's spouse, Ninsun, was a daughter of Bau + Ninurta!
· Her name (according to the God Lists) Nin.e.gula ("Lady of the House/Temple of Gula") serves as a confirmation that in addition to the 'femininity-jewelry gene' of Grandma Inanna she was bearing the 'Gula' gene of her grandmother Bau/Gula—the extraordinarily large head!
We thus obtain two genealogical-heritage lines of det
ection that converge:
Anu > Enlil + Ninlil > Nannar > Inanna > Lugalbanda + Ninsun
And
Anu > Enlil + Ninmah > Ninurta + Bau > Ninsun + Lugalbanda
Thus converging, the two genealogical lines point to the same Lugalbanda + Ninsun couple as the progenitors of the goddess in PG-800: their daughter Nin.e.gula, also known as Nin.Puabi.
This conclusion offers a plausible explanation for the contradictory physique of 'Puabi'—smallish body (a granddaughter of Inanna!) and an extraordinarily large head (a granddaughter of Bau/Gula).
This conclusion also offers a plausible reason for Lugalbanda to be the one entombed in PG-261.
And it explains the neglected clue of the naming of both Mes .Anne.Pada and Nin.Banda-Nin on vessels found near the coffin of Meskalamdug in PG-755, as well as in the seal inscription Nin .banda Nin/Dam Mes.anne.pada ('Ninbanda, goddess, spouse [of] Mesannepada')-. Confirming, in our opinion, that they were the goddess + demigod couple who started the First Dynasty of Ur.
There Were Giants Upon the Earth Page 28
