religion before adam

7/27/2019 Religion Before Adam

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http://www.lost-history.com/adam.php

Religion Before Adam It is shocking to realize how little has been written about the female deities who were worshipped in the

most ancient periods of human existence and exasperating to then confront the fact that even thematerial there is has been almost totally ignored in popular literature and general education. Most of theinformation and artifacts concerning the female religion, which flourished for thousands of years beforethe advent of Judaism, Christianity, and the Classical Age of Greece, have been dug out of the groundonly to be reburied in obscure archaeological texts, carefully shelved away in the exclusively protected

stacks of university and museum libraries. -Merlin Stone, When God Was a Woman

The Age of the Goddess

The written word has certainly been the most useful tool for gathering history about ancientreligion. Oral tradition always changes with the teller and it takes only one link in thegenerational chain to break for the entire tradition to be lost to the void. With the revolution ofwriting came the ability for future generations to understand the world on a larger scale, and it isdue to the lack of it that we only know about 5% of the human story (or 0.1% of the hominidstory). But there is another accessory of mankind that has given us a glimpse into the dark age ofhuman illiteracy: the idol. Throughout the final fifth of our lost tale of the homo sapien, stonestatuettes of a large-breasted woman were carved into soft stones such as steatite, calcite,limestone, or ivory have been discovered throughout Europe and Asia. Although archaeologists

have been extremely reluctant to provide any definitive explanation for their culturalsignificance, the most common sense answer is that they represent religious iconography. Whatmakes this very remarkable is that that s nearly all that is known to have been carvedthroughout Europe and Asia for about 15,000 years. With this kind of pedigree, the Venusfigurines are doubtless the most far-reaching cultural practice unearthed by archaeology. Whatother cultural belief or practice can claim to have traveled so far or has been around for so long?What s more, how did such a practice get to be so widespread in a time before cities or roads ora known written language? Certainly the Venus figurines show a centralization of culture farsurpassing the conceptualizations of ancient humans worshipping ad hoc gods that differ fromtribe to tribe.

The majority of these statuettes hold key recognizable features that prove cultural solidarity: afeatureless golf-ball head, tiny bent arms covering immense sagging breasts, a swollen possibly-pregnant belly, gigantic hips and buttocks narrowing down to pin-size feet. The Venusfigurines portray an unmistakably original, yet they have been found across France, Spain,Germany, Italy, Switzerland, Austria, Czechoslovakia, Turkey, Israel, the Middle East, Russia,and as far east as Mal ta (a little north of China). The overwhelming predominance of femininestatuettes over masculine ones gives unmistakable evidence that the principal representation ofGod for the majority ofhomo sapien history has been that of a woman.
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Prehistoric Venus Figurines discovered throughout Europe and Asia show a remarkable

resemblance to one another

Some Venus figurines were carved as far back as 27,000 B.C., but the majority of them havebeen dated between 23,000 B.C. and 21,000 B.C. The latest figurines found date to about 12,000B.C. The most famous of the Venuses is the Venus of Willendorf, carved around 25,000 B.C. inGermany and discovered in 1908. Some 350 of these same goddess figurines were found in astone age site in Israel dating back to the Yarmukian culture, which existed between 5500 to

5000 B.C., near the mountain city of Har Meggido (identified as the site of the final battlebetween good and evil in the Book of Revelation, giving root to the name of the English word Ar-mageddon ).

It has largely been assumed that the exaggerated breasts and hips were meant to emphasizefertility. However, another suggestion first raised by douard Piette is that the shape represents agenetic characteristic known as Steatopygia, in which high amounts of fat are stored in thebreasts and buttocks, reaching it s maximum development in women during pregnancy. Thisgenetic trait is found throughout Africa, where it allows hunter-gatherers to store fat during thedry season when there is little to eat. It s often accompanied by an elongated labia that can hangthree or four inches below the vagina. Some of these women were paraded around Europe as an

exhibition during the 1800 s. This trait has been most closely studied in the Khoi-san bushmen of southern Africa, where it is considered to be a trait of beauty. It has even beensuggested that the perceived preference for large posteriors predominate in African Americans iscaused by a hereditary trademark of this ancient survival adaptation. However, the connection istenuous and other explanations abound; for example, it has been pointed out there are strikingsimilarities between the Venus of Willendorf and a pregnant woman when looked at from above.


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Venus of Willendorf

African Khoi-san exhibiting Steatopygia

The Khoi-san have the largest amount of genetic diversity in mtDNA than any other humanpopulation, having diverged from the evolutionary tree 100,000 years ago, making them the mostarchaic racial group known on earth. The name Khoi-san was not adopted by the nomadsthemselves as they only use the names of specific groups, but were identified as such by theKhoi-khoi. The Khoi-khoi call the hunters Khoi-san because san means not us, as in wewho have domestic animals. Some time before 400 A.D. the Khoi-khoi and the San werepushed into the inhospitable Khalhari desert of South Africa by the West African Bantu andpossibly others. Whwn the invaders came, they brought iron spears and arrowheads with them,and as evidence suggests, sheep and cattle as well. The Khoi-khoi adopted farming andsheepherding, but the Khoi-san have continued as hunters and gatherers.

Their belief systems of the Khoi-Khoi are varied: many worship a supreme sky god namedGauna, who presides over daily life and can kill people with arrows from behind the stars,somewhat like Apollo, as well as an evil trickster god who could transform himself into animalsand return from the dead. Some perform rituals and small sacrifices to the sky god while othersbelieve it s best not to attempt communication in fear of summoning the evil god. Ancientspirits, which are different in every social group, are considered to be more relevant to spirituallife. A famous hunter, sorcerer, and warrior from Khoi-khoi mythology named Heitsi, or Heitsi-eibib, was worshipped as god of the hunt and said to have been born from a virgin cow after itate some magical grass. Various myths tell of how he tricked a monster named Ga-gorib (goribmeaning spotted ) into falling into the magical beast s own pit, but in other versions he issaid to have been killed by the monster and returned from the dead.


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Little can be proven regarding the beliefs of those who carved the Venus figurines thosethousands of years ago, and despite many shared characteristics, there has been a great reluctanceto identify her as the same earth goddess known throughout Paleolithic Europe from 7,000 to1,700 B.C. But the significance of the lack of variety in these idols through such a large amountof time and space I believe suggests something that is unthinkable to historic sensibilities:

prehistoric monotheism. This seems incredible because by the dawn of written word, the worldwas almost entirely polytheistic. The first archaeological evidence of monotheism beingpracticed is that of the cult of sun god Aten in Egypt in the 1300s B.C., started by the hereticpharaoh, Akhenaten, and it is not generally believed to have gone very far. Adam is usuallydated to 4004 B.C., but it is Abraham, who is believed to have lived some time around 1600B.C., who is usually given credit as being the first monotheist. Today about 53% of the worldbelieves in one God due to a monotheistic revolution that spread throughout the western worldstarting with Judaism and Zoroastrianism some two millennia ago. Although Judaism now onlymakes up 0.2% of world religions today (and Zoroastrianism making up far less), themonotheistic revolution spread to both Christianity (33%) and Islam (20%), and now maintains aslight majority in world opinion. If these idols really are heirlooms from a long lost monotheistic

age, then perhaps we can think of there having been a polytheistic revolution that took placesome time before the first known language. This may have been linked to the establishment ofcities, in which city councils began to take on a larger role in centralizing governments, whichmirrored the concept of a council of gods that governed the world.

The predominance of feminine iconography must also prompt us to re-evaluate the way historylooks at prehistoric man. How can we reconcile this predominantly feminine form of venerationwith the common portrait of ancient life consisting of violent social groups ruled by instinctivealpha males who follow the animalistic urges of their FreudianIdand horde the tribe s womenas concubines? Were women completely dominant over men in some long lost matriarchal age?Or was the figure not so much a glorification of an actual deity but more of an abstract symbol oflife? The lack of information begs for speculative bridges to be constructed. One suggestion fromscholars that provides a psychological answer to the question is that before the institution ofmarriage was popularized, polygamy was very comon and people often did not know who theirfather was. Since the mother was the primary caregiver, she devleoped into the most commonrole model and authoritarian figure to be imitated in divine conceptualizations until thedevelopement of cities and centralization of society brought forth the nuclear family andtransferred authority to the Father in both the divine and corporeal realms.

Although no Venus figurine found has been dated after 12,000 B.C., I beleive that there is goodevidence the goddess did not immediately die out with the advent of civilization. Excavations ofthe Neolithic settlement in Chatal Hyuk, Turkey, dated to around the 6700 s B.C., have turnedup a far greater number of earth mother figurines over that of the male god, one of thembeing a large goddess sitting on a throne flanked by two lions. Hundreds of bear goddessfigurines have been discovered around Celtic Gaul and Britain and dated to 5,000 B.C. Thefigurines portray a mother bear nursing her cubs, which has had a long association with femininefertility. In fact, the term to bear children comes from this association with the bear, in thatthe Scottish word for child, bairn, is derived from the Anglo-Saxon word for bear, beran.Sumerian statues dated to around 2,000 B.C. portray the fertility goddess Inanna with featurestoo similar to the Venuses to be coincidental: large breasts covered by small hands and a barbell


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shape very reminiscent of the prehistoric Venuses. Although the Sumerian statues have faces onthem, the same bead-like circles of the Venuses can be found around their head and pubic area.There are also a lot of contradictions within Sumerian sources as to how Inanna fits into theSumerian pantheon s family tree, which suggests the deity was embedded into the mythology atdifferent times by different people. Unlike most of the other gods, who are repeatedly referred to

as bull gods, Inanna s totem animal is that of the lion. However, the connection between thePaleolithic Venus figurines and the goddesses of "earth mothers" of Chatal Hyuk and theSumerian societies have been greatly contested, most especially due to the absense ofarchaeological evidence in the intervening Mesolithic era between 11,500 and 7,500 B.C.

Goddess figurine from Chatal Hyuk with lions on each side of her


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Inanna figurines shows wide hips and hands-on-breasts exhibited by Venus figurines

As explained in the prior chapter, Inanna was part of the death and rebirth cycle along with herlover, Dumuzi, an earlier manifestation of Dionysus, who symbolized the cyclical changebetween the summer and winter season that lie behind the Easter and Christmas holidays. To themonotheistic Jews, Inanna was the abominable Ashtoreth, or Lady of Shame. The author ofRevelation refers to her as the whore of Babylon. In the Akkadian language of the Epic ofGilgamesh, she is called Ishtar. She would later be known to the Syrians as Sybil, to theAssyrians as Mylitta, to the Canaanites as Astarte or Asherah, to the Egyptians as Hathor, to theHittites as Shaushka or Ishtar, to the Greeks as Aphrodite, to the Romans as Venus, to the Norseas Freya or Ostara and to the Saxons as Eostre. It s from this Anglo-Saxon name that we get thename of our own holiday marking the seasonal change of the Spring Equinox. The Easter bunnyand the Easter egg are also both rooted in pagan fertility symbolism: the bunny because of itsreputation for accelerate proliferation and the egg for it s association with new birth.

Naming the ancient figurines after the Roman goddess of love was not a conscious attempt tolink the ancient goddess to the Roman one though. The name stuck after it was first used by theMarquis Paul de Vibraye in 1864 under the name Venus Impudique, or Immodest Venus, todescribe a heavily damaged and particularly slimmer-looking goddess statue made of mammothivory. It was meant to be an ironic reference to the term Venus Pudica, or Modest Venus, aterm used to describe a classic pose in Western art in which a nude female keeps one handcovering her private parts. This was made to contrast the unashamed depiction of the feminineanatomy on the ancient figurines with that of the more modern modest portrayal in westernart. The pose, however, that of hands holding or covering the breasts, is comparable. If it spossible to trace the fertility goddess from prehistory to the Sumerians, Canaanites, Hittites,Greeks, and Romans, the name may have been more appropriate than the Marquis had imagined.


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have allowed us to look further back than into history than ever before, uncovering the myths ofarchaic gods from ancient libraries long buried by the sands of time. Certainly there were a greatmultitude of adventure stories before those of the Sumerians, but they had the misfortune of nothaving been written down and locked away for three millennia beneath the earth. Even theexistence of the Sumerians has only been known for the past 150 years, having been forgotten

for thousands of years. In ancient times, Iraq made up the eastern pinnacle of the FertileCrescent, a moon-shaped patch of vegetative paradise in contrast to the harsh desert life thatcomprises most of the Middle East. The Sumerians appeared in southern Iraq somewherebetween 6,000 and 4,000 B.C., calling themselves theEmegir: the black-headed people (orpossibly bald-headed people ). The name Sumer came from a word used by the Akkadiansand later Babylonians to describe the area in southern Iraq where the Sumerians lived. They wereeither replaced or are descended from the Ubaid culture, which thrived between 5900 and 4300B.C. The Ubaid culture was the first known to have used the wheel, the sail, advanced irrigationtechniques, and a monetary system made out of clay tokens. They were in turn preceded by twocontemporary cultures: the Halafian culture, which was ruled by rich chieftans, and the Samarraculture, whose people used large scale irrigation. Both of these cultures replaced the already 500-

year old Husunna culture around 6000 B.C., and were in turn absorbed by the Ubaid culturesome 500 to 600 years later. The Husunna culture lived on the Iraqi/Syria/Turkey border whereAssyria would later make it s capital. They grew barley, bred farm animals, smelt copper, andwere the first to create the stamp and painted pottery.

The first towns and temples were built around 5,000, during the Ubaid period. By 4300, copperwas bring worked and the first cities were being built. The Sumerians had arrived by 3400 andwere pressing pictographs of simple objects into the wet clay using reeds, and even then it wasalready a complex system with over 700 symbols. Around 2900, this pictography was simplifiedinto a more abstract wedge-shaped cuneiform language that came to be used by their easternneighbors of the Indus Valley in India. Some of their phonetic seedlings have even survived5,000 years of linguistic evolution and jumped over to our Indo-European branch of languages.For instance, the word alcohol is rooted in the Sumerian word for eyeliner, kohl, and thescientific name for the marijuana plant, Cannabis, dates back to the Sumerian word kanubi,meaning cane of two [sexes]. Our word for a watery void abyss also seems to stem backto Sumer through the word abzu, the underwater home of the Sumerian god of wisdom, Enki.The Sumerians were also the first to divide the circle into 360 degrees and to organize the dayinto 24 hours of 60 minutes, associating the number 60 with the head of their pantheon, An,whose name means Heaven. Geometry was especially important in their astrology, whichwas based on the sun, the moon, and the five visible planets. From what we know of them, theSumerians seem to have contributed more to the ancient world in culture and technology than theGreco-Roman world did to Western Europe.

The Sumerians practiced slavery, but it was one based on economy rather than heredity, and acondition that one could buy oneself out of. Prostitution was common and Sumerian men couldhave concubines, but only one wife. Marriages between slaves and freemen were common.Divorce was legal but uncommon, mostly granted due to the inability to conceive a child, andadoption was popular for the sake of continuing one s namesake. Children were required toshow respect to their parents and elder siblings or face disinheritance. The culture waspatriarchal. Only men were educated and all but one of the Sumerian rulers listed on their king


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lists were men. Wealthier families could send their sons to school to study economics,administration, and creative writing, so as to become a scribe for the local temple or palace.There is also some evidence to suggest that before 3,000 B.C., the average Sumerian was a nakedfield worker. The Sumerians wrote many things on their tablets: lessons for schools, tradeagreements, accounting, but the heart of the culture we can construct comes from their

mythology. It is from the stories of gods and men that we see how the first men who lived incities pictured their role in the universe. Like the majority of ancient civilizations that came afterthem, they believed in a pantheon of gods, one nearly identical to the future Babylonians andAssyrians, and which bore strong relationships with the religions practiced in the Indus Valley(India), Canaan (Palestine), Haitia (Turkey), Greece and even the Norse lands.

Each Sumerian city-state had a temple that owned about two-thirds of the land and was dedicatedto one of the gods of the pantheon, which acted as a king or mascot for the city. Uruk, whichhosted the largest population of the area and was home to the ancient hero Gilgamesh, wasdedicated to An, the king of heaven. Uruk is located on an abandoned channel of the Euphratesriver about 155 miles south of Baghdad. Although Uruk is believed by many people to be the

source of the name of Iraq, little was known of it until it was excavated by Germanarchaeologists starting in 1912. The ancient site was not abandoned by the people so much as theEuphrates itself, the river having changed course since those ancient times.

The Sumerians also had mythical timelines, in which each city s dynasty was divided intodifferent dynastical periods, each concluded with the capital of the dynasty being conquered by adifferent city. After this, the kingship was said to have been brought to the capital of the newdynasty, until that city was attacked and kingship was brought somewhere else. Uruk, Ur, andthe Akkadian city of Kish were the greatest competitors, with each of them taking kingship atleast three times, according to the king lists. Even though the Akkadian city of Nippur was neverthe capital of a dynasty, it was also important because no king was considered legitimate unlessit was sanctioned by that city. Nippur is also where 80% of all the excavated Sumerian literaturehas come from. That city was dedicated to Enlil ( Lord-Air ), the son of An ( Heaven ) andKi ( Earth ). It was believed that in distant ages past, heaven and earth were one entity called An-ki, but after Enlil was born, he took mother earth away for himself, and the two becameseparated.

In those days, the gods walked the earth like men. During that time Enlil lived in the city ofNippur along with his future wife Ninlil ( Lady-Air ). In the Sumerian myth,Enlil and Ninlil,Enlil was banished from Nippur by the rest of the gods for impregnating Ninlil, and travels to theunderworld. The reason for his banishment seems to be because Ninlil is too young, but oneinterpretation I would suggest is that the inclusion of male god into the pantheon through marriage may have originally met with fierce resistance. When Ninlil follows Enlil there, heimpregnates her three more times in the guise of three netherworld entities: the gatekeeper, theriver man, and the ferry man (equivalent to Charon, the ferryman of the river Styx in Greekmythology). Ninlil gives birth to three netherworld gods, including Nergal, the future husband ofthe Queen of the netherworld, Ereshkigal. These three gods remain behind as substitutes,allowing Enlil, Ninlil, and their first son, Suen, the moon god, to return. According to Sumerianmyth, Suen would later marry Ningal, who in later Phoenician inscriptions is identified as a sungoddess. She would give birth to twins: Utu, a sun god identified with laws and justice, and


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Inanna, the fertility goddess who was probably associated with the moon due to it s connectionwith the calculation of months and the menstrual cycle.

Sumerian mythology says that kingship began in Eridu, which was the city of Enki ( Lord-Earth or Lord-Mound ), the god of wisdom who lived in the abyss. Archaeological evidence

confirms that it is one of the earliest Iraqi settlements, going back to 4,000 B.C. This does notmean it was really the first city to be built, as the Sumerians believed. The oldest city in theworld is today generally believed to be Jericho, whose settlement in Palestine was inhabited bythe Natufian culture some time before 9,000 B.C. According to the historian Dr. GwendolynLeick, Eridu s earliest levels show signs of three different ecosystems: the mud brick housesand canals of the afore-mentioned Samarra culture, the reed huts and shore-dumps of Arabianfisher-hunters, and the constructions of nomadic sheep and goat herders from the desert. The citywas centered around Enki s temple, the House of Abzu, which was on the edge of a swampand was built within a depression that allowed water to accumulate around it. This abzu wasthought to be an freshwater ocean that existed below the ground, feeding all the lakes, rivers,springs, and wells of the land.

In the story ofEnki and Ninmah, it is Enki who is said to be the father of all the elder godsinstead of Uruk s god, An. Enki is said to have been sleeping beneath the ocean when the lessergods who were dredging the clay began a revolt. He is woken by his mother, Nammu, thegoddess of the primeval oceans and mother to all the gods. In later Babylonian times Nammubecame identified with the multi-headed dragon Tiamat, who the god of Babylon Marduk slew,just as Yahweh is said to have slain the multi-headed male dragon Leviathan. In this earlierSumerian story, Nammu plays a far more positive role, telling Enki to take the earth goddessNinmah and create a helper for the gods so that they would no longer have to work. Ninmah( Lady-Exalted ), who was also called Aruru and Ninhursag ( Lady-Mountain ), had aseparate temple in Eridu named House of the Sacred Goddess. Enki and Ninmah makehumans out of clay, similar to how Adam is formed in Genesis (2:7), but after getting drunk,Ninmah began to make some people with physical deformities. Enki countered each of thephysical deformities with a fate, that is, a job that they could do, such as making the blind man amusician and giving the eunuch the job of standing before the king. Enki then tries to form a manand have Ninmah make a fate for it, but creates one so badly deformed that it greatly distressesthe goddess and nothing can be done for it.


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Enki and Ninmah

In another text,Enki and World Order, the god of wisdom is told by Enlil to establish the days ofmonth and fertilize the land. Enki does this and also gives animals to the nomadic Martu. TheMartu are mentioned often in the Old Testament as the Ammorites, desert tribesmen who livedthroughout Canaan and Syria and were often equated with the Canaanites in the Bible. In theform of a raging bull, he ejaculated into the canals the lesser gods had dug and filled the Tigrisand Eurphrates rivers, two of the four rivers that flowed through the Garden of Eden (2:14). Hethen built a sea shrine, ordained the god Ishkur as Lord of the Storms, and organized wherefarmland should be plowed and where wildlife should live. Then he placed everything in chargeof a king who would take the form of his son, Dumuzi-Mother-Dragon-of-Heaven, the friend

of An. The name definitely shows an attachment to the earlier goddess religion of Nammu, adistinction that would continue on in the worship of Dionysus. This king then took the form ofDumuzi would also perform the hieros gamos, or sacred marriage ceremony, with Inanna srepresentation in Kulaba, the district of the city of Uruk based around Inanna s temple. AfterEnki assigns some other duties to Ninmah and other goddesses, Inanna comes weeping becauseshe has not been given an assignment. Enki tells her that he already gave her a voice, garments offeminine power, and a shepherd s crook-staff, but decides to also give her the ability to sense illomens in battle. He then gives her a spindle with colored thread to weave people s fates, similarto the spindle used by the three Moirae sisters in Greek mythology, and tells her that she sowshuman heads like seed and never grow tired of her admirers.

The ending seems to resonate with an aura of compromise in theological duties between theolder fertility goddess cult and the new sea god cult. The association with the feminine religionwith serpents also resonates through Greek mythology in the likes of: Typhon taking revengeagainst Zeus for his mother, Gaea; Jason s x-wife Medea, a worshipper of the goddess Hecate,who killed her sons before escaping on a cart pulled by dragons; and Perseus slaying the snake-haired gorgon Medusa. Although Medusa was originally said to have been born the way sheappeared, the Greek poet Ovid changed her origin to having being a beautiful nymph beforebeing cursed by the sea god Poseidon after making love inside his temple, a suitable parallel to


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the hieros gamos ceremony.

Another story,Enki and Ninhursag, describes how Enki laid down with his spouse in the virginland of Dilmun, a pristine paradise where there was no pain or aging, where the lion did notslay, the wolf was not carrying off lambs. This brings to mind the description of an Eden-like

future where the wolf will live with the lamb, and the leopard will lie down with the younggoat. , the Book of Isaiah describes (11:6). Isaiah s vision of a New Jerusalem is similarlydescribed as a place of no weeping and crying, where everyone could live a long life (65:19).Enki then told Utu to purify the pools of salt water and turn them into fresh water, and the sungod caused fresh water to rise up from the ground, similar to how streams came up from theearth and watered the whole surface of the ground in Genesis (2:6). Enki then lies withNinhursag in the swamp and they conceive a child named Ninsar ( Lady-Plants ). The laborlasts nine days instead of nine months and the delivery is painless. This is consistent withGenesis in which there are no labor pains until Hawah, or Eve, eats the fruit of wisdom of goodand bad (3:16). Enki then conceives a daughter with Ninsar, who gives birth to Ninkurra( Lady-Mountains ), and when Enki conceives a daughter with Ninkurra, she gives birth to

Uttu, who might be a spider goddess of weaving. Enki then lies with Uttu, but when she beginsto feel pain within her, Ninhursag takes Enki s semen out of her and uses it to grow eight plants.Enki later comes by and sees the plants, and gives them each a fate, but eats them in the process,which causes Ninhursag to curse him, saying she will not give him the life-giving eye untilhis dying day. This calls to mind the curse that God pronounces on Adam and Eve for eating thefruit (3:14). Ninhursag then disappears, and Enki becomes very ill, causing all the gods to sitdown in the dust and despair. A fox offers to find her if Enlil will have two standards of him tobe erected in the city. The fox finds her and tells her how all the cities are suffering, soNinhursag rushes back to find Enki in great pain. When asked where it hurts, Enki names eightparts of him that are in pain, and so Ninhursag gives birth to eight healing deities for each part.When Enki mentioned that his ribs hurt, she gives birth to Ninti, which can be translated Lady-Rib or Lady-Life, since the Sumerian word ti can mean both rib and life. InGenesis, Eve is formed from one of Adam s ribs (2:21) and Adam names his wife Hawahbecause she is the mother of all living (3:20). Even though the word for rib in Hebrew isdifferent than the word for life, it appears that the Sumerian association made between thetwo words continued on into Hebrew culture.

According to the Sumerian king lists, the first king of Eridu was Alulim, who ruled for 28,000years. In later times, Alulim was said to have had an advisor named Adapa, whose name, likeAdam, means man. The Myth of Adapahas been found in both the Armana tablets of themonotheistic pharaoh Akhenaton (1300 s B.C.), and in Nineveh library of King Ashurbanipalof Assyria (600 s B.C.). He was also known to the Kassites and the Babylonians. The tabletbegins by saying, Ea made broad understanding perfect in Adapa, to disclose his design of theland. To him he gave wisdom, but did not give eternal life. A Babylonian priest namedBerossus reinvigorated interest in the figure during the 200 s B.C., using the name of Oannes, acorruption of U-an, another name of Adapa s. Written in the Semitic language of Akkadian, thename of Enki is changed to Ea, which in the Sumerian language was the name of his temple (E-a, House of Water ). Adapa is referred to as an abgallu, or water-great-man, and a sagedescended from the gods. He is often listed as the first of the famed Seven Sages whobrought civilization, arts, and crafts to humankind. The theme of the Seven Sages, which first


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appears in Sumerian texts, would resonate in Hindu, Chinese, and Greek myth, although whothese sages were identified with were completely different. So, instead of being the first man,Adam appears to have been the first priest and exorcist of Eridu, and is depicted as wearing agiant fish costume. Depictions of priests in fish garb is common in Sumerian carvings andstatues. The image is very similar to the image of a man inside a fish on a Christian oil lamp

from the 200 s A.D. The picture appears in Joseph Campbell s book, The Masks of God:Creative Mythology.

Fish priest of Eridu Statues of fish priests

Fish priests worshipping the Tree of Life/Wisdom

Christian oil lamp from 200 s A.D.

The myth tells how Adapa was fishing out on the lake one day when the South Wind blew his


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ancient belief that anyone who killed a king would be cursed (4:15). Although Cain s sonEnoch is largely believed to be a different Enoch than the one who was taken up to heaven inGenesis (5:24), there is reliable evidence that the abundant repetition of names in the genealogiesthroughout the first five chapters of Genesis came about through the combination of differentsource texts. As such, the name U-an may also be the basis for the Biblical Enosh, since one

source from Genesis, not the earliest, says that Adam had a third son named Seth, whose ownson was named Enosh, thus providing an Jewish alternate for U-an (4:26). Like Enoch,Adapa is said to be a sage who brought the knowledge of civilization to humankind, but in sharpcontrast, Enoch gains immortality instead of loses it. The Book of Enoch in fact divides thisentire concept of divine wisdom into two parts: immoral wisdom taught by Samyaza, Azazel,and the fallen angels, and elect wisdom, which Enoch brings down from the heavens to pass onto later generations. The dualism is indicative or the era in which Enoch is believed to have beenwritten, with pre-Essene forms of Judaism being heavily influenced by Persian Zoroastrianism.

A version of the Cain and Abel story has also been found in the Sumerian texts, only in the formof gods instead of men. In the story ofThe Debate Between Winter and Summer, Enlil copulates

with the hills of the earth and fathers Emesh ( Summer ) and Enten ( Winter ). Enlil fatedthat Summer would found the towns and villages and work the land with oxen while Wintershaped the lagoons and dealt with the spring floods. Winter also creates the fish of the sea andthe birds of the sky in one instance, similar to how God creates fish and birds on the same daybefore land animals were formed (1:20). Summer in turn builds the first city, just as Cain is thefirst city-builder (4:17). Like Cain and Abel, they both go and sacrifice to Enlil. Summer bringsmostly animals to the sacrifice while Winter brings mostly birds, fruits, and vegetables, and theysoon get into argument over which sacrifice is better. At first Winter is too tired from working toargue but then, overcome with anger, he reared himself and told his brother that all ofSummer s harvest had come from Winter s toil. Summer countered that all of the straw thatWinter hauled got thrown into the hearth because of the cold that Winter brought. The argumentcomes to a quick stop when Enlil appears, and Summer praises Enlil, saying that as long as he isthere, there is harmony and respectful awe with the people. Enlil settles the argument by saying, Winter is controller of the life-giving waters of all the lands -- the farmer of the gods produceseverything. Summer, my son, how can you compare yourself to your brother Winter? At this,Summer bowed his head to Winter, saying a prayer for him, and a banquet is prepared with beerand wine. Summer presents Winter with gold, silver, and lapis luzili, and the two of them pourout brotherhood and friendship like best oil.

The ending is in stark contrast to the Genesis story, of course. Where the appearance of Enlilbrought peace between the two brothers, Yahweh s upbraiding causes Cain to become jealousand commit the first murder. And in the Sumerian story, even though Summer s herdsmansacrifices are better, Winter s farming sacrifice is found to be more pleasing because heworked harder for it. In Genesis, Cain brings fruit from the soil, and Abel sacrifices of thefirstborn of the flock and it s Abel s herdsman sacrifice that God favors. The reason forthis is not surprising if we consider the background of the Sumerians against the Hebrews. TheSumerians who wrote this story were far more dependant on the farming culture of the city. TheHebrews were in turn a largely pastoral community, whose sacrifices were almost entirely madeup of sheep, goats, and calves. The duality between farmer and herdsman qualities of Cain andAbel are also elaborated upon in the apocryphal Book of Jasher, which has Cain complaining


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about Abel s sheep grazing over the land he was trying to plough. Abel points out that Cainused the meat and wool from the sheep, and so unless he wanted to give those up, he shouldallow the sheep to graze on his land. So Cain asks him, Surely if I slay you this day, who willrequire your blood from me? Abel answers that God will avenge his cause and require hisblood from Cain. Cain s anger flares and he kills him with, of all things, an iron ploughing

instrument. Immediately regretting it, he weeps and buries Abel, and God curses him to wanderthe earth.

When the twins of Roman mythology, Romulus and Remus, were arguing over where to buildtheir city, they agreed to augur a competitive sacrifice as well, one in which each took a seaton the ground next to each other. In a vision, Remus sees 6 vultures (or eagles), but Romulussees 12, and Remus becomes enraged at the victory. Remus ridicules and obstructs his brother swork building the trench for the new city, and then jumps over it to prove how easy it could betraversed. For transgressing his boundary, Romulus kills Remus on the spot and decides to namethe city after himself, Rome. Just like in Sumerian myth, Rome s hero was Cain.

Flood Epics of the World

According to the Sumerian king lists, Alulim and his successor Alalgar ruled Eridu for a total of66,000 years, after which it was conquered and kingship was taken to Bad-Tibira. Three morekings ruled for another 108,000 years, the last one being Dumuzi the Shepherd, who ruled for36,000 years. Kingship was then taken to the cities of Larag, Zimbir, and finally Shurrupak, untila great flood is said to have covered the entire land. There are several versions of the Noah sArk story in Sumerian, Akkadian, and Babylonian mythology, many of them using a differentname for the flood hero, but each portray him as the last king of Shurrupuk. The earliest versionof the story uses the name Ziusudra, whose name means life of long days, as he is said tohave lived 36,000 years. In the Sumerian text, Instructions of Shurrupak, Ziusudra is identifiedas the son of Ubara-Tutu, the last king of Shurrupak mentioned in the king lists, whose namemeans friend of Utu.

The oldest Sumerian creation myth, found in Enlil s city of Nippur, also gives a version of theflood story. Referred to as theEridu Genesis or theNippur Tablet, it s been dated to some timearound 2600 B.C. It describes how the Sumerians and the surrounding animals were created byAn, Enlil, Enki and Ninhursag to make peace amongst the gods and how kingship descendedfrom heaven to Eridu. The first city is given to Nudimmud, another name for Enki. The secondcity, Bad-Tibira, was given to the prince and the sacred one, probably a reference to Dumuzi the Shepherd. The third city, Larag, was given to Pabilsag, another name for Enlil sson Ninurta. The fourth city was given to Utu, the sun god of justice, and the fifth city,Shurrupak, was given to Ansud, a grain goddess who may be equivalent to Ninhursag andNinmah. Although the text is heavily damaged, other texts fill in some of the lost details of howhuman noise caused Enlil to petition the divine court into destroying mankind with a flood.Ziusudra was praying to an idol when a vision came to him and he saw the gods planning thegreat deluge. Enki then tells Ziusudra to build an ark. Just like in the flood of Genesis, and in thelater flood stories in the epics of Atra-Hasis and Gilgamesh, the storm is said to have raged forseven days and seven nights (7:12). Ziusudra then drills a hole in the ark, just as Noah did (8:6),


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so that the sun god Utu shone his light inside the ark. When Ziusudra stepped out of the ark ontodry land, he kissed the ground before him, and like Noah, sacrificed a burnt offering, which wasenjoyed as a sweet savor by the gods (8:20). Although Enlil is at first upset at what Enki did,Enki convinces him to not only let Ziusudra live, but to give him immortality, and to live onMount Dilmun, the place where the sun rises.

The afore-mentioned Babylonian priest Berossus, who identified Ea, or Enki, with the Greek godKronos, the titan of air and time, and said that the ark of Xisuthros could still be found in theGordian Mountains of Armenia during his own time (200 s B.C.), and that pilgrims would gothere to scrape asphalt from the ark s remains and use it for witchcraft. The Gordian mountainsare east of the Ararat mountain range in Turkey, where Genesis places Noah s ark, but whichalso has been referred to as Ararat. It s also north and slightly west of Sumer, not east, astheEridu Genesis suggests. Even some 300 years later, Josephus wrote that Noah s ark was ondisplay for anyone to see.

A very strange rock formation shaped like a giant ship was discovered in 1948 on a mountain

range known as Durupinar near the Iranian border in eastern Turkey was discovered in 1948. Itwas surveyed in 1960, and after two days of digging and dynamiting, was declared to be a freakof nature. It was rediscovered in 1977 by the self-styled archaeologist and explorer RonWyatt. He was joined in 1985 by David Fasold, who used a radar to detect iron in what hebelieved was in the formation of the upper deck of the ark. In his book, The Ark of Noah, Fasoldalso argued that the Great Pyramid of Giza was built by Noah s son, Shem, in 2500 B.C., at theexact center of the earth. After further drillings and excavations, Fasold accepted the conclusionsof Lorence Collins in 1996 that the formation was only a curious upwelling of mud. Even so,Fasold believed it was that formation that ancient people like Berossus and Josephus took to bethe ark, although he changed his mind again shortly before his death in 1998. There has yet to beconclusive evidence of what the formation is.


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Durupinar site in Eastern Turkey, believed by some to be the remains of Noah s Ark

The flood story that appears in Genesis is derived from two different sources. The earliest sourcewas written by an author that scholars refer to as the Yahwist, or J, because he refers to Godby the divine name Yahweh. This is the author to wrote the majority of Genesis, and is denoted

in brown. The second source is referred to as the Priest, or P, because he is believed to be anAaronid priest, that is, a priest descended from the high priest Aaron. The Priest is responsiblefor all of Leviticus as well as large portions of Exodus and Numbers, and is denoted in red. Asshown in Richard Elliot Friedman s books, Who Wrote the Bible? and The Bible: With SourcesRevealed, two entirely different flood stories can be read out of this combination. The editing toarrange the story into a seamless whole was so well done that it has been largely gone undetectedfor over a millennia. Yet each source can be read from beginning to end as a complete whole,each with differing details:

Yahweh saw how great man s wickedness on the earth had become, and that every inclination of thethoughts of his heart was only evil all the time. Yahweh was grieved that he had made man on the earth,and his heart was filled with pain. So Yahweh said, I will wipe mankind, whom I have created, from the

face of the earthmen and animals, and creatures that move along the ground, and birds of the airfor Iam grieved that I have made them. But Noah found favor in the eyes of Yahweh. This is the account ofNoah. Noah was a righteous man, blameless among the people of his time, and he walked with Elohim.Noah had three sons: Shem, Ham and Japheth. Now the earth was corrupt in Elohim s sight and was fullof violence. Elohim saw how corrupt the earth had become, for all the people on earth had corrupted theirways. So Elohim said to Noah, I am going to put an end to all people, for the earth is filled with violencebecause of them. I am surely going to destroy both them and the earth. So make yourself an ark ofcypress wood; make rooms in it and coat it with pitch inside and out. This is how you are to build it: Theark is to be 300 cubits long, 50 cubits wide and 30 cubits high. Make a roof for it and finish the ark to


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within a cubit of the top. Put a door in the side of the ark and make lower, middle and upper decks. I amgoing to bring floodwaters on the earth to destroy all life under the heavens, every creature that has thebreath of life in it. Everything on earth will perish. But I will establish my covenant with you, and you willenter the arkyou and your sons and your wife and your sons wives with you. You are to bring into theark two of all living creatures, male and female, to keep them alive with you. Two of every kind of bird, ofevery kind of animal and of every kind of creature that moves along the ground will come to you to bekept alive. You are to take every kind of food that is to be eaten and store it away as food for you and forthem. Noah did everything just as Elohim commanded him.

Yahweh then said to Noah, Go into the ark, you and your whole family, because I have found yourighteous in this generation. Take with you seven of every kind of clean animal, a male and its mate, andtwo of every kind of unclean animal, a male and its mate, and also seven of every kind of bird, male andfemale, to keep their various kinds alive throughout the earth. Seven days from now I will send rain on theearth for 40 days and 40 nights, and I will wipe from the face of the earth every living creature I havemade. And Noah did all that Yahweh commanded him. Noah was 600 years old when the floodwaterscame on the earth.And Noah and his sons and his wife and his sons wives entered the ark to escapethe waters of the flood. Pairs of clean and unclean animals, of birds and of all creatures that move alongthe ground, male and female, came to Noah and entered the ark, as Elohim had commanded Noah. Andafter the seven days the floodwaters came on the earth. In the 600th year of Noah s life, on the 17th dayof the second monthon that day all the springs of the great deep burst forth, and the floodgates of the

heavens were opened. And rain fell on the earth 40 days and 40 nights. On that very day Noah and hissons, Shem, Ham and Japheth, together with his wife and the wives of his three sons, entered the ark.They had with them every wild animal according to its kind, all livestock according to their kinds, everycreature that moves along the ground according to its kind and every bird according to its kind, everythingwith wings. Pairs of all creatures that have the breath of life in them came to Noah and entered the ark.The animals going in were male and female of every living thing, as Elohim had commanded Noah. ThenYahweh shut him in. For forty days the flood kept coming on the earth, and as the waters increased theylifted the ark high above the earth. The waters rose and increased greatly on the earth, and the arkfloated on the surface of the water. They rose greatly on the earth, and all the high mountains under theentire heavens were covered. The waters rose and covered the mountains to a depth of more than 15cubits. Every living thing that moved on the earth perishedbirds, livestock, wild animals, all the creaturesthat swarm over the earth, and all mankind. Everything on dry land that had the breath of life in its nostrilsdied. Every living thing on the face of the earth was wiped out; men and animals and the creatures that

move along the ground and the birds of the air were wiped from the earth. Only Noah was left, and thosewith him in the ark. The waters flooded the earth for 150 days.

But Elohim remembered Noah and all the wild animals and the livestock that were with him in the ark,and he sent a wind over the earth, and the waters receded. Now the springs of the deep and thefloodgates of the heavens had been closed, and the rain had stopped falling from the sky. The waterreceded steadily from the earth.At the end of the 150 days the water had gone down, and on the 17thday of the seventh month the ark came to rest on the mountains of Ararat. The waters continued torecede until the tenth month, and on the first day of the tenth month the tops of the mountains becamevisible.After 40 days Noah opened the window he had made in the ark.And he sent out a raven, and itkept flying back and forth until the water had dried up from the earth. Then he sent out a dove to see if thewater had receded from the surface of the ground. But the dove could find no place to set its feet becausethere was water over all the surface of the earth; so it returned to Noah in the ark. He reached out his

hand and took the dove and brought it back to himself in the ark. He waited seven more days and againsent out the dove from the ark. When the dove returned to him in the evening, there in its beak was afreshly plucked olive leaf! Then Noah knew that the water had receded from the earth. He waited sevenmore days and sent the dove out again, but this time it did not return to him. By the first day of the firstmonth of Noah s 601st year, the water had dried up from the earth. Noah then removed the coveringfrom the ark and saw that the surface of the ground was dry. By the 27th day of the second month theearth was completely dry. Then Elohim said to Noah, Come out of the ark, you and your wife and yoursons and their wives. Bring out every kind of living creature that is with youthe birds, the animals, and allthe creatures that move along the groundso they can multiply on the earth and be fruitful and increasein number upon it. So Noah came out, together with his sons and his wife and his sons wives. All the


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from heaven while Elohim (Enlil) executes them on earth, and that the sons of Elohim rule overtheir respective states. It implies that Israel was given to Yahweh, Moab was given to Chemosh,and Babylon was given to Marduk.

In the Epic of Atra-Hasis, the Igigi dug out the Tigris and Euphrates rivers for 3,600 years, all

the while groaning and blaming each other. But the time came when they decided to stage arevolt against Ellil. The Igigi set fire to their tools and surrounded his temple, E-Kur, the House of the Mountain. Ellil's vizier, Nisku, barred the door and took up weapons to guardhis master. When he saw that Ellil was pale from fear, he asked the god why he was afraid of hisown sons, and suggested sending a message to the other gods. Ellil sends out a message and allof the gods come, including the mother of the gods, Nintu (literally Lady-Life ), also knownas Belet-ili, Nammu, or Tiamat. The gods ask that Nisku go out and find out who started therebellion, but when he goes out and asks, they tell him that they all decided it on their ownbecause the work was killing them. With tears in his eyes, Ellil cautiously suggested that Anushow his strength by bringing one of them up and destroying him as an example. But against thewishes of many of the other gods, Anu decides that the Igigi s work is too hard. Every day the

earth resounded. , he said, The warning signal was loud enough, we kept hearing the noise.Enki agrees with Anu, saying that the Ilulu are not to blame and suggests that humankind bemade as a substitute. The other Anunnaki agreed and called up to the mother of the gods:

You are the womb-goddess, to be the creator of Mankind!Create a mortal, that he may bear the yoke!Let him bear the yoke, the work of EllilLet him bear the load of the gods!

Nintu made her voice heardAnd spoke to the great gods:

On the first, seventh, and fifteenth of the month I shall make a purification by washing. Then one god

should be slaughtered and the gods can be purified by immersion. Nintu shall mix the clay with his fleshand blood. Then a god and a man will be mixed together in clay. Let us hear the drumbeat [heartbeat]forever after, let a ghost come into existence from the god s flesh, let her proclaim it as her living sign,and let the ghost exist so as not to forget the slain god.

The god chosen to be sacrificed is Gesthu-E, the god who had intelligence. He wasslaughtered in their assembly and his flesh and blood were then mixed with clay and the spittleof the Igigi, and the human spirit was created. Nintu then proclaimed that the ghost existed soas not to forget the slain god. She then appeared before the Igigi and told them that she hadrelieved them of their hard work and had bought their freedom. The Igigi then threw themselvesdown and kissed her feet, saying, We used to call you Mami, But now your name shall beMistress of All Gods. Enki and the wise Mami then enter the Room of Fate where 14 womb-goddess are assembled. Enki then took the clay and Nintu recited an incantation. Shethen pinched off 14 pieces, setting seven to the left and seven to the right. She cut their umbilicalcords with a reed and then called up the wisdom of the womb-goddesses to create seven malesand seven females. She then made certain rules concerning birth, such as a woman was to cut herown baby s umbilical cord, mud brick would be set down in celebration, and a man and womancan first choose each other when a beard could be seen on the man s cheek. The wombgoddesses counted out ten months, not nine, and Nintu slipped her staff into the womb and washappy to find the humans fully formed. She then performed her celestial midwife duties and


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delivered the 14 humans. After that, she decreed that whenever a baby is born, the midwifeshould celebrate in the house of the Qadishtu priestess, Inanna s temple. When the wedding bedis laid out in the house, Inanna would rejoice in the marriage and a wedding celebration was totake place at the father-in-law s house for nine days.

The second tablet tells how after 600 years, humanity had multiplied to the point that they madeso much noise, Ellil could not sleep, so he ordered that a surrupu disease be unleashed. Atra-Hasis then asked Enki how long the gods would intend to make them suffer. Enki told him to callall the elders to form an uprising. Enki told them to stop praying to the gods and to set a loaf ofbread on the door of Namtara, the god of fate, so that he would be shamed into the stopping thedisease. Ellil then decides to destroy mankind with a flood and makes Enki swear an oath not totell anyone.

But in the third tablet, Enki speaks through a reed wall (possibly through an oracle) to dismantlehis home and build a ship. The ship was to have multiple decks and a roof like Apsu, sealedwith bitumen. Atrahasis then takes his family and animals into the ship and seals the door. This

version of the flood story attributes the great deluge to the Euphrates river flooding, but when thelater editor of theEpic of Gilgamesh story copied material from this version of the myth, hechanged it into a worldwide flood. Yet even as a river flood, it s described as being so terriblethat even the gods were scared. The Anunnaki then realized that without humans, they wouldreceive no sacrifices of bread and beer, and they began growing hungry and thirsty. After sevendays, Atra-Hasis provides a sacrifice. Ellil is angry with Enki for breaking his promise, but Enkidenies breaking it, saying that he only ensured that life was preserved, and Ellil finally agreesthat he did the right thing.

Both theEridu Genesis and theEpic of Atra-Hasis start with the divine birth of humankindthrough the goddess of the primeval sea and ends with it s near destruction by the same chaotic,watery forces that Nammu represented. The very beginning of Genesis starts off by saying, Inthe beginning Elohim created the heavens and the earth. Now the earth was formless and empty,darkness was over the surface of the deep, and the Spirit of Elohim was hovering over thewaters. The word here used for formless is tohu and the word for deep is tehom. Both ofthese words are derived from the same Semitic root as the Babylonian name Tiamat. Thefloodwaters in Genesis is described as God opening a window in heaven to allow all the waterabove it to fall to the earth.

The first nine chapters of Genesis seem to be made up of stories that can be described as a world myth. Although these first nine chapters contain some of the most fantastical andmythological of the Bible s stories, the monotheistic religions have had a long history of takingthem literally. When pressed about the realism of an ark being able to hold all the animals in theworld, the Alexandrian theologian Origen argued that Moses had been using Egyptian cubitswhich were much larger than the normal cubits. It wasn t until 1853, when theEpic ofGilgamesh was found in a library in the ruins of Nineveh, that the originality of the Bible sflood story began to be questioned. In reality, it need not have taken so long. There are no lessthan three Hindu flood myths which provide ample correlations with the Biblical flood story.TheMahabharata, a Hindu flood epic written in Sanskrit, was compiled some time around thefirst century A.D., but is made up of core material believed to date back to the 500 s B.C. Like


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the Sumerian and Babylonian versions, it is the sky god, Brahma, who decides to flood the earth,and it is another god, Vishnu, the god of preservation, that saves humankind from destruction:

The progeny of Adamis and Hevas soon became so wicked that they were no longer able to coexistpeacefully. Brahma therefore decided to punish his creatures. Vishnu ordered Vaivasvata to build a shipfor himself and his family. When the ship was ready, and Vaivasvata and his family were inside with the

seeds of every plant and a pair of every species of animal, the big rains began and the rivers began tooverflow.

TheMatsya Purana, or Fish Chronicle, is the considered the oldest of all the Hindu texts,possibly dating back as far back as 300 A.D., and is believed to have first been recited byVishnu, who like Enki, is associated with the fish symbol. In it, Satyavarman, or Manu, the sonof the sun god and king of the world, gave his throne to his son Ikshvaku and went into the forestto meditate for thousands of years. Brahma then told him that he could have anything he wishesand he asked that he be allowed to save the world at the time of it s destruction. Days later, hewas washing his hands in a stream when he accidentally pulled out a minnow, and put inside awaster pot. As the fish grew and grew, it was moved to a jar, a well, the river Ganga, and then

finally the ocean. Finally, the fish revealed that he was the god Vishnu and that there was goingto be a great flood. Satyavarman, whose name means Protector of Righteousness, was tobuild a ship and tie it to the fish s horn. The fish then disappeared and for hundreds of yearsthere was a great famine, similar to the one that preceded the flood in theEpic of Atra-Hasis.After the sun burnt the land into ashes, dark clouds began to form and the rains poured downuntil there was a great flood. Satyavarman s ship was tied to the fish s horn, and while the fishpulled them along, Satyavarman asked Vishnu about the creation of the world. Vishnu explainsthat in the beginning there was only darkness, until Vishnu removed the darkness and splithimself into three forms: Vishnu, Brahma, and Shiva. This may be a reference to the fact thatEnki seems to have been the first god and that Anu and Enlil seem to have been added later. LikeEnki, Vishnu slept in the water until a golden egg that shone with the light of a thousand suns

began to form out of his navel. After a thousand years, the egg cracked, and Brahma emerged.One half of the egg formed the heavens while the other half formed the earth, similar to how thebirth of Enlil was said to have split the heavens and the earth in Sumerian myth. Brahma beganto meditate and the Hindu scriptures known as the Vedas came into his heart and was distributedby him. Ten sages were born directly from him, followed by the first man and woman who couldprocreate on their own. Brahma asked Shiva to create also, but Shiva created only immortals likehimself.


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The incarnation of Vishnu as a fish, taken from a devotional text

After the flood, Satyavarman is said to have had three sons: Shem, Sham, and Jyapeti, who in theBible are referred to as Shem, Ham (or in Hebrew, Cham), and Japheth. They are considered tobe the fathers of the three main world-races: Semitic, African, and European. In the Hindu myth,all three are said to have been brave men of high morals. Pleased with their devout meditation,Satyavarman readied them for governing. But one day Satyarvarman grew drunk with mead andfell asleep naked. When he woke up, he remembered that Sham had seen him and laughed at hisnakedness, and so Satyavarman cursed him saying that he would be the servants of servants. Thesame events happen to Noah, as he too gets drunk and is covered by his sons, save for Ham, who

is then cursed to be the lowest of slaves among his brothers (9:25). Later Rabbis, disturbed bythe idea of such a devastating curse being given for such a small shortcoming, would elaborateon the story, saying that Ham had either sodomized or castrated his father, even though theoriginal text says that Noah did not realize what had happened to him until he woke up the nextday. Early Americans would later use the Bible verse as a justification for slavery.

In Greek mythology, Prometheus is the god of wisdom, who like Enki, forms humans from clay,inadvertently introduces civilization to them, and then warns the Greek Noah of the great deluge.There was a cult to Prometheus known to have existed in Athens as well as three other maincities in central and southern Greece. Prometheus was the nephew of Kronos and the son of the

titan Iapetus, who has long been equated with the Biblical Japheth due to their names beingnearly identical when translated. Although Prometheus was a Titan, he is said to have joinedZeus side when Zeus rose up against Kronos. Although there are generally said to be fiveTitans, Kronos and one Titan for each corner of the earth, the Sibylline Oracles (dated between100 and 400 B.C.) make Iapetus to be one of three brothers, along with his brothers Kronos and Titan.


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Kronos was associated with Saturn, as was the much earlier god, Chronos, a personification oftime used in pre-Socratic philosophy. Although Chronos and Kronos were associated with oneanother since Hellenic times, their etymological roots may be completely different. Chronos isthe Greek word for time and he is said to be the father of the three goddess of the seasons, theHorae. He was also known as Aeon, a word used by Gnostics to describe the angel-like

emanations of God, or in the oneness of God, such as the name Aion teleos, which means Perfect Aeon. Kronos was the god of air and time and king of the Titans until his son Zeusoverthrew him, fulfilling a prophecy that had caused Kronos to eat his children in order to stop itfrom happening. The name Kronos may be related to krounos, the Greek word for Spring, orfrom keras, which means horn. In this way he may have been equivalent to the Celtic horned godfrom around the 300 s B.C. in Europe, and even without this link he can certainly be associatedwith Enlil and El the Bull. A carving of the horned god with a Parisii inscription discovered inFrance gives the name of this horned god as [C]ernunnos, but the first letter had been scrapedoff. The letter C has been reasonably substituted because carnon orcernon means antler or

horn in Gaulish, which goes back to the proto-Indo-European root *krno, from which theLatin word for horn, cornu, and the Germanic *hurnazcomes from. The name may also berelated to the evil god Kroni, who in Ayyavazhi sect of Hindu mythology is said to have gone onan eating rampage that was going to threaten the entire universe, similar to how Kronos eats hischildren. Mayon, another name for Vishnu, is said to have appeared in six different eras in orderto slice Kroni into six different pieces and save the universe. As mentioned in an previouschapter, the Roman festival of Saturnalia was replaced by the birthday of Sol Invictus in the200 s A.D. and then by the birthday of Jesus in the late 300 s. In Ovid sMetamorphosis,Prometheus fashions humans out of clay, into the form of a god, by the command of Kronos.Another Greek myth says that the task of giving survival traits to all the creatures of the earth

was given to Prometheus, whose name means Forethought, and his brother Epimetheus,whose name means Afterthought. Epithemeus convinces Prometheus to allow him to giveout the abilities. Epithemeus gives some creatures the ability to fly, some the ability to eat grass,and to others strength, the ability to live underground, or to resist cold and heat, but when he getsto man, he finds out that he has run out of survival traits. Seeing how men suffered in the cold,Prometheus steals fire, as well as all the other arts of civilization, from Haphaestus, the volcanicgod of the forge, and Athena, the goddess of wisdom who sprang out of Zeus head, and givesthese powers to mankind. Zeus is outraged by humankind becoming enlightened and pronouncedthat Prometheus would be bound to a rock on Mount Caucasus for all eternity, forced to watchZeus punish man for his misdeeds. Every morning his liver was to be torn out by an eagle everymorning and because he was a god, the liver would grow back the next day. This has causedsome people to question whether this myth showed that the Greeks knew that the liver is one ofthe few human organs that can regenerate itself. Mount Caucasus was considered to be one of thepillars of the world in Greek mythology, and is the area from which the racial designation Caucasian was derived in the 1800 s A.D. The word hubris, has been used to describe thesin of Prometheus as well as that of the devil. The word is normally translated as pride, which is


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Covenant in Luke (22:20). Acts has the apostle James decree that Gentiles need only follow lawsvery similar to the laws of Noah (15:20). In one of the Hindu flood myths, Deucalion is referredto Dyaus-Nahusha, and it has been suggested that this is possibly the origin of the name Dio-Nysus, the Greek incarnation of Dumuzi. The invention of wine, which was traditionally creditedto Dionysus, could be seen as symbolic of fertility in the context of Deucalion s preservation of

all life. Pausanias, a Greek traveler and geographer from the 100 s A.D., tells a Laconianversion of the Dionysus myth in which Dionysus and his mother Semele are locked into a giantchest and cast into the sea by Semele s father Cadmus, who does not believe Semele wasimpregnated by Zeus. Instead of being killed by Zeus true image, Semele dies on the ark beforeit wanders to Laconia, in southern Greece, where Dionysus is adopted by her sister Ino. In a largeByzantine historical encyclopedia dated to the 900 s A.D., known as the Suda, there is a quotefrom Prometheus saying, According to the Judges of the Judaeans, Prometheus was knownamongst the Greeks [as the one] who first discovered scholarly philosophy. He it is of whomthey say that he molded men, inasmuch as he made some idiots understand wisdom. And

Epimetheus, who discovered music. The reference may refer to the duality of the Apollonianreason and Dionysian music, or perhaps the twin motif in Genesis to the sons of Lamech: Jabal,the father of tent dwellers and livestock, and Jubal, the father of harp and flute players (4:21).

In the story of Deucalion s ark, Zeus decides to bring the flood because he was disgusted by thecannibalism and human sacrifice that he saw in Arcadia, in Peloponnese peninsula of Greece,under the guise of being a mortal. He was served the meat of a boy by King Lycaon, and soburned everyone to death in their castle, except for King Lyacon, who he instead turned into awolf. Zeus also visited the slums where he was served a stew with the remains of the stew-maker s own brother. Zeus turned them into wolves and restored the life of their brother.

Cannibalism is a common trait found in ancient societies, and this may be an ancient criticism ofthe practice. After destroying the castle with fire, Zeus decided to also create a great flood. SoPrometheus instructed Deucalion to build a giant trunk to take refuge in. Zeus overflows therivers and the trunk is swept away with only Deucalion and Pyrrha in it. The trunk is said to havecome to a rest on various mountains in Greece, Macedonia, and Sicily.

One myth says that the chest landed on Mount Parnassus and that Deucalion and Pyrrha bothgave thanks to Zeus and then found a washed-out temple to the earth goddess Themis. Themistold them that they could repopulate the earth by covering their heads and throwing the bones oftheir mother over his shoulder. Deuclation and Pyrrha figure out that the their mother was theearth and her bones were stones. So they threw stones over their shoulders and created a newrace of stone-men that were tougher than the original clay-men that Prometheus had formed. Thetwo of them have their own children as well. They had a son, Hellen, whose name issynonymous with Greek, although he was sometimes called the son of Zeus and Pyrrha. Theirdaughter was Protogenia, the mother of Opus, Aethlius, and Aeolus; and there was possibly athird child named Amphictyon.


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In the Finno-Ugaric version of the flood story, centered around Finland, Hungary, and Russia,the sky god Numi-Tarem tries to use a holy fiery-flood to destroy the prince of the dead,Kulya-ter. For the gods he built an iron airship, and for the people he created a covered raft.While the sky god builds the ships, he tells his wife to create a new substance called beer, and to

bring it to him. He then gets drunk and Kulya-ter overhears Numi-Tarem telling his wife about aflaming deluge. The prince of the dead sneaks into the sewing box of Numi-Tarem s wife and isable to escape his fate. The gods then fly up as the fiery flood comes, and all but the last sevenlayers of the raft are burned up. A plague of insects then came along as well, devouringeverything in their path. The addition of flame to the flood adds a unique element to this versionof the flood story. It could possibly be a reference to the Thera eruption, a huge volcanicexplosion in Santorini not far from Arcadia, followed by a giant tsunami. This is also the greatnatural disaster that is believed to have ended Minoan dominance some time in the Late BronzeAge.

After the flood came, it was largely reported in Sumer that kingship descended from heaven tothe Akkadian city of Kish, just as it did before with Eridu. According to Sumer and theSumerians, written by Harriet Crawford, the city of Kish flourished in the Early Dynastic IIperiod soon after an archaeologically attested river flood in Shuruppak that has been radio-carbon dated about 2900 B.C. In 1998, William Ryan and Walter Pitman wrote a booknamed Noah s Flood that hypothesized that a cataclysmic flood that turned the freshwaterparadise of the ancient Black Sea into a salt water sea around 5600 B.C. was responsible for allthe flood stories. However, the evidence for the cataclysmic event itself has been disputed, andnothing about that flood really matches any the details of any of the myths. The Shurrupak flood

of 2900, on the other hand, does match the oldest attested versions of the myth in referring to itas a river flood and linking it to a king of Shurrupuk. It s not impossible that the flood myth isdeeper than that, that it was a world myth before 2900, and that the Sumerians simply rewrote itstarring King Ziusudra because of his connection to the Shurrupuk flood. But it is this version ofthe story that would provide the greatest influence on the later Babylonian and Hebrew floodstories. Assuming all the Babylonian, Hebrew, Hindu, Greek, and Finno-Ugaric flood myths arebased on this original story, it was not the grandiose size of the flood that made it so famous, butthe fact that it swept power away from Shurrupak to the more northern city of Kish.

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