The Nefilim: People of the Fiery Rockets

4 minutes • 802 words

The peoples of the ancient Near East knew that the Gods of Heaven and Earth were able to:

rise from Earth
ascend into the heavens
roam Earth’s skies at will.

In a text dealing with the rape of Inanna/Ishtar by an unidentified person, he justifies his deed thus:

One day my Queen, after crossing heaven, crossing earth—Inanna, After crossing heaven, crossing earth— After crossing Elam and Shubur, The hierodule approached weary, fell asleep. I saw her from the edge of my garden; Kissed her, copulated with her.

Inanna roamed the heavens over many lands that lie far apart.

In a text which S. Langdon (in Revue d’Assyriologie et d’Archeologie Orientale) named “A Classical Liturgy to Innini,” the goddess laments her expulsion from her city.

Acting on the instructions of Enlil, an emissary, who “brought to me the word of Heaven,” entered her throne room, “his unwashed hands put on me,” and, after other indignities, Me, from my temple, they caused to fly; A Queen am I whom, from my city, like a bird they caused to fly.

The gods were depicted with wings.

These were not part of the body-not natural wings. Instead, they were a decorative attachment to the god’s clothing. (Fig. 58)

Inanna/Ishtar, whose far-flung travels are mentioned in many ancient texts, commuted between her initial distant domain in Aratta and her coveted abode in Uruk.

She called upon Enki in Eridu and Enlil in Nippur, and visited her brother Utu at his headquarters in Sippar. But her most celebrated journey was to the Lower World, the domain of her sister Ereshkigal.

The journey was the subject not only of epic tales but also of artistic depictions on cylinder seals—the latter showing the goddess with wings, to stress the fact that she flew over from Sumer to the Lower World. (Fig. 59)

The texts dealing with this hazardous journey describe how Inanna very meticulously put on herself seven objects prior to the start of the voyage, and how she had to give them up as she passed through the seven gates leading to her sister’s abode. Seven such objects are also mentioned in other texts dealing with Inanna’s skyborne travels:

The SHU.GAR.RA she put on her head. “Measuring pendants,” on her ears. Chains of small blue stones, around her neck. Twin “stones,” on her shoulders. A golden cylinder, in her hands. Straps, clasping her breast. The PALA garment, clothed around her body.

Unlike the flat carvings or bas-reliefs, this life-size, three-dimensional representation of the goddess reveals interesting features about her attire. On her head she wears not a milliner’s chapeau but a special helmet; protruding from it on both sides and fitted over the ears are objects that remind one of a pilot’s earphones.

On her neck and upper chest the goddess wears a necklace of many small (and probably precious) stones; in her hands she holds a cylindrical object which appears too thick and heavy to be a vase for holding water.

Over a blouse of see-through material, two parallel straps run across her chest, leading back to and holding in place an unusual box of rectangular shape. The box is held tight against the back of the goddess’s neck and is firmly attached to the helmet with a horizontal strap. Whatever the box held inside must have been heavy, for the contraption is further supported by two large shoulder pads.

The weight of the box is increased by a hose that is connected to its base by a circular clasp. The complete package of instruments—for this is what they undoubtedly were—is held in place with the aid of the two sets of straps that crisscross the goddess’s back and chest.

The parallel between the seven objects required by Inanna for her aerial journeys and the dress and objects worn by the statue from Mari (and probably also the mutilated one found at Ishtar’s temple in Ashur) is easily proved.

We see the “measuring pendants”—the earphones—on her ears; the rows or “chains” of small stones around her neck; the “twin stones”—the two shoulder pads-on her shoulders; the “golden cylinder” in her hands, and the clasping straps that crisscross her breast. She is indeed clothed in a “PALA garment” (“ruler’s garment”), and on her head she wears the SHU.GAR.RA helmet—a term that literally means “that which makes go far into universe.”

All this suggests to us that the attire of Inanna was that of an aeronaut or an astronaut.

The Old Testament called the “angels” of the Lord malachim—literally, “emissaries,” who carried divine messages and carried out divine commands. As so many instances reveal, they were divine airmen: Jacob saw them going up a sky ladder, Hagar (Abraham’s concubine) was addressed by them from the sky, and it was they who brought about the aerial destruction of Sodom and Gomorrah.