Cities of the Gods

The “Epic of Creation” informs us that the “gods” came to Earth following a deliberate decision by their leader.

The Babylonian version, attributing the decision to Marduk, explains that he waited until Earth’s soil dried and hardened sufficiently to permit landing and construction operations.

Then Marduk announced his decision to the group of astronauts:

Earth was thus to be a permanent home away from home.

Traveling on board a planet that was itself a kind of spaceship, crossing the paths of most of the other planets, the Nefilim first scanned the heavens from the surface of their own planet.

Sooner or later they acquired the capacity to send out manned missions to the other planets.

Earth must have struck them favorably.

When the Nefilim first came to Earth, Earth was in the midst of an ice age—a glacial period that was one of the icing and deicing phases of Earth’s climate.

When the Nefilim first landed on Earth some 450,000 years ago, about a third of Earth’s land area was covered with ice sheets and glaciers.

With so much of Earth’s waters frozen, rainfall was reduced, but not everywhere. Due to the peculiarities of wind patterns and terrain, among other things, some areas that are well watered today were barren then, and some areas with only seasonal rains now were experiencing year-round rainfalls then.

The sea levels were also lower because so much water had been captured as ice on the land masses. Evidence indicates that at the height of the two major ice ages, sea levels were as much as 600 to 700 feet lower than at present.

Therefore, there was dry land where we now have seas and coastlines. Where rivers continued to run, they created deep gorges and canyons if their courses took them through rocky terrain; if their courses ran in soft earth and clay, they reached the ice-age seas through vast marshlands.

Arriving on Earth amidst such climatic and geographic conditions, where were the Nefilim to set up their first abode?

They searched for a place with a relatively temperate climate, where simple shelters would suffice and where they could move about in light working clothes rather than in heavily insulated suits.

They must also have searched for water for drinking, washing, and industrial purposes, as well as to sustain the plant and animal life needed for food. Rivers would both facilitate the irrigation of large tracts of land and provide a convenient means of transportation.

Only a narrow temperate zone on Earth could meet:

• all these requirements
• the need for the long, flat areas suitable for landings.

The attention of the Nefilim focused on 3 major river systems and their plains:

1. The Nile
2. The Indus
3. The Tigris–Euphrates

The Nefilim also needed a source of fuel and energy.

The Nefilim, judging by Sumerian practice and records, made extensive use of petroleum and its derivatives.

In their search for the most suitable habitat on Earth, the Nefilim would prefer a site rich in petroleum.

With this in mind, the Nefilim probably placed the Indus plain in last place, for it is not an area where oil could be found.

The Nile valley was probably given second place; geologically it lies in a major sedimentary rock zone, but the area’s oil is found only at some distance from the valley and requires deep drilling.

The Land of the Two Rivers, Mesopotamia, was doubtless put in first place. Some of the world’s richest oil fields stretch from the tip of the Persian Gulf to the mountains where the Tigris and Euphrates originate.

While in most places one must drill deep to bring up the crude oil, in ancient Sumer (now southern Iraq), bitumens, tars, pitches, and asphalts bubbled or flowed up to the surface naturally.

Interestingly, the Sumerians had names for all bituminous substances—petroleum, crude oils, native asphalts, rock asphalts, tars, pyrogenic asphalts, mastics, waxes, and pitches.

They had 9 different names for the various bitumens. By comparison, the ancient Egyptian language had only 2, and Sanskrit, only 3.

The Book of Genesis describes God’s abode on Earth as Eden which had:

• temperate climate
• warm yet breezy, for God took afternoon strolls to catch the cooling breeze
• good soil for agriculture and horticulture, especially the cultivation of orchards
• watered by a network of four rivers

1. Pishon (“abundant”)
2. Gihon (“which gushes forth”)
3. Hidekel [Tigris], This floweth towards the east of Assyria
4. Euphrates

Some scholars locate Eden in northern Mesopotamia, where the two rivers and two lesser tributaries originate; others (such as E. A. Speiser, in The Rivers of Paradise) believe that the four streams converged at the head of the Persian Gulf, so that Eden was not in northern but in southern Mesopotamia.

The biblical name Eden is of Mesopotamian origin, stemming from the Akkadian edinu, meaning “plain.” We recall that the “divine” title of the ancient gods was DIN.GIR (“the righteous/just ones of the rockets”). A Sumerian name for the gods’ abode, E.DIN, would have meant “home of the righteous ones”—a fitting description.

The selection of Mesopotamia as the home on Earth was probably motivated by at least one other important consideration. Though the Nefilim in time established a spaceport on dry land, some evidence suggests that at least initially they landed by splashing down into the sea in a hermetically sealed capsule.

If this was the landing method, Mesopotamia offered proximity to not one but two seas—the Indian Ocean to the south and the Mediterranean to the west—so that in case of an emergency, the landing did not have to depend on one watery site alone. A good bay or gulf from which long sea voyages could be launched was also essential.

In ancient texts and pictures, the craft of the Nefilim were initially termed “celestial boats.” The landing of such “maritime” astronauts, one can imagine, might have been described in ancient epic tales as the appearance of some kind of submarine from the heavens in the sea, from which “fish-men” emerged and came ashore.

The texts mention that some of the AB.GAL who navigated the spaceships were dressed as fish.

One text dealing with Ishtar’s divine journeys quotes her as seeking to reach the “Great gallu” (chief navigator) who had gone away “in a sunken boat.”

Berossus wrote about Oannes, the “Being Endowed with Reason” – a god who first appeared from “the Erythrean sea which bordered on Babylonia in the first year of the descent of Kingship from Heaven.

Oannes looked like a fish. But he had a human head under the fish’s head, and had feet like a man under the fish’s tail. “His voice too and language were articulate and human.” (Fig. 126)

The 3 Greek historians through whom we know what Berossus wrote, reported that such divine fish-men appeared periodically, coming ashore from the “Erythrean sea”—the body of water we now call the Arabian Sea (the western part of the Indian Ocean).

Why would the Nefilim splash down in the Indian Ocean, hundreds of miles from their selected site in Mesopotamia, instead of in the Persian Gulf, which is so much closer?

The first landings occurred during the second glacial period, when today’s Persian Gulf was not a sea but a stretch of marshlands and shallow lakes, in which a splashdown was impossible.

Coming down in the Arabian Sea, the first intelligent beings or Earth then made their way toward Mesopotamia. The marshlands extended deeper inland than today’s coastline. There, at the edge of the marshes, they established their very first settlement on our planet.

They named it E.RI.DU (“house in faraway built”).

To this day, the Persian term ordu means “encampment.” It has taken root in all languages: The settled Earth is called Erde in German, Erda in Old High German, Jordh in Icelandic, Jord in Danish, Airtha in Gothic, Erthe in Middle English; and, going back geographically and in time, “Earth” was Aratha or Ereds in Aramaic, Erd or Ertz in Kurdish, and Eretz in Hebrew.

At Eridu, in southern Mesopotamia, the Nefilim established Earth Station I, a lonely outpost on a half-frozen planet. (Fig. 127)

Sumerian texts, confirmed by later Akkadian translations, list the original settlements or “cities” of the Nefilim in the order in which they were established.

We are even told which god was put in charge of each of these settlements. A Sumerian text, believed to have been the original of the Akkadian “Deluge Tablets,” relates the following regarding five of the first seven cities:

The name of the god who lowered Kingship from Heaven, planned the establishment of Eridu and four other cities, and appointed their governors or commanders, is unfortunately obliterated. All the texts agree, however, that the god who waded ashore to the edge of the marshlands and said “Here we settle” was Enki, nicknamed “Nudimmud” (“he who made things”) in the text.

This god’s two names—EN.KI (“lord of firm ground”) and E.A (“whose house is water”)—were most appropriate. Eridu, which remained Enki’s seat of power and center of worship throughout Mesopotamian history, was built on ground artificially raised above the waters of the marshlands. The evidence is contained in a text named (by S. N. Kramer) the Myth of Enki and Eridu: