Superphysics
When the Gods Fled from Earth
4 minutes • 781 words
Table of contents
The Flood was the great time divider.
Not only the comprehensive king lists but also texts relating to individual kings and their ancestries made mention of the Deluge. One, for example, pertaining to Ur-Ninurta, recalled the Deluge as an event remote in time:
On that day, on that remote day, On that night, on that remote night, In that year, in that remote year— When the Deluge had taken place.
The Assyrian king Ashurbanipal was a patron of the sciences. He amassed the huge library of clay tablets in Nineveh. He was able to read “stone inscriptions from before the Deluge.”
An Akkadian text dealing with names and their origins explains that it lists names “of kings from after the Deluge.”
A king was exalted as “of seed preserved from before the Deluge.” Various scientific texts quoted as their source “the olden sages, from before the Deluge.”
What was the ordeal suffered by Mankind, in respect to which Noah was named “Respite” with the hope that his birth signaled an end to the hardships?
What was the “secret” the gods swore to keep, and of whose disclosure Enki was accused?
Why was the launching of a space vehicle from Sippar the signal to Utnapishtim to enter and seal the ark?
Where were the gods while the waters covered even the highest mountains?
Why did they so cherish the roasted meat sacrifice offered by Noah/Utnapishtim?
The Deluge was not a premeditated punishment brought about by the gods at their exclusive will.
The Deluge was a predictable event, it was an unavoidable one, a natural calamity in which the gods played not an active but a passive role.
Much of our greatly increased knowledge of the Deluge and the events preceding it comes from the text “When the gods as men.”
Atra-Hasis
The hero of the Deluge is called Atra-Hasis.
The Epic of Gilgamesh has a Deluge segment where Enki called Utnapishtim “the exceedingly wise”—which in Akkadian is atra-hasis.
In time, enough Babylonian, Assyrian, Canaanite, and even original Sumerian tablets were discovered to enable a major reassembly of the Atra-Hasis epic – a masterful work credited to W. G. Lambert and A. R. Millard (Atra-Hasis: The Babylonian Story of the Flood).
After describing the hard work of the Anunnaki, their mutiny, and the ensuing creation of the Primitive Worker, the epic relates how Man began to procreate and multiply.
In time, Mankind began to upset Enlil.
The land extended, the people multiplied; In the land like wild bulls they lay. The god got disturbed by their conjugations; The god Enlil heard their pronouncements, and said to the great gods:
“Oppressive have become the pronouncements of Mankind; Their conjugations deprive me of sleep.”
Enlil then ordered a punishment by calling for the decimation of Mankind through pestilence and sicknesses.
The Akkadian and Assyrian versions of the epic speak of “aches, dizziness, chills, fever” as well as “disease, sickness, plague, and pestilence” afflicting Mankind and its livestock following Enlil’s call for punishment.
But Enlil’s scheme did not work.
Atra-Hasis—happened to be especially close to Enki.
Atra-Hasis alterted Lord Enki and appealed to him to undo his brother Enlil’s plan:
Until more pieces of the broken-off tablets are found, we shall not know what Enki’s advice was. He said of something, “…let there appear in the land.” Whatever it was, it worked.
Soon thereafter, Enlil complained bitterly to the gods that “the people have not diminished; they are more numerous than before!”
He then proceeded to outline the extermination of Mankind through starvation.
Let supplies be cut off from the people; in their bellies, let fruit and vegetables be wanting!" The famine was to be achieved through natural forces, by a lack of rain and failing irrigation.
Let the rains of the rain god be withheld from above;
Below, let the waters not rise from their sources.
Let the wind blow and parch the ground; Let the clouds thicken, but hold back the downpour.
Even the sources of seafood were to disappear:
Enki was ordered to “draw the bolt, bar the sea,” and “guard” its food away from the people.
Soon the drought began to spread devastation.
From above, the heat was not…
Below, the waters did not rise from their sources. he womb of the earth did not bear; Vegetation did not sprout… The black fields turned white; The broad plain was choked with salt.
