Superphysics
The Passings
5 minutes • 891 words
The resulting famine caused havoc among the people. Conditions got worse as time went on.
The Mesopotamian texts speak of six increasingly devastating shaat-tam’s or passings:
For one sha-at-tam they ate the earth’s grass. For the second sha-at-tam they suffered the vengeance. The third sha-at-tam came, their features were altered by hunger, their faces were encrusted… they were living on the verge of death. When the fourth sha-at-tam arrived, their faces appeared green; they walked hunched in the streets; their broad [shoulders?] became narrow. By the fifth “passing,” human life began to deteriorate. Mothers barred their doors to their own starving daughters.
Daughters spied on their mothers to see whether they had hidden any food. By the sixth “passing,” cannibalism was rampant. When the sixth sha-at-tam arrived they prepared the daughter for a meal; the child they prepared for food… One house devoured the other.
The texts report the persistent intercession by Atra-Hasis with his god Enki.
The sight of a starving, disintegrating Mankind, of parents eating their own children, finally brought about the unavoidable: another confrontation between Enki and Enlil.
In the seventh “passing,” when the remaining men and women were “like ghosts of the dead,” Enki said:
“Make a loud noise in the land,” he said. Send out heralds to command all the people: “Do not revere your gods, do not pray to your goddesses.”
There was to be total disobedience!
Under the cover of such turmoil, Enki planned more concrete action.
The texts, quite fragmented at this point, disclose that he convened a secret assembly of “elders” in his temple. “They entered … they took counsel in the House of Enki.”
First Enki exonerated himself, telling them how he had opposed the acts of the other gods.
Then he outlined a plan of action that involved his command of the seas and the Lower World:
“In the night … after he…” someone had to be “by the bank of the river” at a certain time, perhaps to await the return of Enki from the Lower World.
From there Enki “brought the water warriors”—perhaps also some of the Earthlings who were Primitive Workers in the mines. At the appointed time, commands were shouted: “Go! … the order…”
Enlil then was filled with anger.
He summoned the Assembly of the Gods and sent his sergeant at arms to fetch Enki. Then he stood up and accused his brother of breaking the surveillance-and-containment plans:
He claimed that he had caught the culprits and punished them, but Enlil was not satisfied.
He demanded that Enki “stop feeding his people,” that he no longer “supply corn rations on which the people thrive.” The reaction of Enki was astounding:
Enlil was furious. There were heated exchanges with Enki and shouting.
When the Assembly was finally called to order, Enlil took the floor again. He reminded his colleagues and subordinates that it had been a unanimous decision.
He reviewed the events that led to the fashioning of the Primitive Worker and recalled the many times that Enki “broke the rule.”
But, he said, there was still a chance to doom Mankind.
A “killing flood”* was in the offing. The approaching catastrophe had to be kept a secret from the people.
Superphysics Note
He called on the Assembly to swear themselves to secrecy and, most important, to “bind prince Enki by an oath.”
Enlil addressed the Assembly of all the gods:
Anu swore first; Enlil swore; his sons swore with him. At first, Enki refused to take the oath.
“Why will you bind me with an oath?” he asked. “Am I to raise my hands against my own humans?”
But he was finally forced to take the oath. One of the texts specifically states: “Anu, Enlil, Enki, and Ninhursag, the gods of Heaven and Earth, had taken the oath.”
The die was cast.
What was the oath he was bound by? As Enki chose to interpret it, he swore not to reveal the secret of the coming Deluge to the people; but could he not tell it to a wall?
