Mankind Emerges

Ever since George Smith found and reported in 1876 (The Chaldean Account of Genesis) detailed Mesopotamian tales of Creation, followed by L. W. King’s The Seven Tablets of Creation, scholars and theologians alike have come to recognize that the Creation Tales of the Old Testamant (Genesis Chapters 1 through 3) are condensed and edited versions of original Sumerian texts.

A century later, in our work, The 12th Planet (1976), we have shown that these texts were no primitive myths, but depositories of advanced scientific knowledge with which modern scholars are only now beginning to catch up.

The unmanned space probes of Jupiter and Saturn confirmed many “incredible” facets of the Sumerian knowledge regarding our Solar System, such as that the outer planets have numerous satellites and that water is present on some of them. Those distant planets, and some of their principal satellites, were found to have active cores that generate internal heat; some radiate out more heat than they can ever receive from the distant Sun.

Volcanic activity provided those celestial bodies with their own atmospheres. All the basic requirements for the development of life exist out there, just as the Sumerians had said 6,000 years ago.

What, then, of the existence of a twelfth member of our Solar System—a tenth planet beyond Pluto, the Sumerian Nibiru (and Babylonian Marduk)—a planet whose existence was a basic and far-reaching conclusion in The 12th Planet?

In 1978, astronomers at the U.S. Naval Observatory in Washington determined that Pluto—being smaller than formerly believed—could not by itself account for perturbations in the orbits of Uranus and Neptune; they postulated the existence of yet another celestial body beyond Pluto.

In 1982, the U.S. National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) announced its conclusion that there indeed exists such a body; whether or not it is another large planet, it planned to determine by deploying in a certain manner its two Pioneer spacecraft that had been hurtling into space beyond Saturn.

And at the close of 1983, astronomers at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory in California announced that IRAS—the infrared telescope mounted on a spacecraft and launched under NASA’s auspices with the cooperation of other nations—had discovered beyond Pluto a very distant ‘“mystery celestial body” about four times the size of Earth and moving toward Earth. They have not yet called it a planet; but our Earth Chronicles leave the ultimate finding in no doubt.

In 1983, rocks were found in Antarctica and elsewhere which are undoubtedly fragments of the Moon and Mars; and the scientists are totally baffled as to how that could have happened. The Sumerian tale of the Creation of the Solar System, the collision between Nibiru’s satellites and Tiamat, and the rest of the cosmogony in the celebrated Epic of Creation offer a comprehensive explanation. And what about the texts describing how Man was created through genetic manipulation: in vitro fertilization and reimplantation? Recent advances in genetic sciences and technologies have affirmed the Sumerian concept of gradual evolution on the one hand, and on the other hand, the (otherwise inexplicable) appearance of the biologically advanced Homo sapiens through genetic engineering by the Anunnaki. Even the very recent method of test tube procreation—extracting a female egg, impregnating it with purified male semen, and reimplanting the fertilized egg in a woman’s womb—is the very same procedure described in the Sumerian texts from millennia ago.

If the two principal events—the creation of Earth and the creation of Man—are correctly reported in the Bible, ought we not to accept the veracity of the biblical tale regarding the emergence of mankind on Earth?

If the biblical tales are but a condensed version of more detailed, earlier Sumerian chronicles, could not the latter be used to enhance and complete the biblical record of those earliest times? Since one is the reflection of the other, let us hold up a mirror to that ancient flame of memories. . . . Let us continue the unraveling of the wondrous tale. After relating how “The Adam” (literally, “the Earthling”) was granted the ability to procreate, the Book of Genesis moves from recounting the general events on Earth to the saga of a specific branch of mankind: the person named Adam and his descendants.

“This is the Book of the Generations of Adam,” the Old Testament informs us. Such a book, we can safely assume, had surely existed. The evidence strongly suggests that the person whom the Bible called Adam was the one whom the Sumerians called Adapa, an Earthling “perfected” by Enki and deemed to have been genetically related to him. “Wide understanding Enki perfected for him, to disclose the designs of the Earth; to him he gave Knowing; but immortality he did not give him.”

Portions of the “Tale of Adapa” have been found; the complete text might well have been the “Book of the Generations of Adam” to which the Old Testament refers. Assyrian kings probably had access to such a record, for many of them claimed to have retained one or another of Adapa’s virtues.

Sargon and Sennacherib held that they had inherited the wisdom that Enki had granted Adapa; Sinsharishkun and Esarhaddon boasted that they were bom “in the image of the wise Adapa”; according to an inscription of Esarhaddon. he had erected in the temple of Ashura statue with the image of Adapa; and Ashurbanipal asserted that he had learned “the secret of tablet-writing from before the Deluge” as Adapa had known.

The Sumerian sources hold that there had been both rural cultures—cultivation and shepherding—as well as urban settlements before the Deluge had swept all off the face of the Earth. The Book of Genesis relates that the first son of Adam and Eve, Cain, “was a tiller of the earth,” and his brother Abel “was a herder of sheep.” Then, after Cain was exiled “away from the presence of the Lord” for having killed Abel, urban settlementsCities of Man—were established: in the land of Nud, east of Eden, Cain had a son whom he named Enoch and built a city called likewise, the name meaning “Foundation.” The Old Testament, having no particular interest in the line of Cain, skips quickly to the fourth generation after Enoch, when Lamech was born: And Lamech took unto himself two wives: The name of one was Adah, and the name of the other Zillah.

Adah bore Jabal; he was the father of such as dwell in tents and have cattle. And his brother’s name was Jubal; he was the father of all such as play lyre and pipe. And Zillah also bore Tubal-Cain, an artificer of gold and copper and iron.

The pseudepigraphical Book of Jubilees, believed to have been composed in the second century B.C. from earlier material, adds the information that Cain espoused his own sister Awan and she bore him Enoch “at the close of the fourth Jubilee. And in the first year of the first week of the fifth Jubilee, houses were built on the earth, and Cain built a city and called its name Foundation, after the name of his son.” Where did this additional information come from? It has long been held that this part of the Genesis tale stands alone, without corroboration or parallel in the Mesopotamian texts. But we have found that it is just not so. First, we have come upon a Babylonian tablet in the British Museum (No. 74329, Fig. 31), catalogued as “containing an otherwise unknown myth.” Yet it may in fact be a Babylonian/Assyrian version from circa 2000 B.C. of a missing Sumerian record of the Line of Cain!

As copied by A. R. Millard and translated by W. G. Lambert (Kadmos, vol. VI), it speaks of the beginnings of a group of people who were ploughmen, which corresponds to the biblical “tiller of the land.” They are called Amakandu—“People Who In Sorrow Roam”; it parallels the condemnation of Cain: “Banned be thou from the soil which hath received thy brother’s blood … a restless nomad shaft thou be upon the earth.” And, most remarkably, the Mesopotamian chief of these exiled people was called Ka’in! Also, just as in the biblical tale: He built in Dunnu a city with twin towers. Ka’in dedicated to himself the lordship over the city.

The name of this place is intriguing. Because the order of syllables could be reversed in Sumerian without changing the meaning, the name could also be spelled NU.DUN, paralleling the biblical name Nud as the place of Cain’s exile. The Sumerian name meant “the excavated resting place”—very much similar to the biblical interpretation of the name as meaning “Foundation.” After the death (or murder) of Ka’in, “he was laid to rest in the city of Dunnu, which he loved.” As in the biblical tale, the Mesopotamian text records the history of four following generations: brothers married their sisters and murdered their parents, taking over the rulership in Dunnu as well as settling in new places, the last of which was named Shupat (“Judgment”).

Fig. 31

A second source indicating Mesopotamian chronicles for the biblical tale of Adam and his son Cain are Assyrian texts. We find, for example, that an archaic Assyrian King List states that in the earliest times, when their forefathers were tent-dwellers—a term duplicated in the Bible regarding the line of Cain—the patriarch of their people was named Adamu, the biblical Adam.

We also find among traditional Assyrian eponyms of royal names the combination Ashur-bel-Ka’ini (“Ashur, lord of the Ka’- inites”); and the Assyrian scribes paralleled this with the Sumerian ASHUR-EN.DUNI (“Ashur is lord of Duni”), implying that the Ka’ini (“The people of Kain”) and the Duni (“The people of Dun”) were one and the same; and thus reaffirming the biblical Cain and Land of Nud or Dun.

Having dealt briefly with the line of Cain, the Old Testament turned its full attention to a new line descended of Adam: “And Adam knew his wife again, and she bore a son, and called his name Seth, for [she said] the Lord hath granted me another offspring instead of Abel, whom Cain had slain.” The Book of Genesis then adds: “One hundred and thirty years did Adam live when he begot a son in his likeness and after his image, and called his name Seth. “And the days of Adam after he had begotten Seth were eight hundred years, and he begot [other) sons and daughters; and all the days that Adam lived were nine hundred and thirty years, and he died. And Seth lived a hundred and five years and begot Enosh; and after he begot Enosh Seth lived eight hundred and seven years, and he begot [other] sons and daughters; and all the days of Seth were nine hundred and twelve years, and he died.”

The name of Seth’s son and the next pre-Diluvial patriarch in which the Bible was interested was Enosh; it has come to mean in Hebrew “Human, Mortal,” and it is clear that the Old Testament considered him the progenitor of the human lineage at the core of the ancient chronicles. It states in respect to him, that “It was then that the name of Yahweh began to be called,” that worship and priesthood began.

There are a number of Sumerian texts that shed more light on this intriguing aspect. The available portions of the Adapa text state that he was “perfected” and treated as a son by Enki in Enki’s city Eridu. It is likely then, as William Hallo (Antediluvian Cities) had suggested, that the great-grandson of Enosh was named Yared to mean “He of Eridu.” Here, then, is the answer: While the Bible loses interest in the banished descendants of Adam, it focuses its attention on the patriarchs from Adam’s line who had stayed in Eden—southern Mesopotamia—and were the first to be called to priesthood.

In the fourth generation after Enosh the firstborn son was named Enoch; scholars believe that here the name’s meaning stemmed from a variant of the Hebrew root, connoting “to train, to educate.” Of him the Old Testament briefly states that he “had walked with the Deity” and did not die on Earth, “for the Deity had taken him.” The sole verse in Genesis 5:24 is substantially enlarged upon in the extra-biblical Books of Enoch. They detail his first visit with the Angels of God to be instructed in various sciences and ethics. Then, after returning to Earth to pass the knowledge and the requisites of priesthood to his sons, he was taken aloft once more, to permanently join the Nefilim (the biblical term meaning “Those Who Had Dropped Down”) in their celestial abode.

The Sumerian King List records the priestly reign of Enmeduranki in Sippar, then the location of the Spaceport under the command of Utu/Shamash. His name, “Priestly lord of the Dur-an-ki,” indicates that he had been trained in Nippur. A little-known tablet, reported by W. G. Lambert (“Enmeduranki and Related Material”), reads as follows: Enmeduranki [was] a prince in Sippar, Beloved of Anu, Enlil and Ea.

Shamash in the Bright Temple appointed him. Shamash and Adad [took him] to the assembly [of the gods]. . . They showed him how to observe oil on water, a secret of Anu, Enlil and Ea. They gave him the Divine Tablet, the kibdu secret of Heaven and Earth . . .

They taught him how to make calculations with numbers. When the instruction of Enmeduranki in the secret knowledge of the gods was accomplished, he was returned to Sumer. The “men of Nippur, Sippar and Babylon were called into his presence.” He informed them of his experiences and of the establishment of priesthood. It shall be passed, the gods commanded, from father to son: “The learned savant, who guards the secrets of the gods, will bind his favored son with an oath before Shamash and Adad . . . and will instruct him in the secrets of the gods.” The tablet concludes with a postscript: “Thus was the line of priests created—those who are allowed to approach Shamash and Adad.”

By the time of the seventh generation after Enosh, on the eve of the Deluge, the Earth and its inhabitants were gripped by a new Ice Age. The Mesopotamian texts detail the sufferings by mankind, the shortages of food, even cannibalism. The Book of Genesis only hints at the situation by stating that when Noah (“Respite”) was born, he was so named by his father in the hope that his birth shall signal a respite “from the work and toil that cometh from the Earth which the Lord hath cursed.” The biblical version tells us little about Noah, apart from the fact that he was “righteous and of pure genealogy.” The Mesopotamian texts inform us that the hero of the Deluge lived in Shuruppak, the medical center run by Sud.

The Sumerian texts relate that as mankind’s hardships were increasing, Enki suggested, and Enlil vehemently opposed, the taking of measures to alleviate the suffering. What upset Enlil no end was the increasing sexual relationships between the young male Anunnaki and the Daughters of Man. The Book of Genesis describes the “taking of wives” by the Nefilim in the following words:

And it came to pass, When the Earthlings began to increase in number upon the face of the Earth, and daughters were born unto them— That the sons of the gods saw the daughters of the Earthlings that they were compatible; And they took unto themselves wives of whichever they chose. A “mythical tablet” (CBS-14061) reported by E. Chiera (Sumerian Religious Texts) tells the story of those early days and of a young god named Martu, who complained that he, too, should be permitted to espouse a human wife.

It happened, the text begins, when The city of Nin-ab existed, Shid-tab did not exist; The holy tiara existed, the holy crown did not exist . . . Cohabitation there was . . . Bringing forth [of children] there was.

“Nin-ab,” the text continues, “was a city in the settled Great Land.” Its high priest, an accomplished musician, had a wife and a daughter. As the people gathered to offer the gods the roasted meat of the sacrifices, Martu, who was single, saw the priest’s daughter. Desiring her, he went to his mother and complained: In my city I have friends, they have taken wives. I have companions, they have taken wives. In my city, unlike my friends, I have not taken a wife; I have no wife, I have no children. Asking whether the maiden whom he desired “appreciated his gaze,” the goddess gave her consent. The other young gods then prepared a feast; as the marriage was announced, “in the city of Nin-ab, the people by the sound of the copper drum were called; the seven tambourines were sounded.”

This growing togetherness between the young astronauts and the descendants of the Primitive Worker was not to Enid’s liking. The Sumerian texts tell us that “as the Land extended and the people multiplied,” Enlil became increasingly “disturbed by Mankind’s pronouncements” and its infatuation with sex and lust. The gettogethers between the Anunnaki and the daughters of Man caused him to lose sleep. “And the Lord said: ‘I will destroy the Earthling whom I have created off the face of the Earth.’ The texts inform us that when it was decided to develop the deep mines in the Abzu, the Anunnaki also proceeded to establish a scientific monitoring station at the tip of Africa. It was put in charge of Ereshkigal, a granddaughter of Enlil. A Sumerian epic tale recorded the hazardous voyage of Enki and Ereshkigal from Mesopotamia to that far-off mountainland (Kur)—a text that implies that Ereshkigal was either abducted or in some other manner coerced by Enki on that voyage, having been “carried off to Kur as a prize.” (Ereshkigal, we know from other epics, was later on attacked at her station by Nergal, one of Enki’s sons, as a result of an insult involving Ereshkigal’s emissary. At the last moment, Ereshkigal saved her life by offering Nergal to marry her and control together with her the station’s “Tablets of Wisdom.”)

Enlil now saw his chance to get rid of the Earthlings when this scientific station at the tip of Africa began to report a dangerous situation: the growing ice cap over Antarctica had become unstable, resting upon a layer of slippery slush. The problem was that this instability had developed just as Nibiru was about to make its approach to Earth’s vicinity; and Nibiru’s gravitational pull could upset the ice cap’s balance and cause it to slip into the Antarctic Ocean. The immense tidal waves that this would cause could engulf the whole globe.

When the Igigi orbiting Earth confirmed the certainty of such a catastrophe, the Anunnaki began to assemble in Sippar. the spaceport. Enlil, however, insisted that mankind be kept unaware of the coming Deluge; and at a special session of the Assembly of the Gods, he made all of them, and especially Enki, swear to keep the secret. The last part of the Atra-Hasis text, a major part of the Epic of Gilgamesh, and other Mesopotamian texts describe at length the events that followed—how the catastrophe of the Deluge was used by Enlil to achieve the annihilation of mankind; and how Enki, opposed to the decision which Enlil forced upon the Assembly of the Gods, contrived to save his faithful follower Ziusudra (“Noah”) by designing for him a submersible vessel that could withstand the avalanche of water.

The Anunnaki themselves, on a signal, “lifted up” in their Rukub ilani (“chariots of the gods”), the fired-up rocket ships “setting the land ablaze with their glare.” Orbiting the Earth in their shuttlecraft, they watched in horror the onslaught of the tidal waves below. All that was upon the Earth was swept off in one colossal avalanche of water: A.MA.RU BA.UR RA.TA—“The Flood swept thereover.” Sud, who had created Man with Enki. “saw and wept. . . . Ishtar cried out like a woman in travail . . . the gods, the Anunnaki. weep with her.” Rolling back and forth, the tidal waves swept the soil away, leaving behind vast deposits of mud: “All that had been created, turned back to clay.” In The 12th Planet we have presented the evidence for our conclusion that the Deluge, bringing about an abrupt end to the last Ice Age, had occurred some 13,000 years ago.

As the waters of the Deluge “went back from off the land” and started to subside, the Anunnaki began to land on Mount Nisir (“Mount of Salvation”)—Mount Ararat. There Ziusudra/Noah also arrived, his vessel guided by a navigator provided by Enki. Enlil was outraged to discover that the “seed of Mankind” was saved; but Enki persuaded him to relent: The gods, he argued, could no longer exist on Earth without the help of man. “And the Lord blessed Noah and his sons, and said unto them: ‘Be fruitful and multiply, and replenish the Earth.’ "

The Old Testament, focusing its interest on the line of Noah alone, lists no other passengers in the rescue ship. But the more detailed Mesopotamian Deluge texts also mention the Ark’s navigator and disclose that at the last moment friends or helpers of Ziusudra (and their families) also came on board. Greek versions of the account by Berossus state that after the Deluge, Ziusudra, his family, and the pilot were taken by the gods to stay with them; the other people were given directions to find their way back to Mesopotamia by themselves.

The immediate problem facing all that were rescued was food. To Noah and his sons the Lord said: “All the animals that are upon the earth, and all that flies in the skies, and all that creepeth on the ground, and all the fishes of the sea, into your hands are given; all that teemeth and that liveth, shall be yours for food.” And then came a significant addition: “As grassy vegetation all manner of grain have I given you.”

This little-noticed statement (Genesis 9:3), which touches on the origins of agriculture, is substantially enlarged upon in the Sumerian texts. Scholars are agreed that agriculture began in the MesopotamiaSyriaTsraei crescent but are at a loss to explain why it did not begin in the plains (where cultivation is easy) but rather in the highlands. They are agreed that it began with the harvesting of “wild ancestors” of wheat and barley some 12,000 years ago but are baffled by the genetic uniformity of those early grain grasses; and they are totally at a loss to explain the botano-genetic feat whereby—within a mere 2,000 yearssuch wild emmers doubled, trebled, and quadrupled their chromosome pairs to become the cultivable wheat and barley of outstanding nutritional value with the incredible ability to grow almost anywhere and with the unusual twice-a-year crops. Coupled with these puzzles was the equal suddenness with which every manner of fruit and vegetable began to appear from the same nuclear area at almost the same time, and the simultaneous “domestication” of animals, starling with sheep and goats that provided meat, milk, and wool.

How did it all come about when it did? Modern science has yet to find the answer; but the Sumerian texts had already provided it millennia ago. Like the Bible, they relate how agriculture began after the Deluge, when (in the words of Genesis) “Noah began as a husbandman”; but like the Bible, which records that there had been tilling of the land (by Cain) and shepherding (by Abel) long before the Deluge, so do the Sumerian chronicles tell of the development of crop-growing and cattle-rearing in prehistoric times.

When the Anunnaki had landed on Earth, a text titled by scholars The Myth of Cattle and Grain states, none of the domesticated grains or cattle had yet been in existence: When from the heights of Heaven to Earth Anu had caused the Anunnaki to come forth. Grains had not yet been brought forth. had not yet vegetated . . . There was no ewe, a lamb had not yet been dropped; There was no she-goat. a kid had not yet been dropped. The ewe had not yet given birth to her lambs. the she-goat had not yet given birth to her kid. Weaving [of wool] had not yet been brought forth, had not yet been established. Then, in the “Creation Chamber” of the Anunnaki, their laboratory for genetic manipulation, Lahar (“woolly cattle”) and Anshan (“grains”) “were beautifully fashioned”: In those days, in the Creation Chamber of the gods, in the House of Fashioning, in the Pure Mound, Lahar and Anshan were beautifully fashioned. The abode was filled with food for the gods. Of the multiplying of Lahar and Anshan the Anunnaki, in their Holy Mound, eatbut were not satiated. The good milk from the sheepfold the Anunnaki, in their Holy Mound, drink— but are not satiated. The Primitive Workers—those who “knew not the eating of bread . . . who ate plants with their mouths”—were already in existence: After Anu. Enlil, Enki and Sud had fashioned the black-headed people. Vegetation that luxuriates they multiplied in the Land. Four-legged animals they artfully brought into existence; In the E.DIN they placed them.

So, in order to increase the production of grains and cattle to satiate the Anunnaki, a decision was made: Let NAM.LU.GAL.LU —“civilized mankind”—be taught the “tilling of the land” and the “keeping of sheep … for the sake of the gods”: For the sake of the satiating things, for the pure sheepfold. Civilized Mankind was brought into existence. Just as it describes what had been brought into existence at that early time, so does this text also list the domesticated varieties that had not then been brought forth: That which by planting multiplies, had not yet been fashioned:

Terraces had not yet been set up . . . The triple grain of thirty days did not exist: The triple grain of forty days did not exist: The small grain, the grain of the mountains, the grain of the pure A.DAM, did not exist . . . Tuber-vegetables of the field had not yet come forth. These, as we shall see, were introduced on Earth by Enlil and Ninurta some time after the Deluge. After the Deluge had swept all off the face of the Earth, the first problem facing the Anunnaki was where to get the seeds needed for renewed cultivation. Fortunately specimens of the domesticated cereals had been sent to Nibiru; and now “Anu provided them, from Heaven, to Enlil.” Enlil then looked for a safe place where the seeds could be sown to restart agriculture. The earth was still covered with water, and the only place that seemed suitable was “the mountain of aromatic cedars.” We read in a fragmented text reported by S. N. Kramer in his Sumerische Literarische Texte aus Nippur:

Enlil went up the peak and lifted his eyes; He looked down: there the waters filled as a sea. He looked up: there was the mountain of the aromatic cedars. He hauled up the barley, terraced it on the mountain. That which vegetates he hauled up, terraced the grain cereals on the mountain.

The selection of the Cedar Mountain by Enlil and its conversion into a Restricted (“Holy”) Place was. most likely, not accidental. Throughout the Near East—indeed, worldwide—there is only one unique Cedar Mountain of universal fame: in Lebanon. It is the location, to this very day (at Baalbek in Lebanon), of a vast platform supported by colossal stone blocks (Fig. 32) that are still a marvel of technology. It was, as we have elaborated in The Stairway to Heaven, a Landing Place of the Anunnaki; a platform that persistent legends hold to have been built in pre-Diluvial times, even as early as the days of Adam. It was the only place, after the Deluge, immediately suitable for handling the shuttlecraft of the Anunnaki: the spaceport at Sippar was washed away and buried under layers of mud.

Fig. 32

With seeds available, the question was where to sow them. . . . The lowlands, still filled with mud and water, were unsuitable for habitation. The highlands, though freed from under the avalanche of water, were soggy with the rains that began to pour down with the neothermal age. The rivers had not found their new courses: the waters had nowhere to go; cultivation was impossible. We read this description in a Sumerian text: Famine was severe, nothing was produced. The small rivers were not cleaned, the mud was not carried off . . . In all the lands there were no crops, only weeds grew.

The two great rivers of Mesopotamia, the Euphrates and Tigris, were also not functioning: “The Euphrates was not bound together, there was misery; the Tigris was confounded, jolted and injured.” The one who rose to the task of building dams in the mountains, digging new channels for the rivers, and draining off the excess water was Ninurta: “Thereon the lord sets his lofty mind; Ninurta, the son of Enlil, brings great things into being”: To protect the land, a mighty wall he raised. With a mace he smote the rocks; The stones the hero heaped, made a settlement . . . The waters that had been scattered, he gathered; What by the mountains had been dispersed, he guided and sent down the Tigris. The high waters it pours off the farmed land. Now. behold— Everything on Earth rejoiced at Ninurta, the lord of the land.

A long text, gradually pieced together by scholars, The Feats and Exploits of Ninurta, adds a tragic note to Ninurta’s efforts to bring back order to the Earth on which he was superior. To cover all the problem spots at once, Ninurta rushed from place to place in the mountains in his airship; but “His Winged Bird on the summit was smashed; its pinions crashed down to the earth.” (An unclear verse suggests that he was rescued by Adad.) We know from the Sumerian texts that first to be cultivated on the mountain slopes were fruit trees and bushes and most certainly grapes. The Anunnaki, the texts state, gave mankind “the excellent white grapes and the excellent white wine; the excellent black grapes and the excellent red wine.” No wonder we read in the Bible that when “Noah began as a husbandman, he planted a vineyard; and he drank of the wine and became drunken.”

When the drainage works carried out in Mesopotamia by Ninurta made cultivation possible in the plains, the Anunnaki “from the mountain the cereal grain they brought down,” and “the Land [Sumer] with wheat and barley did become acquainted.” In the millennia that followed mankind revered Ninurta as the one who had taught it farming; a “Farmer’s Almanac” attributed to him was actually found by archaeologists in a Sumerian site. The Akkadian name for him was Urash—“The One of the Plough”; a Sumerian cylinder seal depicted him (some believe it shows Enlil) granting the plow to mankind (Fig. 33). Fig. 33

While Enlil and Ninurta were credited with granting agriculture to mankind, the credit for the introduction of domesticated herds was given to Enki. It was after the first grains were already in cultivation but not yet “the grain that multiplies,” the grains with the doubled, tripled, and quadrupled chromosomes; these were created by Enki artificially, with Enlil’s consent: At that time Enki spoke to Enlil: “Father Enlil, flocks and grains have made joyful the Holy Mound, have greatly multiplied in the Holy Mound. Let us, Enki and Enlil, command:

The woolly-creature and grain-that-multiplies let us cause to come out of the Holy Mound.” Enlil agreed, and abundance followed: The woolly-creature they placed in a sheepfold. The seeds that sprout they give to the mother, for the grains they establish a place. To the workmen they give the plough and the yoke . . . The shepherd makes abundance in the sheepfold; The young woman sprouting abundance brings; she lifts her head in the field:

Abundance had come from heaven. The woolly-creature and grains that are planted came forth in splendor. Abundance was given to the congregated people. The revolutionary agricultural tool—a simple, but ingeniously designed, wooden implement—the plow, was at first pulled, as the above text states, by putting a yoke on the farm workers. But then Enki “brought into existence the larger living creatures”—domesticated cattle—and bulls replaced people as pullers of the plow (Fig. 34). Thus, the texts conclude, did the gods “increase the fertility of the land.”

Fig. 34

While Ninurta was busy damming the mountains flanking Mesopotamia and draining its plains. Enki returned to Africa to assess the damage the Deluge had caused there. As it turned out, Enlil and his offspring ended up controlling all the high ground from the southeast (Elam, entrusted to Inanna/Ishtar) to the northwest (the Taurus Mountains and Asia Minor, given to Ishkur/Adad), with the highland arching in between given to Ninurta in the south and Nannar/Sin in the north. Enlil himself retained the central position overlooking the olden E.DIN; the Landing Place on the Cedar Mountain was put under the command of Utu/Shamash. Where were Enki and his clan to go?

As Enki surveyed Africa it was evident to him that the Abzu alone—the continent’s southern part—was insufficient. Just as in

Mesopotamia “abundance” was based on riverine cultivation, so it had to be in Africa; and he turned his attention, planning, and knowledge to the recovery of the Valley of the Nile. The Egyptians, we have seen, held that their great gods had come to Egypt from Ur (meaning “the olden place”). According to Manetho, the reign of Ptah over the lands of the Nile began 17,900 years before Menes; i.e., circa 21,000 B.C. Nine thousand years later Ptah handed over the Egyptian domain to his son Ra; but the latter’s reign was abruptly interrupted after a brief 1,000 years, i.e., circa 11,000 B.C; it was then, by our reckoning, that the Deluge had occurred.

Then, the Egyptians believed, Ptah returned to Egypt to engage in great works of reclamation and to literally raise it from under the inundating waters. We find Sumerian texts that likewise attest that Enki went to the lands of Mcluhha (Ethiopia/Nubia) and Magan (Egypt) to make them habitable for man and beast: He proceeds to the Land Meluhha; Enki, lord of the Abzu, decrees its fate: Black land, may your trees be large trees, may they be the Highland trees. May thrones fill your royal palaces. May your reeds be large reeds, may they be the Highland reeds . . . May your bulls be large bulls, may they be the Highland bulls . . . May your silver be as gold. May your copper be tin and bronze . . . May your people multiply; May your hero go forth as a bull . . .

These Sumerian records, linking Enki with the African lands of the Nile, assume a double significance: they corroborate the Egyptian tales with Mesopotamian tales and link Sumerian gods— especially the Enki-gods—with the gods of Egypt; for Ptah, we believe, was none other than Enki.

After the lands were made habitable again, Enki divided the length of the African continent between his six sons (Fig. 35). The southernmost domain was regranted to NER.GAL (“Great Watcher”) and his spouse Ereshkigal. To his north, in the mining regions, GIBIL (“The One of Fire”) was installed, having been taught by his father the secrets of metalworking. NIN.A.GAL Mankind Emerges 127 (“Prince of Great Waters”) was, as his name implied, given the region of the great lakes and the headwaters of the Nile. Farther north, in the grazing plateau of the Sudan, the youngest son, DUMU.ZI (“Son Who Is Life”), whose nickname was “The Herder,” was given reign.

Fig. 35

The identity of yet another son is in dispute among the scholars (we shall offer our own solution later on). But there is no doubt who the sixth son—actually Enki’s firstborn and legal heir—was: He was MAR.DUK (“Son of the Pure Mound”). Because one of his fifty epithets was ASAR, which sounds so much like the Egyptian As-Sar (“Osiris” in Greek), some scholars have speculated that Marduk and Osiris were one and the same. But these epithets (as “All-Powerful” or “Awesome”) were applied to diverse deities, and Asar meaning “All-Seeing” was also the epithet-name of the Assyrian god Ashur.

There are more similarities between the Babylonian Marduk and the Egyptian god Ra.

• Marduk was the son of Enki
• Ra was the son of Ptah

I think Enki-Ptah is one.

Osiris was the great-grandson of Ra and thus of a much later generation than either Ra or Marduk.

Sumerian texts have evidence supporting our belief that the god called Ra by the Egyptians and Marduk by the Mesopotamians was one and the same deity.

Thus, a self-laudatory hymn to Marduk (tablet Ashur/4125) declares that one of his epithets was “The god IM.KUR.GAR RA”-“Ra Who Beside the Mountainland Abides.”

Moreover, there is textual evidence that the Sumerians were aware of the deity’s Egyptian name, Ra. There were Sumerians whose personal names incorporated the divine name RA; and tablets from the time of the Ur III Dynasty mention “Dingir Ra” and his temple E.Dingir.Ra. Then, after the fall of that dynasty, when Marduk attained supremacy in his favored city Babylon, its Sumerian name KA.DINGIR (“Gateway of the Gods”) was changed to KA.DINGIR.RA-“Ras Gateway of the Gods.”

Indeed, as we shall soon show, Marduk’s rise to prominence began in Egypt, where its best-known monument—the Great Pyramid of Giza—had played a crucial role in his turbulent career. But the Great God of Egypt, Marduk/Ra, yearned to rule the whole Earth, and to do so from the olden “Navel of the Earth” in Mesopotamia. It was this ambition that led him to abdicate the divine throne of Egypt in favor of his children and grandchildren.

Little did he know that this would lead to two Pyramid Wars and to his own near death.