X - Of Patriarchs and Demigods

A ‘demigod’, by definition, is someone who is a product of the mating of a god (or goddess) with an Earthling, sharing the two genomes.

As startling, or dismissed as myth, as the possibility may sound, the Bible unambiguously asserts that such mating had taken place, and that heroic "Men of Renown" were born as a result both before and after the Deluge.

On the face of it, that is all the Bible has to say on such a history-changing matter (it was the cause for the plan to terminate Mankind by the Deluge!) - unlike the Mesopotamian texts that are filled with tales of demigods, with Gilgamesh notorious among them. And that, as we shall see, opens the door to potential discoveries in our own present time.

Some probing of available material, enhanced with deductive reasoning, will show that the meager biblical data about the pre-Deluvial Patriarchs dovetails with the more extensive Mesopotamian information.

The brief biblical statement in Genesis 6 about the "sons of the Elohim" who had taken Daughters of Man as wives is also substantially augmented in other ancient Hebrew writings - ‘Lost Books’ that have not made it into the canonical Hebrew Bible - collectively known as Apocrypha (= ‘Secret, Hidden Writings’) or Pseudo-Epigrapha of the Old Testament; and it behooves us to explore that too.

That such writings existed is confirmed by the Bible itself; it refers to several ‘lost books’ whose existence (and contents) were common knowledge at the time, but that have since been lost. Verse 14 in Numbers 21 refers to the Book of the Wars of Yahweh; Joshua 10:13 recalls the miraculous events described in the Book of Yasher.

Those, and other mentioned books, have been completely lost.

On the other hand, some lost books - such as The Book of Adam and Eve, The Book of Enoch, The Book of Noah, and the Book of Jubilees have come down to us through the ages preserved by translations in languages other than Hebrew, sometimes partly or entirely rewritten by the later Tenderers.

These manuscripts are important not only for reiterating biblical data, but also because they purport to provide added details to biblical tales; and some of them record the incident of the intermarriage and fill in the details.

The Bible, in Genesis 6, presents a God who is of two contradictory minds. He is angered by the intermarriage of the "sons of the Elohim’ with the Daughters of Man, yet later on considers the offspring to be heroic "Men of Renown."

He decides to wipe mankind off the face of the Earth, then goes out of the way to save the Seed of Mankind via Noah and the ark. We now understand that the apparent contradictions stem from the combining by the Bible of diverse and opposed deities, such as Enki and Enlil, into one divine entity (Yahweh).

The authors of the Book of Jubilees and the Book of Enoch dealt with the duality problem by explaining that the descending of the Angels to Earth was meant to be benevolent, but then a group of them were led astray by errant leaders to take Earthlings as wives.

k happened, the Book of Jubilees reported, during the time of Yared (= ‘He of Descending’) who was so named by his father, Mahalalel, because it was then that the "Angels of the Lord descended to the Earth." Their mission was to "instruct the children of men with judgment and uprightness"; but instead they ended up "defiling themselves" with the Daughters of Man.

According to those extra-biblical texts, some two hundred ‘Watchers’ (= the Igigi of Sumerian lore) organized themselves in twenty groups of ten; each group had a named leader; most of the names - Kokhabiel, Barakel, Yomiel, etc. - are theophoric names honoring El (= Lofty).

One, called Shemiazaz, who was in overall command, made all of them swear to act together.

Then,

"each one of them chose for himself one, and they began to go in unto them and defile themselves with them... And the women bore giants."

But according to the Book of Enoch, the instigator of the transgression,

"the one who led astray the sons of God and brought them down to Earth and led them astray through the Daughters of Man,"

...was actually the wrong-doing angel Azazel (= ‘The Might of El') who was exiled for his sins.

According to Mesopotamian texts, which include segments dealing with Marduk’s exile, Marduk was the first one to break the taboo and marry (as distinct from just having sex) Sarpanit, an Earthling woman, and to have a son (named Nabu) by her; and one is left wondering to what extent Marduk’s involvement played a role in Enlil’s anger.

* * *

Enoch, it will be recalled, was the next pre-Diluvial Patriarch after Yared who "walked with the Elohim" and did not die, for he was taken away to be with them; as stated in Genesis 5:21-24:

And Enoch walked with the Elohim,

after he had begotten Metushelah,
300 [more] years,
and begot [other] sons and daughters.
And all the days of Enoch were 365 years.
Enoch walked with the Elohim and was no more,

for Elohim had taken him.

The book ascribed to him, The Book of Enoch, enlarges on that statement and describes the Watchers’ affair as the reason why the Righteous Angels had revealed to Enoch secrets of Heaven and Earth, the Past and the Future:

The purpose was to set Mankind, through the revelations to Enoch, on a righteous path - a path from which it was diverted by the Watchers’ misdeeds.

Enoch, according to these writings, was taken heavenward twice; and whereas the Bible simply states that he first "walked with the Elohim" and then was "taken" by them, the Book of Enoch describes a plethora of angels and archangels who carried all that out.

His sojourn with,

"the Holy Ones" began with a dream-vision in which his bedroom, he wrote later, filled with "clouds which invited me and a mist which summoned me," and a kind of whirlwind "lifted me upwards and bore me unto heaven."

Miraculously passing through a fiery crystal wall, he entered a crystal house whose ceiling emulated the starry skies; then, reaching a crystalline palace, he saw the Great Glory.

An angel led him closer to a throne, and he could hear the Lord tell him that he was chosen to be shown "the heavenly secrets" so that he could teach them to Mankind. He was then told the names of the seven archangels who serve the Lord and who will be his mentors on his journey of discovery. With that, his dream-vision came to an end.

Later on - exactly ninety days before Enoch’s 365th birthday -  as Enoch was alone in his home, "two men, exceedingly big" whose appearance "was such as I have never seen before," materialized out of nowhere.

Their faces shone, their clothing was unlike any, and their arms were like golden wings.

"They stood at the head of my couch, and called upon me by name," Enoch later told his sons Metuhsha’el and Regim.

The two divine emissaries told Enoch that they have come to take him on a second, prolonged celestial journey, and suggested that he inform his sons and servants that he will be gone for a while.

Then the two angels took him on their wings and carried him to the First Heaven. There was a great sea there; and it was there that Enoch was taught the secrets of climate and meteorology.

Continuing the journey, he passed through the Second Heaven, where sinners were punished. In the Third Heaven was Paradise, where the righteous go. In the Fourth Heaven - the longest stop - the secrets of the Sun, Moon, the stars, the zodiacal constellations and the calendar were revealed to Enoch.

At the Fifth Heaven the link bonding Earth with Heaven petered out; it was the abode of the "angels who connected themselves with women." It was there that the first part of Enoch’s celestial journey was completed.

Resuming his journey, Enoch passed through the Sixth and Seventh Heavens, where he encountered diverse groups of angels, arranged by ascending order:

• Cherubim

• Seraphim

• Archangels,

... seven classes in all.

Reaching the Eighth Heaven, he could actually see the stars that make up the constellations. At the Ninth Heaven he could see the realm of the Zodiacs. Finally he reached the Tenth Heaven, where the angels brought him "before the Lord’s face."

Terrified, he fell to his knees and bowed.

And the Lord spoke to him and said:

Arise Enoch, have no fear!
Arise and stand before my face,

and gain Eternity.

And the Lord commanded the archangel Michael to change Enoch’s earthly garments, and clothe him in divine garments, and anoint him.

And the Lord told the archangel Pravu’el to,

"bring out the books from the sacred storehouse, and a quick-writing reed," and give them to Enoch so that he could write down all that the archangel will read to him - "all the commandments and teachings."

For thirty days and thirty nights Pravu’el dictated and Enoch wrote down,

"the secrets of the workings of the heavens, the Earth and the seas, and all the elements... The thunderings of thunders, and the Sun and the Moon, the comings and goings of the stars, and the seasons, years, days, and hours."

He was also taught "human things" - like the "tongues of human songs."

The writings filled up 360 books. Returned to the presence of the Lord, Enoch was seated to His left, beside the archangel Gabriel; and the Lord himself told Enoch how Heaven and Earth were created.

And then the Lord told Enoch that he will be returned to Earth for thirty days so that he could bequeath to Mankind the handwritten books, to be passed from generation to generation. Returned to his home, Enoch told his sons of his odyssey, explained to them the books’ contents, and admonished them to be righteous and follow the commandments.

Enoch was still talking and explaining when his thirty-day homecoming was up; by then, word having spread in town, a great crowd of people gathered around Enoch’s home, striving to hear the details of the celestial journey and the heavenly teachings.

So the Lord caused darkness upon the Earth; and in the darkness two angels swiftly lifted Enoch and carried him away "to the highest heaven."

Realizing that Enoch was gone,

"the people could not understand how Enoch had been taken; they went back to their homes, and those who witnessed such a thing glorified God."

And the sons of Enoch,

"erected an altar at the place where Enoch had been taken up to heaven."

It happened, a scribal postscript states, exactly when Enoch reached the age of 365 years - a number alluding to his newly acquired mastery of astronomy and the calendar.

(One recalls at this point the statement by Manetho regarding a dynasty of 30 demigods in Egypt who reigned a total of 3,650 years - a number that is precisely 365 x 10. A mere coincidence?)

It is noteworthy that neither the Bible in its brief information regarding Enoch, nor the 100-plus chaptered Book of Enoch, explain why Enoch was chosen for the extraordinary divine encounters and avoided a mortal’s death; how was he special, different?

The name of the one who "begot" him, Yared, is explained by the notation that it was in his time that the Descending (of the Nefilim) had occurred. The name Yared is clearly derived from the root verb meaning "To Descend" in Hebrew; but it is grammatically awkward, leaving it unclear whether Yared himself is ‘One who had descended’, which would grant him a god’s status and make his son a demigod.

Also left untold is what was the city where Enoch lived, the locale of miraculous events and site of an altar commemorating them. If it was also the town of his father, Yared - the parallel of the Cainite Yirad -  one wonders whether the name echoes the city’s name, ERIDU.

If so - if the site of Enoch’s divine encounters was Eridu of Enki and Anunnaki fame - we have here details that link those biblical and extra-biblical pre-Diluvial Patriarchs back to the Sumerian pre-Diluvial Kings and to the "sons of the Elohim" (whom the Bible itself describes as Gibborim - heroic "Men of Renown").

* * *

The possibility that pre-Diluvial biblical Patriarchs were demigods, has loomed large already in antiquity - especially in the case of Noah.

The Book of Enoch, scholars have concluded, incorporated sections of another, earlier lost book - a Book of Noah. Its existence was surmised from various other early writings and from the different writing style of sections within the Book of Enoch.

The surmising became a certainty when fragments of a Book of Noah were discovered among the Dead Sea scrolls - a virtual library that was hidden in caves at a site called Qumran on the shores of the Dead Sea in Israel some 2,000 years ago. In that scroll the word usually translated ‘Watchers’ clearly calls them Nefilin (Fig. 71) - Aramaic for Nefilim in Hebrew.

Figure 71
 

According to the relevant sections of the book, the wife of Lamech (father of the biblical Noah) was named Bath-Enosh (= ‘Daughter/ Offspring of Enosh’).

When Noah was born, the baby was so unusual that he aroused suspicions in the mind of Lamech: He looked decidedly different from the usual baby boys, his eyes shone, and he could speak.

And right away Lamech,

"thought in his heart that the conception was from one of the Watchers."

Lamech expressed his suspicions to Metushelah, his father:

I have begotten a strange son,
different from and unlike Man,
and resembling the sons of God of Heaven.
His nature is different, and he is not like us.

And it seems to me that he is not sprung from me, but from the angels.

Suspecting that the boy’s real father was one of the Watchers, Lamech questioned his wife, Bath-Enosh, demanding that she swear to him "by the Most High, the Lord Supreme, the King of all the Worlds, the ruler of the Sons of Heaven," to tell him the truth.

Responding, Bath-Enosh told Lamech:

"Remember my delicate feelings! The occasion is indeed alarming, and my soul is writhing in its sheath!"

Puzzled by the answer, Lamech again asked her to swear to tell him the truth.

 Bath-Enosh again reminded Lamech of her "delicate feelings" - but then, swearing by "the Holy and Great One," assured him,

"that this conception was by you and not by some stranger or by any of the Watchers."

Still skeptical, Lamech went to his father, Metushelah, with a request:

To seek out his father, Enoch - who was taken away by the Holy Ones - and ask him to pose the fatherhood question to them.

Locating his father, Enoch, "at the ends of the Earth," Metushelah related to him the Noah puzzle and conveyed to him Lamech’s request.

Yes, Enoch told him, in the days of my father, Yared,

"some Angels of Heaven did transgress and united themselves with women, and have married some of them, and begot children by them"; but you can reassure Lamech "that he who has been born is in truth his son."

The odd features and unusual talents of Noah are due to his having been chosen by God for a special destiny, as predicted "in the heavenly tablets."

Lamech accepted those reassurances; but what are we to make of the whole tale? Was Noah, after all a demigod - in which case we, his descendants, have a larger dose of Anunnaki genes than The Adam had received?

The Bible had this to say in its introduction to the Deluge story. These are the generational records of Noah:

Noah was a righteous man,
Perfect in his genealogy he was;
With the Elohim did Noah walk.

If this leaves one wondering, a re-reading of the prior Nefilim verses in Genesis 6 reinforces the impression that the Bible itself left the question hanging by stating, after verse 4 about the demigods who were "the Mighty Men of old, Men of Renown,"

"And Noah found grace in the eyes of the Lord".

(verse 8)

It does not say "But" - the verse starts with "And" as though it was a direct continuation of the previous verses about the sons of the gods:

They were the Mighty Men of old,

Men of Renown, and (= ‘as well as’) Noah

[who] found grace in the eyes of the Lord.

Read this way, Noah would have been one of the Mighty Men of Renown - a demigod whose 600 years before the Deluge telescope the 36,000 years of Ziusudra/Utnapishtim.

***

Sumerian texts include the story of the pre-Diluvial En.me.duranki (also called En.me.durannd) whose tale is remarkably similar to that of the biblical Enoch.

His theophoric name links him to the Dur.an.ki (= ‘Bond Heaven-Earth’), Enlil’s command center in Nippur.

A patriarch named ‘Enoch’, it will be recalled, appears in the Bible in both the Cain and the Seth genealogical lines. In the context of the Enki-Enlil rivalries, Enmeduranki’s parallel to ‘Enoch’ would lean to the Cainite one, whose distinction was the establishment of a new city. In the Sumerian texts, the events concerning Enmeduranki no longer take place in Eridu, but rather in a new center called Sippar, where he reigned for 21,600 years.

The discovered texts relate how the gods Shamash and Adad took Enmeduranki to the celestial Assembly of the gods, where the secrets of medicine, astronomy, mathematics, etc., were revealed to him.

He was then returned to Sippar so that he could start a line of priest-savants:

Enmeduranki was a prince in Sippar, beloved of Anu, Enlil, and Ea.
Shamash, in E.babbar, the Bright Temple, appointed him as priest.
Shamash and Adad [took him] to the Assembly [of the gods].
Shamash and Adad clothed (purified?) him.
Shamash and Adad set him up on a large throne of gold.
They showed him how to observe oil on water -  a secret of Anu, Enlil, and Ea.
They gave him a Divine Tablet,
the Kibdu, a secret of Heaven and Earth.
They put in his hand a cedar instrument, a favorite of the great gods.
They taught him how to make calculations with numbers.

The two gods, Shamash and Adad - a grandson and a son, respectively, of Enlil - then returned Enmeduranki to Sippar, instructing him to report his divine encounter to the populace and to make his acquired knowledge available to humankind - knowledge that shall be passed from generation to generation, from father to son, by a priestly line beginning with him:

The learned savant,
who guards the secret of the great gods,

will bind his favored son with an oath

before Shamash and Adad.
By the divine tablets, with a stylus,
he will instruct him in the secrets of the gods.

"Thus," states the postscript in the tablet, "was the line of priests created - those who are allowed to approach Shamash and Adad."

In this Sumerian version of the Enoch tale, the two gods acted as the two archangels in the Book of Enoch version; it was a theme common in Mesopotamian art, in which two ‘Eaglemen’ were depicted flanking a gateway (see Fig. 58), a Tree of Life, or a rocket (Fig. 72).

Figure 72

Though in the legible parts of the Enmeduranki tablets his demi- godness is not asserted beyond the statement that he "was a Prince in Sippar," his inclusion in the list of pre-Diluvial rulers with a reign of six Shars (= 21,600 Earth-years) should serve as an indicator:

No mere mortal Earthling could have lived that long.

At the same time, such longevity was far short of that of the real Anunnaki gods; Enki, for example, lived through the full 120 Shars from Arrival to Deluge - and he was already an adult when arriving, and stayed on Earth beyond the Deluge.

If the eight who reigned after Alulim and Alalgar were not full fledged gods, they must be considered to have been demigods.

How can this conclusion be reconciled, say, in the case of the tenth ruler, the hero of the Deluge, if the Bible (re. Noah) lists him as a son of Lamech, and the Sumerian texts (re. Ziusudra) as a son of Ubar- Tutu?

The explanation lies in demigod tales, from Bath-Enosh (the mother of Noah) all the way to Olympias (the mother of Alexander):

Assuming the identity of the husband, a god did it!

Such an explanation admirably affirms the child’s demigod status while it absolves the mother of adultery.

An interesting example that illustrates the universality of this explanation comes to us from Egypt, where some of the best known Pharaohs bore theophoric names with the suffix MSS (also rendered MES, MSES, MOSE) that meant ‘Issue/offspring of’ - such as Thothmes (‘Issue of the god Thoth’), Ramses (‘Issue of the god Ra’), etc.

A case in point occurred when Egypt’s famed 18^th dynasty Pharaoh Thothmes I died in 1512 B.C. He left behind a daughter (Hatshepsut) mothered by his legitimate spouse, and a son mothered by a concubine.

Seeking to legitimize his assumption of the throne, the son (thereafter known as Thothmes II) married his half-sister Hatshepsut.

The marriage produced only daughters; and when Thothmes II died (in 1504 B.C.) after a short reign, the only male heir was a son not by Hatshepsut, but by a harem girl.

Since the boy was too young to rule, Hatshepsut was appointed co-regent with him. But then she decided that kingship was rightfully hers alone and assumed the throne as a full-fledged Pharaoh in her own right.

To justify and legitimize that, she came out with a claim that while Thothmes I was her nominal father, she was actually conceived when the god Amon (= ‘The Unseen Ra’) - disguising himself as the husband-king - was intimate with her mother.

On Hatshepsut’s orders, the following statement was included in Egypt’s royal annals to record her demigod origins:

The god Amon took the form of his majesty the king,

the husband of this queen.
Then he went to her immediately,

and he had intercourse with her.
 

These are the words which the god Amon,
Lord of the Thrones of the Two Lands,

spoke thereafter in her presence:
 

‘Hatshepsut-by-Amon-created’
shall be the name of this daughter of mine
whom I have planted in your body...
She will exercise beneficial kingship in this entire land.

Hatshepsut died as Queen of Egypt in 1482 B.C., whereupon the ‘boy’ - thereafter known as Thothmes III - finally became Pharaoh.

Her great and magnificent funerary temple at Deir-el-Bahari, on the Nile’s western side opposite ancient Thebes (today’s Luxor-Karnak), still stands; and on its inner walls, the story of Hatshepsut’s demigod birth is told in a series of murals accompanied by hieroglyphic writing.

The murals start with a depiction of the god Amon, led by the god Thoth, entering the nighttime chamber of queen Ahmose, wife of Thothmes I.

The accompanying hieroglyphic inscriptions explain that the god Amon was disguised as the queen’s husband:

Then entered the glorious god, Amon himself,
Lord of the thrones of the Two Lands,

having taken the form of her husband.
 

"They (the two gods) found her (the queen)

sleeping in the beautiful sanctuary.

She awoke at the perfume of the god

[and] merrily laughed in the face of his majesty."

 

As Thoth discreetly left, Amon -
Enflamed with love, hastened toward her.
She could behold him, in the shape of a god,

as he came nearer to her.

She exulted at the sight of his beauty.

Both enamored, god and queen had intercourse:

His love entered into all her limbs.

The place was filled with the god’s sweet perfume.
The majestic god did to her all that he wished.
She gladdened him with all of herself; she kissed him.

Attributions of liaisons by Ra that endowed future Egyptian Pharaohs with demigod status go back, in fact, to earlier dynastic times.

A tale, inscribed on papyrus may even solve a mystery concerning Egypt’s 5th dynasty in which three related Pharaohs succeeded each other without being fathers-sons. According to that tale, they were conceived when the god Ra mated with the wife of the high priest of his temple.

When the pangs of childbirth began, it was realized that the woman carries a triplet and would have a very difficult time giving birth.

So Ra summoned four ‘birth goddesses’ and appealed to his father, Ptah, to assist in the births. The text describes how all those gods assisted as the wife of the high priest gave birth, in succession, to three sons who were named Userkaf, Sahura, and Kakai. Historical records show that the three of them indeed reigned in succession as Pharaohs, forming the Fifth Dynasty; they were a Demigod Triplet.

Besides providing Egyptologists with an explanation of that odd dynasty, the tale also offers an explanation for a bas-relief, discovered by archaeologists, that depicts the Pharaoh Sahura as a baby suckled by a goddess - a privilege limited to those of divine birth.

Such ‘divine suckling’ was also claimed by Hatshepsut to further her claim to divinely ordained kingship: she asserted that the goddess Hathor (nicknamed ‘Mother of gods’) suckled her. (A successor, the son of Thothmes III, also claimed to having been divinely suckled.)

A claim of direct demigod status as a result of intercourse with a god in disguise was then made by the famed Ramses II by recording in the royal annals the following revelation that the great god Ptah himself made to the Pharaoh:

I am thy father.
I assumed my form as Mendes, the Ram Lord,

and begot thee inside thy august mother.

If such a claim to having been fathered by not just one of the gods but by the head of the pantheon looks too far fetched, recall our explanation that the god

called Ptah by the Egyptians was none other than Enki.

And to assert a fathering by Enki was not outlandish at all.

* * *

As one takes a sweeping view of the Mesopotamian tales of the gods, there come into focus the different personalities of the half-brothers Enki and Enlil - in every respect, including matters of sexual behavior.

Anu, we have earlier mentioned, had quite a harem of concubines in addition to his official spouse, Antu; indeed, the mother of Ea/Enki, Anu’s firstborn son, was one such concubine. When Anu and Antu came to Earth on a state visit (circa 4000 B.C.), a special city, Uruk (the biblical Erech), was built to accommodate them.

During the visit Anu took a special liking to Enlil’s granddaughter, who was called thereafter In.Anna (= Anu’s Beloved’) - with hints, in the texts, that Anu’s "loving" was not just grandfatherly.

And in these respects, Enki and definitely not Enlil, had his father’s genes. Of his six sons, only Marduk is clearly identified as mothered by Enki’s official spouse Dam.ki.na (= ‘Lady [who] to Earth Came’); the other five sons’ mothers are mostly unnamed and could have been concubines or (see hereunder) chance encounters.

By comparison, Enlil - who had a son by Ninmah back on Nibiru when both were unmarried - had sons (two) only by his spouse, Ninlil.

A long Sumerian text that its first translator, Samuel N. Kramer, named Enki and Ninhursag: A Paradise Myth, details Enki’s repeated sexual intercourses with his half-sister Ninharsag/Ninmah in (unsuccessful) attempts to have a son by her, and then his intercourses with the female offsprings of those liaisons. (Ninharsag - a medical officer -  had to inflict Enki with painful maladies to make him stop.)

As often as not, these Enki tales extolled the god’s mighty penis.

Enki was not averse to keeping sex within the family: A long text dealing with Inanna’s visit to Eridu (to obtain from Enki the vital Me) describes how her host attempted (unsuccessfully) to get her drunk and seduce her; and another text, recording a voyage from Eridu to the Abzu, relates how Enki did succeed to have sex with Ereshkigal (Inanna’s elder sister and future wife of Enki’s son Nergal) aboard their boat.

When such escapades resulted in the birth of offspring, young gods or goddesses were born; for demigods to be born, the intercourse had to be with Earthlings; and of that too there was no shortage... We can begin with Canaanite tales of the gods, where El (= ‘The Lofty One’ -  ‘Cronos’ of eastern Mediterranean lore) was head of the pantheon.

The tales include a text known as The Birth of the Gracious Gods; it describes how El, strolling on the seashore, met two Earthling females bathing. The two women were charmed by the size of his penis and had intercourse with him, resulting in the birth of Sbahar (= ‘Dawn’) and Shalem (= ‘Complete’ or ‘Dusk’).

Though called ‘gods’ in the Canaanite text, the two were, by definition, demigods. An important epithet-title of El was Ab Adam -  translated ‘Father of Man’ but also meaning 'Father of Adam,’ which, literally taken, may mean just that: Progenitor and actual father of the individual the Bible calls Adam, as distinct from the prior references to "The Adam" species.

And this leads us directly to Adapa, the legendary Model Man of Mesopotamian texts.

A pre-Diluvial demigod known as "Man of Eridu," his name, Adapa, identified him as the "Wisest of Men." Tall and big of size, he was most clearly identified as a son of Enki - a son of whom Enki was openly proud, whom he appointed as Chief of Household in Eridu, and to whom he granted "wide understanding" - all manner of knowledge, including mathematics, writing, and craftsmanship.

The first "Wise Man" on record, Adapa might have been the elusive Homo sapiens sapiens who appeared on the human scene some 35,000 years ago as ‘Cro-Magnon Man’, as distinct from the cruder Neanderthals.

It has been speculated (with no convincing conclusion) whether ‘Adapa’ could have been the actual person the Bible calls ‘Adam’ (as distinct from ‘The Adam’ species).

I, for one, wonder whether he could have been the En.me.lu.anna of the pre-Diluvial Sumerian King Lists - a name translatable as ‘Enki’s Man of Heaven’ - for the most memorable and unique event concerning Adapa was his celestial journey to visit Anu on Nibiru.

The Tale of Adapa begins by giving the reader the sense of a very long ago time, at the beginning of events, when Ea/Enki was involved in Creation:

In those days, in those years, by Ea was the Wise One of Eridu created as a model of Man.

The tale of Adapa reverberated in Mesopotamian life and literature for ages. Even in later Babylon and Assyria, the expression "Wise as Adapa" was used to describe someone highly intelligent.

But so was another aspect of the Adapa tale, according to which Ea/Enki deliberately granted one but withheld another divine attribute from this Model of Man, though his own son:

Wide understanding he perfected for him;
Wisdom he had given him;
To him he had given Knowledge -
Everlasting life he had not given him.

As word reached Nibiru of the unusually wise Earthling, Anu asked to see Adapa. Complying, Enki,

"made Adapa take the way to Anu, and to heaven he went up."

But Enki was concerned lest Adapa, while on Nibiru, be offered the Bread of Life and the Water of Life - and attain the longevity of the Anunnaki after all.

To prevent that from happening, Enki made Adapa look wild and shaggy, dressed him shabbily, and gave him misleading instructions:

As you stand before Anu,

they will offer you bread;

it is Death - do not eat!
They will offer you water;

it is Death - do not drink!
They will offer you a garment -

put it on.
They will offer you oil - 

anoint yourself with it.

 

"You must not neglect these instructions," Enki cautioned Adapa; "to that which I have spoken, hold fast!"

Taken aloft by "the Way of Heaven," Adapa reached the Gate of Anu; it was guarded by the gods Dumuzi and Gizidda.

Let in, he was brought before Anu. As Enki had predicted, he was offered the Bread of Life - but fearing death, refused to eat it. He was offered the Water of Life, and refused to drink it; he did put on the clothes he was offered, and anointed himself with the oil given him.

Puzzled and bemused, Anu asked him:

"Come now, Adapa - why did you not eat, why did you not drink?"

To which Adapa answered:

"Ea, my master, commanded me ‘you shall not eat, you shall not drink’."

Angered by the answer, Anu sent an emissary to Enki, demanding an explanation.

The inscribed tablet is too damaged here to be legible, so we don’t know Enki’s response. But the tablet does make it clear that Adapa, having been found "worthless" by Anu, was returned to Earth and started a line of priests adept at curing diseases. Wise and intelligent, a son of the god Enki Adapa was - yet as a mortal he died.

The scholarly debate whether the biblical ‘Adam’ was ‘Adapa’ is yet to be settled.

But clearly, the biblical narrator had the tale of Adapa in mind when writing the story of the two trees in the Garden of Eden - the Tree of Knowing (of which Adam ate) and the Tree of Life (of which he was precluded). The warning to Adam (and Eve), "the day you shall eat thereof surely you shall die," is almost a quote from Enki’s warning to Adapa.

So is the deity’s concern, expressed to unnamed colleagues, regarding the risk of Adam eating also from the Tree of Life (Genesis 3:22-24):

And Yahweh Elohim said:
Behold, the Adam is become as one of us

to know good and evil;
And now, what if he put forth his hand

and took also of the Tree of Life,

and ate, and lived forever?

So,

"Yahweh Elohim expelled him from the Garden of Eden... and placed at the east of the Garden of Eden the Cherubim, and the flaming sword which revolveth, to guard the way to the Tree of Life."

We do not know whether Enki’s warning to Adapa - to avoid the Water and Bread of Life lest he dies - was an honest one, or part of the deliberate decision to give Adapa Wisdom but not "Everlasting life."

We do know, however, that the warning to Adam and Eve, that they will "surely die" were they to eat of the Tree of Knowing, was untrue. God, as the Serpent told them, lied.

It is an episode to be kept in mind as the issues of Immortality will come to the fore.

* * *

According to the WB-62 king list, Enmeluanna was followed by En.sipa.zi.anna (= ‘Shepherd Lord, Heavenly Life’) and then by Enmeduranna/Enmeduranki, whose tale matches that of the biblical Enoch.

 Different and ambiguous names are then given by the Mesopotamian sources for the biblical Lamech, the most certain of which is the Ubar-Tutu in the Epic of Gilgamesh (and thus probably the Obartcs of Berossus).

Nothing, apart from this mention in the Epic of Gilgamesh, is known about that predecessor of Ziusudra/ Utnapishtim. Was he a demigod, or the hapless Lamech who had doubts about the true parentage of Noah?

The ‘transgressions’ by the Igigi or "Watchers" that so upset Enlil were in fact begun by none other than Enki himself. They resulted, as the varied sources make clear, in numerous demigod offspring; but only a handful of them are named and listed.

Were they the instances in which Enki himself, bearing the epithet En.me, was involved?

The riddle of Patriarch-Demigods in pre-Diluvial times runs all the way to Noah and the Deluge; but the enigma of our ancestral "seed" does not end there, for - as the Bible states (and Mesopotamian sources confirm) - the intermarriage that began before the Deluge continued "also after that."

We will soon find that other gods - and goddesses! - were eager intermarriage partners in the post-Deluge times.

WORDS AND THEIR MEANING

Readers of transliterated Sumerian texts may find a small ‘d’ prefixing a deity’s name - e.g., dEnki, dEnlil.

Called a ‘determinative’, it identifies the name as that of a god (or goddess). The d is shorthand for the two-syllable word Din.gir. Literally meaning ‘Righteous Ones [of the] Rocketships’, it was depicted pictographically as a rocket with a command module (see sidebar "The Land of ‘Eden’" on page 82).

Simplified, the designation ‘god/divine’ was rendered by a ‘star’ sign that was read An and evolved further to a crosslike wedgemark (see illustration); it was read llu in Akkadian (i.e., Babylonian, Assyrian) - from which the singular El in Canaanite or Hebrew and the plural Elohim in the Bible.

While explaining that in the tale of Adam’s creation, etc., the Elohim of the Bible were the Sumerian Anunnaki, this author (as unambiguously stated in Divine Encounters) envisions God (with a capital ‘G’) as a universal cosmic Creator of All, who acts through emissaries - ‘gods’ with a small ‘g’. The existence of the Elohim/Anunnaki ‘gods' with a small ‘g’ is confirmation of the existence of their creator, God with a capital ‘G’.

The encompassing divine name "Yahweh" was explained to Moses as meaning Eheyeh asher eheyeh - "I will be whoever I will be" - God could "be" (act through) Enki in one instance, or "be" through Enlil in another instance, etc. When the Hebrew text states Elohim, Anunnaki ‘gods’ are spoken of; and when the Bible employs the term Yahweh Elohim, it should be recognized as meaning ‘When Yahweh acted as/ through one of the Elohim’.

Other unorthodox understandings of biblical words suggested in my writings, include the term Olam.

It is commonly translated ‘Forever/Everlasting/of old’; but stemming from the root verb that means "To hide," Olam (I wrote) could mean a physical ‘Hidden Place’ of God, as in Psalm 93:2 - "Thou art from Olam" - the ‘Hidden Place,’ the unseen planet Nibiru.

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