XIII - Dawn of the Goddess

"Come Gilgamesh, be thou my lover!"

There are hardly any other few words, here spoken by Inanna, that epitomize the unintended consequences of the post-Diluvial relationship between gods and Earthlings.

In truth, after it was realized that the Anunnaki could have all the gold they needed just by picking it up in the Andes, there was no reason for them to stay on in the Old Lands.

Enlil, according to Ziusudra, changed his mind about the imperative of wiping Mankind off the face of the Earth after he smelled the aroma of roasting meat - the thanksgiving sacrifice of a lamb offered by Ziusudra; but in fact the change of heart among the Anunnaki leadership began as soon as the scope of the calamity became clear.

While down below the avalanche of waters swept everything away, the gods were orbiting the Earth in their aircraft and shuttlecraft. Crammed inside,

"the gods cowered like dogs, crouched against the walls... the Anunnaki were sitting in thirst, in hunger .. . Ishtar cried out like a woman in travail; the Anunnaki gods wept with her: Alas, the olden days are turned to clay’."

Most touched was Ninmah:

The great goddess saw and wept.. .
Her lips were covered with feverishness.
"My creatures have become like flies -
they fill the rivers like dragonflies,
their fatherhood taken away by the rolling sea."

When the tidal wave retreated and the twin peaks of Mount Ararat emerged from the endless sea, and the Anunnaki began to bring their craft down, Enlil was shocked to discover the survival of ‘Noah’.

Long verses detail the accusations hurled at Enki once his duplicity came to light, and his justification of what he had done. But equally long verses record the vehement reprimand that Ninmah directed at Enlil for his "Let’s wipe them off" policy.

We have created them, now we are responsible for them! she, in essence, said; and that, plus the realities of the situation, convinced Enlil to change his mind.

Ninmah - a female of ‘Shakespearean’ dimensions, were he to live in her time - had played major roles in the affairs of gods and men before the Deluge; and she did so, though in different ways, thereafter too. A daughter of Anu, she was caught in a love triangle with her two half-brothers, having an out-of-wedlock child (Ninurta) with Enlil after she was prevented from marrying Enki whom she loved.

Considered important enough to be granted one of the first five pre-Diluvial cities (Shuruppak), she came to Earth to serve as Chief Medical Officer of the Anunnaki (see Fig. 65), but ended up creating Ameluti - workmen -  for them (earning her the epithets Ninti, Mammi, Nintur, and many » more). Now she saw her creatures turned to clay, and she raised her voice against Enlil.

Thereafter, she was the arbiter between the rival half-brothers and their clans. Respected by both sides, she negotiated the peace terms that ended the Pyramid Wars and was granted the sacred Fourth Region (the Sinai Peninsula) with its Spaceport as neutral territory.

A long text describes how her son Ninurta created a comfortable abode for her amidst the mountains of the Sinai peninsula, resulting in her Sumerian name Ninharsag (= ‘Lady/Mistress of the Mountain peak’) and the Egyptian epithet Ntr Mafqat (= ‘Goddess/Mistress of Turquoise’, which was mined in the Sinai).

She was worshipped in Egypt as the goddess Hathor (literally Hat-Hor, ‘Abode of Horus’), and in her old age was nicknamed ‘The Cow’ both in Sumer and in Egypt, for her asserted role in breastfeeding demigods. But at all times, whenever the title ‘Great Goddess’ was used, it was always reserved for her.

Never married - the original "Maiden" of the zodiacal constellation we call Virgo - she had, in addition to her son with Enlil, several daughters by Enki born on Earth as a result of lovemaking on the banks of the Nile.

The tale, that has been misnomered A Paradise Myth, ends with Ninharsag and Enki engaged in matchmaking, pairing off young goddesses with Enki’ite males; prominent among them were spouses chosen for Ningishzidda (Enki’s science-knowing son) and for Nabu (Marduk’s son) - powerful matchmaking feats, to be sure; but as we shall see, not the last of Ninharsag’s power-links and string-pullings through births and marriages, in which she was joined by her younger sister, the goddess Ba’u, and by Bau’s daughter Ninsun.

Bau, who had also come from Nibiru, was one of the Anunnaki female ‘great gods’.

She was the spouse of Ninurta, which made her daughter-in-law of Ninharsag. But Bau herself was the youngest daughter of Anu, which made her a sister of Ninharsag... Both ways, these relationships served as a special bond between the two goddesses, especially so since Bau too gained a reputation as a medical doctor, credited in several tales of bringing the dead back to life.

When she and Ninurta settled in a new sacred precinct that a king of Lagash, Gudea, had built for them, the place became a kind of field -hospital for the people (rather than for gods) - a unique aspect of the love for humankind that Bau picked up from Ninharsag. Lovingly nicknamed Gula (= ‘The Big One’), she was invoked in prayers as "Gula, the great physician" - and in curses was asked to "put illness and unhealing sores" on an adversary.

The nickname, in any event, correctly invoked her hefty size (see Fig. 80).

If Ninmah/Ninharsag was the first "always a bridesmaid but never a bride," Ninsun, her granddaughter (via Ninurta) cum niece (via Bau), was "always a bride" (in a manner of speaking), for a line of renowned kings claimed to have been her sons - among them the great Gilgamesh. Starting with his father and continuing into the Third Dynasty of Ur and beyond, she outlived one mortal spouse after another.

Her family album (were she to have one) bulged with children and grandchildren - starting with her own eleven children with the deified demigod Lugalbanda.

The three - Ninharsag, Bau, Ninsun - formed a trio of goddesses who had a hand in steering Sumer’s royals in life as well as in death (including the most challenging female mystery).

A fourth principal female activist - Inanna/Ishtar - had, as we shall see, her own agenda.

* * *

Having reconciled to sharing the Earth with Mankind, the Anunnaki set out to make Earth habitable again after the Deluge.

In the Nile Valley, Enki - Ptah to the Egyptians - built dams with sluices (see Fig. 12) to drain off floodwaters and, in the words on a papyrus, "to lift the land from under the waters." In the Euphrates-Tigris plain, Ninurta created habitable areas by damming mountain passes and draining the water overflow.

At a "Chamber of Creation" - in all probability situated on the great stone platform that the Igigi had used as a ‘Landing Place’ - Enki and Enlil supervised feats of genetic ‘domestication’ of plants and animals. The zeal with which all that was done suggests that the Anunnaki leaders were captivated by their own vision of becoming Interplanetary Benefactors.

Right or wrong, they did create the Earthlings, who served them well as toilers in mines and fields; so Anu’s state visit to Earth circa 4000 B.C. put in motion a decision that it was only right to give Mankind ‘Kingship’ - Civilization - by rebuilding pre-Diluvial cities (exactly where they Tt,ad been) and establishing several new ones.

Much has been written, based on archaeological discoveries, of how cities became ‘cult centers’ for this or that particular deity, with an ‘E’ (‘Abode’ = Temple) in a ‘sacred precinct’ where priests provided the resident deities with the leisurely life of privileged overlords.

But not enough has been written of the role of ‘at large’ deities who were the mainstay of civilized advancement:

A deity, Nidaba, who was in charge of Writing, overseeing regular as well as specialized scribal schools; or Nin.kashi, who was in charge of the beer-brewing that was one of Sumer’s ‘firsts’ as well part of its social life; or Nin.a, who supervised the land’s water resources.

Those deities were goddesses; so was Nisaba, also known as Nin.mul.mula (= ‘Lady of many planets’ or ‘Lady of the Solar System’), an astronomer whose tasks included providing celestial orientation for new temples - not only in Sumer but also in Egypt (where she was revered as Seshetd).

Another female deity, the goddess Nanshe, was mistress of the calendar who determined New Year’s Day. Added to the ‘traditional’ medical services provided by the group of Suds (= ‘One who gives succor’) who arrived with Ninmah, the specialties overseen by goddesses embraced every aspect of civilized life.

The increased and more assertive role of goddesses in the affairs and hierarchy of the Anunnaki was expressed graphically at a sacred Hittite site called Yazilikaya in central Turkey, where the pantheon of twelve leading deities, carved on rock faces, is depicted as two equal groups of male gods and female goddesses marching toward each other with their retinues (Fig. 96, partial view).

 

Fig. 96

In the relations between Anunnaki and Earthlings, the increasing ‘feminization’ was enhanced by the actual power and authority wielded by the second and third generations of Anunnaki on Earth.

In the Olden Days, the nurse Sud was re-titled Nin.lil when she became Enlil’s spouse, but her title (= ‘Lady of the Command’) did not make her an Anunnaki commanding leader. Ea’s spouse, Damkina, was retitled Nin.ki (= ‘Lady [of] Earth’) when he was renamed En.ki, but she never was Mistress of the Earth.

Even Nin.gal, spouse of Enlil’s Earthborn son Nannar/Sin, who in official ‘portraits’ (Fig. 97) shared equal status with him, had no known authority/powers of her own.

Fig. 97

Things were different when it came to goddesses born on Earth, as shown by Nannar/Sin’s and Ningal’s daughters Ereshkigal and Inanna.

When Inanna was granted Uruk, she turned it into a powerful capital of Sumer; when Marduk caused the death of her bridegroom Dumuzi, she launched and led an intercontinental war; when she was made divine head of Aratta, she insisted that it be granted the full status of the Third Region. She could and did select kings (and ordered them around).

When Ereshkigal (= ‘Scented Mistress of the Great Land’) was less than enthusiastic about marrying Enki’s son Nergal, who was bald and had limped from birth, she was promised to become Mistress of his African domain; called the ‘Lower World’, it was the continent’s southern tip.

Ereshkigal made it into the site for crucial scientific observations involving the Deluge and (in subsequent times) of determining zodiacal ages. Text after text describe the ruthless determination with which Ereshkigal wielded the resulting powers.

And one key area in which all these changes came to the fore was the issue of demigods.

With the institution of Kingship came the function and persona of a ‘King’ - a Lu.gal - "Big Man." Residing in his own E.gal, the Palace, he ran the administration, promulgated laws, dispensed justice, built roads and canals, maintained relations with other centers, and enabled society to function - all on behalf of the gods. It was, by and large, a formula for growth, achievements in technology and arts, prosperity.

As begun in Sumer some 6,000 years ago, it laid the foundations for all that we call Civilization to this day.

It was only natural that someone would come up with the idea that the best Lu.gal would be akin to the demigods who were around before the Deluge "and thereafter too."

Endowed (in fact or by presumption) with more intelligence, physical strength and size, and longevity than the average Earthling, ‘demigods’ were the best choice to serve as the Jink between gods and mortals - to be the kings, especially so when the king also served as the high priest allowed to approach the deity.

But where would those post-Diluvial demigods be coming from? The answer, extracted from varied texts, is this: They were made to order... * * *
With a few exceptions, the Sumerian King List provides no direct information on the demigod status of the kings who made up the First Dynasty of Kish, the one that started post-Diluvial Kingship under the aegis of Ninurta.

Like the King List, we have dwelt on Etana and his legendary space trips, concluding that his reign length (1,560 years) and eligibility for space visits to Nibiru indicate his demigod status, which is further corroborated by a notation in another text that Etana was of the same "Pure Seed" as Adapa.

We have also pointed out that some of the names of subsequent kings of Kish, such as En.me.nunna (660 years) and En.me.bara.ge.si (900 years), suggested the presence of demigods in between their non-divine successors. In Tablet I of the Great God List, following the Enlil group and the Ninurta listings, there are fourteen names that start with d.Lugal - divine Lugal.gishda, divine Lugal.zaru, etc.

Unknown otherwise, they represent demigods - entitled to the din- gir determinative! - who either did not reign in Kish or were known by other epithet-names.

Where data is provided, we find a major change in ‘demigodness’. In pre-Diluvial times, and for a while thereafter, ‘demigodness’ stemmed from the "Pure Seed" of a male parent: So and so was the son of dUtu, etc. It was thus quite a change when a king named Mes.Alim (also written ‘Mesilim’) - a name whose significance we shall soon explore -  ascended the throne of Kish.

One of the discovered artifacts (a silver vase) bears this telltale inscription:

Mes-Alim king of Kish beloved son of dNinharsag

Since there is no way the king - proved correct in all his other inscriptions - would have dared present the vase to the goddess if it were not true, a birth involving Ninharsag as the mother has to be considered in spite of her advanced age; this could include artificial insemination, which was in fact claimed in another instance in which Ninharsag was involved.

That such pre-assuring from birth the ‘demigod qualifications’ of a future king was practiced by the Anunnaki is documented by a long and clearly written inscription regarding a king named Eannatum in the city of Lagash (whose patron god was Ninurta, here renamed Nin.Girsu after the city’s sacred precinct).

Reigning circa 2450 B.C. (by one chronology) Eannatum attained fame as a fierce warrior whose feats were recorded both in texts and on monuments, leaving no doubt about his historicity.

On a stela now on exibit in the Louvre (Fig. 98) he claimed divine ancestry through artificial insemination and a birth involving several deities. Here is what the inscription said:

Divine Ningirsu, warrior of Enlil,

implanted the semen of Enlil for Eannatum in the womb of [ ? ].
[ ? ] rejoiced over Eannatum.

Inanna accompanied him,

named him ‘Worthy of the temple of Inanna in Ibgal’,

and sat him on the holy lap of Ninharsag.
Ninharsag offered him her special breast.

Ningirsu rejoiced over Eannatum,

semen implanted in the womb by Ningirsu.

As if to answer a future question,

the inscription went on to describe the giantlike size of Eannatum:
Ningirsu laid his extent upon him:
For a span of five forearms he set his forearm on him -
A span of five forearms for him he measured.

Ningirsu, with great joy,
gave him the kingship of Lagash.

(The term ‘forearm’, usually translated ‘cubit’, represents the distance from the elbow to the end of the midfinger, on the average about 20 inches. Eannatum’s ‘span’ of five forearms means he was about 100 inches, or over 8 feet, tall.)

Fig. 98

An instance of artificial insemination is also recorded in Egyptian tales of the gods, when the god Thoth (Ningishzidda in Sumer) t extracted semen of the dead (and dismembered) Osiris and impregnated with it Isis, the wife of Osiris (who then gave birth to the god Horus); a depiction of the tale (Fig. 99) shows Thoth combining two separate strands of DNA to attain the feat.

In the case of Eannatum we have a clearly described similar instance - in Sumer - in which the Foremost Son of Enlil was involved. The opening statement regarding "semen of Enlil" is understood to mean Ninurta’s own semen, carrying as it did the Seed of Enlil.

Eannatum was followed on the throne in Lagash by king Entemena; and though stated in inscriptions to have been "son of Eannatum," he was also repeatedly described as,

"endowed with might by Enlil, nourished with the sacred breastmilk of Ninharsag."

Figure 99
 

The two kings belonged to the First Dynasty of Lagash that was installed by Ninurta in reaction to the transfer of Kingship from Kish (that was under his aegis) to Uruk (under Inanna’s patronage); and there are reasons to believe that all the nine kings of the first dynasty of Lagash were demigods in some manner.

The manner in which he was engendered, Eannatum claimed, allowed him to assume the title ‘King of Kish’, linking him -  genealogically? - to the venerated Kish dynasty and its patron god •Ninurta. While we can only guess how other kings of Kish qualified as demigods, no guesswork is required as Sumer’s capital moved from Kish to Uruk; there Utu is named as father of the very first king, Me s. kiag.gasher.

Utu (later known as Shamash, the ‘Sun god’), it need be kept in mind, belonged to the second generation of great Anunnaki born on Earth, and his fathering of the head of a new dynasty must be considered a major milestone - a parenthood change from the Olden Gods who had come from Nibiru to an Earth born and bred male deity.

This generational change, with its genetic implications, was followed on the female side with Lugalbanda, the third king to reign in Uruk:

In his case, it was a goddess - Inanna - who was identified as the mother; the twin sister of Utu, she too was a second generation Anunnaki ‘Earth Baby’.

 

That was followed in Uruk by a second divine maternal involvement: The naming of the goddess Ninsun as wife of Lugalbanda and her clear identification as the mother of their son Gilgamesh. And Ninsun - daughter of Ninurta and his spouse, Bau - was herself also an ‘Earth Baby’.

A stone portrait of Ninsun found in Lagash with her name, Nin.Sun (pronounced ‘Soon’) clearly inscribed on it (Fig. 100), shows her dignified and serene; in fact, she was quite a master of court intrigues - in part, perhaps, out of necessity, being the mother of Lugalbanda’s eleven children.

A glimpse of her matchmaking is revealed in a segment of the Gilgamesh Epic, where she discussed with Aya (spouse of Utu) the selection of a young goddess as wife for Enkidu (as a reward for his undertaking to risk his life to protect Gilgamesh).

Fig. 100

Retaining much of her parents’ longevity (and the genes of their heroic stature), Ninsun lived long enough to mother several later kings. Her probable role in the life and death drama of the First Dynasty of Ur will be a highlight of our tale.

Sumer’s capital remained in Ur for just over a century after the death of Gilgamesh, and then shifted to several other cities. Circa 2400 B.C. Ur served again, for the third time, as the national capital under an important king named Lugal.zagesi.

His many inscriptions included the claim that the goddess Nisaba was his mother:

Dumu tu da dNisaba,
Son born by/to divine Nisaba,
Pa .zi ku.a dNinharsag
fed [with] holy milk by divine Ninharsag

Nisaba, it will be recalled, was the astronomy goddess.

In some texts she is called "sister of Ninurta," sharing with him Enlil as a father. But in the Great God List she was described as,

"divine Nisaba, a female, from the pure/sacred womb of divine Ninlil."

In other words, she was an Earthborn daughter of Ninlil and Enlil, full sister of Nannar/Sin but only a half-sister of Ninurta (whose mother was Ninmah).

Here, then, in probable chronological order, is the picture that emerges from the nine kings of Kish, Lagash and Uruk whose demigod parentage has been verified:

Etana: Of same seed as Adapa (= Enki’s)
Meskiaggasher: The god Utu is the father

Enmerkar: The god Utu is the father
Eannatum: Seed of Ninurta, Inanna put him on lap of Ninharsag for breastfeeding

Entemena: Raised on Ninharsag’s breastmilk

Mesalim: "Beloved son" of Ninharsag

Lugalbanda: Goddess Inanna his mother

Gilgamesh: Goddess Ninsun is his mother

Lugalzagesi: Goddess Nisaba his mother

These one-two-three punches reveal the significant post-Diluvial double shift in the affairs of gods and demigods: First, the ‘Founding Fathers’ progenitors who had come from Nibiru are replaced by the Earthborn generations.

Then, through a stage involving the ‘Sacred. Breastmilk’, the final change takes place: The female "Divine Womb" replaces the earlier male "Fecund Seed" and "Pure Semen."

It is important to understand these changes, for they had long-term consequences.

When the role of parenting demigods was taken over by the Earthborn gods and goddesses, was it just a matter of nature (i.e., getting old) taking its course, or did genealogical succession - through demigods - become more vital for those born on Earth because their life cycles were shortened by Earth, not Nibiru, being their home planet?

The records show that the Anunnaki did realize that those who had come and stayed on Earth (Enki, Enlil, Ninmah) aged faster than those who stayed back on Nibiru; and that those who were born on Earth aged even faster. The changes from life on Nibiru to life on Earth apparently affected not only the longevity of the gods (and demigods), but also their physique, making them less giant-like as time went on.

And then - we now know from advances in genetics - the switch of parenthood from the ‘Fecund’ Seed of the males to the female "Divine Womb" meant that the demigods from then on inherited both the general DNA as well as the specific Mitochondrial DNA of the female goddess.

These were changes whose significance will emerge as we follow the saga of gods and demigods to its concluding mystery.

In the biblical context, the crucial change in the realm of demigods from pre-Diluvial times can be summed up by us in a simple statement: Before, the sons of the gods,

"chose whichever they wanted from among the daughters of Man."

Now the daughters of gods chose whichever they wanted from the sons of Men.

The role of the goddesses in all that was epitomized by Sitar’s six words. Where the mother was the deity, describing her as ‘spouse’ of the male no longer held true: It was the male father who was chosen to be the companion of the goddess.

It was Inanna who said,

"Come Gilgamesh, be thou my lover".

And with that, the Era of the Goddess had dawned.

* * *

Uruk’s heroic age of Enmerkar, Lugalbanda and Gilgamesh petered out after the death of Gilgamesh.

His son Ur.lugal and then grandson Utu. kalamma reigned a combined 45 years, and were followed by five more kings with a total throneship of 95 years. The King List deemed only one of them, Mes.he, worthy of an extra word - noting that he was "a smith."

All in all, according to the King List,

"12 kings reigned (in Uruk) for 2,310 years; its kingship was carried to Ur."

The long reigns of the dynasties of what is now termed by scholars ‘Kish I’ and ‘Uruk I’ are recalled for their progress and stability, but not necessarily as peaceful times.

On the national arena, as cities expanded to city-state size, disputes over boundaries, arable land, and water resources erupted into armed clashes. On the international stage, the hopes placed on the Inanna/Dumuzi union were dashed by Dumuzi’s death and the ferocious war launched by Inanna against the accused Marduk. Of all the gods involved, the death of Dumuzi placed a tremendous emotional burden on Inanna; so much so that the ensuing events even led to her own death!

The tale is told in a text called Inannas Descent to the Lower World (misleadingly titled by scholars Inanna’s Descent to the Netherworld). It tells how Inanna, following the death of Dumuzi, went to the ‘Lower World’ domain of her sister Ereshkigal.

The visit aroused Ereshkigal’s suspicions, for not only did Inanna come uninvited, she also cames to meet the god Nergal, her sister’s spouse. So on Ereshkigal’s orders Inanna was seized, killed with death rays, and her dead body was hung as a carcass...

When Inanna’s handmaiden, who stayed back in Uruk, raised an alarm, the only one who could help was Enki.

He fashioned two clay androids who could withstand the death rays, and activated them by giving one the Food of Life and the other the Water of Life. When they retrieved Inanna’s lifeless body, "upon the corpse they directed the Pulser and the Emitter"; they sprinkled on her body the Water of Life and gave her the Plant of Life’, "and Inanna arose."

Scholars have speculated that Inanna went to the Lower World to find Dumuzi’s body; but in fact Inanna knew where the body was, because she had ordered for it to be mummified and preserved.

She went, I have suggested in Divine Encounters, to seek from Nergal the fulfillment of a custom known from the Bible that required a brother (as Nergal was of Dumuzi) to sleep with the widow in order to obtain a son who will carry on the dead man’s name; and Ereshkigal would have none of that.

Without doubt, these experiences profoundly affected Inanna’s behavior and future actions; one of the notorious changes was the introduction by Inanna of the ‘Sacred Marriage’ rite, whereby a man of her choice (as often as not the king) had to spend with her the night on the anniversary of her unfulfilled wedding with Dumuzi; often, the man was found dead in the morning.

Thus, the transfer of the central capital to Ur was an attempt to gain respite by shifting responsibilities to Nannar/Sin - Ninurta’s younger brother and Inanna’s father.

* * *

Ur (pronounced ‘Oor’) was a new post-Diluvial city established as a ‘cult center’ for Enlil’s son Nanna/Nannar (= ‘The Bright One’, an allusion to his celestial counterpart, the Moon).

It was destined to play a major role in the affairs of gods and men, and its tale crossed paths with the biblical Abraham; but that was yet to take place when Ur would serve as Sumer’s national capital for the third time. In the short span of what is called the ‘Ur I’ period, immediately following ‘Uruk I’, Ur - according to the King List - had four kings who reigned a total of 177 years; two of them are distinguished by their names - Mes.Anne.pada and Mes.Kiag.nanna.

Though Ur attained its most glorious - and tragic - time later on, in what is termed the ‘Ur III’ period, the archaeological evidence shows that the nearly two centuries of ‘Ur I’ were also times of high culture and great artistic and technological advancement.

We know not whether it was cut short by mounting pressures on Sumer’s borders by increasingly aggressive migrants, or by internal problems; the King List itself suggests that some turbulent events had taken place, causing the record- keepers to provide five (not four) royal names, amend one of them, and confuse reign lengths.

Whatever the troubling events might have been, the record shows that the national capital was abruptly moved from Ur to a minor city called Awan, and then in quick succession to cities called Hamazi and Adab, back (for a second time each) to Kish, Uruk, and Ur, shifted to cities called Mari and Akshak, then back again to Kish (III and IV) -  all within a span of about two centuries.

Then, for the third time, the gods returned central kingship to Uruk, appointing as its king a strongman named Lugal.zagesi. His mother, it will be recalled, was the goddess Nisaba, an aunt of Inanna, which (presumably) should have been enough to assure Inanna’s blessing.

His first priority was to restore order among the quarreling and warring city-states, not refraining from use of his own troops to remove troublesome rulers. One of the cities subjected to punitive action by Lugal.zagesi was Umma - a city that served as cult center’ for Shara, Inanna’s son...

So Lugalzagesi was gone soon after that, and the next King of Kings was a man of Inanna’s own choice - a man who answered her call,

"Come, be thou my lover!"

After all the millennia of gods in charge, a goddess was now in full command.
 

‘HERO’ BY ANY NAME

Two of the names of Ur I - Mes.anne.pada and Mes.kiag.nanna - are noteworthy because, as that of Uruk’s Mes.he (He = ‘Fullness/ Plenty’), they have as a prefix the syllable-word Mes that we have encountered before - in Mes.Kiag.gasher, the very first king of Kish whose father was the god Utu, and in the later king of Kish, Mes .Alim (Alim = ‘Ram’), who claimed to have been the "beloved son" of Ninharsag.

This raises the question: Did Mes as a prefix (or Mesh a suffix, as in Gilgamesh) identify the person as a demigod? Apparently so, because the term Mes in fact meant ‘Hero’ in Sumerian - the very meaning of the Hebrew term Gibbor used in Genesis 6 to define the demigods!

Such a conclusion is supported by the fact that an Akkadian text catalogued BM 56488 concerning a certain temple contains the statement:

Bit sha dMesannepada ipushu Temple which divine Mesannepada built Nanna laquit ziri ultalpit Nannar, the seed giver, destroyed - a statement that both assigns the determinative ‘divine’ to Mesannepada, and, by referring to the god Nannar/Sin as "the seed giver," indicates which god was the procreator of this demigod.

One must also wonder, in view of other meaning similarities that we have already mentioned, whether the Sumerian Mes and the Egyptian Mes/Mses as in Thothmes or Ramses (meaning "issue of" in Pharaonic claims of divine parentage) do not stem from some common early source.

Our conclusion that royal Sumerian names starting (or ending) with Mes indicate demigod status will serve as a clue to unlock varied enigmas.
 

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