The Stairway to Heaven

In the Days before the Deluge

I understand the enigmatic words in the stone carvings from the days before the Deluge. So had stated, in a self-laudatory inscription, the Assyrian king Ashurbanipal. Indeed, throughout the diversified literature of ancient Mesopotamia, there were scattered references to a deluge that had swept over Earth.

Could it then be, scholars wondered as they came upon such references, that the detailed biblical tale of the Deluge was not a myth or allegory, but the record of an actual event—an event remembered not by the Hebrews
lone?

Moreover, even the single sentence in Ashurbanipal's inscription was full of scientific dynamite. He not only confirmed that there had been a Deluge; he stated that his tutoring by the God of Scribes included the understanding of pre-Diluvial inscriptions, "the enigmatic words in the stone carvings from the days before the Deluge." It could only mean that even before the Deluge there had been scribes and stone carvers, languages and writing— that there had been a civilization in the remote days before the Deluge!

It was traumatic enough to have realized that the roots of our modern western civilization go back not to Greece and Judea of the first millennium B.C., and not to Assyria and Babylonia of the second millennium B.C., and not even Egypt of the third millennium B.C. —but to Sumer of the fourth millennium B.C. Now, scientific credibility had to be stretched even farther back, to what even the Sumerians considered "the olden days" —to an enigmatic era "before the Deluge."

Yet, all these shocking revelations should have been old news to anyone who had cared to read the Old Testament's words for what they actually said: that after Earth and the Asteroid Belt (the Raki'a or Heaven of Genesis) had been created, and Earth had taken shape, and life evolved, and "the Adam" created—Man was placed in the Orchard that was in Eden.

But through the machinations of a brilliant "Serpent" who dared call the bluff of God, Adam and his female companion Eve acquired certain knowing which they were not supposed to possess. Thereupon, the Lord— speaking to unnamed colleagues—grew concerned that Man, "having become as one of us." might also help himself to the Tree of Life, "and eat, and live forever."

So He drove out the Adam;

And he 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.

Thus was Adam expelled from the wonderful orchard which the Lord had planted in Eden, from then on to "eat the herbs of the field" and obtain his sustenance "by the sweat of thy face." And

"Adam knew Eve his wife and she conceived and bore Cain... and she bore again, his brother, Abel; and Abel was a keeper of sheep, and Cain was a tiller of the land."

The biblical claim of a pre-Diluvial civilization then proceeds along two lines, beginning with the line of Cain. Having murdered Abel—there is a hint of homosexuality as the cause—Cain was expelled farther east, to the "Land of Migrations." There his wife bore him Enoch—a name meaning "Foundation"; and the Bible explains that Cain "was building a city" when Enoch was born, "so he named the city Enoch,' as a namesake of his son Enoch." (The application of the same name to a person and the city associated with him was a custom that prevailed throughout the history of the ancient Near East.)

The line of Cain continued through Irad, Mechuyah-el, Metusha-el and Lamech. The first son of Lamech was Jabal—a name which in the original Hebrew (Yuval) means "The Lute Player." As the Book of Genesis explains, "Jabal was the ancestor of all such as play the harp and the lyre." A second son of Cain, Tubal-Cain, could "sharpen all cutters of copper and iron." What became of these capable people in the eastern Lands of Migration, we are no longer told; for the Old Testament, considering the line of Cain to be accursed, lost all interest in tracking further their genealogies and fate.

Instead, the Book of Genesis (in Chapter V) turns back to Adam and to his third son Seth. Adam, we are told, was 130 years old when Seth was born, and lived another 800 years for a total of 930 years. Seth, who fathered Enosh at age 105, lived to be 912. Enosh begot Cainan at age 90, and died at age 905. Cainan lived to the ripe age of 910; his son Mahalal-el was 895 years old when he died; and his son, Jared, passed on at age 962.

For all these pre-Diluvial patriarchs, the Book of Genesis provides the bare biographical information: who was their father, when their male heir was born, and (after "giving birth to other sons and daughters") when they died. But when the next patriarch is listed, he gets special treatment:

And Jared lived a hundred and sixty-two years, and begot Enoch...
And Enoch lived sixty-five years, and begot Methuselah.
And Enoch walked with the Lord, after he had begotten Methusaleh,
for three hundred years; and he begot (other) sons and daughters. And all the days of Enoch were three hundred and sixty and five years.
And here comes the explanation—an astounding explanation—of why Enoch was singled out for so much attention and biographical detail: Enoch did not die!
For Enoch had walked with the Lord, and was gone; for the Lord had taken him away.

Methusaleh lived the longest—969 years—and was succeeded by Lamech. Lantech (who lived to be 777 years) begot Noah—the hero of the Deluge. Here too there is a brief biographical-historical note: Lamech had so named his son, we are informed, because Mankind was undergoing at that time great sufferings, and the earth was barren and unproductive. In naming his son Noah ("Respite"), Lamech expressed the hope that

"This one shall bring us respite of our toil and frustrations of the land which the Lord had cursed."

And so, through ten generations of pre-Diluvial patriarchs blessed with what scholars call "legendary" life spans, the biblical narrative reaches the momentous events of the Deluge.

The Deluge is presented in the Book of Genesis as the opportunity seized by the Lord "to destroy the Man whom I had created from the face of the Earth." The ancient authors found it necessary to provide an explanation for such a far-reaching decision. It had to do, we are told, with Man's sexual perversions; specifically, with the sexual relations between "the daughters of Man" and "the sons of the Gods."

In spite of the monotheistic endeavors of the compilers and editors of the Book of Genesis, struggling to proclaim faith in a sole deity in a world that in those days believed in many Gods, there remain numerous slip-ups where the biblical narrative speaks of Gods in the plural. The very term for "deity," (when the Lord is not specifically named as Yahweh), is not the singular El but the plural Elohim. When the idea of creating Adam occurs, the narrative adopts the plural language:

" And Elohim (= the deities) said: 'Let us make Man in our image and after our Likeness."

And when the incident with the Fruit of Knowing had occurred, Elohim again spoke in the plural to unnamed colleagues.

Now, it transpires from four enigmatic verses of Genesis VI that set the stage for the Deluge, that not only were there deities in the plural, but that they even had sons (in the plural). These sons upset the Lord by having sex with the daughters of Man, compounding their sins by having children or demi-Gods born from this illicit lovemaking.

And it came to pass When the Earthlings began to multiply upon the Earth, and daughters were born unto them—
That the sons of the Gods saw the daughters of Adam, that they were good; And they took them for wives, of all which they chose.
And the Oletusmake.swffex770,325further:
The Nefilim were upon the Earth in those days and thereafter too;
Those sons of the Gods who cohabited with the daughters of the Adam,
and they bore children unto them.
They were the Mighty Ones of Eternity, the People of the Shetn.

Nefilim—traditionally translated "giants"—literally means "Those Who Were Cast Upon" the earth. They were the "Sons of the Gods"—"the people of the Shem," the People of the Rocketships.

We are back to Sumer and the DIN.GIR, the "Righteous Ones of the Rocket Ships." Let us then pick up the Sumerian record where we left off—450,000 years ago.

It was some 450,000 years ago, the Sumerian texts claim, that astronauts from Marduk came to Earth in search of gold. Not for jewelry, but for some pressing need affecting survival on the Twelfth Planet.

The first landing party numbered fifty astronauts; they were called Anunnaki—"Those of Heaven Who Are on Earth." They splashed down in the Arabian Sea, and made their way to the head of the Persian Gulf, establishing there their first Earth Station E.RI.DU—"Home in Faraway Built." Their commander was a brilliant scientist and engineer who loved to sail the seas, whose hobby was fishing. He was called E.A—"He Whose House Is Water," and was depicted as the prototype Aquarius; but having led the landing on Earth, he was given the title EN.KI—"Lord Earth." Like all the Sumerian Gods, his distinguishing feature was the horned headdress (Fig. 51).

Fig.51

The original plan, it appears, was to extract the gold from the seawaters; but the plan proved unsatisfactory. The only alternative was to do it the hard way: to mine ores in southeastern Africa, haul them by ship to Mesopotamia, and there smelt and refine them. The refined gold ingots were then sent aloft in Shuttlecraft, to an Earth-orbiting craft. There they awaited the periodic arrival of the Mother Spaceship, which took the precious metal back home.

To make this possible, more Anunnaki were landed on Earth, until their number reached 600; another 300 serviced the Shuttlecraft and orbiting station. A Spaceport was built at Sippar ("Bird Town") in Mesopotamia, on a site aligned with the Near East's most conspicuous landmark—the peaks of Ararat. Other settlements with various functions—such as the smelting and refining center of Bad-Tibira, a medical center named Shuruppak—

were laid out to form an arrow-like Landing Corridor. In the exact center, NIBRU.KI—"The Crossing Place on Earth" (Nippur in Akkadian)—was established as the Mission Control Center.

The commander of this expanded enterprise on Planet Earth was EN.LIL—"Lord of the Command." In the early Sumerian pictographic writing, Enid's name and his Mission Control Center were depicted as a complex of structures with tall antennas and wide radar screens (Fig. 52).

Fig. 52

Both Ea/Enki and Enlil were sons of the then ruler on the Twelfth Planet, AN (Akkadian Anu), whose name meant "He of the Heavens" and was written pictographically as a star Ea was the firstborn; but because Enlil was born to Anu by another wife who was also his half-sister, Enlil and not Ea was the heir to the throne. Now Enlil was sent to Earth, and took over the command from Ea, the so-called Lord Earth.

Matters were further complicated by the dispatch to Earth as Chief Medical Officer of NIN.HUR.SAG ("Lady of the Mountainpeak"), a half-sister of both Ea and Enlil—enticing both brothers to seek her favors; for by the same rules of succession, a son to one of them by her would inherit the throne. The lingering resentment on Ea's part, compounded by the growing competi-tion between the brothers, eventually spilled off to their offspring and was the underlying cause of many events that followed.

As the millennia passed on Earth —though to the Anunnaki each 3,600 years were but one year of their own life cycles —these rank-and-file astronauts began to grumble and complain. Was it indeed their task as spacemen to dig for ores deep inside dark, dusty, hot mines? Ea—perhaps to avoid friction with his brother—spent more and more time in south-eastern Africa, away from Mesopotamia. The Anunnaki who toiled in the mines addressed their complaints to him; together they talked over their mutual dissatisfactions.

Then, one day, as Enlil arrived in the mining area for a tour of inspection, the signal was given. A mutiny was declared. The Anunnaki left the mines, put their tools on fire, marched on Enlil's residence and encircled it, shouting: "No more!"

Enlil contacted Anu and offered to resign his command and return to the home planet. Anu came down to Earth. A court-martial was held. Enlil demanded that the instigator of the mutiny be put to death. The Anunnaki, all as one, refused to divulge his identity. Hearing the evidence, Anu concluded that the work was indeed too harsh. Was the gold mining then to be discontinued?

Ea then offered a solution. In southeastern Africa, he said, there roamed a being that could be trained to perform some of the mining tasks—if only the "mark of the Anunnaki" could be implanted upon it. He was talking of the Apemen and Apewomen, who had evolved on Earth—but were still far behind the evolutionary level attained by the inhabitants of the Twelfth Planet. After much deliberation, Ea was given the go-ahead: "Create a Lulu," a "primitive worker," he was told; "let him bear the yoke of the Anunnaki."

Ninhursag, the chief medical officer, was to assist him. There was much trial and error until the right procedure was perfected. Extracting the egg of Apewoman, Ea and Ninhursag fertilized it with the sperm of a young astronaut. Then they reimplanted the fertilized egg not in the womb of the Apewoman, but in the womb of a female astronaut. Finally, the "Perfect Model" was achieved, and Ninhursag shouted with joy. "I have created— my hands have made it!" She held up for all to see the first Homo sapiens (Fig. 53)—the Earth's first-ever test-tube baby.

Fig, 53

But like any hybrid, the Earthling could not procreate on his own. To obtain more primitive workers, Apewomen eggs were extracted, fertilized, and reimplanted in the wombs of "birth Goddesses"—fourteen at a time: seven to be born males, seven females. As the Earthlings began to take over mining work in southeastern Africa, the Anunnaki who toiled in Mesopotamia grew jealous: they too clamored for primitive workers. Over the objections of Ea, forcibly, Enlil seized some of the Earthlings and brought them to the E.DIN—the "Abode Of The Righteous Ones" in Mesopotamia. The event is recalled in the Bible.

"And the Lord took the Adam, and He placed him in the garden in Eden, to till it and tend it."

All along, the astronauts who had come to Earth were preoccupied with the problem of longevity. Their biological clocks were set for their own planet: the time it took their planet to orbit the Sun once was to them but a single year of their life spans. But in such a single year, Earth orbited the Sun 3,600 times—a span of 3,600 years for Earth-originated life. To maintain their longer cycles on the quick-paced Earth, the astronauts consumed a "Food of Life" and "Water of Life" which were provided from the home planet. At his biological laboratories in Eridu, whose emblem was the sign of the Entwined Serpents (Fig. 54), Ea tried to unravel the secrets of life, reproduction, death.

Fig. 54

Why did the children born to the astronauts on Earth age so much faster than their parents? Why did Apemen live such short lives? Why did the hybrid Homo sapiens live much longer than Apeman, but only brief lives compared to the visitors to Earth? Was it environment, or inherent genetic traits?

Conducting further experiments in genetic manipulation on the hybrids, and using his own sperm, Ea came up with a new "perfect model" of Earthling. Adapa, as Ea had named him, had greater intelligence; he acquired the all-important ability to procreate, but not the longevity of the astronauts;

With wide understanding
he had perfected him...

To him he had given Knowing;

Lasting Life him he did not give.

Thus were Adam and Eve of the Book of Genesis given the gift or fruit not only of Knowledge but also of Knowing—the biblical Hebrew term for intercourse for the purpose of having offspring. We find this "biblical" tale illustrated in an archaic Sumerian drawing (Fig. 55).

Fig. 55

Enlil was outraged on discovering what Ea had done. It was never intended that Man should be able to procreate like the Gods. What next, he asked—would Ea also achieve for Man an everlasting life span? On the home planet, Anu too was perturbed.

"Rising from his throne, he ordered: 'Let them fetch Adapa hither!'"

Afraid that his perfected human would be destroyed at the Celestial Abode, Ea instructed him to avoid the food and water that would be offered to him, for they would contain poison;

"He gave him this advice:
Adapa,

Thou art going before Anu, the Ruler.

The road to Heaven wilt thou take.

When to Heaven thou hast gone up,
and hast approached the gate of Anu,

Tammuz and Gizzida at the gate will be standing...

They will speak to Anu;

Anus benign face they will cause to be shown thee.

As thou standest before Anu,

When they offer thee the Bread of Death,
thou shalt not eat it.

When they offer thee the Water of Death,

thou shalt not drink it...

"Then he made him take the road to Heaven, and to Heaven he went up."

When Anu saw Adapa, he was impressed by his intelligence and the extent to which he had learned from Ea "the plan of Heaven and Earth." "What shall we do about him," he asked his counselors, now that Ea "distinguished him by making a Shem for him"—by letting Adapa travel in a spacecraft from Earth to Marduk?

The decision was to keep Adapa permanently on Marduk. So that he could survive, "the Bread of Life they brought him," and the Water of Life too. But forewarned by Ea, Adapa refused to eat or drink. When his erroneous reasons were discovered, it was too late; his chance to obtain everlasting life was missed.

Adapa was returned to Earth—a trip during which Adapa saw the "awesomeness" of space, "from the horizon of Heaven to the zenith of Heaven." He was ordained as the High Priest of Eridu; he was promised by Anu that henceforth the Goddess of Healing would also attend to the ailments of Mankind. But Mortal's ultimate goal—everlasting life—was no longer his.

From then on, Mankind proliferated. The humans were no longer just slaves in the mines or serfs in the fields. They performed all tasks, built "houses" for the Gods—we call them "temples"—and quickly learned how to cook, dance and play music for them. It was not long before the young Anunnaki, short of female company of their own, took to having sex with the daughters of Man. Since they were all of the same first Seed of Life, and Man was a hybrid created with the genetic "essence" of the Anunnaki, the male astronauts and the female Earthlings discovered that they were biologically compatible; "and children were born unto them."

Enlil viewed these developments with rising apprehension. The original purpose of coming to Earth, the sense of mission, the dedication to the task—were dissipated and gone. The good life seemed to be the main concern of the Anunnaki—and with a race of hybrids to boot!

Nature, as it were, offered Enlil a chance to put a halt to the deteriorating mores and ethics of the Anunnaki. Earth was entering a new ice age, and the pleasant climate was changing. As it got colder, it also became dryer. Rains became less frequent, the river waters sparser. Crops failed, famine spread. Mankind began to undergo great sufferings; daughters hid food from their mothers, mothers ate their young. At the urging of Enlil, the Gods refrained from helping Mankind: Let them starve, let them be decimated, Enlil decreed.

In the "Great Below"—in Antarctica—the Ice Age was also causing changes. From year to year, the ice cap covering the continent at the South Pole grew thicker and thicker. Under the increasing pressure of its weight, friction and heat increased at its bottom. Soon the immense ice cap was floating on a slippery slush of mud. From the orbiting shuttlecraft, an alarm was sounded: the ice cap was becoming unstable; if it should happen to slip off the continent into the ocean—an immense tidal wave would engulf all of Earth!

It was not an idle danger. In the heavens, the Twelfth Planet was orbiting back to the Place of Crossing between Jupiter and Mars. As on previous occasions when it neared Earth, its gravitational pull caused earthquakes and other disturbances upon Earth and in its celestial motions. Now, it was calculated, this gravitational pull could well trigger the slippage of the ice cap, and inundate Earth with a global deluge. From this catastrophe, the astronauts themselves could not be immune.

As preparations were made to assemble all the Anunnaki near the Spaceport, and ready the craft to take them aloft before the tidal wave struck, ruses were employed to keep the approaching catastrophe a secret from Mankind. Fearing that the Spaceport would be mobbed, all the Gods were made to swear to secrecy. And as to Mankind, Enlil said—Let them perish; let the seed of Earthling be wiped off the face of Earth.

In Shuruppak, the city under the lordship of Ninhursag, relations between Man and Gods had gone the farthest. There, for the first time ever, a man was elevated to the status of king. As the sufferings of Mankind increased, ZI.U.SUD.RA (as the Sumerians called him) pleaded for the help of Ea. From time to time, Ea and his seafarers clandestinely brought Ziusudra and his people a load of fish. But now the question involved the very destiny of Mankind. Shall all the handiwork of Ea and Ninhursag perish "and turn to clay" as Enlil wished—or should the Seed of Mankind be preserved?

Acting on his own, but mindful of his oath, Ea saw in Ziusudra the chance to save Mankind. The next time Ziusudra came to pray and plead in the temple, Ea began to whisper from behind a screen. Pretending to talk to himself, Ea gave Ziusudra urgent instructions:

Tear down the house, build a ship!
Give up possessions, seek thou life!
Foreswear belongings, keep soul alive!
Aboard ship take thou the seed of all living things.
That ship thou shalt build;
Her dimensions shall be to measure.

The ship was to be a submersible vessel, a "submarine" that could withstand the avalanche of water. The Sumerian texts contain the dimensions and other structural instructions for the various decks and compartments in such detail that it is possible to draw the ship, as was done by Paul Haupt (Fig. 56). Ea also provided Ziusudra with a navigator, instructing him to direct the vessel toward the "Mount of Salvation," Mount Ararat; as the highest range in the Near East, its peaks would be the first to emerge from under the waters.

Fig. 56

The Deluge came as expected. "Gathering speed as it blew" from the south, "submerging the mountains, overtaking the people like a battle." Viewing the catastrophe from above, as they orbited Earth in their craft, the Anunnaki and their leaders realized how much they had fallen in love with Earth and with Mankind.

"Ninhursag wept... the Gods wept with her for the land.... The Anunnaki, all humbled, sit and weep" as they huddled, cold and hungry, in their Shuttlecraft.

When the waters subsided and the Anunnaki began to land on Ararat, they were elated to discover that the Seed of Mankind was saved. But as Enlil too arrived, he was furious to see that "a living soul had escaped." It took the pleadings of the Anunnaki and the persuasion of Ea, to bring him around to their point of view—that if Earth was to be resettled, the services of Man were indispensable.

And so it was, that the sons of Ziusudra and their families were sent out to settle the mountain ranges flanking the plain of the two rivers, to await the time when the plain was dry enough to inhabit. As to Ziusudra, the Anunnaki,

Life like that of a God they gave him;

Breath eternal, like a God, they granted him.

This they achieved by exchanging his "Breath of Earth" with the "Breath of Heaven." Then they took Ziusudra, "the preserver of the seed of Mankind," and his wife, to "reside in the faraway place"—

In the Land of the Crossing,

The Land Tilmun,

The place where Utu rises,

They caused him to dwell.

It is evident by now that the Sumerian tales of the Gods of Heaven and Earth, of the Creation of Man and of the Deluge, were the fountainhead from which the other nations of the ancient Near East drew their knowledge, beliefs and "myths." We have seen how the Egyptian beliefs matched the Sumerian ones, how their first sacred city was named after An, how the Ben-Ben resembled the Sumerian GIR, and so on.

It is also generally accepted by now, that the biblical tales of the Creation and of the events leading to the Deluge are condensed Hebrew versions of the Sumerian traditions. The biblical hero of the Deluge, Noah, was the equivalent of the Sumerian Ziusudra (who was called Utnapishtim in the Akkadian versions).

But while the Sumerians asserted that the hero of the Deluge was made immortal, no such claim is made in the Bible for Noah. The immortalization of Enoch is also given short shrift, quite unlike the detailed Sumerian tale of Adapa or other texts dealing with other Ascents. But this abrupt biblical attitude could not prevent the spread, over the millennia, of legends dealing with the biblical heroes and their sojourn in, or return to, Paradise.

According to very ancient legends, which survived in a number of versions stemming from a composition almost 2,000 years old called The Book of Adam and Eve, Adam fell sick after he was 930 years old. Seeing his father "sick and in pain," his son Seth volunteered to go to "the nearest gate of Paradise... and lament and make entreaty to God; perchance He will hearken to me and send His angel to bring me the fruit, for which thou hast longed"—the fruit of the Tree of Life.

But Adam, accepting his mortal's fate, only wished for the excruciating pains to be relieved. So he asked Eve his wife to take Seth, and together go "to the neighborhood of Paradise"; there to ask not for the Fruit of Life, but only for one drop of the "oil of life" which floweth from the Tree, "to anoint me with it, that I may have rest from these pains."

Having done as Adam asked, Eve and Seth reached the gates of Paradise, and entreated with the Lord. Finally, the angel Michael appeared unto them—only to announce that their request would not be granted. "The time of Adam's life is fulfilled," the angel said; his death was not to be averted or postponed. Six days later, Adam died.

Even the historians of Alexander created a direct link between his miraculous adventures and Adam, the very first man who had dwelt in Paradise, and was proof of its existence and lifegiving powers. The connecting link in the case of Alexander was the unique stone which emitted light: it was said to have been brought out of the Garden of Eden by Adam, then handed down from generation to generation, until it reached the hands of an immortal Pharaoh, who in turn gave it to Alexander.

The plot-of-parallels indeed thickens, as one realizes that there exists an old Jewish legend, whereby the staff with which Moses performed many miracles, including the parting of the waters of the Lake of Reeds, was brought out of the Garden of Eden by Adam. Adam gave it to Enoch; Enoch gave it to his great-grandson Noah, the hero of the Deluge. Then it was handed down through the line of Shem, son of Noah, from generation to generation, until it reached Abraham (the first Hebrew patriarch).

Abraham's great-grandson Joseph brought it with him to Egypt, where he rose to highest rank in the Pharaoh's court. There the staff remained among the treasures of the Egyptian kings; and thus it reached the hands of Moses, who was raised as an Egyptian prince before he escaped into the Sinai peninsula. In one version, the staff was carved out of a single stone; in another, it was made of a branch of the Tree of Life, which grew in the Garden of Eden.

In these interwoven relationships, harkening back to the earliest times, there were also tales linking Moses with Enoch, A Jewish legend, called "The Ascent of Moses," relates that when the Lord summoned Moses at Mount Sinai and charged him to lead the Israelites out of Egypt, Moses resisted the mission for various reasons, including his slow and non-eloquent speech.

Determined to remove his meekness, the Lord decided to show him His throne and "the angels of the Heavens" and the mysteries thereof.

So "God commanded Metatron, the Angel of the Countenance, to conduct Moses to the celestial regions." Terrified, Moses asked Metatron: "Who art thou?"

And the angel (literally: "emissary") of the Lord replied: "I am Enoch, son of Jared, thy ancestor." (Accompanied by the angelic Enoch, Moses soared through the Seven Heavens, and saw Hell and Paradise; then he was returned to Mount Sinai, and accepted his mission.)

Further light on the occurrences concerning Enoch, and his preoccupation with the impending Deluge and its hero, his great-grandson Noah, is shed by yet another ancient book, the Book of Jubilees. It was also known in early times as the Apocalypse of Moses, for it allegedly was written down by Moses at Mount Sinai as an angel dictated to him the histories of days past. (Scholars, though, believe that the work was composed in the second century B.C.)

It follows closely the biblical narratives of the Book of Genesis; yet it provides more detail, such as the names of wives and daughters of the pre-Diluvial patriarchs. It also enlarges upon the events experienced by Mankind in those prehistoric days. The Bible informs us that the father of Enoch was Jared ("Descent"), but not why he was so named. The Book of Jubilees provides the missing information. It says that the parents of Jared so named him,

For in his days the angels of the Lord descended upon Earth—those who
are named The Watchers—that they should instruct the children of men,
that they should do judgment and uprightness upon Earth.

Dividing the eras into "jubilees," the Book of Jubilees further narrates that,

"in the eleventh jubilee Jared took to himself a wife; her name was Baraka ("Lightning Bright"), the daughter of Basujal, a daughter of his father's brother... and she bare him a son and he called his name Enoch. And he (Enoch) was the first among men that are born on Earth who learnt writing and knowledge and wisdom, and who wrote down the signs of heaven according to the order of their months in a book, that men might know the seasons of the year according to the order of their separate months.''

In the twelfth jubilee. Enoch took as wife Edni ("My Eden"), the daughter of Dan-el. She bare him a son whose name was Methuselah. After that. Enoch

"was with the angels of God for six jubilees of years, and they showed him everything which is on Earth and in the Heavens... and he wrote down everything."

But by then, trouble was brewing. The Book of Genesis reports that it was before the Deluge,

"That the sons of the Gods saw the daughters of Man, that they were good, and they took them for wives of all which they chose... and it repented the Lord that He had made Man on Earth... and the Lord said: I will destroy the Man whom I had created from the face of the Earth."

According to the Book of Jubilees, Enoch played some role in this changed attitude by the Lord, for "he testified about the Watchers who had sinned with the daughters of men; he testified against them all." And it was to protect him from the revenge of the sinning Angels of the Lord, that "he was taken from amongst the children of men, and was conducted into the Garden of Eden." Specifically named as one of the four places of God on Earth, it was in the Garden of Eden that Enoch was hidden, and where he wrote down his Testament.

It was after that that Noah, the righteous man singled out to survive the Deluge, was born. His birth, occurring at the troubled times when the "sons of the Gods" were indulging in sex with mortal females, caused a marital crisis in the patriarchal family. As the Book of Enoch tells it, Methuselah "took a wife for his son Lamech, and she became pregnant by him and bore a son."

But when the baby—Noah—was born, things were not as usual:

His body was white as snow and red as the blooming of a rose, and the
hair of his head and his long locks were white as wool, and his eyes were
beautiful.
And when he opened his eyes, he lighted up the whole house like the
sun, and the whole house was very bright.
And thereupon he arose in the hands of the midwife, opened his
mouth, and conversed with the Lord of Righteousness.
Shocked, Lamech ran to his father Methuselah, and said:
I have begotten a strange son, diverse from and unlike Man, and
resembling the sons of the God of Heaven; and 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, in other words, that his wife's pregnancy was induced not by him, but that she was impregnated by one of the angels, Lamech had an idea: Since his grandfather Enoch was staying amongst the Sons of the Gods, why not ask him to get to the bottom of this?

"And now, my father," he said to Methuselah. "I petition thee and implore thee that thou mayest go to Enoch thy father, and learn from him the truth, for his dwelling place is amongst the angels."

Methuselah went as Lamech had asked, and reaching the Divine Abode summoned Enoch, and reported the unusual baby boy. Making some inquiries, Enoch assured Methuselah that Noah was indeed a true son of Lamech; and that his unusual countenance was a sign of things to come: "There shall be a Deluge and great destruction for one year," and only this son, who is to be named Noah ("Respite") and his family shall be saved. These future things, Enoch told his son, "I have read in the heavenly tablets."

The term employed in these ancient, even if ex-biblical scriptures, to denote the "sons of the Gods" involved in the pre-Diluvial shenanigans, is "Watchers." It is the very term Neter ("Watchers") by which the Egyptians called the Gods, and the exact meaning of the name Shumer, their landing place on Earth.

The various ancient books which throw this extra light on the dramatic events in the days before the Deluge, have been preserved in several versions that are all only translations (direct and indirect) of lost Hebrew originals. Yet their authenticity was confirmed with the renowned discoveries in recent decades of the Dead Sea Scrolls, for among the finds were fragments of scrolls which were undoubtedly parts of the Hebrew originals of such "memoirs of the Patriarchs."

Of particular interest to us is a scroll fragment which deals with the unusual birth of Noah, and from which we can learn the original Hebrew term for what has been translated as "Watchers" or "Giants," not only in the ancient versions, but even by modern scholars (as T. H. Gaster, The Dead Sea Scriptures and H. Dupont-Sommer, The Essene Writings from Qumran).

According to these scholars, column II of the scroll fragment begins thus:

Behold, I thought in my heart that the conception was from one of the
Watchers, one of the Holy Ones, and (that the child really belonged) to
the Giants.
And my heart was changed within me because of the child.
Then I, Lamech, hastened and went to Bath-Enosh (my) wife, and I
said to Her:
[I want you to take an oath] by the Most High, by the Lord Supreme,
the King of all the worlds,
the ruler of the Sons of Heaven, that you will tell me in truth
whether...

But as we examine the Hebrew original (Fig. 57) we find that it does not say "Watchers"; it says Nefilim—the very term used in Genesis 6. Thus do all the ancient texts and all the ancient tales confirm each other: The days before the Deluge were the days when,

"The Nefilim were upon the Earth—the Mighty Ones, the People of the Rocketships."

Column II

Fig. 57

In the words of the Sumerian King Lists, "the Deluge has swept over" 120 shars—120 orbits of 3,600 years each—after the first landing on Earth. This places the Deluge at about 13,000 years ago. It is exactly the time when the last ice age ended abruptly, when agriculture began. It was followed 3,600 years later by the New Stone Age (as scholars call it), the age of pottery. Then, 3,600 years later, Civilization all at once blossomed out—in the "plain between the rivers," in Shumer.

"And the whole Earth was of one language and of one kind of things," the Book of Genesis says; but soon after the people had established themselves in the Land of Shin'ar (Sumer), and built dwellings of fired clay bricks, they conspired to "build a city, and a Tower the top of which can reach unto Heaven."

The Sumerian texts from which this biblical tale was extracted have not yet been found; but we do come across allusions to the event in various Sumerian tales. What emerges is an apparent effort on the part of Ea to enlist Mankind in gaining control over the space facilities of the Nefilim— one more incident in the continuing feud between Ea and Enlil, which by then had spilled over to their offspring. As a result of the incident, the Bible tells us, the Lord and his unnamed colleagues decided to disperse Mankind and "confuse" its languages—give it diverse and separate civilizations.

The deliberations of the Gods in the era following the Deluge are mentioned in various Sumerian texts. The one called the Epic of Etana states:

The Great Anunnaki who decree the fate sat exchanging their counsels regarding the Earth. They who created the four regions, who set up the settlements, who oversaw the land, were too lofty for Mankind.

The decision to establish on Earth four Regions was thus coupled with a decision to install intermediaries (priest-kings) between the Gods and Mankind; so "kingship was again lowered to Earth from Heaven."

In an effort—which proved futile—to end or abate the feud between the Enlil and Ea families, lots were drawn between the Gods to determine who would have dominion over which of the Regions. As a result, Asia and Europe were assigned to Enlil and his offspring; to Ea, Africa was given.

The First Region of civilization was Mesopotamia and the lands bordering upon it. The mountain-lands where agriculture and settled life began, the lands that came to be known as Elam, Persia, Assyria—were given to Enlil's son NIN.UR.TA, his rightful heir and "Foremost Warrior." Some Sumerian texts have been found dealing with Ninurta's heroic efforts to dam the mountain passes and assure the survival of his human subjects in the harsh times that had followed the Deluge.

When the layers of mud that had covered the Plain between the Two Rivers dried up sufficiently to permit resettlement, Shumer and the lands that stretched therefrom westward to the Mediterranean were put under the charge of Enlil's son NAN.NAR (Sin in Akkadian). A benevolent God, he supervised the reconstruction of Sumer, rebuilding pre-Diluvial cities at their original sites and establishing new cities.

Among the latter was his favorite capital Ur, the birthplace of Abraham. His depictions included the crescent symbol of the Moon, which was his celestial "counterpart" (Fig. 58). To Enlil's youngest son, ISH.KUR (whom the Akkadians called Adad), were given the northwestern lands, Asia Minor and the Mediterranean islands from where civilization—"Kingship"—eventually spread to Greece. Like Zeus in later Greece, Adad was depicted riding a bull and holding a forked lightning.

Fig. 58

THE GodS OF HEAVEN AND EARTH

1. ENLIL 2. NINURTA 3. NANNAR/Sin 4. ISHKUR/Adad 5. NERGAL 6. GIBIL

7. MARDUK

IRNINI/Ishtar as Great Lady (8), Enchantress (9), Warrior (10), Pilot (11)

Ea too divided the Second Region, Africa, among his sons. It is known that a son named NER.GAL lorded over the southernmost parts of Africa. A son named GI.BIL learned from his father the arts of mining and metallurgy, and took over control of the African gold mines. A third son— Ea's favorite—was named by him after the home planet MARDUK, and was taught by Ea all knowledge of sciences and astronomy. (Circa 2000 B.C., Marduk usurped the Lordship of Earth and was declared Supreme God of Babylon and of "the Four Quarters of the Earth.") And, as we have seen, a son whose Egyptian name was Ra presided over the core civilization of this Region, the civilization of the Nile Valley.

The Third Region, as was discovered only some fifty years ago, was in the subcontinent of India. There too, a great civilization arose in antiquity, some 1,000 years after the Sumerian one. It is called the Indus Valley Civilization, and its center was a royal city unearthed at a site called Harappa. Its people paid homage not to a God but to a Goddess, depicting her in clay figurines as an enticing female, adorned with necklaces, her breasts enhanced by straps which crossed her body.

Because the script of the Indus Civilization is still undeciphered, no one knows what the Harappans called their Goddess, or who exactly she was. It is our conclusion, however, that she was the daughter of Sin, whom the Sumerians called IR.NI.NI ("The Strong, Sweetsmelling Lady") and the Akkadians called Ishtar. Sumerian texts tell of her dominion in a far land named Aratta—a land of grain crops and granaries as Harappa was— whereto she made flying trips, attired as a pilot.

It was in need of a Spaceport that the Fourth Region was set aside by the Great Anunnaki—a Region not for Mankind, but for their own exclusive use. All their space facilities from the time they had landed on Earth—the Spaceport at Sippar, the Mission Control Center at Mippur—were wiped out by the Deluge. The low-lying Mesopotamian plain was still too muddy for millennia to enable the rebuilding there of these vital installations. Another place —more elevated yet suitable, secluded but accessible —had to be found for the Spaceport and its auxiliary installations. It was to be a "sacred zone"—a restricted area, accessible only by permission. It was called in Sumerian TIL.MUN—literally, "Land of the Missiles."

In charge of this post-Diluvial Spaceport they put the son of Sin (and thus a grandson of Enlil), a twin brother of Irnini/Ishtar. His name was UTU ("The Bright One")—Shamash in Akkadian. It was he who ably carried out Operation Deluge—the evacuation out of Sippar. He was the chief of the Spacemen based on Earth, the "Eagles"; and he proudly wore his Eagle-uniform on formal occasions (Fig. 59).

Fig. 59

In the days before the Deluge, traditions held, a few chosen mortals had been taken aloft from the Spaceport:

Adapa, who missed his chance

Enmeduranki, whom the Gods Shamash and Adad transported to the Celestial Abode, to be initiated in priestly secrets (and then returned to Earth)

Then there was Ziusudra ("His Life-Days Prolonged"), hero of the Deluge, who was taken with his wife to live in Tilmun

In post-Diluvial times, Sumerian records stated,

Etana—an early ruler of Kish—was taken aloft in a Shem to the Abode of the Gods, there to be granted the Plant of Rejuvenation and Birthgiving (but he was too frightened to complete the journey)

Pharaoh Thothmes III claimed in his inscriptions that the God Ra had taken him aloft, given him a tour of the heavens, and returned him to Earth:

He opened for me the doors of Heaven,

He spread open for me the portals of its horizon.

I flew up to the sky as a divine Falcon...

That I might see his mysterious ways in heaven...

I was made full with the understanding of the Gods.

In the later memories of Mankind, the Shem was cherished as an obelisk, and the rocketship saluted by "Eagles" gave way to a sacred Tree of Life (Fig. 60). But in Sumer, where the Gods were a present reality—as in Egypt when the first Pharaohs had reigned—Tilmun, the "Land of the Missiles," was a real place: a place where Man could find Immortality.

Fig. 60

And there, in Sumer, they recorded the tale of a man who—uninvited by the Gods—set out to reverse his fate nevertheless.

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