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Re: Living Sumer: The Historical Evolution of Yahweh
Part 5
Some Snake You Are
As the most significant predators of primates for millions of years, snakes have certainly made a lasting imprint in the collective memory of humanity. They evoke such fear, naked terror, and potent awe that kings from the dawn of humanity have always appropriated the images of snake or serpent, or dragon as their very own in order to strike fear in the hearts of enemies and inspire their own armies in the fields of battle.
As did kings, so did their gods, and the Sumerian priesthood made the most of this potent symbolism in their written religious body. Again, a first in the recorded history of humanity.
The serpents could shed, replace their skin, and apparently become young and regenerate new life, so they possess great knowledge and wisdom, with control over death and life—of immortality—itself. Unfortunately, the same great wisdom and knowledge could be employed in the use of the most cunning trickeries out there when there is a prey in sight or the practice serves their best interest.
The behaviour of snakes and their facial features—e.g. the unblinking, lidless eyes—imply supreme intelligence, that they lived by reason and not instinct, and yet their thought-processes were as alien to humans as their ways of movement.
Like other cultures, the Sumerians appeared to take prominently to the serpent in all its manifestations: symbol of fertility, tempter, trickster, wisdom, arcane knowledge, power over life and death, the secrets to the universe itself, and of course as a fierce, fiery, and fearsome incarnation in the form of a fire-breathing dragon, a favorite war creation of the gods. Kings and gods portray themselves as snakes, serpents, or dragons.
The Sumerian priesthood also appeared to speculate freely on the nature of snakes. They seemed to entertain the idea that snakes started life as some other reptiles possessed of hands and feet and capable of upright posture. How they lost it then? The tale of Dumuzi/Tammuz suggests the Sumerian priests assumed the snake lost its hands and feet for long-term benefit, enabling it to slither and escape away from grave threat, while the Hebrews took the exact counter position: it was by incurring some god’s wrath and earning curse for it.
As seen previously, Dumuzi/Tammuz the husband of Inanna is one of such gods who bore the epithet of some great serpent. Others who did likewise include Enki/Ea, An, Ningishzida/Gishzida, Enlil, Marduk, Inanna herself, Nergal who ruled Hell like Satan, Saidu the Hunter, and Shamhat, that tempter of Enkidu.
Thus the Sumerians portray Enki/Ea and Enlil as the two great serpents who took responsibility in the creation of the minor gods Igigi—posthumously and euphemestically called the first “men” after they were escorted out of the garden of eden never to return to a life of toil and service to the senior gods—as well as in the creation of mankind.
An/Anu the great father serpent god tempted Adapa with the immortality-bestowing bread and water of life so man could take his place among the gods, only to be outdone and undone by the other great serpent Enki/Ea who tricked Adapa not to have anything with the magically-enhanced bread and water or else the man will surely die if he did so, good as a line for line source for the Genesis authors later on though pushing for a different end. Enki/Ea was not about to lose his priest and servant Adapa to that annoying An and his moment of generosity to the detriment of the other gods who would have to go back working the garden of eden themselves.
Yet again, it has to be another snake who would foil Gilgamesh of his painstaking labors to acquire the plant of life to revive his loyal friend Enkidu, trapped in the hell of the underworld. After Gilgamesh managed to have the plant of life, the wily snake snatched it from him in order to ensure immortality for itself. Evidently, the serpents have it all against the labors of humans and their ultimate destiny in the universe.
Before all this, An/Anu and Enki/Ea first squared in the matter of knowledge that An specifically forbade the humans to have: this time, it might be recalled, it was Enki/Ea who defied the divine mandate and taught his favorite servant/priest Adapa exactly this forbidden knowledge, after he himself endeavored to cover Adapa’s nakedness in order to pass the code of propriety among the gods and start civilization in good order.
Settling the Score: The Theme of Cain and Abel
The first mention of murder in the Genesis involves a jealous Cain slaying his brother Abel first chance he got after Yahweh appeared to favor the taste of Abel’s burnt offering of animals rather than Cain’s bland agricultural sacrifices apparently with zero culinary appeal. The blood of Abel was said to “cry out to god from the ground.” Yahweh then saw fit to condemn Cain to wander in the land of Nod, a name that also means “to wander.” There the blood murderer is said to suffer the fate of constant fear from fellow men conspiring to take his own life. Cain is credited with being the creator of the world’s first city.
In contrast, the Sumerian priesthood seemed to take a liking for intrigue, adorning their mythologies of gods regularly murdering each other for the slightest infraction even before the arrival of man.
Enki/Ea is responsible for a significant number of these divine murders although his actions were portrayed to have just cause, and his last act of murder involves the slaying of the leader of the minor gods who rebelled against their fate slaving in the garden of eden, the blood of the murdered brother god said to be “calling to high heavens.”
The said slain leader of the rebellion also happens to be the chief planter and gardener—agriculturist or farmer—of the garden of eden.
Enki’s solution to the rebellion involves the creation of man to replace the first “men”—the rebelling gods—to be the new workers and caretakers of the garden of eden. Some of Enki’s men creations, like the aforementioned Enkidu, were left abandoned to wander the wilderness to fend for themselves against the ferocious wild beasts and the elements.
When humanity took root and multiplied, the outcasts of respectable city societies who defied existing laws had no resort but to run and wander the wilderness to escape the wrath of law, thus giving the wilderness of eden the reputation as the abode of lawlessness, of brigands and cut-throat criminals, where life is as much a game as the untamed animals who are both predator and prey any time while roaming the place absent of laws. A place where the air of death is a constant companion.
Famously, Gilgamesh had an episode of wandering the eden constantly in fear of meeting death as did his loyal friend Enkidu (see further discussion below) after their battle with Enlil's Cedar Mountain guard.
Enki, like Cain, is credited as the first creator of human city.
To the chagrin of pastoral nomads peopling the wilderness of eden, the Sumerian priests seemed to favor the agriculturists rather than the animal lovers. And distinctly so.
In the “Debate between Sheep and Grain,” a disputative creation myth found among the thousands of Sumerian cuneiform tablets, Lahar the cattle goddess enters into a substantive argument against Ashnan the grain goddess over who brought the most gifts to civilization. Predictably unable to settle the dispute between themselves, Enlil and Enki entered the fray and threw their judgment in favor of Ashnan and his gift of grain and agriculture to the advancement of civilization.
Curiously, history itself bears them out about this subject. Cities emerged when men started gaining enormous surplus in planting and harvesting grains and other useful plants, consigning the previously heralded pastoral nomads and their era to a minor role in the push by humanity to advance forward.
But Abraham would have none of any of this. First he disposes of the criminally inclined gods. He leaves out one god who he imagined to be perfect and passes the murderous impulse to men alone, inventing the story of Cain as the vehicle for this new interpretation. The dual identification of Cain with cities made it doubly worth the relish.
Whereas the Sumerians clearly reasoned that the murderous nature of men merely mirrors the image of their murderous gods, the Hebrews leave this mirror image issue severely ignored and unaddressed in their new religious formulation, inventing the concept of original sin in its place, one that opens a host of other contentious questions to the trained mind.
As Abraham personally saw the increasing rise to prominence of the agriculturist city dwellers and their towering ziggurats to declare their glory, first in Eridu and later in his hometown Ur, he endeavored to correct the plate of injustice served in the nomadic pastoralists’ way, internalizing his wrath at these developments, making it his mission to reverse the eroded status of his kind even if it meant consigning himself to a life of wandering, ironically like the fate of Cain—except that this time Abraham was guilty of murdering the rest of the gods except one—first from taking flight from Ur to escape the wrath of his kinsmen and fellow citizens, and from thence to Haran and finally to Canaan to establish footing for his new vision of religion.
Cherubim, Angels, Loss of Innocence Revisited
Although the Sumerian priestly mythologists missed out on Tolkien’s elves and orcs, they understood well enough that they can’t have gods walking around conducting their affairs with nothing to separate them from their mortal subjects and underlings either in appearance or other aspects.
Not only are they able to sit on thrones with winged sphinxes or other forms of creatures about, they could also ride those creatures bare or chariots attached, if not riding clouds to roam the realms. In times of battle, a run-of-the-mill uninspiring sword or battle ax would simply not cut it: they need special enchanted weapons, and the Sumerian gods and even genii and demons appeared to have a thing with flaming swords or daggers. And why not, they already have flame-billowing dragons around as allies or enemies to contend with, along with a host of mighty creatures like the Leviathan. The supreme gods and their chief enforcers could take on any awe-inspiring mighty beast form like dragons or serpents, or hating the inconvenience, just do away with the physical transformation but retain the wings for swift mobility and maneuverability.
The Sumerians loved their priestly inventions, as did their succeeding Near East spiritual inheritors the Akkadians, Babylonians, the Amorites, the Syrians, Persians, the Egyptians, the Canaanites, to Greece, and still much later Rome.
When the supreme gods are not dispatching their chief military enforcers with marching orders in the battlefield, they have them as personal attendants and bodyguards, watching over their most treasured territories and holiest of possessions. An had Ningishzida/Gishzida and Tammuz/Dumuzi serving him personally, and another personally chosen warrior to guard over his favored cedar trees in the Cedar Mountain. Ezekiel of course had a field day with these concepts, as did the other Genesis authors.
Ningishzida and Dumuzi were the ones who personally ushered in Adapa to the abode of An in that bread and water of life episode which should have given the man immortality, and the two again escorted Adapa out of An’s holy garden of Eden, ensuring that he does not return or any one else does not enter the forbidden holy place.
Ningishzida and Dumuzi would prove to be untouchable in their guardianship duties, but the other mighty warrior guarding Enlil’s Cedar Mountain would not be as fortunate, having to come under a losing battle of wits with the mighty Gilgamesh and his comrade-at-arms Enkidu later on upon the instigation of Enki/Ea.
The mighty Enlil of course did not take kindly to the death of his Cedar Mountain warrior guard, and he bore down on Enkidu who was the culprit. Sentenced to death, Enkidu undergoes a moment of epiphany.
He recalls how he was shagged out of the wilderness in companionship with the wild beasts by the woman temptress Shamhat. Thereupon the two stumbled upon a shepherd’s camp in eden and they were offered bread and alcoholic drink as a courtesy. Enkidu balks at consuming these items, having known only grass and water with the gazelles. Whereupon Shamhat steps in and tells Enkidu he must eat the bread and drink the alcolohic beverage set before him because it is the "custom of the land" and to refuse this act of hospitality on the shepherd's part would be a grave insult to the hosts. Once Enkidu acquiesces to Shamshat wishes, he thereby formally broke the bonds with the wilderness and his companion beasts. The Sumerians portrayed the event as that of Enkidu when he finally "becomes human" and a beast no longer, and he is given a choice of garments more befitting a man his new status and formal entry to the enclave of humanity where he truly belongs. And just like the Adapa episode, Enkidu’s initial refusal to eat the food and drink the water offered him mirrors Adam’s initial refusal to eat Eve’s offering to eat the fruit.
Now face to face with death, Enkidu starts to rue about the “loss of his innocence” and his “impending death” after killing Enlil’s guardian of the cedar trees. In a moment of madness he asks the sun god Shamash his patron-god to carry out a curse on Shamhat, seeking her "subordination to men" who will abuse her in her role as a harlot.
However, he is duly rebuked by his god, being told the harlot has done him "only good" clothing his nakedness with a fine robe, giving him food and drink fit for a god, and introduced him to Gilgamesh his companion-in-arms!
Thereupon a chastened Enkidu withdraws his curse and bestows a blessing on the harlot!
Failing with Shamshat, Enkidu tries another, cursing the hunter who brought the harlot to eden's watering hole to entrap him with sex and separate him from his animal companions the gazelles. He asks the sun-god to diminish the profits of the hunter in all that he sets his hand to. Mixing it all up in Genesis, Yahweh diminishes the yield of the earth for Adam, setting forth brambles and thorns as reward for his toil.
TO BE CONTINUED....
Part 5
Some Snake You Are
As the most significant predators of primates for millions of years, snakes have certainly made a lasting imprint in the collective memory of humanity. They evoke such fear, naked terror, and potent awe that kings from the dawn of humanity have always appropriated the images of snake or serpent, or dragon as their very own in order to strike fear in the hearts of enemies and inspire their own armies in the fields of battle.
As did kings, so did their gods, and the Sumerian priesthood made the most of this potent symbolism in their written religious body. Again, a first in the recorded history of humanity.
The serpents could shed, replace their skin, and apparently become young and regenerate new life, so they possess great knowledge and wisdom, with control over death and life—of immortality—itself. Unfortunately, the same great wisdom and knowledge could be employed in the use of the most cunning trickeries out there when there is a prey in sight or the practice serves their best interest.
The behaviour of snakes and their facial features—e.g. the unblinking, lidless eyes—imply supreme intelligence, that they lived by reason and not instinct, and yet their thought-processes were as alien to humans as their ways of movement.
Like other cultures, the Sumerians appeared to take prominently to the serpent in all its manifestations: symbol of fertility, tempter, trickster, wisdom, arcane knowledge, power over life and death, the secrets to the universe itself, and of course as a fierce, fiery, and fearsome incarnation in the form of a fire-breathing dragon, a favorite war creation of the gods. Kings and gods portray themselves as snakes, serpents, or dragons.
The Sumerian priesthood also appeared to speculate freely on the nature of snakes. They seemed to entertain the idea that snakes started life as some other reptiles possessed of hands and feet and capable of upright posture. How they lost it then? The tale of Dumuzi/Tammuz suggests the Sumerian priests assumed the snake lost its hands and feet for long-term benefit, enabling it to slither and escape away from grave threat, while the Hebrews took the exact counter position: it was by incurring some god’s wrath and earning curse for it.
As seen previously, Dumuzi/Tammuz the husband of Inanna is one of such gods who bore the epithet of some great serpent. Others who did likewise include Enki/Ea, An, Ningishzida/Gishzida, Enlil, Marduk, Inanna herself, Nergal who ruled Hell like Satan, Saidu the Hunter, and Shamhat, that tempter of Enkidu.
Thus the Sumerians portray Enki/Ea and Enlil as the two great serpents who took responsibility in the creation of the minor gods Igigi—posthumously and euphemestically called the first “men” after they were escorted out of the garden of eden never to return to a life of toil and service to the senior gods—as well as in the creation of mankind.
An/Anu the great father serpent god tempted Adapa with the immortality-bestowing bread and water of life so man could take his place among the gods, only to be outdone and undone by the other great serpent Enki/Ea who tricked Adapa not to have anything with the magically-enhanced bread and water or else the man will surely die if he did so, good as a line for line source for the Genesis authors later on though pushing for a different end. Enki/Ea was not about to lose his priest and servant Adapa to that annoying An and his moment of generosity to the detriment of the other gods who would have to go back working the garden of eden themselves.
Yet again, it has to be another snake who would foil Gilgamesh of his painstaking labors to acquire the plant of life to revive his loyal friend Enkidu, trapped in the hell of the underworld. After Gilgamesh managed to have the plant of life, the wily snake snatched it from him in order to ensure immortality for itself. Evidently, the serpents have it all against the labors of humans and their ultimate destiny in the universe.
Before all this, An/Anu and Enki/Ea first squared in the matter of knowledge that An specifically forbade the humans to have: this time, it might be recalled, it was Enki/Ea who defied the divine mandate and taught his favorite servant/priest Adapa exactly this forbidden knowledge, after he himself endeavored to cover Adapa’s nakedness in order to pass the code of propriety among the gods and start civilization in good order.
Settling the Score: The Theme of Cain and Abel
The first mention of murder in the Genesis involves a jealous Cain slaying his brother Abel first chance he got after Yahweh appeared to favor the taste of Abel’s burnt offering of animals rather than Cain’s bland agricultural sacrifices apparently with zero culinary appeal. The blood of Abel was said to “cry out to god from the ground.” Yahweh then saw fit to condemn Cain to wander in the land of Nod, a name that also means “to wander.” There the blood murderer is said to suffer the fate of constant fear from fellow men conspiring to take his own life. Cain is credited with being the creator of the world’s first city.
In contrast, the Sumerian priesthood seemed to take a liking for intrigue, adorning their mythologies of gods regularly murdering each other for the slightest infraction even before the arrival of man.
Enki/Ea is responsible for a significant number of these divine murders although his actions were portrayed to have just cause, and his last act of murder involves the slaying of the leader of the minor gods who rebelled against their fate slaving in the garden of eden, the blood of the murdered brother god said to be “calling to high heavens.”
The said slain leader of the rebellion also happens to be the chief planter and gardener—agriculturist or farmer—of the garden of eden.
Enki’s solution to the rebellion involves the creation of man to replace the first “men”—the rebelling gods—to be the new workers and caretakers of the garden of eden. Some of Enki’s men creations, like the aforementioned Enkidu, were left abandoned to wander the wilderness to fend for themselves against the ferocious wild beasts and the elements.
When humanity took root and multiplied, the outcasts of respectable city societies who defied existing laws had no resort but to run and wander the wilderness to escape the wrath of law, thus giving the wilderness of eden the reputation as the abode of lawlessness, of brigands and cut-throat criminals, where life is as much a game as the untamed animals who are both predator and prey any time while roaming the place absent of laws. A place where the air of death is a constant companion.
Famously, Gilgamesh had an episode of wandering the eden constantly in fear of meeting death as did his loyal friend Enkidu (see further discussion below) after their battle with Enlil's Cedar Mountain guard.
Enki, like Cain, is credited as the first creator of human city.
To the chagrin of pastoral nomads peopling the wilderness of eden, the Sumerian priests seemed to favor the agriculturists rather than the animal lovers. And distinctly so.
In the “Debate between Sheep and Grain,” a disputative creation myth found among the thousands of Sumerian cuneiform tablets, Lahar the cattle goddess enters into a substantive argument against Ashnan the grain goddess over who brought the most gifts to civilization. Predictably unable to settle the dispute between themselves, Enlil and Enki entered the fray and threw their judgment in favor of Ashnan and his gift of grain and agriculture to the advancement of civilization.
Curiously, history itself bears them out about this subject. Cities emerged when men started gaining enormous surplus in planting and harvesting grains and other useful plants, consigning the previously heralded pastoral nomads and their era to a minor role in the push by humanity to advance forward.
But Abraham would have none of any of this. First he disposes of the criminally inclined gods. He leaves out one god who he imagined to be perfect and passes the murderous impulse to men alone, inventing the story of Cain as the vehicle for this new interpretation. The dual identification of Cain with cities made it doubly worth the relish.
Whereas the Sumerians clearly reasoned that the murderous nature of men merely mirrors the image of their murderous gods, the Hebrews leave this mirror image issue severely ignored and unaddressed in their new religious formulation, inventing the concept of original sin in its place, one that opens a host of other contentious questions to the trained mind.
As Abraham personally saw the increasing rise to prominence of the agriculturist city dwellers and their towering ziggurats to declare their glory, first in Eridu and later in his hometown Ur, he endeavored to correct the plate of injustice served in the nomadic pastoralists’ way, internalizing his wrath at these developments, making it his mission to reverse the eroded status of his kind even if it meant consigning himself to a life of wandering, ironically like the fate of Cain—except that this time Abraham was guilty of murdering the rest of the gods except one—first from taking flight from Ur to escape the wrath of his kinsmen and fellow citizens, and from thence to Haran and finally to Canaan to establish footing for his new vision of religion.
Cherubim, Angels, Loss of Innocence Revisited
Although the Sumerian priestly mythologists missed out on Tolkien’s elves and orcs, they understood well enough that they can’t have gods walking around conducting their affairs with nothing to separate them from their mortal subjects and underlings either in appearance or other aspects.
Not only are they able to sit on thrones with winged sphinxes or other forms of creatures about, they could also ride those creatures bare or chariots attached, if not riding clouds to roam the realms. In times of battle, a run-of-the-mill uninspiring sword or battle ax would simply not cut it: they need special enchanted weapons, and the Sumerian gods and even genii and demons appeared to have a thing with flaming swords or daggers. And why not, they already have flame-billowing dragons around as allies or enemies to contend with, along with a host of mighty creatures like the Leviathan. The supreme gods and their chief enforcers could take on any awe-inspiring mighty beast form like dragons or serpents, or hating the inconvenience, just do away with the physical transformation but retain the wings for swift mobility and maneuverability.
The Sumerians loved their priestly inventions, as did their succeeding Near East spiritual inheritors the Akkadians, Babylonians, the Amorites, the Syrians, Persians, the Egyptians, the Canaanites, to Greece, and still much later Rome.
When the supreme gods are not dispatching their chief military enforcers with marching orders in the battlefield, they have them as personal attendants and bodyguards, watching over their most treasured territories and holiest of possessions. An had Ningishzida/Gishzida and Tammuz/Dumuzi serving him personally, and another personally chosen warrior to guard over his favored cedar trees in the Cedar Mountain. Ezekiel of course had a field day with these concepts, as did the other Genesis authors.
Ningishzida and Dumuzi were the ones who personally ushered in Adapa to the abode of An in that bread and water of life episode which should have given the man immortality, and the two again escorted Adapa out of An’s holy garden of Eden, ensuring that he does not return or any one else does not enter the forbidden holy place.
Ningishzida and Dumuzi would prove to be untouchable in their guardianship duties, but the other mighty warrior guarding Enlil’s Cedar Mountain would not be as fortunate, having to come under a losing battle of wits with the mighty Gilgamesh and his comrade-at-arms Enkidu later on upon the instigation of Enki/Ea.
The mighty Enlil of course did not take kindly to the death of his Cedar Mountain warrior guard, and he bore down on Enkidu who was the culprit. Sentenced to death, Enkidu undergoes a moment of epiphany.
He recalls how he was shagged out of the wilderness in companionship with the wild beasts by the woman temptress Shamhat. Thereupon the two stumbled upon a shepherd’s camp in eden and they were offered bread and alcoholic drink as a courtesy. Enkidu balks at consuming these items, having known only grass and water with the gazelles. Whereupon Shamhat steps in and tells Enkidu he must eat the bread and drink the alcolohic beverage set before him because it is the "custom of the land" and to refuse this act of hospitality on the shepherd's part would be a grave insult to the hosts. Once Enkidu acquiesces to Shamshat wishes, he thereby formally broke the bonds with the wilderness and his companion beasts. The Sumerians portrayed the event as that of Enkidu when he finally "becomes human" and a beast no longer, and he is given a choice of garments more befitting a man his new status and formal entry to the enclave of humanity where he truly belongs. And just like the Adapa episode, Enkidu’s initial refusal to eat the food and drink the water offered him mirrors Adam’s initial refusal to eat Eve’s offering to eat the fruit.
Now face to face with death, Enkidu starts to rue about the “loss of his innocence” and his “impending death” after killing Enlil’s guardian of the cedar trees. In a moment of madness he asks the sun god Shamash his patron-god to carry out a curse on Shamhat, seeking her "subordination to men" who will abuse her in her role as a harlot.
However, he is duly rebuked by his god, being told the harlot has done him "only good" clothing his nakedness with a fine robe, giving him food and drink fit for a god, and introduced him to Gilgamesh his companion-in-arms!
Thereupon a chastened Enkidu withdraws his curse and bestows a blessing on the harlot!
Failing with Shamshat, Enkidu tries another, cursing the hunter who brought the harlot to eden's watering hole to entrap him with sex and separate him from his animal companions the gazelles. He asks the sun-god to diminish the profits of the hunter in all that he sets his hand to. Mixing it all up in Genesis, Yahweh diminishes the yield of the earth for Adam, setting forth brambles and thorns as reward for his toil.
TO BE CONTINUED....
