But it is, paradoxically, the parallels between Yahweh and Enki that are the most pervasive, persuasive, and disturbing, for Enki would in some lights also appear to be the best Sumerian candidate for a parallel to the Biblical tradition’s Lucifer. Goodgame notes that Enki, like Yahweh, is the most “personal” of all the Sumerian gods, and like Yahweh, he was “viewed by the Sumerians as powerful, kind, and wise in his schemes to protect the Sumerians from the animosity of other gods (especially Enlil) and from neighboring enemy tribes.” And in many Sumerian myths it is Enki, and not Enlil, who is personally involved in the creation of mankind, though as we saw in a previous chapter, by a particularly grizzly method.552
However, the closest parallel between Enki and Yahweh lies at what is the most important theophany in all the Old Testament, that of Yahweh to Moses in at the Burning Bush, recounted in Exodus 3:13-14:
13 And Moses said unto God, Behold, when I come unto the children of Israel and shall say unto them, The God of your fathers hath sent me unto you; and they shall say unto me, What is his name? what shall I say unto them? And God said unto Moses, I AM THAT I AM: and he said, Thus shalt thou say unto the children of Israel, I AM hath sent me unto you.
David Rohl, another scholar of these parallels, explains the theophany’s Sumerian background and its densely punning word play this way:
As we have learnt, Enki... was called Ea in Akkadian (East Semitic)-that is to say in the Babylonian tradition. Scholars have determined that Ea was vocalized as “Eya”. So, when Moses stood before the burning bush and asked the name of the god of the mountain, did he really reply “I am who I am”(Hebrew Eyah asher eyah)? This puzzling phrase has long perplexed theologians553 but now there is a simple explanation. The voice of God simply replied “Eyah asher Eyab”-“I am (the one) who is called Eyah” the name of Ea in its West Semitic (i.e. Hebrew) form. Scholars have simply failed to recognize that this is another of those characteristic puns in which the Old Testament abounds. “I am (Eyah) he who is called (asher) Ea (Eyah)” is a classic biblical play on words. It also explains God’s apparently nonsensical instruction: “This is what you are to say to the Israelites, “I am has sent me to you.” God’s words should really be translated as “Eyah has sent me to you.”
“Eyah” or simply “Ya” is the hypocoristic form of the name Yahweh found as an element of so many Old Testament names. So Enki/Ea, the god who created Man and then later warned Zuisudra/Utnapishtim of the impending destruction of mankind, is one and the same as the god of Moses.554
But there all similarity ceases. While not discounting the probable biblical relationship of Yahweh to Enki, the two figures nonetheless possess important distinctions. Enki, for one, is a sorcerer, experienced in the practice of magic of all varieties, whereas the biblical traditions of Yahweh specifically prohibit such practices. Moreover, Yahweh in the biblical tradition is clearly associated with the actual first creation as well as with the creation of mankind. Enki, on the other hand, has no such honor in the Sumerian texts, being associated only with the creation of mankind, but not the first creation itself. And finally, there is no special “covenant relationship” between Enki and the Sumerians, while there is between the Yahweh and the Hebrews.555
With these thoughts in hand, we are now able to view Gardner’s use of the Sumerian and Biblical-Judaic tradition to compile a total picture. We shall cite only the first three tables of Gardner’s extensive “divine genealogies.”
B. Sir Laurence Gardner’s Genealogical Tables
The first table understandably is the most ancient, going far back into the mists of pre-history, to the original revolt of Tiamat, to her theft of the Tablets of Destinies, and to her subsequent destruction in a war by Marduk.
1. Gardner’s “Grand Assembly of the Annunaki”
The Grand Assembly of the Annunaki 556
There are a number of crucial points to be observed about this chart. First and foremost is that it preserves the mythological character of Tiamat, Apsu, and An. Tiamat, it will be recalled from previous chapters, is not only a galactic symbol as De Santillana and Von Dechind averred, but also a planetary symbol, as well as a symbol for the primeval waters of chaos. Absu is the “Abyss” or primordial deep itself, and sometimes functions as a symbol of the Sun. Anu and Ki are two of their “children”, and clearly this distinguishes them from Tiamat, because the genealogical chart supports the notion that as a planetary symbol, Tiamat does not refer to the Earth, but to “Elsewhere,” to the first exploded planet, and perhaps to an even more galactic context.
Secondly, observe the “marriage relationships” between brothers and sisters, and, as will be seen in a moment, between half-brothers and half-sisters. This is one of the stable features both of Mesopotamian and Egyptian dynastic practice.
Thirdly, observe that these “consanguineous” relationships assume particular importance with the two great Anunnaki gods Enlil and Enki, both brothers who share their sister Nin-khursag, or Ninhursag, as their wife. In this context, the placement of Marduk becomes paramount, for as a son of Enki, he is on the opposite side of the family - one “great big happy pantheon” all! - from his distant “great-grandmother” Tiamat - whom he would eventually destroy - and from the Enlil side of the pantheon. Note too that Marduk is cousin to Ninurta.
Finally, note that many of the gods are “titled,” as being lords or “gods” of a particular realm, or, alternatively, a specific functional “department” of the “pantheonic government.” Thus, one might likewise be looking at a genealogical chart of the relations not only of individuals but of dynasties.
Thus, when Marduk recovers the Tablets of Destinies from Tiamat, their possession passes from one side of the “family” or pantheon, to the other. If this sounds a little farfetched, one need only recall that World War One, from a certain point of view, may be understood as a family “feud” of gargantuan proportions between the Von Hohenzollerns in Germany, the Romanovs in Russia, the Von Sachse-Coburgs (Windsors) in England, and the Von Hapsburgs in Austria, all of which families were intricately and inextricably interrelated through decades of intermarriages. Kaiser Wilhelm was thus a cousin to Tsar Nicholas and to King George, a nephew of Queen Victoria, and a distant relation of Kaiser Franz Josef of Austria, King Leopold of Belgium, and King Vittorio Emannuel of Italy! World War One, viewed in this somewhat simplistic and very over-generalized light, was a “civil war” of sorts, between the interrelated Houses of Europe. The same holds true of the Sumerian and Babylonian traditions of the cosmic war; it is in every respect a family war, a civil war and revolt in the pantheon.
2. The “Grand Assembly of the Annunaki” and Mankind
However, it is at the second of Gardner’s genealogical tables that things begin to become very interesting indeed.
Gardner’s Fourth through Sixth Generations of the Grand Assembly of the Anunnaki557
The reader should bear in mind that the solid lines of this chart connect with the ones in the previous table. Thus, Nabak is the son of Marduk, while Nergal is revealed to be the son of Enlil and Ninlil. Consider what this means from the point of view of the texts examined in chapters five and six: it means that Enlil and Enki, who themselves at some point are guardians or keepers of the Tablets of Destinies, have “traded off” guardianship of the objects from one side of the pantheon to the other, or that they became booty of war in the pantheon’s ongoing warfare. Recalling that Nergal is also the “god” of Mars and war, and at one brief period also in possession of the Tablets, it would seem to indicate that they had not only been passed from one wing of the pantheon family to the other, but from one planet to another, from Earth to Mars or vice versa. This would be corroborated by the interplanetary implications of the Two Eyes of Horus, as discussed in the previous chapter.
But note who Nergal’s daughter is: the infamous Lilith of Jewish tradition, Adam’s first wife.
Thus, at the final tier of Gardner’s three initial genealogical charts, we arrive at Adam, Eve,
and Lilith. And at this point an even more suggestive and intriguing set of relationships becomes evident.
3. The Anunnaki and Mankind: Adam, Eve, and Lilith
Gardner’s Chart of the Sumerian Version of Adam and Eve 558
Note that Lilith, daughter of the notorious character Nergal whom we encountered in chapter five, is married in turn both to Adam and to Enki, who likewise shares Eve with Adam. Viewed in a certain way, it is a “marriage of political expedience” for the two sides of the pantheon - Enlil’s and Enki’s - are reunited in mankind himself. If one recalls what was said in the previous chapter about the peculiar associations within esoteric literature of mankind with Mars, then this chart gives yet one more detail testifying to a connection between mankind and Mars, this time via Lilith and her relationship to Nergal. Note something else. Enki, who figures previously in the charts as an ancestor to all these figures - Adam, Eve, Nergal and Lilith - is now not only ancestor and consort to the two female figures, but also both ancestor, brother-in-law, cousin, and son-in-law to the male figures. This means that Enki, in a certain sense, is “still around,” i.e., that he is either very long-lived, or that the name “Enki” refers to someone from the House of Enki. Either way, the chart points up a significant problem, and it is best to examine it here.
From one standpoint, Gardner’s research provides an answer to the age-old question that has haunted biblical scholars, and that is that the book of Genesis only records Cain and Abel as the offspring of Adam and Eve, and yet, in Gen 4:17, Cain sires offspring of his wife. Where did she come from? The standard answer has always been that this unnamed wife was some other child of the biblical progenitors of humanity Adam and Eve. The Sumerian context, Jewish tradition, and Gardner’s charts suggest another answer altogether: Cain’s wife may have been a descendant of some other wing of the pantheon.
Let us also recall who and what the Anunnaki are and mankind’s relationship to them. Note the dotted lines connecting Adam and Eve to the rest of the pantheon. According to the interpretation of Sitchin and others, the Sumerian texts indicate that Adam and Eve were deliberately and genetically engineered creatures, a hybrid between the Anunnaki themselves, and a proto-human hominid already in existence on Earth. Man was thus part “clay” and part “god.” In this the biblical and Sumerian versions are not so different, and even in the biblical version of the creation of mankind by the direct action of God, there is a parallel, for in the Sumerian version the creation of mankind is similarly by the direct action of the “gods,” the Anunnaki. Only the mechanism of creation differs between the two versions, for the Sumerian version has it that the “clay” in mankind is precisely a pre-existing living creature genetically adaptable to, and adapted by, the Anunnaki. The Anunnaki, in short, are the Sumerian equivalent of the Nephilim, the “sons of God,” of Genesis 6.
Note what this means for the “situation” of mankind in the Sumerian version: mankind - Adam and Eve’s direct descendants - is not directly connected to either side of the pantheon, whereas there is a continuation of the Annunaki line via Enki and Lilith, on Nergal’s side of the pantheon, and there is also a further hybridized part-human, part Anunnaki line deriving from Eve and Enki on the other side, a line independent of Nergal’s “more pure” Anunnaki line. Mankind exists in a precarious middle ground between these two dynastic lines.
The obvious implication that follows from this should not be left unstated, for these charts indicate that ancient Sumerian belief was that their “gods” were real personages, capable of interbreeding with mankind.
Viewed in this light, the Sumerian texts indicate that there are three major lines of players on the field after the creation of mankind:
1. The “pure” Anunnaki line of Nergal-Enki-Lilith;
2. The “corrupted” and ultra-hybridized Anunnaki-human line of Enki-Eve; and,
3. A “pure” human line of Adam and Eve.
This is a dynamic tailor-made for conflict, for there are two “pure” lines, the Nergal Anunnaki line, and the Adam-Eve human line. But there are also two “hybrid” lines, the hybrid Anunnaki-human line of Enki-Eve, and the line of mankind from Adam and Eve itself, which is a “less hybridized” line. Finally, there are two Anunnaki lines, the line of Nergal, and the line of Enki-Eve.
It is interesting to ponder the second of these lineages, the “corrupted” or “ultra-hybridized” line of Enki-Eve, from the standpoint of the biblical tradition of the “Nephilim,” of the “sons of God” of Genesis 6, who came down from heaven, and sired hybrid chimerical children of “the daughters of men,” producing a race of giants, for the account of this activity in Genesis gives no indication of when this activity began. The Sumerian version indicates when: it was present almost from the beginning of the human race. And as for the giants themselves, we have already speculated that the inhabitants of the planet Tiamat, if such there were, may have been physiologically much larger than mankind’s average size, given Tiamat’s much higher gravity.
Moreover, there is an odd corroboration of the tradition of chimerical offspring of such unions from yet another source, and this is the traditional depiction of Enki, who is sometimes “shown with the legs of a goat complete with cloven hooves, whilst his upper body is clothed in the scales of a fish.”559 He is a “goatfish,” a Capricorn. Enki himself, in other words, is a chimerical being, who in turn, as a “son of God” in the Biblical perspective, sires similar chimerical offspring.
However, there is a second connection between the Sumerian and Biblical versions, for in the account of the destruction of Tiamat in the Enuma Elish, her creation of chimerical biological life-forms as weapons appears to be one principal reason she incurred the wrath of the rest of the gods, in addition to her theft of the Tablets of Destinies. In the Biblical version, the story of the Nephilim and their hybrid-giant offspring forms the immediate context for the divine decision to wipe out mankind for his wickedness. The clear implication is, once again, that it was the continued co-habitation of man and “the sons of God” that formed a motivation for the Deluge. These points suggest a further speculation: could the creation of mankind in the Sumerian version be related to the cosmic war and the theft of the Tablets of Destinies?
Whatever the answer to that question may be, one thing seems to be strongly implied by all that has preceded, and that is that according to the Sumerian tradition mankind appears to be centrally connected both to the motivations of the cosmic war and is to an extent also a legacy of it, at least in the hybridized Nephilimic line. In the Sumerian version, it is human overpopulation that formed one of the motivations for the war, and in the Biblical version, it is the “Nephilimic wickedness” that forms the backdrop of the divine decision to wipe out “mankind” by means of the Deluge. Putting two and two together, it would appear that it is the Enki-Eve line that may have been the focus of attention here, both as a chimerical ultra-hybridized lineage, and perhaps as an overly-populated one vis-à-vis the “pure human lineage” of Adam and Eve themselves. Indeed, we may be drawing near to one reason why the various books of the Old Testament place such an emphasis on preserving various genealogical records, for as an examination of those records will demonstrate, there is little if any association of the Old Testament patriarchal lineage with the second “ultra-hybridized” lineage of Enki-Eve. In fact, the converse is true, for from the moment of the Hebrew Exodus from Egypt to the conquest and occupation of Canaan, an endless struggle is waged against the Nephilimic dynasties of surrounding peoples, the story of David and Goliath being the most familiar example. To put it as bluntly and briefly as possible, one legacy of the conflict appears to be an ongoing “struggle between the bloodlines.” Unfortunately, as fascinating as this story is, as it weaves its way through history, it is not a story that can be recounted here, for it would require a book in its own right.
The relationship between Enki and Eve revives an ancient Talmudic tradition in a particular way, for Enki here takes on the principal role of what Genesis
describes as being the activities of the Nephilim, of the “sons of God” who married human wives and sired chimerical, giant offspring. In a roundabout way, then, Gardner has confirmed Genesis’ own characterization of the Nephilim, a characterization supported by the Sumerian’s traditional artistic renditions of Enki as a chimerical being.
C. Ninurta-Nimrod and the Tower of Babel Moment
Another intriguing Biblical-Sumerian perspective on the events of the cosmic war is provided by the Tower of Babel episode. As will be seen in a moment, this episode also leads back to Egypt, and Osiris, in a very peculiar fashion. Previous chapters have mentioned the close association of the Anunnaki god Ninurta with the Biblical figure of Nimrod. Any comparison of the Sumerian genealogy of Ninurta with the Biblical genealogy of Nimrod in Genesis 10 will demonstrate there is little if any parallel between the two. So why associate the two?
The Cosmic War: Interplanetary Warfare, Modern Physics and Ancient Texts Page 32