There is little doubt by now that the biblical tales, as well as the reports of the Greek historians of 2,000 years ago and of their predecessor Berossus, all stem from earlier—Sumerian—origins. A. H. Sayee (The Religion of the Babylonians) reported reading on a fragmentary tablet in the British Museum "the Babylonian version of the building of the Tower of Babel." In all instances, the attempt to reach the heavens and the ensuing confusion of tongues are basic elements of the version. There are other Sumerian texts that record the deliberate confusion of Man's tongue by an irate god.
Mankind, presumably, did not possess at that time the technology required for such an aerospace project; the guidance and collaboration of a knowledgeable god was essential. Did such a god defy the others to help Mankind? A Sumerian seal depicts a confrontation between armed gods, apparently over the disputed construction by men of a stage tower. (Fig. 74)
A Sumerian stela now on view in Paris in the Louvre may well depict the incident reported in the Book of Genesis. It was put up circa 2300 B.C. by Naram-Sin, king of Akkad, and scholars have assumed that it depicts the king victorious over his enemies. But the large central figure is that of a deity and not of the human king, for the person is wearing a helmet adorned with horns—the identifying mark exclusive to the gods. Furthermore, this central figure does not appear to be the leader of the smaller-sized humans, but to be trampling upon them. These humans, in turn, do not seem to be engaged in any warlike activities, but to be marching toward, and standing in adoration of, the same large conical object on which the deity's attention is also focused. Armed with a bow and lance, the deity seems to view the object menacingly rather than with adoration. (Fig. 75)
The conical object is shown reaching toward three celestial bodies. If its size, shape, and purpose indicate that it was a shem, then the scene depicted an angry and fully armed god trampling upon people celebrating the raising of a shem.
Both the Mesopotamian texts and the biblical account impart the same moral: The flying machines were meant for the gods and not for Mankind.
Men—assert both Mesopotamian and biblical texts—could ascend to the Heavenly Abode only upon the express wish of the gods. And therein lie more tales of ascents to the heavens and even of space flights.
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The Old Testament records the ascent to the heavens of several mortal beings.
The first was Enoch, a pre-Diluvial patriarch whom God befriended and who "walked with the Lord." He was the seventh patriarch in the line of Adam and the great-grandfather of Noah, hero of the Deluge. The fifth chapter of the Book of Genesis lists the genealogies of all these patriarchs and the ages at which they died—except for Enoch, "who was gone, for the Lord had taken him." By implication and tradition, it was heavenward, to escape mortality on Earth, that God took Enoch. The other mortal was the prophet Elijah, who was lifted off Earth and taken heavenward in a "whirlwind."
Fig. 74
Fig. 75
A little-known reference to a third mortal who visited the Divine Abode and was endowed there with great wisdom is provided in the Old Testament, and it concerns the ruler of Tyre (a Phoenician center on the eastern Mediterranean coast). We read in Chapter 28 of the Book of Ezekiel that the Lord commanded the prophet to remind the king how, perfect and wise, he was enabled by the Deity to visit with the gods:
Thou art molded by a plan,
full of wisdom, perfect in beauty.
Thou hast been in Eden, the garden of God;
every precious stone was thy thicket....
Thou art an anointed Cberub, protected;
and I have placed thee in the sacred mountain;
as a god werest thou,
moving within the Fiery Stones.
Predicting that the ruler of Tyre should die a death "of the uncircumcised" by the hand of strangers even if he called out to them "I am a Deity," the Lord then told Ezekiel the reason: After the king was taken to the Divine Abode and given access to all wisdom and riches, his heart "grew haughty," he misused his wisdom, and he defiled the temples.
Because thine heart is haughty, saying
"A god am I;
in the Abode of the Deity I sat,
in the midst of the Waters";
Though thou art a Man, not a god,
thou set thy heart as that of a Deity.
The Sumerian texts also speak of several men who were privileged to ascend to the heavens. One was Adapa, the "model man" created by Ea. To him Ea "had given wisdom; eternal life he had not given him." As the years went by, Ea decided to avert Adapa's mortal end by providing him with a shem with which he was to reach the Heavenly Abode of Anu, there to partake of the Bread of Life and the Water of Life. When Adapa arrived at Anu's Celestial Abode, Anu demanded to know who had provided Adapa with a shem with which to reach the heavenly location.
There are several important clues to be found in both the biblical and the Mesopotamian tales of the rare ascents of mortals to the Abode of the Gods. Adapa, too, like the king of Tyre, was made of a perfect "mold." All had to reach and employ a shem—"fiery stone"—to reach the celestial "Eden." Some had gone up and returned to Earth; others, like the Mesopotamian hero of the Deluge, stayed there to enjoy the company of the gods. It was to find this Mesopotamian "Noah" and obtain from him the secret of the Tree of Life, that the Sumerian Gilgamesh set out.
The futile search by mortal Man for the Tree of Life is the subject of one of the longest, most powerful epic texts bequeathed to human culture by the Sumerian civilization. Named by modern scholars "The Epic of Gilgamesh," the moving tale concerns the ruler of Uruk who was born to a mortal father and a divine mother. As a result, Gilgamesh was considered to be "two-thirds of him god, one-third of him human," a circumstance that prompted him to seek escape from the death that was the fate of mortals.
Tradition had informed him that one of his forefathers, Utna-pishtim—the hero of the Deluge—had escaped death, having been taken to the Heavenly Abode together with his spouse. Gilgamesh therefore decided to reach that place and obtain from his ancestor the secret of eternal life.
What prompted him to go was what he took to be an invitation from Anu. The verses read like a description of the sighting of the falling back to Earth of a spent rocket. Gilgamesh described it thus to his mother, the goddess NIN.SUN:
My mother,
During the night I felt joyful
and I walked about among my nobles.
The stars assembled in the Heavens.
The handiwork of Anu descended toward me.
I sought to lift it; it was too heavy.
I sought to move it; move it I could not!
The people of Uruk gathered about it,
While the nobles kissed its legs.
As I set my forehead, they gave me support.
I raised it. I brought it to thee.
The interpretation of the incident by Gilgamesh's mother is mutilated in the text, and is thus unclear. But obviously Gilgamesh was encouraged by the sighting of the falling object—"the handiwork of Anu"—to embark on his adventure. In the introduction to the epic, the ancient reporter called Gilgamesh "the wise one, he who has experienced everything":
Secret things he has seen,
what is hidden to Man he knows;
He even brought tidings
of a time before the Deluge.
He also took the distant journey,
wearisome and under difficulties;
He returned, and engraved all his toil
upon a stone pillar.
The "distant journey" Gilgamesh undertook was, of course, his journey to the Abode of the Gods; he was accompanied by his comrade Enkidu. Their target was the Land of Tilmun, for there Gilgamesh could raise a shem for himself. The current translations employ the expected "name" where the Sumerian mu or the Akkadian shumu appear in the ancient texts; we shall, however, employ shem instead so that the term's true meaning—a "skyborne vehicle"—will come through:
The ruler Gilgamesh
toward the Land of Tilmun set his mind.
He says to his companion Enkidu:
"O Enkidu ...
I would enter the Land, set up my shem.
In the places where the shem's were raised up
I would raise my shem. "
Unable to dissuade him, both the elders of Uruk and the gods whom Gilgamesh consulted advised him to first obtain the consent and assistance of Utu/Shamash. "If thou wouldst enter the Land—inform Utu," they cautioned him. "The Land, it is in Utu's charge," they stressed and restressed to him. Thus forewarned and advised, Gilgamesh appealed to Utu for permission:
Let me enter the Land,
Let me set up my shem.
In the places where the shem's are raised up,
let me raise my shem. ...
Bring me to the landing place at....
Establish over me thy protection!
An unfortunate break in the tablet leaves us ignorant regarding the location of "the landing place." But, wherever it was, Gilgamesh and his companion finally reached its outskirts. It was a "restricted zone," protected by awesome guards. Weary and sleepy, the two friends decided to rest overnight before continuing.
No sooner had sleep overcome them than something shook them up and awoke them. "Didst thou arouse me?" Gilgamesh asked his comrade. "Am I awake?" he wondered, for he was witnessing unusual sights, so awesome that he wondered whether he was awake or dreaming. He told Enkidu:
In my dream, my friend, the high ground toppled.
It laid me low, trapped my feet....
The glare was overpowering!
A man appeared;
the fairest in the land was he.
His grace ...
From under the toppled ground he pulled me out.
He gave me water to drink; my heart quieted.
Who was this man, "the fairest in the land," who pulled Gilgamesh from under the landslide, gave him water, "quieted his heart"? And what was the "overpowering glare" that accompanied the unexplained landslide?
Unsure, troubled, Gilgamesh fell asleep again-but not for long.
In the middle of the watch his sleep was ended.
He started up, saying to his friend:
"My friend, didst thou call me?
Why am I awake?
Didst thou not touch me?
Why am I startled?
Did not some god go by?
Why is my flesh numb?"
Thus mysteriously reawakened, Gilgamesh wondered who had touched him. If it was not his comrade, was it "some god" who went by? Once more, Gilgamesh dozed off, only to be awakened a third time. He described the awesome occurrence to his friend.
The vision that I saw was wholly awesome!
The heavens shrieked, the earth boomed;
Daylight failed, darkness came.
Lightning flashed, a flame shot up.
The clouds swelled, it rained death!
Then the glow vanished; the fire went out.
And all that had fallen had turned to ashes.
One needs little imagination to see in these few verses an ancient account of the witnessing of the launching of a rocket ship. First the tremendous thud as the rocket engines ignited ("the heavens shrieked"), accompanied by a marked shaking of the ground ("the earth boomed"). Clouds of smoke and dust enveloped the launching site ("daylight failed, darkness came"). Then the brilliance of the ignited engines showed through ("lightning flashed"); as the rocket ship began to climb skyward, "a flame shot up." The cloud of dust and debris "swelled" in all directions; then, as it began to fall down, "it rained death!" Now the rocket ship was high in the sky, streaking heavenward ("the glow vanished; the fire went out"). The rocket ship was gone from sight; and the debris "that had fallen had turned to ashes."
Awed by what he saw, yet as determined as ever to reach his destination, Gilgamesh once more appealed to Shamash for protection and support. Overcoming a "monstrous guard," he reached the mountain of Mashu, where one could see Shamash "rise up to the vault of Heaven."
He was now near his first objective—the "place where the shem's are raised up." But the entrance to the site, apparently cut into the mountain, was guarded by fierce guards:
Their terror is awesome, their glance is death.
Their shimmering spotlight sweeps the mountains.
They watch over Shamash,
As he ascends and descends.
A seal depiction (Fig. 76) showing Gilgamesh (second from left) and his companion Enkidu (far right) may well depict the intercession of a god with one of the robot-like guards who could sweep the area with spotlights and emit death rays. The description brings to mind the statement in the Book of Genesis that God placed "the revolving sword" at the entrance to the Garden of Eden, to block its access to humans.
When Gilgamesh explained his partly divine origins, the purpose of his trip ("About death and life I wish to ask Utnapishtim") and the fact that he was on his way with the consent of Utu/Shamash, the guards allowed him to go ahead.
Fig. 76
Proceeding "along the route of Shamash," Gilgamesh found himself in utter darkness; "seeing nothing ahead or behind," he cried out in fright. Traveling for many beru (a unit of time, distance, or the arc of the heavens), he was still engulfed by darkness. Finally, "it had grown bright when twelve beru he attained."
The damaged and blurred text then has Gilgamesh arriving at a magnificent garden where the fruits and trees were carved of semiprecious stones. It was there that Utnapishtim resided. Posing his problem to his ancestor, Gilgamesh encountered a disappointing answer: Man, Utnapishtim said, cannot escape his mortal fate. However, he offered Gilgamesh a way to postpone death, revealing to him the location of the Plant of Youth—"Man becomes young in old age," it was called. Triumphant, Gilgamesh obtained the plant. But, as fate would have it, he foolishly lost it on his way back, and returned to Uruk empty-handed.
Putting aside the literary and philosophic values of the epic tale, the story of Gilgamesh interests us here primarily for its "aerospace" aspects. The shem that Gilgamesh required in order to reach the Abode of the Gods was undoubtedly a rocket ship, the launching of one of which he had witnessed as he neared the "landing place." The rockets, it would seem, were located inside a mountain, and the area was a well-guarded, restricted zone.
No pictorial depiction of what Gilgamesh saw has so far come to light. But a drawing found in the tomb of an Egyptian governor of a far land shows a rockethead aboveground in a place where date trees grow. The shaft of the rocket is clearly stored underground, in a man-made silo constructed of tubular segments and decorated with leopard skins. (Fig. 77)
Very much in the manner of modern draftsmen, the ancient artists showed a cross-section of the underground silo. We can see that the rocket contained a number of compartments. The lower one shows two men surrounded by curving tubes. Above them there are three circular panels. Comparing the size of the rockethead—the ben-ben—to the size of the two men inside the rocket, and the people above the ground, it is evident that the rockethead—equivalent to the Sumerian mu, the "celestial chamber"—could easily hold one or two operators or passengers.
Fig. 77
TIL.MUN was the name of the land to which Gilgamesh set his course. The name literally meant "land of the missiles." It was the land where the shem's were raised, a land under the authority of Utu/ Shamash, a place where one could see this god "rise up to the vault of heavens."
And though the celestial counterpart of this member of the Pantheon of Twelve was the Sun, we suggest that his name did not mean "Sun" but was an epithet describing his functions and responsibilities. His Sumerian name Utu meant "he who brilliantly goes in." His derivate Akkadian name—Shem-Esh—was more explicit: Esh means "fire," and we now know what shem originally meant.
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