1. The Atrahasis Epic
The oldest clay
tablets containing the Flood Epic of Atrahasis “can be dated around
1700 BC.”258 The entire focus of
the epic is on the relation of mankind, called the “Igigi” in the
text, and the gods, a relationship that leads ultimately to the
gods’ extermination of mankind whom they had helped
create.
The story begins with
an overview of the plot that will be unfolded in more detail as the
myth proceeds:
When the gods instead of man
Did the work, bore the loads,
The gods’ load was too great,
The work too hard, the trouble too much.
The great Anunnaki made the Igigi
Carry the workload sevenfold.
Anu their father was king,
Their counselor warrior Ellil,
Their chamberlain was Ninurta,
Their canal-controller Ennugi,
They took the box [of lots]....,
Cast the lots; the gods made the division.
Anu went up to the sky,
[And Ellil(?)] took the earth for his people (?)... 259They were counting the years of loads.
For 3,600 years they bore the excess,
Hard work night and day.
They groaned and blamed each other,
Grumbled over the masses of excavated soil;“Let us confront our [ ] the chamberlain,
And get him to relieve us of our hard work!
Come, let us carry [the Lord (?)],
The counselor of gods, the warrior, from his dwelling...”260
As these passages
make clear, the “gods” were near open revolt due to the exorbitant
workload laid on them, and they demand to see the
“chamberlain.”
A little later on in
the text, the revolt or strike threatens to become open war:
“Every single one of us gods declared war!
We have put [a stop] to the digging.
The load is excessive, it is killing us!
Our work is too hard, the trouble too much!
So every single one of us gods
Has agreed to complain to Ellil.”261
As Zechariah Sitchin
has often pointed out, in the face of this situation, the gods
decided to ease their workload by creating an intelligent “worker,”
mankind:
Ea made his voice heard
And spoke to the gods his brothers...
...“There is [ ]
Belet-ili the womb goddess is present -
Let her create primeval man
So that he may bear the yoke [( )],
So that he may bear the yoke, [the work of Ellil],
Let man bear the load of the gods!”262
Mankind’s “purpose in
life was to relieve the gods of hard labour,”263 he was, in
short, created to be a slave.
A little later on,
the exact, and grizzly, methods of the creation of mankind are
described in detail:
Enki made his voice heard,
And spoke to the great gods,“On the first, seventh, and fifteenth of the month
I shall make a purification by washing.
Then one god should be slaughtered.
And the gods can be purified by immersion.
Nintu shall mix clay
With his flesh and his blood.
Then a god and a manWill be mixed together in clay.
Let us hear the drumbeat forever after,
Let a ghost come into existence from the god’s flesh,
Let her proclaim it as his living sign,
And let the ghost exist so as not to forget (the slain god).”They answered “Yes!” in the assembly,
The great Anunnaki who assign the fates.264
The decision made,
the “gods” then proceed to the task of slaughtering one of their
own and creating “primeval man.”
On the first, seventh, and fifteenth of the month
He made a purification by washing.
Ilawela who had intelligence,
They slaughtered in their assembly.
Nintu mixed clay
With his flesh and blood.
They heard the drumbeat forever after.265
This gives a crucial
insight into the “morality” of the Annunaki, who are clearly not
above murdering one of their own to lighten the workload of the
rest.
But the passage is
obviously pregnant with much more significance. As Assyriologist
Stephanie Dalley observes:
This account of man’s creation may be compared with that in the Epic of Creation, in which Marduk used the blood of Qingu, the evil leader of the enemy gods whom he had slain, to create mankind with the help of Ea; clay is not mentioned, and no birth-goddess takes part, but the purpose of man’s creation is again to toil on the gods’ behalf....The account in Genesis describes God using earth (adamah) to create the first man (Adam), animating him with the breath of life.266
The ancient
Mesopotamian account of the creation of man, in other words,
appears generally of a piece with the biblical account in so far as
common clay or dirt is mingled with the “life” of God or the
“gods”: in the case of the Hebrew version, with the “breath of
life,” and in the Atrahasis, the blood
of life.
But here the
resemblance stops. Beyond the obvious moral differences between the
two accounts, the Mesopotamian version of mankind’s creation also
hints at something else: mankind is a chimera, a hybrid,
engineered by mingling the “gods” with an
already existing “man:” “Nintu shall mix clay With his flesh
and his blood. / Then a god and a man / Will be mixed together in
clay.” Zechariah Sitchin believes that this is an indicator of a
sophisticated “paleoscience” of a very different sort: advanced
genetic engineering and manipulation.
For the theologically
inclined, these observations suggest a method of reconciliation
between the Mesopotamian and the Biblical traditions, for if there
was an already existing human or human-like creature from which
“primeval” worker-man was engineered, as the Atrahasis suggests, then the biblical account in
Genesis would appear to be referring to this creature, while its
subsequent mention of the creation of a hybrid race brought about
by the intermarriage of the Nephilim
and the daughters of men in Genesis 6 would then be the hybrid race
referred to here as the creation of man by the gods in the
Atrahasis. More on this point in a
subsequent chapter.
That this is a
plausible reconciliation is borne out by what immediately follows
in the Mesopotamian epic:
Far-sighted Enki and wise Mami
Went into the room of fate.
The womb-goddesses were assembled.
He trod the clay in her presence;
She kept reciting an incantation,
For Enki, staying in her presence, made her recite it.
When she had finished her incantation,
She pinched off fourteen pieces (of clay),
(And set) seven pieces on the right,
Seven on the left.
Between them she put down a mud brick.
She made use of (?) a reed, opened it (?) to cut the umbilical cord,
Called up the wise and knowledgeable
Womb-goddesses, seven and seven.
Seven created males,
Seven created females.267
In other words, the
resulting race of “primeval man”, of “worker man” was a hybrid of
the gods and whatever “man” had already existed as the “clay” from
which the new man was created. This roughly parallels the account
of the Nephilim in Genesis
6.
But there is another
extremely important connection between the two traditions that
should not be overlooked, and like all such things, it is easy to
do because it is so obvious. Both the Atrahasis account of the creation of this hybrid
“worker” man and the Genesis account of the Nephilim and their
hybrid offspring form the immediate context for their respective
versions of the Deluge.
The Atrahasis legend, however, puts the motivations for
the Deluge in starkly different terms, for it is not this new
hybrid race’s utter lack of morality that is the reason for the
Deluge, as it is in the biblical account, it is rather this new
race’s longevity and the resulting
overpopulation of the earth by a hybrid “mankind”:
And the country became too wide, the people too numerous.
The country was as noisy as a bellowing bull.
The God grew restless at their racket,
Ellil had to listen to their noise.
He addressed the great gods,“The noise of mankind has become too much,
I am losing sleep over their racket.”
Ellil orders that the
population be reduced by introducing a deadly disease among hybrid
population:
“Give the order that suruppu-disease shall break out...”268
Dalley’s comment is
worth citing:
In Atrahasis the Flood was sent by the gods in order to reduce overpopulation, a situation which has been compared with an early Greek poem, the Cypria (loosely attributed to Homer in antiquity and known mainly from allusions and quotations), in which Zeus planned to reduce overpopulation by war.269
In any case, one
individual of the new hybrid race, for whom the epic is named,
Atrahasis, beseeches his “god” Enki to do something about
“humanity’s” plight:
Now there was one Atrahasis
Whose ear was open (to) his god Enki.
...
Atrahasis made his voice heard
And spoke to his lord,“How long (?) [will the gods make us suffer]?
Will they make us suffer illness forever?”
Enki’s response to
Atrahasis is that he should foment a rebellion against all the
gods, and strike, refusing to work, returning the pantheonic
council to the same situation that led to the creation of the
hybrids in the first place:
Enki made his voice heard
And spoke to his servant:“Call the elders, the senior men!
Start [an uprising] in your own house,
Let the heralds proclaim...
Let them make a loud noise in the land:
Do not revere your gods,
Do not pray to your goddesses...270
The result, however,
is a replay of what brought about the disease in the first place,
as Enlil decrees that the hybrid man should be starved to death to
reduce the overpopulation:
The God grew restless at their clamour,
Ellil had to listen to their nise.
He addressed the great gods,“The noise of mankind has become too much.
I am losing sleep over their racket.
Cut off food supplies to the people!
....
Command that Anu and Adad keep the (air) above (earth) locked,
Sin and Nergal keep the middle earth locked.“271
Interestingly, the
“god” of wars, rebellions, of Mars and of the Underworld, Nergal,
is involved in this nefarious activity.
As a result of this
new assault, which according to the legend lasted for six years,
the hybrid “man” was reduced to cannibalism:
A daughter would eye her mother coming in;
A mother would not even open her door to her daughter.
A daughter would watch the scales (at the sale of her) mother,
A mother would watch the scales (at the sale of her) daughter.
When the sixth year arrived
They served up a daughter for a meal,
Served up a son for food.272
But even this
brutality did not work.
Finally a council is
held, and Enlil/Ellil complains that the plan to create the hybrid
worker race did not work, and he quickly proceeds to blame the god
who has “befriended” mankind, Enki:
He (Ellil) was furious [with the Igigi]273“We, the great Anunna, all of us,
Agreed together on [a plan].
An argument quickly
develops between Ellil/Enlil and Enki:
“[You] imposed your loads on man,
You bestowed noise on mankind,
You slaughtered a god together with his intelligence.
(Ellil to Enki): You must... and [create a flood].
It is indeed your power that shall be used against [your people!]277
You agreed to [the wrong (?)] plan!
Have it reversed! (?)
Let us make far-sighted Enki swear... an oath.”Enki made his voice heard
And spoke to his brother gods,“Why should you make me swear an oath?
Why should I use my power against my people?
The flood that you mention to me -
What is it? I don’t even know!
Could I give birth to a flood?
That is Ellil’s kind of work!
....
[Let Erakal278 pull out] the mooring poles
Let [Ninurta] march, let him make [the weirs] overflow.279
Enki, in other words,
will have no part in wiping out the new race.
Indeed, Enki actually
warns Atrahasis of the impending genocide:
Enki made his voice heard
And spoke to his servant,....
“Dismantle the house, build a boat,
Reject possessions, and save living things...”280
Then, the Deluge
breaks over mankind.
Anzu was tearing at the sky with his talons,
....
...the Flood [came out (?)].
The kasusu-weapon went against the people like an army.
No one could see anyone else,
They could not be recognized in the catastrophe.
...
The darkness was total, there was no sun.281
Notably it is Anzu
that is credited with bringing the Flood. As will be seen in the
next chapter, this is the same Anzu that wages war with the rest of
the Pantheon by stealing the Tablets of Destinies, making it likely
that the Flood, the decision to wipe out mankind, and the war in
the Pantheon, are all somehow components of the same
scenario.
It is clear from the
Atrahasis however, that at least one
motivation for the Deluge, as far as the Mesopotamian tradition is
concerned, is the overpopulation of the earth by the new hybrid
race. Reading between the lines a bit, it is possible that the
pantheon perceived the growing population as a threat to its own
power, a reading borne out by the argument between Enlil and Enki,
for perhaps inflicting the catastrophe on the hybrid race was the
pantheon’s “loyalty test” on Enki. This would imply that perhaps
Enki’s seeming beneficence to Atrahasis and the human race was just
that: seeming beneficence. Perhaps he
had plans to use the revolt among the human workers to further his
own power.
In any case, it seems
that the Atrahasis is more than a mere
epic, for it hints at dark designs and agendas at work in the
pantheon, and moreover clearly suggests that mankind, whether in
his hybrid form or not, is perhaps both battlefield and prize in a
much larger cosmic conflict.