The Bible copied the Sumerians and the Babylonians...

The Bible copied the Sumerians and the Babylonians...

Warning :

In this text, we only highlight the Sumerian and Babylonian influences on the writers of the Old Testament. This does not mean that we ignore the importance of Egyptian, Canaanite, or Hittite influences, but that is not the purpose of this writing.

The Old Testament, considered to be dictated by God, was copied word for word from ancient Mesopotamian texts, hundreds of years older and, in some cases, more than 2,000 years earlier.

The writers of Genesis were prisoners in Mesopotamia when they worked on its writing.

The starting point of Jewish society is presented in the Bible as Ur, in Mesopotamia. In Genesis (Bible), we can read the following passage : "The Lord said to him : I am the Lord, who brought you out of Ur of the Chaldees, to give you this land to possess."

All the legends of the biblical story are Mesopotamian : Creation, the making of man, the Garden of Eden, the myth of Moses saved from the waters, the Flood, the Book of Esther (or Ishtar), etc.

The man who would become the great Mesopotamian king Sargon I, who founded the kingdom of Akkad, was found abandoned at birth in a floating basket on the Euphrates River. He was raised by the gardener Akkis and later became cupbearer to King Kish. This story would be repeated in the Old Testament for Moses. The writers copied the legend of King Sargon in detail, specifying that the cradle was caulked with bitumen to make it waterproof. Bitumen (crude oil) was a very common material in Mesopotamia, the land of King Sargon. It was completely unknown in Egypt.

The Torah (or Old Testament), supposedly dictated to Moses by God on Mount Sinai, began to be written by religious leaders imprisoned in Babylon in the 7th century BC, while Jewish tradition claims it dates back to 5000 BC !

Mircea Eliade writes in his "History of Religious Beliefs and Ideas" :

“The origin and early history of Sumerian civilization are still poorly understood. It is assumed that a population speaking Sumerian, a language that is not Semitic and cannot be explained by any known linguistic family, descended from the northern regions and settled in Lower Mesopotamia. Most likely, the Sumerians subjugated the natives, of whom the so-called Obeid component is still unknown. Quite early on, groups of nomads from the Syrian desert, speaking a Semitic language, Akkadian, began to penetrate the territories north of Sumer, while infiltrating, in successive waves, the Sumerian cities. Around the middle of the 3rd millennium, under a now legendary leader, Sargon, the Akkadians imposed their supremacy on the Sumerian cities. However, even before the conquest, a Sumero-Akkadian symbiosis developed, which greatly increased after the unification of the two countries. Until 30 or 40 years ago, scholars spoke of a single culture, the Babylonian, resulting from the fusion of these two ethnic groups. Today, it is generally agreed to study the Sumerian and Akkadian contributions separately because, despite the fact that the occupiers had assimilated the culture of the vanquished, the creative genius of the two peoples was different.

It is especially in the religious domain that we grasp these divergences. From the most remote antiquity, the characteristic insignia of divine beings was a horned tiara. In Sumer, therefore as everywhere in the Middle East, the religious symbolism of the bull, attested since the Neolithic, had been transmitted without interruption… The first Sumerian texts reflect the work of classification and systematization carried out by the priests. First there is the triad of planetary gods. We also have considerable lists of divinities of all kinds, of which very often we know nothing except their names… The triad of the Great Gods is made up of An, En-lil and En-ki. As his name indicates (an = sky), the first is a Uranian god. He must have been the sovereign god par excellence, the most important of the pantheon ; but An already presents the syndrome of a “deus otious”. More active and more "current" are En-lil, god of the atmosphere (also called the "Great Mount") and En-ki "Lord of the Earth", god of the "foundations", who was wrongly considered as the god of the Waters because, in the Sumerian conception, the Earth was supposed to be seated on the Ocean...

Some texts evoke the perfection and beatitude of "beginnings" : "the days of old when everything was perfect," etc. (Poem "Gilgamesh, Enkidu and the Underworld"). However, the true paradise seems to be Dilmun, a country where there is neither disease nor death. There, "no lion slaughters, no wolf carries off a lamb... No sick person turns within its enclosure..." The god Enki, the Lord of Dilmun, was asleep beside his wife, still a virgin, as the earth itself was virgin. Upon awakening, Enki united with the goddess Nin-gur-sag, and then with the daughter she bore, and finally with this daughter’s daughter... But an incident, apparently insignificant, gives rise to the first divine drama. The god eats certain plants that had just been created ; now, he had to "determine their fate," that is, he had to fix their mode of existence and their function. Outraged by this senseless gesture, Nin-gur-sag declares that she will no longer look at En-ki with the "gaze of life" until he dies...

After the flood, it was, for the second time, reported on earth… The diluvial catastrophe was equivalent to the “end of the world”. Indeed, only one human being, called Zisudra in the Sumerian version and Utnapishtim in the Akkadian version, was saved…. The Great Gods decide to destroy humanity by the flood… We find the theme of the flood in the “Epic of Gilgamesh”. This famous work, fairly well preserved, highlights even better the analogies with the biblical story. Presumably, we are dealing with a common source, and a rather archaic one. As we know from the compilations of R. Andree, H. Usener and J.G. Frazer, the myth of the flood is almost universally widespread… In a large number of variants, the flood is the result of the “sins” (or ritual faults) of humans ; Sometimes it simply results from the desire of a divine Being to put an end to humanity... The "end of the world" and of a sinful humanity to make possible a new creation. In the Legend of Gilgamesh, according to the version preserved in the Epic of Atrahasis, Ea decided, after the flood, the creation of seven men and seven women...

The biblical story has a number of elements in common with the flood recounted in the "Epic of Gilgamesh." It is possible that the writer was familiar with the Mesopotamian version or, what seems even more likely, that he used an archaic source, preserved since time immemorial in the Middle East... The writer of the biblical story takes up and extends the reinterpretation of the flood catastrophe : he elevates it to the rank of an episode of "sacred history." Yahweh punishes human depravity and does not regret the victims of the cataclysm... The sons of Noah became the ancestors of a new humanity. At that time, everyone spoke the same language. But one day, men decided to build "a tower whose top penetrates the heavens"... Yahweh "came down to see the city and the tower" and understood that, from now on, "no plan will be realized for them." So he confused their language and they no longer understood one another… In this case too, we are dealing with an old mythical theme (the Tower of Babel) reinterpreted from the perspective of Yahwism.

It was in captivity in Mesopotamia ( see here ) that the ruling class of the Hebrews of the defeated state of Judah wrote the beginning of the biblical text... It was then General Cyrus, who had become emperor and master of the entire Middle East, who ordered the liberation of the Hebrew leaders and gave them a new territory and a new temple, a success for them which gave credence to their assertion : God took the side of the Hebrews...

The Mesopotamian texts that are the origin of the Old Testament date back to at least the 3rd millennium BC and are Sumerian or Babylonian.

The biblical stories of the creation of the world, the Garden of Eden, Moses, the Flood, and the Tower of Babel have Sumerian and then Babylonian origins...

The myth of the Garden of Adam and Eve, as well as that of the Flood and the myth of Noah (in Genesis 6-8), are obvious copies of the Sumerian legend of "Enki and Ninhursag" (-3000 years BC), of the "Poem of the Super-Wise Man" (-1300 BC), and of the "Epic of Gilgamesh" (canto XI) (-650 BC).

The origin of this work comes from the occupation of Judah by the Babylonians after which the ruling class was entirely brought to Babylon in 587 BC, Jerusalem and its temple were destroyed, and part of the population was also taken into exile in Babylon.

The earliest version of the Flood myth was written in Sumerian in 1600 BC, then this myth had a Babylonian version in 1200 BC, then there was the Epic of Gilgamesh which dates from the 18th century BC, then an Assyrian copy from the 10th century BC, then a Greek copy from the 3rd century BC.

Jean Botéro, in "Babylon and the Bible" confirms the convergence between Babylonian beliefs and the Old Testament.
The Flood according to the Ninevite version of the Epic of Gilgamesh :

“At first light the next day,

A black cloud rose from the horizon

In which Adad thundered

Preceded by Shullat and Hanish,

Divine heralds who crisscrossed mountains and plains.

Nergal tore off the props of the celestial floodgates,

And Ninurta rushed to overflow the dams above,

While the Annunaki, brandishing their torches,

They set the whole country ablaze with their fire.

Adad spread his deathly silence across the sky,

Reducing to darkness all that had been light ! (...)

And the Anathema passed like war upon men.

No one saw anyone anymore :

The crowds were no longer discernible in this downpour.

The myth of the Flood occupies a special place in Mesopotamian mythological tradition because of its resonance in Western tradition, for which it refers to the biblical story. As with many other origin myths, it comes in different, very similar versions, which makes it plausible that the oldest text served as inspiration for the others. According to current knowledge, this first version would be that of the Atrahasis, a story in Akkadian dating back to at least the 18th century BC, where it takes its place in a vast composition also recounting the creation of the world and of man. The catastrophe is brought about by the will of Enlil, king of the gods, exasperated like many of his peers by the proliferation of men and the uproar it causes. He first unleashes an epidemic against them, then a drought causing famine in order to reduce their numbers, in vain. He therefore decides on a solution with no return : annihilation by Flood. Ea then decides to protect humankind, his creation, by warning the wisest of his devotees, Atrahasis (the "Super-Wise"), who builds, following his instructions, an ark to save his species and others. The storm and precipitation unleashed by Enlil for seven days and seven nights flood the entire Earth, decimating humans, with only the Super-Wise and his loved ones surviving. Once the waters have receded, the Super-Wise sets foot on the ground and dedicates a sacrifice to the gods, who have had time to repent of the catastrophe. Enlil initially flies into a rage when he sees that his plans have been thwarted by Ea, but after a plea from the latter, he changes his mind, on the condition that humans now face death and infertility, previously unknown, so as to avoid overpopulation. The versions in the Epic of Gilgamesh and the Genesis of Eridu are similar, giving the name of the Supersage : Uta-napishtim in the former, Ziusudra in the latter. They are clearly one or two centuries later than the Atrahasis and inspired by it.

The development of the Flood myth seems to have taken place during the first century of the 2nd millennium BC, because it is not attested in the previous millennium but appears in the version of the Sumerian King List written in the literate circles of the kingdom of Isin at the latest in the first half of the 18th century BC. The context of the development of this myth is therefore to be placed in the reflections on the succession of political dynasties which took place after the fall of the third dynasty of Ur, and on the role of the gods (first and foremost Enlil) in the attribution of kingship, and more broadly in the catastrophes (environmental, epidemic, military) which cause the decline of human societies. Here the form of the cataclysm seems inspired by the floods of the Tigris and the Euphrates which regularly covered the Mesopotamian plain. The story takes its place more broadly in a set of similar cataclysmic myths, attested in several civilizations without there being a single source that is clearly at the origin, which have in common to narrate the destruction of the world by water (often as punishment for a serious fault committed by humans), preceding its recreation on new bases. In this context, the role of the hero of the Flood can be interpreted as that of a civilizer, saving and then recreating human civilization, after having passed tests that are similar for some to a rite of passage.

Scientists have even managed to locate the real, historical episode of the flood : see here

The same is true of the myths of Cain and Abel or Adam and Eve. The sources are Sumerian.

The biblical Adam and Enriku in Sumerian legend, a strong man made by a god to punish Gilgamesh for his selfishness, are both made from mud.

In the Bible, Adam has two sons. Cain, a farmer, kills Abel, a shepherd, out of jealousy, which leads to his being banished.
In Sumerian texts, a woman from King Gilgamesh’s city seduces Enriku in order to bring him closer to Gilgamesh. Gilgamesh’s goal is to cut down cedar trees belonging to a giant, whom Enriku kills.

Thus Enriku, having become sedentary, kills a woodman, the giant guardian of the cedar forest, which is reminiscent of the murder of Abel by Cain. These two texts therefore symbolize the struggles between a sedentary people, who cultivate, cut wood to make boats and a nomadic tribe, woodmen living from gathering, stealing animals trapped by the hunters of the city who appropriate the land, or with a nomad, shepherd, as in the Bible.

Enriku will regret his nomadic life, but it will be too late, he no longer knows how to hunt, he is corrupted by the pleasures of civilization. After his murder, Cain will have to migrate to the "land of Nod", where he will found several cities, a third son will be born to the couple Adam and Eve, Seth whose name means "to put in place", and who will therefore replace Abel.

Enriku will die and go to hell, underground and become a winged monster, but another text brings it out. In Genesis, the entire tribe descended from Seth (3rd son of Noah) will disappear under the waters of the flood, Seth, in Egyptian mythology is the God of hell (chaos of the underworld) and accompanies the celestial boat in its underground journey, at night when the sun disappears underground to the west to join underground, the east, where it reappears to make its celestial journey. In the Bible, God manifests himself in a burning "bush" (in Palestine, there is a bush with leaves rich in oil that can catch fire during strong heat), or by an earthquake, this description evokes the underground God, Seth. In the story of the exodus, the earth opens, the Red Sea withdraws and advances like a wall as during a tsunami, a burning cloud or a column of smoke, guides the Hebrews. Seth in Egyptian mythology kills his brother Osiris.

In the Bible, Adam, after eating the forbidden fruit at Eve’s request, becomes mortal, as does Eve, with the added pains of childbirth, and Gilgamesh, the sedentary man, seeks immortality.

And finally, in both texts, two stories of the flood. In the biblical flood, Noah, a descendant of Seth, and his family are the only survivors, after having navigated the waters of the flood, he lands on Mount Ararat, also a volcano which is said to have erupted around - 2500 to 2400 (bones discovered in a pyroplasmic flow). In the flood of the Sumerian text, there is talk of the "hero of the flood", Umnapishti, also a survivor with his family and his domestic animals, who lives on an island at the end of the world, he is the sacrificer of the Gods, Gilgamesh wants to ask him the secret of his immortality. Indeed, after the flood, according to the biblical story, life expectancy decreases, according to the Sumerian text, the gods send childhood diseases, sterile women (it is also a curse in the Bible), etc...

To earn immortality, Gilgamesh must become a hero :
to do this, he must kill the celestial bull, cross the gates of the sun, travel in a tunnel for 24 hours at the risk of being burned, to finally arrive in a heavenly place where, finally, he will be informed to find "the hero of the flood.

But the most surprising thing is that Gilgamesh, to find the gates of the Sun "guarded by the scorpion men", must find Mount Mishu, which means "the twin mountains". However, currently, there is only one Mount Mashu, in the Japanese archipelago, on Okkaido Island in the north of the Japanese archipelago located on the edge of a caldera lake originating from volcanic activity of the Mashu caldera, one of the most transparent lakes in the world. In addition, it is known to keep a constant water level without any inflow or outflow of water. In the center of the lake, a small island called Kamuish (divine island) is located in the center of the lake and Mt Kamuinupuri (divine mountain in the Ainu language or Mt Mashu) stands on the eastern shore, it is also called "Lake Mashu in fog", because it is frequently surrounded by fog, especially in summer.

The indigenous population of the island is made up of the Ainu, who are of Caucasian origin. It would therefore be a very ancient settlement, already existing at the time of the first Sumerian cities.

Moreover, much of the books of Kings and Samuel are borrowed from this culture : the same way of interweaving the history of two kingdoms into a single narrative, the same dating system, the same funerary formulas, and the same evaluation of kings as good or bad depending on whether or not they honor the cult of the national god.

Before time, there was nothing. Nothing but two kinds of water, flowing side by side, without banks, without anything. These two waters did not mix. Each had a deity to govern it :

Fresh water obeyed the god Apsu, salt water the goddess Tiamat ; and Tiamat was Apsu’s wife. This state of affairs lasted for a long time. But since time did not exist, it is impossible to say how many years, centuries, or tens of centuries...

Tiamat and Apsu begot a son and a daughter, Lahmou and Lahamou, about whom we know little, except that they in turn begot Anshar and Kishar... with Anshar and Kishar, the brother and sister, there was an up and a down : the world took shape and time began to flow in turn. Time is not a God, but the feeling that the Gods have of themselves. Anshar contained all that is above, and Kishar all that is below. It was already the outline of a heaven and an earth, of a world of the Gods and a world of men. Anshar and Kishar had only one child, a son named Anu, who took possession of the sky : with him appeared the firmament, laden with stars, this vault of transparent and bluish crystal, dark at night and transparent by day, to which everything on earth is attached by mysterious bonds. Anu, reigning over the sky, in turn engendered only one son : this was Ea. With Ea, the universe knew a new force, and this was the spirit....he was "The One who knows". In him were contained, in a mysterious way, all the beings that had existed until then. There were no more secrets in the world, for Ea knew everything.

From then on, the divine generations succeeded one another with great rapidity. Gods were born in great numbers, each embodying a quality of Ea. There was the god of War, the goddess of spinners, the patron of artisans, the god of harvesters, the god of shepherds, the deities of springs and those of mountains. Ea, by her thought alone, conceived the beings to come, and each of her thoughts was a god being born.

How can we not see in Ea, the Sumerian God of the spirit, the Eternal God (Yavhe) of the Bible ? Abraham, a resident of the Sumerian city of Ur, left his city under the protection of Ea. This spirit God is at the origin of the "spirits of the body" of a human city, according to their profession. Ea is therefore the master of all that is "animated by a spirit," all that moves, both living beings and waters.

According to the Book of Genesis, Abraham was an inhabitant of Ur, a Sumerian city near Uruk, a city founded by Gilgamesh according to the Sumerian tablets that recount his epic, the oldest of which are more than 5,000 years old. Logically, therefore, the Book of Genesis and the Sumerian tablets should have common sources since Abraham was an inhabitant of Ur and Genesis relates his story when he became a nomad and that of his relatives and descendants.

The Bible opens with two creation stories written at two different times.

The first (chapter 1) is the most recent (sixth century BC), the second dates from the tenth century BC. The first corresponds to a universal creation as it was conceived at that time. The second, older, is the one that interests us because it does not evoke global conceptions but integrates a description of precise location :

"These are the beginnings of the heavens and the earth when they were created. When the LORD God made the earth and the heavens, no shrub of the field was yet on the earth, and no herb of the field had yet sprouted. For the LORD God had not caused it to rain on the earth, and there was no man to till the ground. But a mist went up from the earth and watered the whole face of the ground. And the LORD God formed man of the dust of the ground and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life ; and man became a living being.

Then the Lord God planted a garden in Eden (meaning : delights) on the east, and there he put the man whom he had formed. And out of the ground the Lord God made to grow every tree that is pleasant and good for food, and the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. A river went out of Eden and divided into four rivers. The name of the first is Pishon ; it is the one that surrounds the whole land of Havilah, where there is gold. The gold of that land is pure, and there is bdellium (the myrrh tree that grows in Arabia and East Africa) and the onyx stone. The name of the second river is Gihon ; it is the one that surrounds the whole land of Cush (Ethiopia). The name of the third is Hiddekel (the Tigris River) ; it is the one that flows east of Assyria. The fourth river is the Euphrates.

This is not surprising : the Old Testament was written mainly in Mesopotamia, and copied largely from the following Mesopotamian texts :

Sumerian texts

Enuma Elish or the creation of the world

Enki and Ninhursag

The Legend of Gilgamesh

Atrahasis or the super-wise man

If we compare the Sumerian story and the biblical story :

• In both stories, man is created for work : in the Sumerian story to relieve the minor gods // in the Bible to cultivate the soil.

• In both texts, man is made from dust or clay.

• Finally, in these two passages, it is specified that man is linked to the divine. In the Sumerian story, this is presented in the form of a sacrifice of god, in whose blood the human clay is dipped. // In the biblical story, God affirms that man is created in his image ; in the second creation story, this link with the divine is also suggested by the breath of God which gives life to man.

The Sumerian myth of Atrahasis or Supersage, Sumerian text (18th century BC).

A) The men created by ENKI and NINTU could live for 25,000 years. 250,000 years later, eight kings of men had succeeded one another. Men were prosperous, they had expanded their territory, they had multiplied. But the noise of their activities, their agitation, their wars, their festivals—in a word, their uproar—ended up reaching... even the heavens.

At the Council of the Great Gods, ENLIL said : "The noise of humans has become too loud. Because of their continual uproar, I can no longer sleep. We have already sent them diseases, fevers, epidemics, and pestilences to decimate them, but very quickly they multiplied again. We have sent them drought, famine, and other plagues without any more result. Each time, moreover, ENKI the prince helped them out. Now we must put an end to this once and for all and send the Flood upon mankind so that not one remains." ENKI spoke : "I created man in the interest of the gods ; do not ask me to approve such a cataclysm. How could I lay a hand on my creatures !"

B) The gods having nevertheless made the final decision, ENKI in a dream warned ATRAHASIS, the Super-wise, a good man who had always deserved his trust. "ATRAHASIS, throw down your house, turn away from your possessions to save your life. Build a large boat according to the plan that I have traced on the ground. This boat will have an equilateral shape of 60 meters on each side. The boat will be entirely enclosed and solidly roofed. Let its caulking be thick and strong. You will call your ship Sauve-Vie. After having loaded it with your wheat, your goods, your riches, embark your wife, your family, your relatives and your workers as well as wild animals, large and small, and birds of the sky." Super-wise had only 7 days to build Sauve-Vie.

C) His family and the animals had just embarked when a furious wind broke the moorings and freed the boat. Then the bedrock of the earth came loose. The stars themselves were displaced. Deep darkness hid the sun. The roar of the Flood terrified the gods themselves, even though they had all taken refuge in the celestial abode of ANU. ENKI, pale with anger, saw his children swept away by the waters. NINTU, the mother goddess, burst into tears : "How could I have allowed this final decision to be made in the assembly of the gods ? It was ENLIL who, with a clever speech, made my words vain."

D) After 7 days, the wind calmed down, and the boat stopped tossing and turning. Supersage released a dove ; it returned, not knowing where to land. He released a swallow, which also returned. Finally, he released a crow, which did not return. Then Supersage released all the birds.

E) When the waters had receded from the top of the mountain, Supersage disembarked and prepared a banquet to the glory of ENKI, the ingenious god who had saved him. The smell of good food also attracted the great gods, who, in the absence of men, had neither drunk nor eaten during all this time. We can assume that they did not really need it to live, but that they still missed it. ENLIL then seeing the boat, entered into an anger : "We the great gods had taken an oath, how then did a man escape destruction ?" ENKI : "Yes, I did this against the will of all of you, I saved ATRAHASIS. Calm down ENLIL, if you were able to eat and feast, it is thanks to this man. Thanks to him the human race can be saved." NINTU the mother goddess then spoke : "ENLIL, your solutions are too definitive. Let us find a middle ground. So that the descendants of Supersage no longer disturb the gods, the ingenious ENKI must have a solution." ENKI : "O ! Divine Matrix, we have given men almost immortality, it was inconsiderate. You, MAMMI, who stops destinies, impose death on men so that a balance can be established. So that among them, besides fertile women, there will now be infertile ones, so that among them the Extinguishing Demoness will rage to snatch babies from their mothers’ knees." ENLIL approved : "Understood. It was a mistake to want to exterminate them. But let men not live beyond 120 years, so that they can never penetrate our knowledge. Thus, they will no longer be a threat to us ! Let us see to it that men never settle down in joy. Let us closely monitor their proliferation, their prosperity and their joy of living. And for this reason, THAT AMONG MEN A TIME OF UNHAPPINESS ALWAYS FOLLOWS AN ERA OF WELL-BEING."

Excerpt from The Myth of Atrahasis, translated by J. Bottero and SN Kramer, When the Gods Made Man

THE MYTH OF ENKI AND NINMAH

The creation of Man is explained in a myth called Enki and Ninmah. It dates from the middle of the 2nd millennium, and was probably inspired by the Atra-hasis. The gods, all born of the primordial mother Nammu, reside on Earth, where a first category lives peacefully while a second works for all. The second category begins to protest, Nammu asks Enki to try to create a creature whose role will be to work in place of the secondary gods, and for all the gods, thus making their lives easier. The latter does not take long to come up with an idea and tells his mother to shape this creature with clay taken from the surface of the Abyss, in a mold that he makes, with the help of the goddess Ninmah (Enki’s consort) and other divinities, then to give them life. This work, Man, is very favorably received by the gods, who gather around a large banquet to celebrate the event. During the meal, Enki and Ninmah are quite drunk. The latter challenges her husband : she will give life to other human beings who will be "imperfect" (an asexual being, a sterile woman, a lame man, etc.), and challenges Enki to find them a task in society. He succeeds with flying colors. Then he in turn challenges his wife with an identical challenge, creating a formless human being (a "monster"). Ninmah is unable to find him a task, and loses the duel.

We can see that this story seeks to answer several questions that men ask themselves : their reason for being (that is to say, to serve the gods), and why there existed beings that were "imperfect" in their eyes.

ENUMA ELISH, THE MYTH OF THE CREATION OF THE WORLD

The Enûma Elish (When up there ...) was written in Babylon around the beginning of the 12th century BCE, and consists of over a thousand verses spread across seven tablets. The Epic of Creation recounts the origins of the Universe. The great gods are pitted against each other in two conflicts against their ancestors, the forces of chaos. Initially, it is Apsû, the master of the underground waters, who threatens to destroy his offspring, who are too disrespectful to him. But Ea’s cunning allows Apsû to be eliminated. The gods are saved for the time being.

But suddenly a new threat arises : Tiamat, the primordial sea, mother of all the gods. Wanting to avenge the death of her husband, Apsû, master of the underground waters, caused by them (and Ea in particular), she had created an army of terrifying creatures with the aim of annihilating them, with the help of her new ally Kingu. Ea, always ready to take advantage of a favorable opportunity, presented her son as the providential person, the savior of the gods. He showed them that they should trust him, and make him their champion to fight against their mother. This was done during a great banquet organized by Ea, who had Marduk elected as master of all the gods. After this, the god of Babylon went to the scene of the battle. After a terrible battle with many twists and turns, he succeeded in defeating Tiamat’s army, with the celestial weapons with which he was equipped. He then defeated the mother of the gods and used her remains to create the World : he suspended the first half of the corpse to create the Sky (an), above the second half which formed the Earth (ki) emerged from the Apsû, the primordial sea. He thus became the master of the gods and of everyone.

They built a temple in his honor on the very site of the battle, where he created the World. This temple was to be not only Marduk’s, but also that of all the gods, erected at the "center of the world." This temple was named the Esagil ("House with the High Head"), and the holy city of Babylon grew around it. Marduk then created Man, to allow the deities not to work, leaving this heavy burden to these "substitutes." He does this from the blood of Kingu, who is executed. Man is thus created to work for the gods, his masters, which remains faithful to Mesopotamian morality. But a new aspect appears, since Man is born from the execution of a fishing god, whereas before it was a god voluntarily sacrificed. Man therefore bears a part of Kingu’s guilt (even if it is not an idea of ​​the "original sin" type).

The Enûma Elish thus makes Babylon and its god the masters of the world. The city, considered the first place to emerge from the Apsû, is perceived as the center of the World, represented by the Esagil, the temple of all the gods, and the ziggurat Etemenanki, the "House of the Foundation of Heaven and Earth."

An Assyrian version would be written later, with Ashur playing the role of Marduk.

MYTH OF THE DESCENT INTO HELL

This Sumerian myth tells how the goddess Inanna, already a goddess and queen of Heaven, decided to take control of the Underworld, where her sister and sworn enemy Ereshkigal resides. She decides to go there, but takes some precautions first. She warns her advisor Ninshubur of her intentions, and tells him that if she does not return after three days and three nights, he must go and warn Enlil, then, if the latter does not provide any help, Nanna, and finally, as a last resort, Enki. Once this is done, she goes to the land of no return. Once at the gates of Hell, she invents a pretext to be able to meet her sister. But the latter, warned by her gatekeeper, senses the danger. So, she pretends to accept and lets Inanna into her kingdom, making her pass through seven gates. At each of them, a jewel or an item of clothing is taken from her, so that she appears naked before Ereshkigal. She then calls upon the Annunaki, the Seven Judges of Hell, who cast the "death stare" upon her, killing her. Then her sister hangs her corpse from a nail.

Seeing her not return, Ninshubur goes to Enlil in Nippur. But the latter refuses to help Inanna, forcing her vizier to go to Ur, to Nammu, who has the same attitude. Ninshubur therefore goes, as told to Eridu, to Enki, who grants his help to his sister. He creates two asexual beings, the Kurgarru, to whom he entrusts the "food of life," and the Kalaturru, to whom he entrusts the "drink of life." He sends them to the Underworld, where they say they are responsible for bringing Inanna’s body back to Heaven. Ereshkigal accepts, and they bring the goddess back to life with the food and drink entrusted by Enki/Ea. But, if the latter wants to leave the Underworld, she must find someone to replace her. So, she returns to Earth, accompanied by demons sent by the gods of the Underworld to watch over her, to find the victim. She first goes to Umma and Bad-tibira, where the tutelary deities of these cities prostrate themselves before her, thus escaping death. She then visits Kullab, where her husband Dumuzi resides, who welcomes her onto his throne, in his finest clothes. Then Inanna, furious at seeing him so disrespectful, tells the demons to seize him and take him to the Underworld in his place. He is therefore sent to the land of no return. However, his sister Geshtinanna intercedes on his behalf, and moves Inanna, who demands his release. But Ereshkigal only gives in on the condition that he spend half the year on Earth with his lover, Geshtinanna replacing him in the Underworld, before returning to the Otherworld for the rest of the year. This inspired the Greek myth where Aphrodite and Persephone fought over Adonis, before ending up with an identical "sharing." These three deities are, moreover, the Greek counterparts of the three Mesopotamian ones.

An Akkadian version of this text was written in the 2nd millennium. While the story remains broadly the same, and the names of the gods change (Inanna becomes Ishtar, Nanna becomes Sin, and Enki becomes Ea), there are also some modifications to certain passages. Thus, rather than sending asexual demons to the Underworld, Enli/Ea sends a being tasked with seducing Ereshkigal and freeing Ishtar, which he does.

THE MYTH OF ETANA

The myth of Etana probably comes from an ancient Sumerian legend. Indeed, Etana is in the Sumerian King List a king of Kish, reputed to have ascended to Heaven. The story begins with the story of a serpent and an eagle, who became friends before the latter ate the former’s children. The latter seeks advice from Shamash, the sun god, who tells him to trap the eagle by hiding in the carcass of an ox, and to wait for the bird to approach, to capture it. This is what the serpent does, before throwing the eagle into a hole after molesting it to prevent it from flying away, and it wastes away. Enter Etana, the king of Kish, the first king after the Flood. He ardently desires a son, and prays to Shamash, who is also prayed by the eagle to come to his aid. Killing two birds with one stone, he tells Etana that his solution lies in "a childbearing plant" in Heaven. He advises her to take the eagle out of the hole, heal it, and then it will help him find her. But the eagle does not want to help him, and he only gives in after Etana has pleaded with him for a long time. So he flies away on the eagle’s back. After a long flight, he no longer sees Earth, and approaches Heaven, where the gods reside. But the altitude frightens him, and he asks the eagle to stop the ascent. He then falls from the eagle’s back, which manages to catch him before he touches the ground. The rest of the tablet is broken. The Sumerian King List, which says that Etana had a son as his successor, seems to indicate that the end of this myth must be happy for its hero.

THE MYTH OF ADAPA

This Sumerian tale tells the story of Adapa, high priest of Enki/Ea in his palace of Eridu, who faithfully serves his god, who created him to be able to do many things for his great pleasure. One day, while he is going to fish for his master on a boat, he is disturbed by Shutu, the southern wind-bird, who rocks his boat. In his anger, Adapa curses the creature with such hatred that its wings are broken. This act is such that he cannot go unpunished for the gods, and Anu then summons Adapa. Ea, fearing for his servant’s life, explains to him the conduct he must adopt to escape alive : he must first appease Enlil’s doorkeepers to gain their support, and absolutely refuse anything Anu gives him to eat or drink. Arriving at the god’s home, Adapa gains the sympathy of Anu’s gatekeepers, the fertility gods Dumuzi and Ningishzida, who can no longer act after Shutu’s death, by explaining to them that he has come to pray for their return to Earth. Then, upon arriving before the king of the gods, he behaves as instructed, refuses what is given to him, and is spared the intervention of the two deities. Admiring Adapa’s foresight, Anu then offers him food that will make him immortal. True to what Ea told him, the latter refuses, and is immediately sent back to Earth by Anu. By refusing this food, Adapa has missed his chance to become a god, manipulated by Ea’s cunning, and he will therefore spend the rest of his days serving the idle god.

LINKS WITH THE BIBLE

2800 BC

The Sumerians left behind many pieces of clay engraved in cuneiform writing. The Bible borrowed many passages from the Sumerians, such as the earthly paradise described in the poem "Enki and Ninhursag," where the Hebrew Eden and the Sumerian Dilmun are one : same rivers, same place, same suffering, same original sin. This poem also explains the mystery of Adam’s rib : it is there where Enki’s evil lies ; the rib comes from the Sumerian pun "ti" ("rib" or "to make live"). It was the Sumerians who first wrote the myth of the flood with Ziusudra (the Sumerian Noah), which was taken up by the Babylonians.

2500 BC

Almost 2000 years before the writing of the Old Testament, the Sumerian legends were born, copied identically by Christians in the Bible :

The origin of evil depends on the first woman who, induced by a serpent to disobey the creator god, convinces her companion to eat the fruit of the forbidden tree (legend copied as in the Bible.

Marduk’s death was celebrated between the 15th and 20th of March. His passion was recounted in his Gospel : captured by his enemies, he was taken to a mountain and, after placing a crown of acanthus leaves on his head, he was put on trial, which ended with his condemnation to death. His enemies, to be sure that he was truly dead, pierced him with a spear.

(Sources : "Tablet of Temptation" British Museum)

2371 BC

The one who would become the great Mesopotamian king Sargon I, who founded the kingdom of Akkad, was found abandoned at birth in a basket floating on the Euphrates and raised by the gardener Akkis, then became cupbearer to King Kish. This story would be taken up in the Old Testament for Moses : It is a legend like the plagues of Egypt, the sea that opens and other completely supernatural elements... "Sargon of Akkad : Abandoned by his mother in a basket of reeds that is entrusted to the river, the newborn is taken in and adopted by a gardener. The favor of the goddess Ishtar made him more of a cupbearer at the court of Kish and then a prince." (Sources : Encyclopædia Universalis, Jean Bottéro, Les collections de l’Histoire N°22 January-March 2004).

2000 BC

According to the Bible, Abraham receives from God the order to go to the land of Canaan with his people, then to sacrifice his son Isaac, who will be spared and who will found the nation of Israel. Archaeology proves beyond doubt that no population movement occurred at this time despite the efforts of many biblical scholars and historians. It is a pious story invented by the writers of the Bible to unite the nation. The first lie in a long series in the Old and New Testaments. The story of the divine tablets brought back from the mountain was borrowed from the Babylonian god Nemo, the Ten Commandments from the Babylonian code of Hammurabi, the birth in the basket from the Akkadian king Sargon I. The Esther of the Book of Esther comes from the Mesopotamian goddess Ishtar.

Sources : "The Bible Unveiled. New Revelations from Archaeology" Israel Finkelstein (Director of the Institute of Archaeology at Tel Aviv University) and Neil Asher Silberman (Historical Director at the Enasme Center for Public Archaeology and Heritage Presentation in Belgium) Bayard Éditions, Les collections de l’Histoire No. 22 January-March 2004

PLAGIARISM OF SUMERIAN TEXTS IN THE BIBLE

Genesis [2.6] : The paradise of the Bible is "borrowed" from the Sumerian poem (written around -2800) "Enki and Ninhursag" where the Hebrew Eden and the Sumerian Dilmun are one : same rivers, same place, same suffering, same original sin.

Genesis [2.7] "The Eternal God formed man from the dust of the earth" taken from the Sumerian legend ("dust" is "tit" in Hebrew and "ti.it" means "that which is alive" in Sumerian).

Genesis [2.21] The mystery of Adam’s rib is also "borrowed" from the Sumerian poem "Enki and Ninhursag" : this is where Enki’s evil lies, the rib comes from the Sumerian play on words "ti" ("rib" or "to make live"), a play on words which no longer has any meaning in Hebrew.

Genesis [2:22] Woman was created from a rib of man. False ! One could even almost assert the opposite : all embryos are female and only differentiate after a few days. Even today, many people are convinced that man has one less rib than woman.

Genesis [2:14] Humankind originated in the Near East near the Euphrates River (in Iraq, the ancient empire of Sumer - Akkad - Babylon), where the writers lived. To this day, it is not known exactly where Homo sapiens originated (the East African theory is unreliable).

Genesis [3:2] Adam and Eve and the forbidden fruit, a fable copied identically from an ancient Sumerian legend which makes the origin of evil depend on the first woman who, induced by a serpent to disobey the creator god, convinces her companion to eat the fruit of the forbidden tree. Skeptics can admire the cylinder of temptation at the British Museum in London where one sees the woman, the man, the serpent and the apple tree. Today, no one serious believes in the historical reality of Adam and Eve. Source : "At the heart of mythologies" Lacarrière

Genesis [6:14] Noah’s Ark : This fable is taken identically from a Sumerian legend (Utnapishtim who lands on Mount Nishir and releases a dove and then a raven). Generations of Christian researchers have looked for the remains of the ark on Mount Ararat for nothing !

The Exodus [2:10] Moses found in a floating basket : another fable taken from the story of the Mesopotamian king Sargon I who founded the kingdom of Akkad who is found at birth abandoned in a floating basket and will be raised by the gardener. We know today that Moses, Isaac and Abraham did not exist. "Sargon of Akkad : Abandoned by his mother in a basket of reeds which is entrusted to the river, the newborn is taken in and adopted by a gardener. The favor of the goddess Ishtar makes him more a cupbearer at the court of Kish then a prince."

The Exodus [7:17] The theme of the "blood plague" and the protective shade is taken directly from the Sumerian myth "Inanna and Shukallituda or the deadly sin of the gardener".

The Exodus [20] The Ten Commandments were copied from the Babylonian code of King Hammurabi. (circa -1800)

Samuel [28] Inspired by the Sumerian poem where we see the shadow of Enkidu coming out of the Kur and throwing himself into the arms of Gilgamesh.

Esther : The Esther of the Book of Esther comes from the Babylonian goddess Ishtar. Mordecai is the Assyrian god Mardukea.

The Book of Job : The theme of Job derives directly from the Sumerian tablets of Nipur. It uses the very terms of the "Creation poem" that describes Marduk’s fight against Kingu : Yahweh shatters Leviathan’s skull as Marduk shatters Tiamat’s. (Source : "Au cœur des mythologies" Lacarrière).

Song of Songs : A sequel borrowed from the Sumerian sacred marriage song : same style, same themes, details, vocabulary, same characters, monologues, dialogues, same flowery and redundant language. See for example the love song of Shu-Sin in chapter 21. Shu-Sin who strongly resembles King Solomon whose existence is not certain and, if he existed, his reign has nothing to do with that described in the Bible.

Lamentations of Jeremiah : These lamentations are taken from "The Lamentation over the Destruction of Nippur", a Sumerian story.

Ezekiel : Inspired by the Babylonian goddess Ishtar. The Sumerians worshipped her as Innana, wife of Dumuzi, the Tammuz of the Bible.

Isaiah [9:11] Inspired by the Sumerian text which describes the descent into hell of the monarch Ur-Nammu who arrives in the Kur.

THE FLOOD IN THE BIBLE

A) And it came to pass, when men began to multiply on the face of the earth, that the LORD (God) saw that the wickedness of man was great in the earth, and that every imagination of the thoughts of his heart was only evil continually. And the LORD repented that he had made man on the earth, and it grieved him at his heart. And the LORD said, I will destroy man whom I have created from the face of the earth : both man, and cattle, and creeping things, and birds of the air ; for it repents me that I have made them.

B) But Noah found favor in the eyes of the Lord. Noah was a righteous man and blameless in his time ; Noah walked with God. Then God said to Noah : [Men] have filled the earth with violence ; behold, I will destroy them with the earth. Make yourself an ark of gopher wood (a mysterious kind of wood, very strong, perhaps cypress) ; you shall arrange the ark in cells, and you shall cover it inside and out with pitch (a material with which boats were coated to make them watertight and prevent water from seeping in). This is how you shall make it : the ark shall be 300 cubits (an ancient unit of measurement) long, 50 cubits wide, and 30 cubits high. You shall make a window for the ark, and you shall make it a cubit high above ; you shall set up a door in the side of the ark. and you shall build a lower, a second, and a third story. And I will bring a flood of waters upon the earth, to destroy all flesh in which is the breath of life under heaven ; everything that is on the earth will perish. But I will establish my covenant with you ; you will come into the ark, you and your sons, your wife, and your sons’ wives with you. Of every living thing of all flesh, you shall bring two of every kind into the ark, to keep them alive with you : a male and a female. And you, take of all the food that is eaten, and store it with you, that it may be food for you and for them. This is what Noah did ; he did everything that God had commanded him. (…)

C) Noah was six hundred years old when the flood of waters was upon the earth. And Noah, his sons, his wife, and his sons’ wives went into the ark to escape the waters of the flood. Of the clean animals and the animals that were not clean, of the birds, and of everything that moved on the earth, went into the ark with Noah, two by two, a male and a female, as God had commanded Noah. After seven days, the waters of the flood were upon the earth. In the six hundredth year of Noah’s life, in the second month, on the seventeenth day of the month, on that day all the fountains of the great deep burst forth, and the windows of heaven were opened. Rain fell on the earth forty days and forty nights. (…) The flood was upon the earth forty days. The waters increased and lifted up the ark, and it was lifted up above the earth, (…) and the ark floated on the face of the waters. The waters increased more and more, and all the high mountains under the whole heaven were covered. (…) Every living thing that was on the face of the earth was destroyed, from man to cattle to creeping things and birds of the air ; they were destroyed from the earth. Only Noah remained, and those who were with him in the ark. The waters prevailed over the earth for 150 days.

D) (…) God remembered Noah and all the animals and all the livestock that were with him in the ark ; and God made a wind pass over the earth, and the waters subsided. On the seventeenth day of the seventh month, the ark came to rest on the mountains of Ararat. The waters continued to decrease until the tenth month. On the first day of the tenth month, the tops of the mountains appeared. At the end of forty days, Noah opened the window he had made in the ark. He sent out a raven, which flew back and forth until the waters had dried up from off the earth. He also sent out a dove to see if the waters had abated from off the face of the earth. But the dove found no place to rest the sole of its foot, and it returned to him in the ark, for the waters were on the face of the whole earth. He put out his hand and took it and brought it into the ark with him. After another seven days, he sent out the dove again from the ark. The dove came to him at evening, and behold, in its mouth was a plucked olive leaf. So Noah knew that the waters had abated from off the earth. He waited another seven days and sent out the dove. But it did not return to him. In the six hundred and first year, in the first month, on the first day of the month, the waters dried up from off the earth. Noah removed the covering from the ark and looked, and behold, the face of the earth was dry. In the second month, on the twenty-seventh day of the month, the earth was dry.

E) Then God spoke to Noah, saying, “Go out of the ark, you and your wife, your sons, and your sons’ wives with you. Bring out with you every living creature that is with you, both birds and cattle and every creeping thing that creeps on the earth ; let them spread out on the earth and be fruitful and multiply on the earth.” (…) Noah built an altar to the Lord and took of every clean beast and of every clean bird and offered burnt offerings on the altar. The Lord smelled a pleasant aroma, and the Lord said in his heart, “I will not again curse the ground again for man’s sake, because the thoughts of man’s heart are evil from his youth ; neither will I again strike every living thing, as I have done.” While the earth remains, seedtime and harvest, cold and heat, summer and winter, day and night will not cease.