The 12th Planet (56 page)

Fig. 152

Ninti blessed the new being and presented him to Ea. Some seals show a goddess, flanked by the Tree of Life and laboratory flasks, holding up a newborn being. (Fig. 153)

Fig. 153

The being that was thus produced, which is repeatedly referred to in Mesopotamian texts as a "model Man" or a "mold," was apparently the right creature, for the gods then clamored for duplicates. This seemingly unimportant detail, however, throws light not only on the process by which Mankind was "created," but also on the otherwise conflicting information contained in the Bible.

According to the first chapter of Genesis:

Elohim created the Adam in His image—

in the image of Elohim created He him.

Male and female created He them.

Chapter 5, which is called the Book of the Genealogies of Adam, states that:

On the day that Elohim created Adam,

in the likeness of Elohim did He make him.

Male and female created He them,

and He blessed them, and called them "Adam"

on the very day of their creation.

In the same breath, we are told that the Deity created, in his likeness and his image, only a single being, "the Adam," and in apparent contradiction, that both a male and a female were created simultaneously. The contradiction seems sharper still in the second chapter of Genesis, which specifically reports that the Adam was alone for a while, until the Deity put him to sleep and fashioned Woman from his rib.

The contradiction, which has puzzled scholars and theologians alike, disappears once we realize that the biblical texts were a condensation of the original Sumerian sources. These sources inform us that after trying to fashion a Primitive Worker by "mixing" apemen with animals, the gods concluded that the only mixture that would work would be between apemen and the Nefilim themselves. After several unsuccessful attempts, a "model"—Adapa/Adam—was made. There was, at first, only a single Adam.

Once Adapa/Adam proved to be the right creature, he was used as the genetic model or "mold" for the creation of duplicates, and those duplicates were not only male, but male and female. As we showed earlier, the biblical "rib" from which Woman was fashioned was a play on words on the Sumerian TI ("rib" and "life")—confirming that Eve was made of Adam's "life's essence."

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The Mesopotamian texts provide us with an eye-witness report of the first production of the duplicates of Adam.

The instructions of Enki were followed. In the House of Shimti—where the breath of life is "blown in"—Enki, the Mother Goddess, and fourteen birth goddesses assembled. A god's "essence" was obtained, the "purifying bath" prepared. "Ea cleaned the clay in her presence; he kept reciting the incantation."

The god who purifies the Napishtu, Ea, spoke up.

Seated before her, he was prompting her.

After she had recited her incantation,

She put her hand out to the clay.

We are now privy to the detailed process of Man's mass creation. With fourteen birth goddesses present,

Ninti nipped off fourteen pieces of clay;

Seven she deposited on the right,

Seven she deposited on the left.

Between them she placed the mould.

. . . the hair she ...

. . . the cutter of the umbilical cord.

It is evident that the birth goddesses were divided into two groups. "The wise and learned, twice-seven birth goddesses had assembled," the text goes on to explain. Into their wombs the Mother Goddess deposited the "mixed clay." There are hints of a surgical procedure—the removal or shaving off of hair, the readying of a surgical instrument, a cutter. Now there was nothing to do but wait:

The birth goddesses were kept together.

Ninti sat counting the months.

The fateful 10th month was approaching;

The 10th month arrived;

The period of opening the womb had elapsed.

Her face radiated understanding:

She covered her head, performed the midwifery.

Her waist she girdled, pronounced the blessing.

She drew a shape; in the mould was life.

The drama of Man's creation, it appears, was compounded by a late birth. The "mixture" of "clay" and "blood" was used to induce pregnancy in fourteen birth goddesses. But nine months passed, and the tenth month commenced. "The period of opening the womb had elapsed." Understanding what was called for, the Mother Goddess "performed the midwifery." That she engaged in some surgical operation emerges more clearly from a parallel text (in spite of its fragmentation):

Ninti ... counts the months....

The destined 10th month they called;

The Lady Whose Hand Opens came.

With the ... she opened the womb.

Her face brightened with joy.

Her head was covered;

... made an opening;

That which was in the womb came forth.

Overcome with joy, the Mother Goddess let out a cry.

"I have created!

My hands have made it!"

•

How was the creation of Man accomplished?

The text "When the gods as men" contains a passage whose purpose was to explain why the "blood" of a god had to be mixed into the "clay." The "divine" element required was not simply the dripping blood of a god, but something more basic and lasting. The god that was selected, we are told, had TE.E.MA—a term the leading authorities on the text (W. G. Lambert and A. R. Millard of Oxford University) translate as "personality." But the ancient term is much more specific; it literally means "that which houses that which binds the memory." Further on, the same term appears in the Akkadian version as
etemu,
which is translated as "spirit."

In both instances we are dealing with that "something" in the blood of the god that was the repository of his individuality. All these, we feel certain, are but roundabout ways of stating that what Ea was after, when he put the god's blood through a series of "purifying baths," was the god's
genes.

The purpose of mixing this divine element thoroughly with the earthly element was also spelled out:

In the clay, god and Man shall be bound,

to a unity brought together;

So that to the end of days

the Flesh and the Soul

which in a god have ripened—

that Soul in a blood-kinship be bound;

As its Sign life shall proclaim.

So that this not be forgotten,

Let the "Soul" in a blood-kinship be bound.

These are strong words, little understood by scholars. The text states that the god's blood was mixed into the clay so as to bind god and Man genetically "to the end of days" so that both the flesh ("image") and the soul ("likeness") of the gods would become imprinted upon Man in a kinship of blood that could never be severed.

The "Epic of Gilgamesh" reports that when the gods decided to create a double for the partly divine Gilgamesh, the Mother Goddess mixed "clay" with the "essence" of the god Ninurta. Later on in the text, Enkidu's mighty strength is attributed to his having in him the "essence of Anu," an element he acquired through Ninurta, the grandson of Anu.

The Akkadian term kisir refers to an "essence," a "concentration" that the gods of the heavens possessed. E. Ebeling summed up the efforts to understand the exact meaning of
ki
ir
by stating that as "Essence, or some nuance of the term, it could well be applied to deities as well as to missiles from Heaven." E. A. Speiser concurred that the term also implied "something that came down from Heaven." It carried the connotation, he wrote, "as would be indicated by the use of the term in medicinal contexts."

We are back to a simple, single word of translation:
gene.

The evidence of the ancient texts, Mesopotamian as well as biblical, suggests that the process adopted for merging two sets of genes—those of a god and those of
Homo erectus
—involved the use of male genes as the divine element and female genes as the earthly element.

Repeatedly asserting that the Deity created Adam in his image and in his likeness, the Book of Genesis later describes the birth of Adam's son Seth in the following words:

And Adam lived a hundred and thirty years,

and had an offspring

in his likeness and after his image;

and he called his name Seth.

The terminology is identical to that used to describe the creation of Adam by the Deity. But Seth was certainly born to Adam by a biological process—the fertilization of a female egg by the male sperm of Adam, and the ensuing conception, pregnancy, and birth. The identical terminology bespeaks an identical process, and the only plausible conclusion is that Adam, too, was brought forth by the Deity through the process of fertilizing a female egg with the male sperm of a god.