The Epic of GilgameshThe 'Gilgamesh Epic' is generally regarded as the greatest literature prior to the O.T. Genesis 6, Epic poem centered on the heroic tales of a great king.
A sensentional find was made in the hill Kuyunjik around the turn of the century. It was a heroic epic of great exspressive power engraved on twelve clay tablets, and it belonged to the library of the Assyrian King Ashurbanipal. The epic was written in Akkadian; later a second copy was found that goes back to King Hummarabi.
It is an established fact that the original version of the Epic of Gilgamesh stems from the Sumerians, that mysterious people whose origin we do not know but who left behind the astonshing fiftenn-digit number and a very advanced astronomy. It is also clear that the main thread of the Epic of Gilgamesh runs parallel to the biblical Book of Genesis.
The first clay tablet of the Kuynjik finds relates that the victorious hero Gilgamesh built the wall of Uruk. We read that the 'god of heaven' lived in a statley home which contianed granaries, and that gaurds stood on the town walls.
We learn that Gilgamesh was a mixture of 'god' and man -two-thrids 'god', one-third man. Pligrims who came to Uruk gazed up at him in fear and trembling because they had never seen his like for beauty abd strength. In other words, the begining of the narritive contians the ideas of interbredding between "gods" and man yet again. This also is parralel to Genesis 6.
The second tablets tells us that another figure, Enkidu was created by the goddess of heaven, Aruru. Enkidu is described in great detail. His whole body was covered with hair; he wore skins, ate grass in the fields, and drank at the same watering place as the catle. He also disported himself in the tumbling waters.
When Gilgamesh, the king of the town of Uruk, heard about this unattractive hybrid creature, he suggested that he shouldbe given a lovely woman so that he would become estranged from cattle. Enkidu, innocent fellow, was taken in by the king's trick and spent sixdays and six nights with a semi-diving beauty goddes named 'Ishtar'. This little bit of royal pandering leads us to think that the idea of cross-breading between a demigod and a half-animal was not taken quite as a matter of course in this barbaric world.
The third tablet goes on to tell us about a cloud of dust which came froma great distance. The heavens roared, the earth quaked, and finally the 'sun god' came and seized Enkidu with mighty wings and claws. We read in astonishment that he lay like lead on Enkidu's body and that the wieght of his body seemed to him like the weight of a boulder.
Even if we grant the old storytellers a fertile imagination and discount the additions made by translators and copyist, the incredible thing about the account still remains: how on earth could the old chroniclers have known that the wieght of the body becomes as heavy as lead at a certian acceleration? Nowadays we known all about the forces of gravity and acceleration. when an astronaut is pressed back into his seat by a force of several G's at takeoff, it has all been calculated in advance.
But how on earth did this occur to the old chroniclers? The fifth tablet narrates how Gilgamesh and Enkidu set out to visit the adobe of the 'gods' togeather. The tower in which the goddess Irninis lived could be seen gleaming in the distance long before they reached it', I identify this as Atlantis by the detials they give. The arrows and missles which the cautions wanderrers rained on the guards rebounded harmlessly.
And as they reached the precincts of the 'gods', a voice roared at them: " turn back! no mortal comes to the holy mountian where the gods dwell; he who looks the gods in the face must die."
'Thou canst not see my face, for there shall no man see me and live." It says im Exodus.
On the seventh tablet is the first eyewitness account of a space trip, told by Enkidu. He flew for four hours held in the brazen talons of an eagle. This is how his story goes literally:
"He said to me: ' Look down at the land. What does it look like? Look at the sea. How does it seem to you?' And the land was like a mountain and the sea like a lake. And again he flew for four hours and said to me ' Look down at the land. What does it look like? Look at the sea. How does it seem to you? And the earth was like a garden and the sea like the water channel of a gardener. And he flew higher yet another four and spake ' look down at the land. What does it look like? Look at the sea. How does it seem to you? And the land looked like porridge and the sea like a water trough.''
In this case so this living hybrid man Enkidu must have seen the earth from some great height. The account is too accurate to have been the product of pure imagination. Who could have possibly said that the land looked like porridge and the sea like a water trough if some conception of the globe from above had not existed? because the earth actually does look like a jigsaw puzzle of porridge and water troughs from a great hieght.This account is too accurate to have been the product of pure imagination.Is this mere fact or imagination?
When the same tablet tells us that a door spoke like a living person, I unhesitantingly identify this strange phenomenon as a loudspeaker. And on the eighth tablet this same Enkud, who must have seen the earth from a considerable height, dies of a mysterious disease, so mysterious that Gilgamesh ask whether he may not have been smitten by the poisonous breath of the heavenly beast. But where did Gilgamesh get the idea of that the poisonous breath of the heavenly beast could cause fatal and incurable disease? The ninth tablet describes how Gilgamesh mourns for the death of his friend Enkidu and decides to undertake a long journey to the gods, because he is obsessed by the idea that he might die of the same disease as Enkidu. The narrative says that Gilgamesh came to two mountians arched the gate of the sun. At the fate of the sun he meet two giants, and after a lenthy discussion they let him pass because he was two-thrids god himself.
Finally Gilgamesh found the garden of the gods, beyond which stretche the endless seas, This could be identified as being Mu.
While Gilgamesh was on his way, the gods warned him twice: 'Gilgamesh, wither art thou hurrying? Thou shalt not find thelife that thou seekest. When the gods created man, they allotted him to death, but life they retained in thier own keeping."
Gilgamesh would not be warned to reach Utnapishtim, the father figure of men, no matter what dangers. But Utnapishtim, the father fugure of men, lived on the far side of the great sea; no road lead and no ship flew across it except the sun god's. Braving all kinds of perils Gilgamesh crossed the sea. Then floows his encounter with Utnapishtim, which is described in the eleventh tablet.
Gilgamesh found the father figure of men niether bigger nor broader that his own, and he said that they resembled each other like father and son. Then Utnapishtim tells Gilgamesh about his past, strangely enough in the first person. To our amazement we are given a detialed description of the Flood. he recounts that the "gods" warned him of the great flood to come and gave him the task of building a boat on which he was to shelter women and children, his relatives, and craftsmen of every kind. The description of the violent storm, and darkness, the rising flood, and the despair of the people he could not take with him has tremendour narrative power even today. We also hear-just as in Noah's account in the Bible- the story of the raven and the dove that were released and how finnaly, as the waters went down, the boat grounded on a mountian.
The parallel between the stories of the Flood in the Epic of Gilgamesh and the Bible is beyond doubt, and there is not a single scholar who contest it. The fascinatiing thing about this parrallelism is that we are dealing with different omens and different 'gods' in this case.
If the account of the Flood in the Bible is a secondhand one, the first-person form Utnapishtim's narrative shows that a survivor, an eyewitness, was speaking in the Epic of Gilgamesh.
It has been clearly proved that a catastrophic flood did take place in ancient East some thousands of years ago. Ancient Babylonian cuneiform texts indicate very precisely where the remains of the boat ought to be. And on the south side of Mount Ararat inverstigators did in fact find three pieces of wood which possible indicate the place where the ark grounded. Incidentlly, the chances of finding the remains of of a ship that was mainly built of wood and survived a flood more than 6,000 yeas ago are extemely remote.
Besides being a first-hand report, the Epic of Gilgamesh also contians desriptions of extraordinary things that could not have been made up by any intellegence living at the time the tablets were written , any more they could have been devised by the translators and copyist who manhandled the epic over centuries. For there are facts buried among the descrptions that must have been known to the author of the Epic of Goilgamesh---- and we may discover them if we look in th light of present day knowledge.
Perhaps asking some new questions may throw a little light on the darkness. it is possible that the Epic of Gilgamesh did not orignate in the ancient East at all, but in the Tiahuanco region? It is concievable that descendents of Gilgamesh came from South America and brought the Epic with them? An affirmative answer would atleast explain the mention of the Gate of the Sun, the crossing of the sea, and at the same time the sudden appearance of the Sumerians, for as it is well known, all the creations of Babylon, which came later, go back to the Sumerians. Undoubtedly the advanced Egyptian culture of the Phoroahs possessed libraries in which the old secrets were perserved, taught, learned and written down. As has lready been mentioned, Moses grew up at the Egyptian court and certianlly had access to the vernable library rooms.
Moses was a receptive and learned man; indeed he is supposed to have written five of his books him-self, although it is still an unsolved puzzle in what language he could have written them. If we work on the hypothesis that the Epic of Gilgamesh came to Egypt from the Sumerians by way of the Assyrians and Babylonians, and that the young Moses found it there and adapted it for his own ends, then the Sumerian story of the Flood, and not the biblizal one, would be the genuine account.
