What ancient peoples contributed grains of their innermost knowledge to the greatest of mankind's creations - the Book of Books?
The connection of biblical legends with the centuries-old wisdom of Egypt and Babylon is obvious, but the influence of some other highest civilizations in them, the memory of which has been lost in the labyrinths of millennia, is clearly felt … Which ones? The hint is already contained in the first chapters of Genesis.
“And Terah took Abraham his son, and Lot his son Abraham his grandson, and Sarah his daughter-in-law, the wife of Abraham his son, and went out with them from Ur of the Chaldees …” (11:31). The lineage of Abraham, to whom
The Lord, having concluded a covenant with him, changed his name to Abraham, and before he had another, traced from Shem, the eldest son of Noah, in other words - from the most antediluvian times.
Obviously, before becoming the chosen one of the highest will, Abraham, like his father, and grandfather Nahor, and great-grandfather Serug, worshiped local gods.
According to the descriptions of ancient geographers, the land of the Chaldeans was located near the Persian Gulf and bordered on Arabia, somewhere in the south of the Babylonian possessions. It was there that one should look for the very reserved Ur, which until 1922 was considered mythical.
The honor of discovering the legendary city, from where the forefather of the Jews and Arabs came out, belongs to the outstanding English archaeologist Leonard Woolley. Having excavated a mound, which the local Bedouins called Tell Al-Muqayar, he discovered the ruins of palaces, temples and the richest royal burials. On a cylindrical seal dating from 2100 BC, it was possible to read the name of one of the kings of Ur, thereby proving the real existence of the hometown of the forefather Abraham.
And discoveries, one more amazing than the other, followed discoveries. And the incomparable beauty of the golden helmet of the king of Gudea, and the gigantic sanctuary - a stepped ziggurat, the lower wall of which was almost 17 meters high, and the upper tower - 23 meters. The floors of black and red fired bricks were crowned with a throne with a golden dome, faced with blue glazed tiles. Once upon a time, enchanting hanging gardens smelled on the terraces of the sanctuary.
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Wasn't this ziggurat the inspiration for the Tower of Babel?
The residence of a king named Shulgi looked just as majestic. Even the most ordinary houses were equipped with a sewerage system and running water. Numerous fountains were supplied with water through asphalt gutters!
Surprisingly, the archaeologist Woolley managed to light the coals preserved in one of the hearths: “We were able to re-light the fire, made the oldest cuisine in the world work again,” he wrote in his field diary.
So the world learned about the greatness of a unique culture lost in centuries.
And half a century before Woolley, the prominent French linguist Jules Oppert, deciphering the cuneiform tablets, returned this seemingly forgotten name to this civilization. Ur was not Chaldean at all, but Sumerian!
Meanwhile, the very memory of Sumer was erased thousands of years ago. Neither the Bible, nor the Babylonian, nor the Egyptian monuments contain the slightest mention of a people who undoubtedly deserved the right to be called the "teacher of mankind." It is not known where the "blackheads" came from, how the very name of the people who created the first syllabic writing in history, together with which history itself was born, sounds in translation. She was born in Sumer!
It is not known where they came from, so it is not known where and when they acquired the unique knowledge, which they brought to the lower reaches of the Tigris-Euphrates rivers in four thousand years BC. The peoples who lived there adopted from them developed cattle breeding, the art of agriculture, metallurgy. The Sumerians turned sands and swamps into blossoming gardens. They were the first to tame the bull deified later in Egypt, Assyria and Hellas - the “golden calf” of the Bible and were the first to learn how to smelt copper.
This is evidenced by such words as "gud" (bull) and "urudu" (copper), borrowed by many languages of the world. Hence - the old Russian "beef" and quite modern "ore".
Having deciphered the Sumerian cuneiform written on stone cylinders and clay tablets, scientists were able to establish that the first city that was captured, but not destroyed by unknown aliens, was Eredu, located on the shores of a freshwater lagoon near the Persian Gulf.
“After kingship descended from heaven, Eredu became a place of kingship,” read the Royal List, which captured a long list of rulers. It contained the names of the antediluvian capitals of Sumer, which took the baton of "royalty": Badtibir, Shuruppak, and also Uruk, known from the Bible as Erech (in Russian transcription - Arech).
But, perhaps, the most interesting discovery was presented by tablets containing reports of governors. They contain the names of Terah, Abraham's father, his grandfather Nahor, great-grandfather Serug, and even great-great-grandfather Peleg. It seems that we are talking not only about a glorious family, but about a very powerful dynasty of leaders - nomads, possibly kings. The name of the city where Farrah brought his family, Harran, testifies to the same. It is clearly consonant with the name of his brother Abraham, who died before leaving Ur. This is Aran, the father of Lot, mentioned in the same verse (11:31).
What forced the direct descendants of Noah to leave their homes?
“The gods have left us like migratory birds. Smoke covers our cities like a shroud”, - written on one of the Sumerian tables, dating from about XXI-XX centuries BC. The invasion of the Mesopotamia by wild Amorite tribes and neighbors from Elam dates back to this time. During the reign of the last kings of the 3rd dynasty of the city of Ur, the previously prosperous state called Sumer and Akkad fell into decay, splitting into several parts.
To unite them again was to be the great king Hammurabi, whose famous, carved in stone
the laws echo the commandments received by Moses. But this is already the beginning of the history of another mighty empire, which received the name of Babylonia from the Greeks.
It would hardly be fair to classify the family of Abraham as a Sumerian. During the period of forced emigration, the Sumerians thoroughly mixed with the Semites who spoke Akkadian. They inherited their traditions and the pantheon of their gods, to whom they have already given their names. But the Sumerian language, existing in parallel with Akkadian, which, in fact, made it possible to decipher the found inscriptions, for a long time remained the language of sages and priests like Latin in medieval Europe.
The closest to the Sumerian time is the righteous Noah and his son Shem, who “was a hundred years old, and gave birth to Arphaxad two years after the flood” (11:10). Actually, a new, post-Flood race of people originates from Arfaxad. All of them were distinguished by enviable longevity.
According to the Book of Genesis, 2817 years passed from Shem to the birth of Abraham. The accuracy of the figure is very relative, but it is clear that there are no memories of Sumer for such a long time … But the memory of the flood turned out to be too vivid:
“And the Lord said, I will destroy from the face of the earth the men whom I have created … But Noah found grace in the eyes of the Lord” (6: 7, 8).
"And the Lord said to Noah: enter you and all your family into the ark … And take every clean cattle by seven, male and female, and from unclean cattle, by two …" (7: 1, 2).
The flood, "the waters of Noah", were sent by God to the earth and drowned, with the exception of 8 souls, all mankind mired in sins.
“In the six hundredth year of Noah's life … all the springs of the great abyss were opened, and the windows of heaven were opened;
And it rained on the earth forty days and forty nights”(7:11, 121).
The water that flooded the land “intensified” for 150 days and after exactly the same period began to decrease. It took another forty days before Noah released the raven, which flew off the ark and returned back. Then he released the dove, but the dove "found no rest for its feet." Seven days later he had to fly again, and only this time the bird returned with an oil leaf in its beak. It was a sign that the water had gone down. And when, after waiting another seven days, Noah again sent a winged scout, he never returned. The voyage to the Ararat mountains continued, thus, exactly one year!
From such an ancient source, arithmetic accuracy cannot be required, but the very fact of a gigantic flood in this part of the world is beyond doubt. This was established in 1929 by the same Woolley, who discovered during the excavations of Ur a dense layer of silt 2.4 meters thick, separating two cultural layers: before the flood and after the flood.
Not a single artifact was found in the thickness of the water sediments - an object made by a human hand. As if the land had become depopulated for a while!
So the myth took on very real features. And soon followed by a new confirmation. During the excavation of the holy city of Nippur, a fragment of a table made of unbaked clay was found, on which it was possible to read a description of the flood. The table dates from the 21st century BC, when Sumer practically did not exist anymore. This means that the found entry belonged to an older text.
The sensational discovery of 12 tables with the Sumerian epic "On Gilgamesh" gave reason to talk about the prototype of Noah named Ziusudra, the son of Ubar-Tutu.
“A man from Shuruppak, son of Ubar-Tutu, Take apart (your) house, build a ship …
… Load the seed of living beings onto the ship."
The motives are remarkably similar. The decision to bring down the heavenly waters to people belongs to the council of the gods, but the god Enki secretly warns Ziusudra, or Utnapishtim, as the Akkadians called him. The fact that the warning was made in secret from other celestials is evidenced by the Sumerian text:
“Stand against the wall, to my left …
At the wall I'll tell you a word, heed my word
… then it will flood the sanctuaries, In order to destroy the seed of the human race …
This is the decision and decree of the assembly of the gods."
Utnapishtim, who gained immortality, told about the flood to the great hero of the Sumerian-Akkadian legends, Gilgamesh. At first he was ranked as one of the heavenly deities: a temple dedicated to him was discovered in Lagash. The discovery of the records confirming the true existence of Gilgamesh all the more struck the imagination of archaeologists! He, “having seen everything,” seeking immortality or, at worst, posthumous glory, found both in the grateful memory of mankind.
Archaeological finds have confirmed with absolute certainty that Gilgamesh was the fifth king of the first dynasty of Uruk. And this is the XXVII century BC! This means that all images and texts associated with his name could not have appeared earlier than the XXVII-XXVI centuries BC. The halo of the deity was assigned to him already at the sunset of Sumer, under the last kings …
Both the flood tables and the Epic of Gilgamesh give many startling details. It turns out that Ziusudra's ship - Utnapishtima was made of wood and tarred - almost a complete analogy with the description of Noah's ark! The dimensions, however, differ significantly: if the biblical ark reached 150 meters in length and 25 in width, then the Sumerian one was 970 meters long and 338 meters wide. Such a "superliner" could accommodate up to 7000 different animals and a supply of food for a whole year.
It is characteristic that his voyage also ended near one of the mountains of Ararat. And the birds were also released: raven, dove and swallow. It is noteworthy that according to the Sumerian version, the flood lasted seven days and seven nights. Its end was marked by the appearance of the sun. In the Bible, God made it known about a rainbow of water.
Genesis was recorded around the 9th century BC. Almost two thousand years separate Ziusudra - Utnapishtim from Noah. But only thanks to the Bible, which devoted such a significant place to the story of the Great Flood, this brilliant legend, densely mixed with reality, entered the golden fund of all mankind.
And together with her, the Sumerians are our teachers …
Eremey PARNOV