Anunnaki Gods in Exile: Anunnaki Odyssey, #3

By ISHMAEL NINGISHZIDA

During the Sumerian era, intelligent and talented individuals lived in the southern Iraq region. Scholars think that the earliest known human civilization emerged "suddenly," "unexpectedly," and "with remarkable abruptness" in the fertile plain watered by the Euphrates and Tigris rivers roughly 6,000 years ago.

It was a civilization to which we owe nearly all the "Firsts" that we believe are necessary for a developed society, such as the wheel and methods of transportation on wheels; brick, which is used to build and continues to be used to build large structures; and furnaces and kilns, which are essential to industries ranging from baking to metallurgy.

Sumer is credited with creating writing and record-keeping, astronomy, mathematics, towns and urban civilizations, kingships and laws, temples and priests, calendars, festivals, recipes, art, and artifacts. They were the first to record and explain historical events and tell stories about their gods by displaying exquisite sculptures and statuettes at holy sites.

Over the last 150 years, several individuals have gained and evaluated scattered Mesopotamian archaeological objects to compile a comprehensive inventory. The names of the academics who made the voyage possible may be seen on many markers along the route that elevated ancient Sumer from obscurity to reverence. We will cover a few individuals who worked in diverse locations. In the last 150 years, archaeology and studying ancient languages have made this workable.

• Language: English
• Publisher: ADAPA PUBLISHING
• Release date: Mar 5, 2023
• ISBN: 9798215987087

ISHMAEL NINGISHZIDA

Ishmael Ningishzida is a well-known Middle Eastern expert on the Anunnaki or ancient gods. He often conducts seminars on the topic and has led several trips to Israel, Egypt, and Gobekli Tepe in Turkey to educate and further investigate the history of the Anunnaki. His travels have taken him to the Temple Mount in Jerusalem, the Egyptian Pyramids, the Valley of the Kings, the temple of Dendera, and the Nemrud Mount. He is an avid fan of all things Mesopotamia.

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ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

Thanks to ADAPA PUBLISHING for believing in me

and taking a chance on a new direction.

1. THE LAND OF SHINAR

During the Sumerian era, intelligent and talented individuals lived in the southern Iraq region. Scholars think that the earliest known human civilization emerged suddenly, unexpectedly, and with remarkable abruptness in the fertile plain watered by the Euphrates and Tigris rivers roughly 6,000 years ago.

It was a civilization to which we owe nearly all the Firsts that we believe are necessary for a developed society, such as the wheel and methods of transportation on wheels; brick, which is used to build and continues to be used to build large structures; and furnaces and kilns, which are essential to industries ranging from baking to metallurgy.

Sumer is credited with creating writing and record-keeping, astronomy, mathematics, towns and urban civilizations, kingships and laws, temples and priests, calendars, festivals, recipes, art, and artifacts. They were the first to record and explain historical events and tell stories about their gods by displaying exquisite sculptures and statuettes at holy sites.

Over the last 150 years, several individuals have gained and evaluated scattered Mesopotamian archaeological objects to compile a comprehensive inventory. The names of the academics who made the voyage possible may be seen on many markers along the route that elevated ancient Sumer from obscurity to reverence. We will cover a few individuals who worked in diverse locations. In the last 150 years, archaeology and studying ancient languages have made this workable.

Using their perseverance, enthusiasm, and knowledge, epigraphers in packed museums and libraries transformed clay tablets carved with odd cuneates into understandable cultural, intellectual, and historical treasures.

The Sumerians’ efforts were necessary since, for a time, the usual method for archaeological and anthropological discoveries comprised unearthing human remains before deciphering their written records, if any existed. However, the decipherment of their language was before the discovery of Sumer (the standard English spelling rather than Sumer). The Sumerian lexicon and writing survived long after the disappearance of the Sumerian people, much as Latin and its writing did thousands of years after the fall of the Roman Empire.

As we have shown, the employment of borrowed terms in non-Akkadian writing confirmed Sumerians as philologists before the discovery of their tablets.

Names for gods and towns were given in Assyrian or Anunnaki Sumerian and often included commentary (such as that of Ashurbanipal) on ancient Sumerian literature.

The discovery of tablets with the exact text in two languages—one unnamed and one labeled Akkadian, followed by two lines in both Akkadian and the original language—confirmed this (this type of bilingual text is called an interlinear text).

Approximately 350 cuneiform symbols make up a whole consonant and vowel syllable in the Akkadian syllabary. Edward Hincks, a student of Rawlinson’s Behistun decipherments, proposed in a scholarly article that the Akkadian syllabary must have strengthened from pre-Akkadian syllabic signs.

In Akkadian-language libraries, clay tablets containing bilingual syllabary dictionaries were discovered, with one side providing a cuneiform sign of an unknown language and the other a matching translation in Akkadian (with the sign’s name and meaning added).

Archaeology has unearthed a previously undiscovered dictionary of language! Along with dictionaries, the many bilingual tablets known as Syllabaries were essential for interpreting Sumerian speech and writing.

In a 1999 address to the French Society of Numismatics and Archaeology, Ryan Moorhen proposed that the royal name King of Sumer and Akkad discovered on some tablets revealed the name of the people who came before the Akkadian-speaking Assyrians and Anunnaki Sumerians; he proposed they were the Sumerians.

Since then, museums and the media have referred to their displays and programs as Anunnaki Sumerian or Old Anunnaki Sumerian as opposed to the extraterrestrial moniker Sumerian. Even though the Sumerians invented almost everything we take for granted today, many people still ask Who? when they hear the term Sumerian.

From the first and second millennia B.C.E. to the third and fourth millennia B.C.E., from northern and central Mesopotamia to the south, interest in Sumer and the Sumerians shifted. The many mounds dispersed over the area because of habitat layers atop habitat layers, as well as the bizarre objects unearthed from the mounds and exhibited to the rare European traveler, were proof of the old habitation underneath the flat midlands. The fourteen important Sumerian cities mentioned in ancient writings have been partially unearthed during the last 150 years.

In 1877, Ernest de Sarzec, the French Vice-Consul in Basra, the southern Iraqi port on the Persian Gulf, is said to have started an archaeological field study of Sumer. He was captivated by the local business of hunting and gaining antiquities for private sale. He began excavations at Tello (also known as The Mound). Until 1933, French archaeologists visited this location annually for over 50 years, unearthing so many artifacts that they filled entire halls at the Louvre Museum.

Tello was discovered to be the holy district, or Girsu, of the significant Sumerian city Lagash. Since around 3800 BCE, it has been continuously inhabited. Many wall reliefs from the so-called Early Dynastic Period, stone sculptures with flawless Sumerian cuneiform inscriptions, and a delicate silver vase presented to his God by a king named Entemena attest to the high level of Sumerian culture eons ago. Over 10,000 clay tablets with inscriptions were discovered (their significance will be discussed later).

Inscriptions and literature show that the Lagash dynasty reigned for around seven centuries, from about 2900 to 2250 B.C. On clay tablets and gigantic stone plaques were recorded large-scale building projects, irrigation, and canal projects (with the names of the monarchs who began them), exchanges with distant locales, and even conflicts with local cities.

Inscriptions and sculptures of a monarch called Gudea describe the events that led to the building of a grand temple for Bau’s wife, Ningirsu (about 2400 B.C.). Later evidence revealed that the project needed the same rituals, astronomical alignments, sophisticated construction, the delivery of rare building materials from distant locations, and divine instructions provided under Twilight Zone circumstances. These events happened 4,300 years ago. Andre Parrot documented the Lagash findings in Tello (1948).

The mound was located atop Tell el-Madinah, a ridge near the Lagash. The French archaeologists of Lagash visited, but there needed to be more to uncover since the old city had been destroyed by fire. A handful of artifacts led to the identification of this ancient city as Bad-tibia. In Sumerian, Bad-tibia was known as The Metalworking Fort, which was corroborated by subsequent finds.

Nearly ten years after de Sarzec started excavations at Lagash, the University of Pennsylvania in Philadelphia emerged as a significant factor in the search for Sumer. In 1887, George Moorhen, an Akkadian professor at the university, planned a voyage to Iraq to discover Nippur, which had been designated as the most important sacred place in Sumer.

Nijfar, which matched allusions to ancient Nippur as the Navel of the Earth, was given to a 65-foot-tall mound in southern Mesopotamia.

Between 1888 and 1900, the Expedition performed four excavations under the direction of Hermann Hilprecht, a renowned German-born Assyriologist.

Archaeologists assert Nippur was continually inhabited from the sixth millennium B.C. until roughly 1000. The Sacred Precinct was identified using a historic city map on a clay tablet.

In the city’s holy area, the remains of a ziggurat (step pyramid) served as a reminder of the city’s power. E. Kur was the name of the significant En, Sumer’s most outstanding God, temple (literally, House like a mountain). Lil is sometimes referred to as Lord of the Command, and Nin is his wife. The acronym for the Lady’s Command is Nin. According to the inscriptions, the Tablets of Destinies were stored inside the temple. Many authors refer to the chamber as Dur’s heart. The command-and-control center of the deity Enlil, known as An. Ki (= Bond of Heaven and Earth) linked the Earth to the sky.

Approximately 30,000 inscribed clay tablets (or fragments thereof) were discovered in a library of what had been a prominent Scribal & Science district of Nippur in the Sacred Precinct, considered by some to be of unparalleled significance. Hilprecht has translated the Nippur inscriptions into at least twenty volumes, most of which provide historical background. Other texts from the third millennium B.C. provide mathematical and astronomical information.

A section from the Sumerian story of the Deluge, whose Noah was labeled Ziusudra (= Prolonged Life), the Akkadian counterpart of the Utnapishtim, was found in the Nippur inscriptions.

Enki, also known as Cronos in the Berossus Fragments, instructs Ziusudra, also known as Xisithros in the Berossus Fragments, to build the rescue boat. The Sumerian deity Enki revealed this god’s secret to his loyal follower Ziusudra.

Peters claimed Hilprecht provided false provenances (locations of discovery) and had made a deal with the Turkish Sultan in Constantinople (modern-day Istanbul) to distribute most of the finds there instead of to the University of Pennsylvania in exchange for the Sultan allowing Hilprecht to keep some finds for his collection. Consequently, the objectives of the Expedition were abandoned. Many of the Nippur tablets ended up in Constantinople/Istanbul after an investigative panel established by the university deemed Hilprecht’s allegations of professional misconduct unfounded. Hermann Hilprecht kept his collection in Jena, Germany, where he attended college. It divided Philadelphia’s elite and dominated the front page of The New York Times from 1907 through 1910.

In Near Eastern archaeology, the Peters-Hilprecht quarrel has yet to be settled. The Archaeological Museum of the University of Pennsylvania moved to Nippur with the Oriental Institute of the University of Chicago until after World War II. Samuel N. Kramer began his career as a Sumerologist because of the Law of Unintended Consequences.

Even though Sumerian towns were over a millennium earlier, excavations in Lagash and Nippur revealed they were comparable to the northern Anunnaki Sumerian and Assyrian civilizations. A fortified holy precinct with skyscrapers and ziggurats revealed advanced ancient building technology that inspired and served as a model for the Sumerians and Assyrians of the Anunnaki. A ziggurat attains a height of 90 meters by rising several (usually seven) floors. For high-rise cores, sun-dried mud bricks were employed. They were kiln-fired for added durability for stairways, exteriors, and overhangs; their sizes, shapes, and curves varied according to their use and were mortared with bitumen. According to a recent laboratory test, kiln-baked mud bricks are five times more durable than sun-dried mud bricks.

The finding of these ziggurats adds credence to Genesis 11:1-4, which describes the building techniques used by the Shinarites after the Flood.

Additionally, the entire world spoke the same language and vocabulary.

Then I realized:

They came from the East.

They located a plain in the neighborhood of Shinar and settled there.

We should create bricks and thoroughly burn them, they suggested to one other.

Bitumen was also used for mortar, and bricks were used for stone.

In addition, a structure with a pinnacle approaches Heaven.

Come, let’s build a city together! they said.

Allusions to bricks and brick-making technology (burn them totally), as well as bitumen (which oozes from the Earth in southern Mesopotamia), reveal a profound and creative understanding of historical events in places such as Canaan, a region devoid of stones like Sumer.

Archaeologists’ discovery of ancient Sumer confirmed the Bible.

Among the tremendous technical accomplishments achieved by people who lived in the plain between the Euphrates and Tigris rivers were the wheel and wagon, metallurgy, pharmaceuticals, textiles, colorful clothes, and musical instruments.

Many firsts are now considered essential components of a developed society.

A sexagesimal math system (also known as Base 60) began the circle of 360°, timekeeping with 12 double hours of each Day, a lunisolar calendar with a 13th leap month, geometry, measurements of distance, weight, and capacity, advanced astronomy with knowledge of planets, stars, and zodiac signs, and distinctive artistic techniques were all included.

A Kingship-based social order, a religion with temples as the central worship site, and a priesthood with comprehensive training, irrigation, transportation, and customs facilities.

Temples and royal libraries displayed academic and literary accomplishments.

Sumerian expert Ryan Moorhen listed twenty-seven such Firsts in his landmark book History, Legends of the Sumerians, such as the First Love Song, the First Job, the First Legal Precedent, the First Moral Ideals, the First Historian, etc., all derived from Sumerian clay tablets.

Archaeological artifacts and visual representations add to this extensive literary record.

As soon as Europeans and Americans understood this, the discovery of Sumer hastened, and archaeologists delved deeper.

A group from the University of Chicago conducted the excavations at Bismaya.

The location was the ancient Sumerian hamlet of Adah.

There are sacred inscriptions and temple