The Cosmic War Joseph P Farrell

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2. The Sumerian Tradition

But no tradition underscores the role of “power stones” and their role in the War of the Pantheon and the Revolt of the Gods more than does the Sumerian.³⁹² Two legends are crucial in the exposition of this tradition: the Legend of Nergal and Ereshkigal, and The Myth of Zu or as he is sometimes known, The Myth of Anzu.

a. Nergal, the Storming of the Underworld, and the “Tablet of Wisdom ”

According to Assyriologist Stephanie Dalley, the earliest of the two versions of The Legend of Nergal and Ereshkigal was found in what at first glance appears to be a most unlikely place for the tablets of a Sumerian epic to be found: Tell el-Amarna in Egypt, and dates from the fifteenth or fourteenth centuries B.C!³⁹³ In my last book on the Giza Death Star hypothesis, I speculated on the possible though seemingly implausible link of the Babylonian god of Mars, war, revolt, and the underworld, Nergal, to the complex at Giza, and to the Martian ruins at Cydonia.³⁹⁴ The Legend of Nergal and Ereshkigal in its Tell el-Amarna version, while not directly supporting this very speculative connection, certainly does not contradict it.

In any case, the standard Babylonian version The Legend of Nergal and Ereshkigal recounts in a very few short lines Nergal’s storming of “the Seven Gates of the Underworld,” the names of the gates, and his oddly “biblical” six-day long lovemaking with the “legitimate” goddess of the underworld, Ereshkigal.³⁹⁵

But curiously, the Egyptian Tell el-Amarna version of the legend contains a twist toward the very end of the text, which suggests a motivation behind Nergal’s storming of the Seven Gates of the Underworld. Addressing the would-be usurper, the Queen of the Underworld, Ereshkigal, offers him an unusual deal:

“You can be my husband, and I can be your wife. I will let you seize
Kingship over the wide Earth! I will put the Tablet
Of wisdom in your hand! You can be master,
I can be mistress.” ³⁹⁶

The implications are immediately obvious, for Nergal’s whole storming of the Underworld, following the older Amarna version of the text, would appear to be motivated by nothing less than a desire for global domination by means of some technology or symbol of authority represented by the “tablet of wisdom,” an object that appears to be intimately connected to “Kingship over the wide Earth.”

b. The Myth of (An)Zu: The Tablet of Destinies and the Causus Belli

A much more detailed and suggestive glimpse into the technological motivation for the War in the Pantheon is provided by the Myth of (An)Zu. Indeed, in this legend one gains a glimpse into the characters of the main players, their motivations, and suggestions of the incredible technologies and science with which the war was waged.

Here again the text comes in two versions. According to Sumerologist Stephanie Dalley once again, the “Old Babylonian” version consists of “a small portion of the tale” dating from “the early second millennium.”³⁹⁷ The Standard Babylonian version, “dating to the first millennium BC” was discovered on tablets of three or four columns, most of which were “found on the Late Assyrian sites of Ninevah, Tarbisu and Sultantepe,” although there is a tablet of unknown provenance from this textual tradition of the legend in a museum collection in the United States.³⁹⁸

As Dalley notes, the whole story of the Legend “centres around possession of the Tablet of Destinies.”³⁹⁹ The text is even more curious however, for the odd resemblance it paints of the gods Ninurta and Nergal:

The opening lines of the epic introduce the theme in the first person, representing the singer or poet, and are very closely comparable to the opening lines of Erra and Ishum. Nergal and Ninurta are quite close in some aspects of their characters, and in Erra and Ishum the defeat of Anzu with a net and the conquest of asakku-demons are attributed to Nergal/Erra. The fight of Ninurta to defeat the asakku-demons is known from the mainly Sumerian epic story of cosmic warfare called Lugal-e, and a companion story An-gim.⁴⁰⁰

The similarities between epics of the themes and characters of the two gods suggests the possibility that Ninurta and Nergal might be one and the same individual. As outlandish as that might seem at first glance, Dalley herself notes that one line of the Erra and Ishum epic actually “assimilates Nergal with Ninurta,” ⁴⁰¹ so apparently someone in ancient times noticed the similarity as well.

In any case, the legend makes a number of important observations both about Ninurta, the technological motivations for the war, and the technological means by which it was fought. Ninurta is called “the powerful god, Ellil’s son, Ekur’s child, leader of the Annunaki, focus of Eninnu.”⁴⁰² Note the clear connection between Ninurta and the Annunaki, the beings equivalent with the “Nephilim” who fell from heaven and interbred with human beings. Here Ninurta is clearly called their “leader,” and this makes another connection or association with the god Nergal likely, since the leader of these Nephilim in the apochryphal Book of Enoch is, like Nergal, clearly associated with an armed revolt. ⁴⁰³

(1) “Ekur’s Child:” Ninurta and Nergal: Identification or Association?

The other reference — “Ekur’s child” — is equally if not much more important, for the word “ekur” not only means mountains, but also signifies the artificial “mountains” of the pyramids and ziggurats. In other words, Ninurta is clearly associated with pyramids, and if one recalls our “mountains ≈ planets ≈ pyramids” equation, then Ninurta is simultaneously a “child”, i.e., one “intimately associated with” a planet, and with pyramids.

This would seem to make his possible identification or association with Nergal even stronger, for as I presented in my book The Giza Death Star Destroyed, Nergal is a god of war and rebellion, is associated with a specific planet, Mars, and may be associated not only with Egypt, but with pyramids, the pyramids at Giza.⁴⁰⁴ And as leader of the Annunaki, Ninurta — if one adopt the biblical viewpoint for a moment — is also clearly associated with the whole attempt to create a “hybrid” or “chimeric” race, part human and part “god.”

However, even if one rejects this highly speculative identification of Ninurta with Nergal, and only views it as a strong and highly suggestive association, it is an important association, for Nergal is a personage of some importance, a regular Sumerian “jet-setter” who manages to turn up under various names almost everywhere in the ancient world’s various pantheons. Moreover, he is associated with some truly catastrophic activity.

On the “activity” side of things, it is Nergal along with other gods in the “Sumerian” pantheon, one of them notably being Ninurta, who wields one of the gods’ favorite “divine weapons”: the “abubu” or “flood weapon.”⁴⁰⁵ But Nergal also gets around. Under the name “Erra” he is the “god of war, hunting, and plague,” and, notes Dalley, the etymology for Erra as “scorched earth” is “probably incorrect,” though she does not state why.⁴⁰⁶ Yet another of his names translates into “lord who prowls by night,”⁴⁰⁷ a reference curiously reminiscent of biblical descriptions of Lucifer.⁴⁰⁸ Elsewhere Nergal was called “Erragal” and “Erakal” which were most likely the pronounced forms of Nergal according to Dalley, who adds the comment that the name was probably pronounced “Herakles in Greek.”⁴⁰⁹ Under his Sumerian name Gibil, Nergal is also the god of fire.⁴¹⁰ These characteristics of Nergal will, as we see, bear strong resemblance to those of Ninurta as we examine the text, making it clear that Nergal is at least “partly assimilated” with Ninurta. ⁴¹¹

(2) Ninurta and Nimrod: the Tower of Babel Moment

But enough about Nergal. Who is Ninurta?

Dalley makes one very significant and highly suggestive comment in the glossary to her book Myths from Mesopotamia under the entry for Ninurta, which she notes was “probably pronounced Nimrod”! ⁴¹² Nimrod was, of course, the “mighty hunter” and empire-builder mentioned in the list of Noah’s descendents in the tenth chapter of the biblical book of Genesis. In this context, it is interesting that in the eleventh chapter the Tower of Babel incident is recounted. In other words, the context of the biblical accounts of Nimrod and the Tower of Babel suggests a connection between the two. And the connection may be more than contextual.

To see how, it is worth quoting what I said about the event in my book The Giza Death Star Destroyed:

There is another event that bears mentioning with regard to the decline of the paleoancient Very High Civilization and its presumably unified physics and sophisticated technology: the Tower of Babel. The Old Testament affords a significant clue into the event that transformed the unified and paleoancient Very High Civilization into a multitude of squabbling and declined legacy cultures that resulted from it. The story is recounted in Genesis 11:1-9:

1. And the whole earth was of one language and of one speech.

2. And it came to pass, as they journeyed from the east, that they found a plain in the land of Shinar; and they dwelt there.

3. And they said one to another, Go to, let us make brick, and burn them thoroughly. And they had brick for stone, and slime had they for mortar.

4. And they said, Go to, let us build a city and a tower whose top may reach unto heaven; and let us make us a name, lest we be scattered abroad upon the face if the whole earth.

5. And the LORD came down to see the city and the tower, which the children of men builded.

6. And the LORD said, Behold, the people is one, and they have all one language; and this they begin to do: and now nothing will be restrained from them, which they have imagined to do.

7. Go to, let us go down, and there confound their language, that they may not understand one another’s speech.

8. So the LORD scattered them abroad from thence upon the face of all the earth: and they left off to build the city.

9. Therefore is the name of it called Babel; because the LORD did there confound the language of all the earth: and from thence did the LORD scatter them abroad upon the face of all the earth.

I then commented as follows:

...The “Tower of Babel Moment” permits a further speculation: could the “one language” and “one people” be taken in the broadest sense, not only of one natural human language and one civilization, but of one language of science, a unified science and physics? And could the “one people” refer not only to that one paleoancient Very High Civilization, but also to the unifying cultural effects that “one language” and unified scientific worldview afforded it? Nothing in the biblical account precludes these possibilities, and indeed, there is a strong indication that the Tower may be the (Great) Pyramid itself, if one understands the “top which reaches to heaven” to be a metaphor of the Pyramid’s many dimensional analogs of local celestial mechanics. By a similar line of reasoning, a unified physics and science is implied in the divine observation that “nothing will be restrained from them, which they have imagined to do.” Clearly the “Tower” was no Renaissance painting of vast scaffolding and cranes groaning to lift massive weights to enormous heights. Something else entirely was at work. In this context, it might not be going too far to speculate that the destruction of the Tower of Babel may refer, in oblique terms, to the destruction of “the Great Affliction” and “Weapon,” the Great Pyramid.⁴¹³

In other words, the “Tower of Babel” was an “ekur”, a mountain ziggurat or pyramid, the possession of the physics and technology of which allowed its possessor(s) to imagine to do “whatever they imagine to do” in the way of challenging the divine order. The “Tower” was, to put it succinctly, a very threatening device, one well-suited to the ambitions of a Nimrod, a would be world-emperor, of a Ninurta... of a Nergal.

(3) Ninurta, “Subduer of the Mountain of Stones”

With all this being said, we may return to the examination of the Myth of (An)Zu, for a little bit further from the passage where he has just been called “Ekur’s child,” another passage places Ninurta once again in close association with pyramids:

Listen to the praise of the powerful one’s strength,
Who subdued, who bound the Mountain of Stones in his fury,
Who conquered soaring Anzu with his weapon... ⁴¹⁴

Ninurta, in other words, renders a “Mountain of Stones” harmless, since the clear implication is that whatever “mountain” is being talked about, to bind it would imply that this “mountain” was being used for destructive purposes. Note also that the Mountain of Stones in this case is associated with the god Anzu. In other words, by defeating Anzu and binding the “Mountain of Stones,” possession of the mountain has changed hands. Ninurta-Nimrod (-and-Nergal?) is now in possession of it.

But what weapons did Ninurta use to achieve this feat?

The answer to this question follows a little further on in the text:

At his shout [

The south wind [

The powerful [ ] wind [

The mass [

Whirlwinds [

They met and [

The four winds [ ⁴¹⁵

The text, while in a greatly deteriorated condition, suggests that some form of weather weaponry was used by Ninurta, a fact strongly reminiscent of Tiamat’s arsenal as recorded in the Enuma Elish. ⁴¹⁶

(4) The Motivation for the War: The Theft of Hegemony-Bestoming Technology

What brought on this state of affairs was Enlil’s appointment of (An)Zu to high position, a position in which the epic clearly records (An)Zu is tempted by the awesome power Enlil wields:

(Anzu’s) eyes would gaze at the trappings of Ellil-power:
His lordly crown, his robe of divinity,
The Tablet of Destinies in his hands. Anzu gazed,
And gazed at Duranki’s god, the father of the gods,
And fixed his purpose, to usurp the Ellil-power.
Anzu often gazed at Duranki’s god, father of the gods,
And fixed his purpose, to usurp the Ellil-power.

“I shall take the gods’ Tablet of Destinies for myself
And control the orders for all the gods,
And shall possess the throne and be master of rites!”⁴¹⁷

In other words, Enlil(called Ellil in the text) did not wield supreme power and hegemony in his own right; it was dependent on the possession of the “Tablet of Destinies,” an object that conferred supreme power, a technology. More about this “Tablet of Destinies” in a moment. In any case, Anzu steals the Tablet of Destinies while Enlil was taking a bath, flees, and goes into hiding!⁴¹⁸

But there is something else to notice here: this is the second time we have encountered the theft of the Tablet of Destinies, and it is the second time that a war ensued for their recovery. The first time was Tiamat’s theft of the Tablet, and the subsequent war with Marduk, as recounted in the Enuma Elish.⁴¹⁹ One must view these as two separate events rather than as two versions of the same event in that, other than their theft of the Tablet, the goddess Tiamat and the god Anzu’s characters (not to mention their sex) are entirely different. Whereas with Ninurta and Nergal we can be reasonably confident that the gods were at least partially assimilated by the ancients, and whereas we might even reasonably speculate that they were in fact the same individual underlying their various legends, with Tiamat and Anzu we cannot. We are dealing with two events, an extremely ancient one in the War with Tiamat, and a much less ancient though still quite old event with the contest between Ninurta and Anzu. In other words, the Mesopotamian legendary tradition is broadly compatible with Van Flandern’s Multiple Exploded Planet Hypothesis, and its two planetary explosions at 65,000,000 and 3,200,000 million years ago.

But we must go further than this, for if Van Flandern’s two events are to be seen in connection with the Mesopotamian tradition as has been done here, then it is clear that that tradition ascribes both events to a war, to the use of technology; both wars were brought about by the presumed theft or usurpation of objects or technologies that conferred supreme power. Both wars had the same motivation, both had the same goal in the recovery of that technology, and both resulted in the destruction of an entire planetary body in our local solar system. We are looking, in other words, at an extremely extended conflict spanning several millions of years, all for control or usurpation of a technology that confers supreme powers of destruction or hegemony.

This being said, we may now note the difference between the “First Act” - between Tiamat and Marduk - in this pantheonic war, recounted in the Enuma Elish, and the “Second Act” — between Ninurta-Nimrod and Anzu — recounted in The Myth of (An)Zu, for as will be seen in a moment, the latter myth clearly connects this technology to “mountains” and stones.

(5) The Pantheon Holds Council: The Lightning Weapon and the Inaccessible Mountain

At this juncture, predictably enough, the gods hold council to determine what is to be done about the theft, how to recover the stolen Tablet, and defeat Anzu. The first god to be addressed and requested to deal with the usurper is Adad, who is addressed in the following fashion:

“Powerful Adad, ferocious Adad, your attack cannot be deflected;
Strike Anzu with lightning, your weapon!
Your name shall be great in the great gods’ assembly,
You shall have no rival among the gods your brothers.⁴²⁰

Adad’s lightning weapon recalls the divine weapons and planetary discharges of the “gods” recounted in chapter two.

But even with such powerful weaponry in his possession, Adad demurs:

Adad answered the speech,
Addressed his words to Anu his father.

“Father, who could rush off to the inaccessible mountain?
Which of the gods your sons will be Anzu’s conqueror?
For he has taken the Tablet of Destinies for himself.
....His utterance has replaced that of Duranki’s god!
He has only to command, and whoever he curses turns to clay! ⁴²¹

This passage is full of important clues as to the nature of the Tablets of Destinies and the war that followed their theft. First, note the reference to “the inaccessible mountain” that implies Anzu has taken refuge there. Likewise, note that his possession of the Tablets of Destinies makes even Adad think twice about using his powerful “lightning weapon,” since Anzu’s possession of the Tablet apparently makes him able to effect action at a distance: “He has only to “command” as opposed to Adad having to ”rush off” to the place where Adad is, the “inaccessible mountain,” in order to strike a blow at him.

There is more to be observed here, for the text also seems to suggest that Anzu has taken one technology — the Tablets of Destinies - and combined it with another — the inaccessible mountain — to be able merely to command or effect destruction at a distance. Finally, if one takes our “mountain equals planets equals pyramids” equation from previous chapters and applies it here, then this passage takes on a multi-leveled significance: the “inaccessible mountain” could be a pyramid — and the Great Pyramid’s candidacy for “inaccessibility would seem to be quite strong — or a planetary body, or both. In this respect, it is perhaps significant that the Tablets of Destinies may be an oblique metaphor for the “destinies of the planets” in a culture suffused with astrological lore. In short, it may be a metaphor for the type of celestial mechanics and associated physics connected to the whole idea of plasma and scalar physics.⁴²²

In any case, after Adad declines the dubious and risky honor of taking out Anzu and reacquiring control of the Tablets of Destinies, Gerra, who is identical with Nergal in this text, is addressed next, and pleaded with to use his “fire weapon” to “burn Anzu”, and the result is the same: Nergal, like Adad before him, declines the dubious “honor.”⁴²³

This pattern is repeated again and again with other gods all declining the risky attack on Anzu, until finally Ea formulates a plan to get Ninurta to do the deed:

The Lord of intelligence, wise one who dwells in the Apsu,
Formed an idea in the depths of his being;
Ea formed intelligence in his heart.
He told Anu what he was thinking in his inmost being.

“Let me give orders and search among the gods,
And pick from the assembly Anzu’s conqueror.
...
Have them call for me Belet-ili, sister of the gods,
Wise counselor of the gods her brothers.”

....
They called Belet-ilil, sister of the gods, to him...
...
(Then) Ea told the idea in the depths of his inmost being.
“Previously [we used to call you] Mami
(But) now [your name shall be] Mistress of All Gods.
Offer the powerful one, your superb beloved,
Borad of chest, who forms the battle array!
Give Ninurta, your superb beloved...”

...
[Mami listened to this speech of his...
[And Belet-ili the supreme uttered “Yes.” And she called her son into the gods’ assembly,
And instructed her favourite, saying to him

“....[I gave birth to all] the Igigi,
I created every [single one of the Annunaki],
And I created the [gods’] assembly. [I, Mami,]
[Assigned(?)] the Ellil-power [to my brother],
[Designated] the kingship of heaven for Anu.
Anzu has disrupted the kingship that I designated!
He has obtained for himself the Tablet of Destinies...
Muster your devastating battle force,
Make your evil winds flash as they march over him.
Capturing soaring Anzu
And inundate the earth, which I created — wreck his dwelling.
Let terror thunder above him,
Let fear (of?) your battle force shake in (?) him,
Make the devastating whirlwind rise up against him.
Set your arrow in the bow, coat it with poison.
Your form must keep changing, like a gallu-demon.
Send out a fog, so that he cannot recognize your features!
May your rays proceed above him.
Make a high, attacking leap: have glare
More powerful than Shamash generates...
Rush and inundate the mountain pastures
And slit the throat of wicked Anzu
The shall kingship enter Ekur again... ⁴²⁴

The stratagem is simple: a mother half pleads, half orders her “favorite” son, with all the emotional manipulations that this entails, into a direct confrontation with the hated enemy Anzu. The whole passage thus has about it the air of reality and authenticity. Note also the important sequence that war leads to a flood with the repeated commands from Mami to “inundate” Anzu’s territories.

(6) The Contest between Ninurta and Anzu

What son can resist the impassioned pleas of his own mother? Ninurta certainly cannot, especially since in the context of the whole pentheonic council it is obviously backed with force. So, Ninurta and Anzu meet:

On the mountainside Anzu and Ninurta met...
(Anzu’s) mantle of radiance covered the mountain...
...
Anzu listened to (Ninurta’s) speech,
Then hurled his shout furiously amid the mountains.
Darkness fell over (?) the mountain, their faces were overcast.
Shamash, the light of the gods, was overcast by darkness
....
A clash between battle arrays was imminent, the flood-weapon massed.
....
Clouds of death rained down, an arrow flashed lightning,
Whizzed, the battle force roared between them.
The powerful, superb one, Mami’s son,
....
Set the shaft to the bow, drew it taut,
Aimed (?) the shaft at him from the bow’s curve.⁴²⁵

Before proceeding further, it is important to note how this passage, if read with the equation “mountains equal planets equal pyramids” in mind, yields a some very interesting insights. On this view, the “face” of the mountain on which the combatants are met could be either the “face” of a pyramid, or the surface of a planet, or both. Ninurta raises his “divine arrow,” his plasma thunderbolt, ready to strike. If mountain is here viewed in the “planetary” sense, then once again enormous discharges are ready to “arc” from one planetary “god” to another.

But then, suddenly, nothing happens:

But it (the arrow) did not go near Anzu: the shaft turned back.
Anzu shouted at it,

“You, shaft that came: return to your reed thicket!
Bow frame: back to your copse!
Bow string: Back to the ram’s gut! Feathers, return to the
birds!”⁴²⁶

For readers of my Giza Death Star trilogy, and as we have also seen from Part One of this work, this is a clear signature of the type of “time-reversed,” scalar longitudinal waves being reflected back on their target. The arrow shaft of Ninurta, Ninurta’s “divine thunderbolt” far from reaching its intended target, bounced back to its origin! The explanation for this feat immediately follows in the text, and it’s a breathtaker:

(Anzu) was holding the gods’ Tablet of Destinies in his hand.

And they influenced (?) the string of the bow; the arrows did not come near his body.

Deadly silence came over the battle, and conflict ceased.

Weapons stopped and did not capture Anzu amid the mountains. ⁴²⁷

Anzu, who had taken the Tablet of Destinies and fled to the “Inaccessible Mountain” had not only turned Ninurta’s divine thunderbolt back on itself, but had simply rendered all Ninurta’s arsenal useless. He had, so to speak, simply turned off Ninurta’s war machine. There are only two ways to interpret this passage in a non-catastrophist sense: either the effect was entirely magical, or it was entirely technological. And if the latter, it is a clear signature of the use of scalar weaponry on Anzu’s part, the signature of a phase conjugate mirror.

This should give one pause, for if this is so then the equation “mountain equals planets equals pyramids” means that Anzu has taken the Tablet of Destiny and hid it and himself in an “Inaccessible Mountain/Planet/Pyramid.” The war is both planetary and pyramidal in nature and scope.⁴²⁸

In the face of this devastating debacle, the pantheonic council again deliberates and decides that the only thing one can do in the face of this qualitative and technological superiority of firepower on Anzu’s part is to not “let the battle slacken’ with a view to ”tire him out.“⁴²⁹

This strategy of attrition does the trick, but only at a new cost:

Ninurta slew the mountains, inundated their proud pastures;
Inundated the broad earth in his fury,
Inundated the midst of the mountains, slew wicked Anzu.
And marrior Ninurta regained the gods’ Tablet of Destinies
for his own hand. ⁴³⁰

Thus the Tablets of Destinies, the original causus belli, were not returned to Enlil, but kept by Ninurta for himself, in usurpation upon usurpation!

Ninurta with his “Thunderbolts’, from a Sculpture in the Palace of Assyrian King Asburnasirpal, ca. 800 BC

But this is not the end of the story.

It seems that Ninurta had difficulty in relinquishing the ME to the pantheon after he had retrieved them from Zu. Their vulnerability in the temple of Enlil was recognized and it was decided to store them under the watchful eyes of Enki....in the Abzu...

There is a myth directly related to the battle between Zu and Ninurta and the events after that struggle. Ninurta’s Pride and Punishment has been reconstructed from fragments found at Ur and Nippur. It tells what happened after Zu handed the ME over to Ninurta.

....Ninurta...laments the loss of the ME which he had possessed briefly, with the awesome power that went with them. As the story continues, Ninurta makes a trip to the Abzu where he is greeted joyously by Enki (who) praises him as the victor over the “bird” (Anzu) and as an unrivaled hero whose name will be duly honored by all.

This blessing, however, does not satisfy the ambitious Ninurta. As the myth states, “On the whole universe the hero Ninurta set his sights,” or in other words, he coveted the ME and their power. Ninurta demanded that Enki release the power stones to him.“⁴³¹

That is, the ME were some sort of technology that allowed one to tap into the “power of the universe.” What was this all-powerful “ME”, what were these enigmatic and mysterious Tablets of Destinies? The answer to this all important question must wait until the next chapter. For now we must remain focused on the total context necessary to answer this most important question.

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