3. The Anunnaki and Mankind: Adam, Eve, and Lilith
Gardner’s Chart of the Sumerian Version of Adam and
Eve 558
Note that Lilith,
daughter of the notorious character Nergal whom we encountered in
chapter five, is married in turn both to Adam and to Enki, who likewise shares Eve with Adam.
Viewed in a certain way, it is a “marriage of political expedience”
for the two sides of the pantheon - Enlil’s and Enki’s - are
reunited in mankind himself. If one recalls what was said in the
previous chapter about the peculiar associations within esoteric
literature of mankind with Mars, then this chart gives yet one more
detail testifying to a connection between mankind and Mars, this
time via Lilith and her relationship to Nergal. Note something
else. Enki, who figures previously in the charts as an ancestor to all these figures - Adam, Eve, Nergal
and Lilith - is now not only ancestor and consort to the two
female figures, but also both ancestor,
brother-in-law, cousin, and son-in-law to the male figures. This means that Enki, in a certain
sense, is “still around,” i.e., that he is
either very long-lived, or that the name “Enki” refers to someone
from the House of Enki. Either way, the chart points up a
significant problem, and it is best to examine it
here.
From one standpoint,
Gardner’s research provides an answer to the age-old question that
has haunted biblical scholars, and that is that the book of Genesis
only records Cain and Abel as the offspring of Adam and Eve, and
yet, in Gen 4:17, Cain sires offspring of his wife. Where did she come from? The standard
answer has always been that this unnamed wife was some other child
of the biblical progenitors of humanity Adam and Eve. The Sumerian
context, Jewish tradition, and Gardner’s charts suggest another
answer altogether: Cain’s wife may have been a descendant of some
other wing of the
pantheon.
Let us also recall
who and what the Anunnaki are and mankind’s relationship to them.
Note the dotted lines connecting Adam and Eve to the rest of the
pantheon. According to the interpretation of Sitchin and others,
the Sumerian texts indicate that Adam and Eve were deliberately and
genetically engineered creatures, a hybrid between the Anunnaki
themselves, and a proto-human hominid already in existence on
Earth. Man was thus part “clay” and part “god.” In this the
biblical and Sumerian versions are not so different, and even in
the biblical version of the creation of mankind by the direct
action of God, there is a parallel, for in the Sumerian version the
creation of mankind is similarly by the direct action of the
“gods,” the Anunnaki. Only the mechanism of creation differs
between the two versions, for the Sumerian version has it that the
“clay” in mankind is precisely a pre-existing living creature
genetically adaptable to, and adapted by, the Anunnaki. The
Anunnaki, in short, are the Sumerian equivalent of the Nephilim,
the “sons of God,” of Genesis 6.
Note what this means
for the “situation” of mankind in the Sumerian version: mankind -
Adam and Eve’s direct descendants - is not
directly connected to either side of the pantheon, whereas
there is a continuation of the Annunaki
line via Enki and Lilith, on Nergal’s side of the pantheon, and
there is also a further hybridized part-human,
part Anunnaki line deriving from Eve and Enki on the other side, a
line independent of Nergal’s “more pure” Anunnaki line.
Mankind exists in a precarious middle ground between these two
dynastic lines.
The obvious
implication that follows from this should not be left unstated, for
these charts indicate that ancient Sumerian belief was that their
“gods” were real personages, capable of
interbreeding with mankind.
Viewed in this light,
the Sumerian texts indicate that there are three major lines of players on the field after the
creation of mankind:
1. The “pure” Anunnaki line of Nergal-Enki-Lilith;
2. The “corrupted” and ultra-hybridized Anunnaki-human line of Enki-Eve; and,
3. A “pure” human line of Adam and Eve.
This is a dynamic
tailor-made for conflict, for there are two “pure” lines, the
Nergal Anunnaki line, and the Adam-Eve human line. But there are
also two “hybrid” lines, the hybrid Anunnaki-human line of
Enki-Eve, and the line of mankind from Adam and Eve itself, which
is a “less hybridized” line. Finally, there are two Anunnaki lines,
the line of Nergal, and the line of Enki-Eve.
It is interesting to
ponder the second of these lineages, the “corrupted” or
“ultra-hybridized” line of Enki-Eve, from the standpoint of the
biblical tradition of the “Nephilim,” of the “sons of God” of
Genesis 6, who came down from heaven, and sired hybrid chimerical
children of “the daughters of men,” producing a race of giants, for
the account of this activity in Genesis gives no indication of
when this activity began. The Sumerian
version indicates when: it was present almost from the beginning of
the human race. And as for the giants themselves, we have already
speculated that the inhabitants of the planet Tiamat, if such there
were, may have been physiologically much larger than mankind’s
average size, given Tiamat’s much higher gravity.
Moreover, there is an
odd corroboration of the tradition of chimerical offspring of such
unions from yet another source, and this is the traditional
depiction of Enki, who is sometimes “shown with the legs of a goat
complete with cloven hooves, whilst his upper body is clothed in
the scales of a fish.”559 He is a “goatfish,”
a Capricorn. Enki himself, in other words, is a chimerical being,
who in turn, as a “son of God” in the Biblical perspective, sires
similar chimerical offspring.
However, there is a
second connection between the Sumerian
and Biblical versions, for in the account of the destruction of
Tiamat in the Enuma Elish, her creation
of chimerical biological life-forms as weapons appears to be one principal reason she
incurred the wrath of the rest of the gods, in addition to her
theft of the Tablets of Destinies. In the Biblical version, the
story of the Nephilim and their hybrid-giant offspring forms the
immediate context for the divine decision to wipe out mankind for
his wickedness. The clear implication is, once again, that it was
the continued co-habitation of man and “the sons of God” that
formed a motivation for the Deluge. These points suggest a further
speculation: could the creation of mankind in the Sumerian version
be related to the cosmic war and the theft of the Tablets of
Destinies?
Whatever the answer
to that question may be, one thing seems to be strongly implied by
all that has preceded, and that is that according to the Sumerian
tradition mankind appears to be centrally connected both to the
motivations of the cosmic war and is to an extent also a legacy of
it, at least in the hybridized Nephilimic line. In the Sumerian
version, it is human overpopulation that formed one of the
motivations for the war, and in the Biblical version, it is the
“Nephilimic wickedness” that forms the backdrop of the divine
decision to wipe out “mankind” by means of the Deluge. Putting two
and two together, it would appear that it is the Enki-Eve line that
may have been the focus of attention here, both as a chimerical
ultra-hybridized lineage, and perhaps as an overly-populated one
vis-à-vis the “pure human lineage” of Adam and Eve themselves.
Indeed, we may be drawing near to one reason why the various books
of the Old Testament place such an emphasis on preserving various
genealogical records, for as an examination of those records will
demonstrate, there is little if any association of the Old
Testament patriarchal lineage with the second “ultra-hybridized”
lineage of Enki-Eve. In fact, the converse is true, for from the
moment of the Hebrew Exodus from Egypt to the conquest and
occupation of Canaan, an endless struggle is waged against the
Nephilimic dynasties of surrounding peoples, the story of David and
Goliath being the most familiar example. To put it as bluntly and
briefly as possible, one legacy of the conflict appears to be an
ongoing “struggle between the bloodlines.” Unfortunately, as
fascinating as this story is, as it weaves its way through history,
it is not a story that can be recounted here, for it would require
a book in its own right.
The relationship
between Enki and Eve revives an ancient Talmudic tradition in a
particular way, for Enki here takes on the principal role of what
Genesis describes as being the activities of the Nephilim, of the
“sons of God” who married human wives and sired chimerical, giant
offspring. In a roundabout way, then, Gardner has confirmed
Genesis’ own characterization of the Nephilim, a characterization
supported by the Sumerian’s traditional artistic renditions of Enki
as a chimerical being.