The 12th Planet (13 page)

Fig. 36

Fig. 37

The appearance and activities of Ra on Earth were, according to Egyptian tradition, directly connected with kingship in Egypt. According to that tradition, the first rulers of Egypt were not men but gods, and the first god to rule over Egypt was Ra. He then divided the kingdom, giving Lower Egypt to his son Osiris and Upper Egypt to his son Seth. But Seth schemed to overthrow Osiris and eventually had Osiris drowned. Isis, the sister and wife of Osiris, retrieved the mutilated body of Osiris and resurrected him. Thereafter, he went through "the secret gates" and joined Ra in his celestial path; his place on the throne of Egypt was taken over by his son Horus, who was sometimes depicted as a winged and horned deity. (Fig. 39)

Though Ra was the loftiest in the heavens, upon Earth he was the son of the god Ptah ("developer," "one who fashioned things"). The Egyptians believed that Ptah actually raised the land of Egypt from under floodwaters by building dike works at the point where the Nile rises. This Great God, they said, had come to Egypt from elsewhere; he established not only Egypt but also "the mountain land and the far foreign land." Indeed, the Egyptians acknowledged, all their "olden gods" had come by boat from the south; and many prehistoric rock drawings have been found that show these olden gods—distinguished by their horned headdress—arriving in Egypt by boat. (Fig. 40)

The only sea route leading to Egypt from the south is the Red Sea, and it is significant that the Egyptian name for it was the Sea of Ur. Hieroglyphically, the sign for Ur meant "the far-foreign [land] in the east"; that it actually may also have referred to the Sumerian Ur, lying in that very direction, cannot be ruled out.

The Egyptian word for "divine being" or "god" was NTR, which meant "one who watches." Significantly, that is exactly the meaning of the name Shumer: the land of the "ones who watch."

The earlier notion that civilization may have begun in Egypt has been discarded by now. There is ample evidence now showing that the Egyptian-organized society and civilization, which began half a millennium and more
after
the Sumerian one, drew its culture, architecture, technology, art of writing, and many other aspects of a high civilization from Sumer. The weight of evidence also shows that the gods of Egypt originated in Sumer.

Cultural and blood kinsmen of the Egyptians, the Canaanites shared the same gods with them. But, situated in the land strip that was the bridge between Asia and Africa from time immemorial, the Canaanites also came under strong Semitic or Mesopotamian influences. Like the Hittites to the north, the
H
urrians to the northeast, the Egyptians to the south, the Canaanites could not boast of an original pantheon. They, too, acquired their cosmogony, deities, and legendary tales from elsewhere. Their direct contacts with the Sumerian source were the Amorites.

Fig. 38

Fig. 39

Fig. 40

•

The land of the Amorites lay between Mesopotamia and the Mediterranean lands of western Asia. Their name derives from the Akkadian
amurru
and Sumerian
martu
("westerners"), they were not treated as aliens but as related people who dwelt in the western provinces of Sumer and Akkad.

Persons bearing Amorite names were listed as temple functionaries in Sumer. When Ur fell to Elamite invaders circa 2000
B.C.
, a Martu named Ishbi-Irra reestablished Sumerian kingship at Larsa and made his first task the recapture of Ur and the restoration there of the great shrine to the god Sin. Amorite "chieftains" established the first independent dynasty in Assyria circa 1900
B.C.
And
H
ammurabi, who brought greatness to Babylon circa 1800
B.C.
, was the sixth successor of the first dynasty of Babylon, which was Amorite.

In the 1930s archaeologists came upon the center and capital city of the Amorites, known as Mari. At a bend of the Euphrates, where the Syrian border now cuts the river, the diggers uncovered a major city whose buildings were erected and continuously reerected, between 3000 and 2000
B.C.
, on foundations that date to centuries earlier. These earliest remains included a step pyramid and temples to the Sumerian deities Inanna, Nin
h
ursag, and Enlil.

The palace of Mari alone occupied some five acres and included a throne room painted with most striking murals, three hundred various rooms, scribal chambers, and (most important to the historian) well over twenty thousand tablets in the cuneiform script, dealing with the economy, trade, politics, and social life of those times, with state and military matters, and, of course, with the religion of the land and its people. One of the wall paintings at the great palace of Mari depicts the investiture of the king Zimri-Lim by the goddess Inanna (whom the Amorites called Ishtar). (Fig. 41)

As in the other pantheons, the chief deity physically present among the Amurru was a weather or storm god. They called him Adad—the equivalent of the Canaanite Baal ("lord")—and they nicknamed him Hadad. His symbol, as might be expected, was forked lightning.

In Canaanite texts, Baal is often called the "Son of Dagon." The Mari texts also speak of an older deity named Dagan, a "Lord of Abundance" who—like El—is depicted as a retired deity, who complained on one occasion that he was no longer consulted on the conduct of a certain war.

Other members of the pantheon included the Moon God, whom the Canaanites called Yera
h
, the Akkadians Sin, and the Sumerians Nannar; the Sun God, commonly called Shamash; and other deities whose identities leave no doubt that Mari was a bridge (geographically and chronologically) connecting the lands and the peoples of the eastern Mediterranean with the Mesopotamian sources.

Fig. 41

Among the finds at Mari, as elsewhere in the lands of Sumer, there were dozens of statues of the people themselves: kings, nobles, priests, singers. They were invariably depicted with their hands clasped in prayer, their gaze frozen forever toward their gods. (Fig. 42)

Fig. 42

Who were these Gods of Heaven and Earth, divine yet human, always headed by a pantheon or inner circle of twelve deities?

We have entered the temples of the Greeks and the Aryans, the Hittites and the
H
urrians, the Canaanites, the Egyptians, and the Amorites. We have followed paths that took us across continents and seas, and clues that carried us over several millennia.