Divine Encounters

The Serpent (from p.11-20 of Divine Encounters Zecharia Sitchin- author of The Earth Chronicles) In Chapter I of Genesis the discussion that led to this decision is summed up in one verse: "And Elohim said: Let us make the Adam in our image, after our likeness." And, with the implied consent of the assembled "us," the task was carried out: "And Elohim created the Adam in His image; in the image of Elohim created He him." The term image-the element or process by which the existing "creature" could be raised to the level desired by the Anunnaki, akin to them except for Knowing and Longevity-can best be understood by realizing who or what the existing "creature" was. As other texts (e.g. one that scholars title The Myth of Cattle and Grain) explain,

When Mankind was first created They knew not the eating of bread, knew not the wearing of garments. They ate plants with their mouths, like sheep; They drank water from the ditch. This is a fitting description of hominids roaming wildly as, and with, other beasts. Sumerian depictions, engraved on stone cylinders (so-called "cylinder seals") show such hominids mingling with animals but standing erect on two feet- an illustration (regrettably ignored by modern scientists) of a Homo erectus (Fig. 2). It was upon that Being, that already existed, that Enki had suggested to "bind upon it the image of the gods," and create through genetic engineering an Earthling, Homo sapiens.

A hint of the process involved in the genetic makeover is made in the YaLwist Version (as scholars refer to it) in chapter 2 of Genesis, in which we read that ''Yahweh Elohim formed The Adam with clay of the earth, and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life; and the Adam became a living being." In Atra llasis and other Mesopotamian texts a much more complex process involving the Being is described It was a creative process not without frustrating trials and errors until the procedure was perfected and the desired result was attained by Enki and Ninmah (whom some texts, in honor of her memorable role, granted her the epithet NIN.TI-''Lady of Life").

Working in a laboratory called Bit Shimti-"House where the wind of life is breathed in" the "essence" of the blood of a young Anunnaki male was mixed with the egg of a female hominid. The fertilized egg was then inserted into the womb of a female Anunnaki. When, after a tense waiting period, a "Model Man" was born, Ninmah held the newborn baby up and shouted: "I have created! My hands have made it!'' Sumerian artists depicted on a cylinder seal that breathtaking final moment, when Ninmah/Ninti held up the new Being for all to see (Fig. 3). Thus, captured in an engraving on a small stone cylinder, is a pictorial record of the first Divine Encounter! In ancient Egypt, where the gods were called Neteru ("Guardians") and identified by the hieroglyphic symbol of a mining axe, the act of creating the first Man out of clay was attributed to the ram-headed god Khnemu ("He who joins"), of whom the texts said that he was "the maker of men ... the father who was in the beginning." Egyptian artists too, as the Sumerians before them, depicted pictorially the moment of the First Encounter (Fig. 4), it showed Khnemu holding up the newly created being, assisted by his son Thoth (the god of science and medicine).

The Adam, as one version in Genesis relates, was indeed created alone. But once this Model Man proved the validity of this process of creating "test-tube babies," a project of mass replication was embarked upon. Preparing more mixtures of Tl.IT-"That which is with life," the biblical "clay"-genetically engineered to produce Primitive Workers of both sexes, Ninmah placed seven lumps of the "clay" in a "male mould" and seven in a "female mould." The fertilized eggs were then implanted in the wombs of female Anunnaki "birth goddesses." It was to this process of bringing forth seven male and seven female "Mixed Ones'' at each shift that the "Elohist Version'' (as scholars call it) in Genesis referred when it stated that when Humankind was created by Elohim, "male and female created He them."    But, like any hybrid (such as a mule, the result of the mating of a horse and a she-ass), the "Mixed Ones" could not procreate. The biblical tale of how the new being acquired Knowing,'' the ability to procreate in biblical terminology, covers with an allegorical veneer the second act of genetic engineering. The principal actor in the dramatic development is neither Yahwah-Elohim nor the created Adam and Eve but the Serpent, the instigator of the crucial biological change.

The Hebrew word for ''serpent" in Genesis is Nahash. The term, however, had two additional meanings. It could mean "He who knows or solves secrets"; it could also mean "He of the copper." The last two meanings appear to have stemmed from the Sumerian epithel for Enki, BUZUR, which meant both "He who solves secrets'' and "He of the metal mines." Indeed, the frequent Sumerian symbol for Enki was that of a serpent. In an earlier work (Cenesis Revisited) we have suggested that the associated symbol of Entwined Serpents (Fig. 5a), from which the symbol for healing has remained to this day, was inspired already in ancient Sumer!-by the double helix DNA (Fig. 5b) and thus of genetic engineering. As we shall show later on, Enki's use of genetic engineering in the Garden of Eden also led to the double helix motif in Tree of life depictions. Enki bequeathed this knowledge and its symbol to his son Ningishzidda (Fig. Sc), whom we have identified as the Egyptian god Thoth; the Greeks called him Hermes; his staff bore the emblem of the Entwined Serpents (Fig. 5d).

As we trace these double and triple meanings of Enki's epithets (Serpent-copper-healing-genetics), it behooves us to recall the biblical tale of the plague that befell the Israelites during their wanderings in the Sinai wilderness: it stopped after Moses has made a copper serpent" and held it up to summon divine help.

It is nothing short of mind-boggling to realize that this second Divine Encounter, when Humankind was given the ability to procreate, was also captured for us by ancient "photographers"-artists who carved the scene in reverse on the small stone cylinders, images that were seen in positive after the seal was rolled on wet clay. But such depictions too, in addition to the ones depicting the creation of The Adam, have been found. One shows "Adam'' and "Eve" seated, flanking a tree, and the serpent behind Eve (Fig. 6a). Another shows a great god seated atop a thronelike mound from which two serpents emanate-undoubtedly Enki (Fig. 6b). He is flanked on the right by a male whose sprouting branches are penis-shaped, and on the left by a female whose branches are vagina-shaped and who holds a small fruit tree (presumably from the Tree of Knowing). Watching the goings-on is a menacing great god-in all probability an angry Enlil.

All these texts and depictions, augmenting the biblical narrative, have thus combined to paint a detailed picture, a course of events with identifiable principal participants, in the saga of Divine Encounters. Nevertheless, scholars by and large persist in lumping all such evidence as '.mythology." To them the tale of events in the Garden of Eden is just a myth, an imaginary allegory taking place in a nonexistent place.    But what if such a Paradise, a place with deliberately planted fruit-bearing trees, had really existed at a time when everywhere else nature alone was the gardener? What if in the earliest times there had been a place called "Eden," a real place whose events were real occurrences? Ask anyone whare Adam was created, and tbe answer will in all probability be: In the Garden of Eden. But it is not there where the story of Humankind begins. The Mesopotamian tale, first recorded by the Surnerians, places the first phase at a location "above the Abru"-farther north than where the gold mines were. As several groups of "Mixed Ones" were brought forth and pressed into service for the purpose for which they were created-to take over the toil in the mines-the Anunnaki from the seven settlements in the E.DIN clamored for such helpers too. As those in southeastern Africa resisted, a fight broke out. A text which scholars call The Myth of the Pickax describes how, led by Enlil, the Anunnaki from the E.DIN forcefully seized some of "the Created Ones" and brought them over to Eden, to serve the Anunnaki there. The text called The Myth of Cattle and Grain explicitly states that "when from the heights of Heaven to Earth Anu had caused the Anunnaki to come," grains that vegetate, lambs and kids were not yet brought forth. Even after the Anunnaki in their "creation chamber" had fashioned food for themselves, they were not satiated. It was only after Anu, Enlil, Enki and Ninmah had fashioned the black-headed people, Vegetation that is fruitful they multiplied in the kind ... In the Edin they placed them. The Bible, contrary to general assumptions, relates the same tale. As in the Enuma elish, the biblical sequence (chapter 2 of Genesis) is, first, the forming of the Heavens and of Earth; next, the creation of The Adarn (the Bible does not state where). The Elohim then "planted a garden in Eden, eastward" (of where the Adam was created); and only thereafter did the Elohim "put there" (in the Garden of Eden) "the Adam whom he had fashioned." And Yahweh Elohim took the Adam, and placed him in the Garden of Eden to till it and to keep it. An interesting light is shed on the "Geography of Creation" (to coin a term) and, consequently on the initial Divine Encounters, by the Book of Jubilees. Composed in Jerusalem during the time of the Second Temple, it was known in those centuries as The Testament of Moses, because it began by answering the question, How could Humankind know about those early events that even preceded the creation of Humankind? The answer was that it was all revealed to Moses on Mount Sinai, when an Angel of the Divine Presence dictated it to Moses by the Lord's command. The name Book of Jubilees, applied to the work by its Greek translators, stems from the chronological structure of the book, which is based on a count of the years by "jubilees" whose years are called "days" and ''weeks.'' Obviously drawing on sources that were available at the time (in addition to the canonical Genesis), such as the books that the Bible mentions and other texts that Mesopotamian libraries cataloged but which are yet to be found, the Book of Jubilees, using the enigmatic count of "days," states that Adam was brought by the angels into the Garden of Eden only "after Adam had completed forty days in the land where he had been created"; and "his wife they brought in on the eightieth day." Adam and Eve, in other words, were brought into being elsewhere. The Book of Jubilees, dealing with the expulsion from Eden later on, provides another morsel of valuable information. It inforrns us that "Adam and his wife went forth from the Garden of Eden, and they dwelt in the Land of Nativity, the land of their creation." In other words, from the Edin they went back to the Abzu, in southeastern Africa. Only there, in the second Jubilee, did Adam "know" his wife Eve and "in the third week in the second jubilee she gave birth to Cain, and in the fourth she gave birth to Abel, and in the fifth she gave birth to a daughter, Awan." (The Bible states that Adam and Eve had thereafter other sons and daughters; noncanonical books say that they numbered sixty-three in all.) Such a sequence of events. that places the start of Humankind's proliferation from a single primordial mother not in the Mesopotamian Eden but back in the Abzu, in south eastern Africa, is now fully corroborated by scientific discoveries that have led to the "Out of Africa" theories regarding the origin and spread of Humankind. Not only finds of fossil remains of the earliest honunids, but also genetic evidence concerning the final line of Homo sapiens, confirms southeast Africa as the place where Hurnankind originated. And as to Horno sapiens, anthropological and genetic researchers have placed an "Eve"-a single female of whom all of present day humans stem-in the same area at about 250,000 years ago. (This finding, at first based on DNA that is passed only by the mother, has been corroborated in 1994 by genetic research based on Nuclear DNA that is passed from both parents and expanded in 1995 to include an "Adam'' circa 270,000 years ago.) It was from there that the various branches of Horno sapiens (Neanderthals, Cro-Magnons) later arrived in Asia and Europe.

That the biblical Eden was one and the same place setlied by the Anunnaki and the one to which they brought over Primitive Workers from the Abzu, is almost self-evident linguistically. The name Eden, hardly anyone now doubts, stemmed from the Sumerian E.DIN via the intermediary of the Edinnu in Akkadian (tbe mother tongue of Assyrian, Babylonian, and Hebrew). Moreover, in describing the profusion of waters in that Paradise (an impressive aspect for readers in a part of the Near East wholly dependent on rains in a short winter season), the Bible offered several geographical indicators that also pointed to Mesopotarnia; it stated that the Garden of Eden was located at the head of a body of water that served as the confluence of four rivers:

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