But that doesn't really explain who ISH.KUR really is, or why I have adopted his namesake. Indeed, even Sumerian mythology admits that he was no one special-just another deity in a complex polytheism involving hundreds of gods. Yet, somehow, he rose from what seemed to be relative obscurity in one culture to playing a significant role in the next. And as each superseding culture adopted the religion of its predecessors, they placed him in a more pivotal and dominating position until, eventually, he was given all power over everything and proclaimed 'King of the Gods'. Even today, two-thirds of the world still unknowingly worship him.
How this happened (and more importantly, why) is what I will attempt to explain here.
It is necessary, first of all, to convey the overall mood of the people who had originally settled along the banks of the Tigris and Euphrates rivers more than 6000 years ago. With the discovery of the seed and the founding of permanent settlements, they embarked on a grand experiment, the culmination of which sits in front of you in the form of a beige, plastic box; the latest in a line of technical innovations, beginning with them, that changed the world. The first things they learned to build were walls. Then parapets, watchtowers, guard towers, ramparts, barracks and other security constructions. The first thing they learned to do really well was fight-especially over lush, fertile land. Their desire for surplus agriculture led to armies, wars, empires, nations, hierarchical class structures and the rulership of wealthy elites. These were not superstitious or overly religious people. They were serious, somber, violent, mistrustful and frightened. They did not give way to fanciful myths about exotic creatures, coldhearted deities, or supernatural occurrences quite easily. Their days were long and arduous, and mostly spent tilling the soil and providing water through massive irrigation projects. This ancient land they worked on was called Sumer, and it was the world's first and oldest civilization.
Historians typically place the emergence of Sumer around 3800 BCE, predating other emerging cultures in Egypt and India by nearly a thousand years. Before them was nothing, save for a few permanent settlements, villages, and scattered huts.
Yet somehow, miraculously, in the span of a few generations, a unified culture emerged, complete and intact, giving no indication that it had to struggle through any sort of technological adolescence. Almost overnight, these earth-hardened people developed an advanced writing system.
They became masters of higher mathematics, astronomy and metallurgy. They invented a monetary unit of exchange (as well as an intricate system of taxation). They developed law and social reforms. They practiced medicine and studied human anatomy. They invented the world's first wheel, the world's first boat, and the world's first pottery (as well as the firing kiln). They were the first to employ complex architectural designs such as the arch, vault and dome. They built the first schools and government office buildings (as well as the first representative assemblies and early attempts at democracy), constructed vast ziggurats, temples, and statues; they smelted iron ore to make complex metal alloys like tin, brass and bronze. They invented the base 60 system for use in measuring time, distance and geometric functions-a system we still use today.
These were not the markings of a superstitious backward people with primitive beliefs. In actuality, the Sumerians possessed such extraordinary astronomical knowledge that an entire branch of science has been founded-archeoastronomy-to help study it. And among the most impressive findings is the fact that our ancient ancestors knew of the 25,920-year precession of the equinoxes. Few people today even know of this planetary characteristic, so I'll explain:
The earth spins on its axis every 24 hours (roughly), which is why we have day and night. The earth is constantly at a tilt of 23.5 degrees (usually), which is why we have the seasons. But the earth also happens to have a wobble in space, like a spinning top, in a fashion that would have it trace a circular motion every 25,920 years. That's one degree every 72 years, so its not exactly something we would take notice of. The Sumerians not only knew of this precession but charted it as well, and divided it into twelve sections or "houses", each of them 2,160 years long (30 degrees) and each of them associated with a constellation in space that the sun passes through-the twelve houses of the zodiac. We can observe this precession by watching which constellation the sun rises in every year on the spring equinox. Right now we are in the Age of Pisces and about to enter the Age of Aquarius.
The Sumerians documented these precessional shifts with amazing accuracy. They also documented the movements of the 'twelve' bodies of the solar system-the sun, the moon, the nine planets, and a mysterious neighbor whose orbit lay beyond Pluto's. Yes, the famed Planet X, whom astronomers today are still searching the skies for, and whom they insist is the culprit behind Pluto's highly elliptical orbit, was known to the Sumerians as the twelfth planet, called Nibiru. The Sumerians even chronicled explanations for many anomalies in our solar system, such as the collision of two planets that produced the asteroid belt between Mars and Jupiter, and the reasoning behind the earth's unnatural acquisition of such a proportionately large moon.
But what was all this for? What possibly could the ancients have a need for such an advanced portrayal of the heavens? Why did man the hunter and man the farmer suddenly become man the city-dweller? And how did he do it in such an amazingly short time-span? The Sumerians, despite all their practical wisdom and understanding of the world, insisted that all their technology, all their culture, all their science and astronomy, all their knowledge, was a gift to them-from their gods.
Now, it's important to distinguish the way the ancients thought of their gods from the way we think of them. To them, their gods were not all-seeing, all-hearing, omnipotent mystical forces, but rather flesh-and-blood beings who walked on the earth. They actually lived and behaved like normal people; they could be born, give birth, and die. They could fall in love, get married, become frightened, sad, happy, embarrassed, and even angry. But mostly they were vengeful. They argued a lot--especially with each other, and especially over the affairs of men.
Of course, we dismiss the Sumerians' tales of their gods as mere mythology, a chronicle of the world's first polytheistic religion. But to them their gods actually existed, and their stories actually happened, and their influence was enough to affect every culture that dominated the region afterward, appropriating the same gods and the same stories, and passing on that heritage, even in the book of Genesis in the Bible. In fact, scholars now acknowledge that the first few chapters of the Bible are really a condensed version of the Sumerian account of the creation, the Enuma Elish.
Civilization was given to man from the gods, who were, by all accounts, simply flesh-and-blood beings expounding great knowledge and wisdom. In ancient Sumer, this was probably akin to the American and Australian servicemen who landed in New Guinea in the 1930s and 40s, transporting cargo supplies for advancing troops during the second world war. The primitive people they had met there revered them as gods, and even developed a religion-dubbed the Cargo Cult-that was centered around the worship of runways, airplanes and radio transmitters. The ancient Sumerians looked upon their gods in much the same way, especially in their praise, and to some extent deification, of the gods' high technology.
It has been historically noted that every culture, when faced with a superior technology than its own, immediately addresses it as a sort of mysticism, magic or witchcraft. Indeed, one can almost sense the frustration of the Old Testament Prophet Ezekiel, who tried vainly to describe what he called "apparitions of god" when he saw a massive object bellowing out of the sky (Ezekiel 1:4-21); something that was obviously far beyond his comprehension and outside of his vocabulary.
The gods, say the Sumerians, came to Earth by way of the 12th planet Nibiru, whose highly elliptical orbit brings it within the inner solar system only once every 3600 years. Whether this means that the gods came to Earth from Nibiru or that they came via Nibiru is still hotly debated, but the fact persists that the gods, also known as the Elohim or "Lofty Ones", the AN.UNNA.KI, the Nefilim or "Those Who from Heaven to Earth Came" were, in the Sumerians' eyes, a technologically advanced race of beings.
The Enuma Elish even purports that the gods had descended to Earth thousands of years before civilization began, and had tinkered with the genes of early hominids to produce modern man (perhaps providing a clue as to why modern science has failed to find the missing link between humans and apes). The purpose of this genetic hybrid, referred to by the Sumerians as LU.LU, was a slave class designed to relieve the toil of the gods.
But the gods were never uniform in their decisions. For them, the balance of power constantly and bitterly changed hands between members of a kind of celestial dysfunctional family; a monarchical pantheon of unpredictable aging deities, waging war against themselves and man in their pursuit of power. At the head of this pantheon was AN (Babylonian Anu), the father, protector, and overlord of the gods. He never actually spent any time on Earth. He remained a remote and lofty being, indifferent and uninterested in the affairs of mankind. As human civilization aged his role gradually waned to the ceremonial status of "ancestor of the gods", named Uranus by the Greeks.
The world was thus fiercely contested between his sons EN.KI and EN.LIL, and their feuding families who divided the civilized world between them: EN.KI to the underworld (lower world) or Africa, and EN.LIL to the upper world or Mesopotamia. EN.LIL's first-born son, NIN.UR.TA, became the general and military aggressor of the gods, to which the Greeks later associated him with their god of war, Ares. NAN.NAR was EN.LIL's second son. As the moon god, he married NIN.GAL (daughter of Dagon, lord of growth and the harvest) to bear three children of their own: ER.ISH.KI.GAL, who became the queen of the underworld when she married EN.KI's offspring NER.GAL, lord of the underworld, and twins UTU and IN.ANNA. UTU was the god of the sun, while the temperamental and ambitious IN.ANNA featured prominently in Sumerian literature, being the goddess of love, war and even fertility in some cases. She had a reputation for being loving and compassionate one moment, and outright ruthless and cold-hearted the next. The Greeks had many gods to represent her multiple personalities, but she featured most prominent as their god of love, Aphrodite. There was also NIN.HUR.SAG, the Queen of the Mountains and the earth, who was more often referred by her original name, Ki. She remained, as much as possible, impartial and neutral towards the warring families.
Each of the Sumerian city-states was devoted to a particular god or goddess, and their influence in the region rose and ebbed in accordance with the imperial strength of each city. Early on, the most powerful city was Uruk, the patron city of AN, but since he was never present, the city was instead controlled and guided by his great granddaughter IN.ANNA, who later ruled from the Akkadian city of Agade as well. Eridu, the city on the waterfront where the Tigris and Euphrates rivers meet the Persian Gulf, was the city of EN.KI, which he used to conduct his affairs in the lower world. NAN.NAR ruled from Ur, and NIN.HUR.SAG ruled from Shuruppak. UTU was the deity of Sippar. All of these cities were at one point or another controlled by Nippur, the sacred city of EN.LIL, who thus became the supreme god of Sumer and Akkad.
As the ages wore on, however, and the land of Old Sumer gave way to invading cultures like the Akkadians and Babylonians, a shift in divine power occurred. Anu was dismissed as unimportant and replaced by the king of the gods on earth, EN.LIL (called Ellil by the Babylonians, and later El by the Canaanites, which means, simply 'god'). But eventually he was deposed by the sudden rise of Babylon and its token god Marduk, son of EN.KI (Babylonian Ea) who usurped all the other gods to become the central figure of the pantheon. So legendary were his exploits that the Babylonians had over 50 different names and titles for him. One such title was Bel, which the Canaanites on the Mediterranean coast later corrupted into Baal, meaning 'lord'. But by then Marduk's power had declined and the name no longer referred to him, but rather another up-and-coming god, whose influence and power began to spread among the Mediterranean cultures-the storm god Baal-Hadad, who was originally but less importantly known to the Sumerians as ISH.KUR.
ISH.KUR was the youngest son of EN.LIL and was, in the Sumerian pantheon, simply an unimportant storm and weather god. His name, in Sumerian, means literally "far-off mountain land", befitting his reputation for dwelling among hilltops and highlands, especially in the Zagros Mountains to the east and, later, the Taurus Mountains to the west. He was perhaps the only greater god that had no cult center.
For this reason he resented the other gods and their warring city-states, especially the Lower World gods and their successor, Marduk. Such it was that when Marduk conquered Mesopotamia through his stronghold in Babylon, ISH.KUR intervened, setting in motion a period of events that would eventually depose not just Marduk, but all of the gods as idols of worship.
The Akkadians and Babylonians referred to ISH.KUR as Adad, and sometimes considered him to be the son of Anu. He was often pictured riding a bull (his sacred animal) and wielding either a thunderbolt or a trident (forked lightening).
As a weather god, he was extremely short-tempered, moody, eccentric, emotional, and violent. After Marduk's conquest of Sumer, he fled west to the Mediterranean coast in Canaan, where he gained a reputation and a seat of worship among the various peoples who lived there, who called him Hadad, Zephon, Pidar and Rapha, normally appending each name with the prefix title Baal (meaning 'Lord'). To the north in Turkey ISH.KUR found the sturdy warrior land of the Hittites. From his new abode in the Taurus Mountains (so named after his token animal, the bull), he armed them and sent them towards the sacred twin rivers, where they subsequently sacked Marduk's city of Babylon, crushing its empire.
Thus, the descendents of the Hittites, the Hurrians, would come to know ISH.KUR as the Great Storm God Teshub The Conqueror, god of battle and victory.
After this bitter defeat Marduk returned to Egypt and, in retaliation for the sacking of Babylon, began planning an assault of ISH.KUR's adopted homeland in Palestine. He instigated the age of the great warrior Pharaohs in Egypt (the only period in their ancient history where military conquest was favored over enrichment of domestic culture), who expanded their borders to conquer the Mediterranean coast and subjugated the Hittites through tribute and diplomacy. In an act of humiliation, the defeated peoples of the Levant were carted back to Egypt to toil as slaves for the Pharaohs' ambitious public works projects. This infuriated ISH.KUR to the extent that he decided to take matters into his own hands to free his captive people (one of the few cases in the ancient world where there was direct intervention by a god), paving way for one of the greatest and oldest stories ever told.
So great was ISH.KUR's anger that during this period the Egyptians called him Prince Resheph, god of pestilence. He openly came and ravaged the people of Egypt with a kind of biological warfare so devastating that his wish was granted, and his people set free, just to get him to stop. But when he led them out of Egypt he learned that during their captivity they had been assimilated into Egyptian culture, worshipping Egyptian gods (EN.KI's family). This was a common tendency of ancient cultures-to readily adopt and owe allegiance to whatever deity was most powerful, led by the strongest army. ISH.KUR, who never had a permanent city and people to call his own, was extremely upset to find his people worshipping other gods. He had to find a way to make his people worship him and only him, by eliminating all other divine influences. It was there, in the Sinai desert, over a forty year span (so as to lead a new generation of followers, untainted by the years of polytheistic captivity) that he sowed the seeds of a monotheistic form of worship. To do this, he needed to reform himself; create a new image of a god that was not worshipped by anyone else anywhere, not even in the Near East. Since he had quite a reputation in other lands, it was necessary for him to keep his identity hidden, to convince his people that he was their god, and only their god. He made sure that the people never saw his likeness and, when they asked for his name, replied with the Hebrew "ehyeh asher ehyeh", which means "I am who I am". And because he had a fondness for hills and mountains, the people took to calling him El Shaddai, El meaning 'god', and Shaddai being a derivative of the Akkadian word shadu, which means "mountains": God of the Mountains. For it was from Mt. Sinai that ISH.KUR delivered a code of laws to his people, emphasizing the belief and worship of one god.
The people thus came to know of ISH.KUR as their one and only god, and his identity so secret that even his name, YHVH, was not permitted to be spoken. For thereafter he was known to the Hebrews as Yahweh.
ISH.KUR didn't completely transform into the Biblical Yahweh until centuries later, however. Despite all his efforts, the people were still hard-pressed to accept his monotheism. In the newly created state of Israel, he was very much apart of the pantheon, and very much human--fallible, moody, violent and irrational. He may have been the most important and prominent god in the region, but by no means was he the only one. Other gods, including the fertility goddess Astarte (the Canaanite's name for IN.ANNA) and Dagon, were still being worshipped alongside him, sometimes even in the same temple.
The people of the ancient world managed to keep a steady and consistent record, even across cultural and linguistic boundaries, of their gods and their gods' deeds. For them, it was an impossibility for any god to be in two places at once (naturally). Whichever region a god dwelled in or inhabited-a river, or a mountain or city-the people of that region paid homage to him. It was for this reason that ISH.KUR enforced the idea of him being the one and only god by pretending to be everywhere at once. He gave his people a communications device--the Ark of the Covenant--and kept contact with them through it, so as to maintain his anonymity and strengthen the notion of his omniscience.
It partially worked. Social inertia being what it is, the Hebrews didn't accept ISH.KUR as their one and only god until generations later, but by then he was gone. He was no longer present in the Middle East; none of the gods were. Suddenly, as if by divine decree, the gods left man to fend for himself. There's ample evidence to suggest that some of them may have traveled to North America or even India and China (thus influencing the cultures that lived there), but by and large their presence was significantly reduced after the incident in Egypt. It may be that the older gods had become fed up with the younger, warring gods and brought them to heel. But whatever the case, the affairs of the gods came to an unusually abrupt and final end in Mesopotamia.
Over the next several centuries the exploits of the gods faded into myth, folklore and legend. ISH.KUR's reputation as the all-powerful storm god in the Levant was exported across the Mediterranean, where he became the King of the Gods in Greece, Zeus (and later the Romans' Jupiter). In other cultures, the sudden absence of the gods was such a shock that many of them resorted to drastic measures like mass sacrifices in an effort to bring them back. In Israel, however, an unthinkable and unprecedented religious revolution took place. The Hebrews, in accordance with their god's philosophy, decided to transform ISH.KUR. In his absence they made him omnipresent, liberated him from his location so he could be worshipped from anywhere (even when the Jews were in captivity), and made him the universal God. He was proclaimed omniscient and infallible; he had no location, no shape or form, and no rivals. The Ark of the Covenant eventually went missing, but by then it no longer mattered because they didn't need it to speak to a god who was everywhere and everything. Furthermore, if he was the one god who invented everything, it stood to reason that no other gods could ever have existed. Thus, he was the god of everyone else too. There were no wars between ISH.KUR and any other gods, because there were no other gods. Any other divinity was seen as just an aspect of the unseen presence of ISH.KUR. With such a newfound and immense presence, he also matured psychologically. He was no longer a warrior god, a vengeful and violent mountain god. He was instead made to be a merciful, righteous god, whose love permeated the entire universe. The word Elohim, a plural word traditionally used to refer to all the gods, was appropriated into one of his many titles.
Priests, aristocrats, soldiers, missionaries and the like spread the faith further. Like ripples in a pond, the more the monotheistic movement grew, the less it had to do with its original preposition. Two more branches of the religion were later founded by men; one professing to be his offspring, the other professing to be his prophet. Both gave radically different ideas of ISH.KUR and what he wanted from man. And the world, unfortunately, has continued under this guise ever since.
I chose the name ISH.KUR because he represents (for me at least) both the problem and solution to the meaning of life, of our fumbled search for our own origins, of our purpose and place in the natural order of things. ISH.KUR is human society's first myth, oldest lie, biggest excuse and longest running rumor. His name, his exploits, his deeds, his personality, his wisdom, his charity and his influences have all been told and retold, and also skewered, changed, altered and molded to suit shaping cultural interests through the ages, providing the framework upon which our entire civilization rests. Too much has been invested in ISH.KUR, and too much has depended on his feigned presence, that to even try and shatter such a belief would be catastrophic for the entire species.
I believe that everyone should invent a personal philosophy or faith for themselves; something that reflects who they really are and how they really feel and react to others around them. I think this is one of the main pitfalls of organized religion--that it has an inability to cope with the meticulous wants and needs of its followers with respect to their individuality. For my own personal religion, I choose to believe in ISH.KUR. In addition to associating him as the raison d'être of mankind, I also relate to him on a somewhat more personal level. ISH.KUR's token animal is the bull, befitting his representation in ancient astrology as the stubborn sign of Taurus. I am a Taurus, my birthday lying on May 14. Both ISH.KUR and I are prone to seeking unique (if not always sensible) perspectives. We are both benightedly intelligent individuals given to fits of irrational and moody dispositions. We both have simultaneous contempt and lust for the abuse of power. We both attract attention, yet scorn it. We both have a set of convictions, that opinion is more important than position, and that faith is more powerful than material acquisition.
Oh, and we both don't believe in God, either.