The Atra-Hasis: the real and original Creation story?
L M Leteane | Friday November 11, 2016 15:25
All have adopted a primordial theme and feel to the epic-poems whereas, through Setswana, we find that the scribe is talking about something else quite different. Let me go over the examples.
If one is aware that Sumerians – the ancient people that inhabited Mesopotamia (now mostly Iraq) and started off the world’s oldest known civilisation more than 5000 years ago – are adamant that the flesh-and-blood gods that ruled over them and their kings were from a fabled planet called ‘N’ibiru’, then one would have expected the Sumerian poem Enki’s Journey to N’ibiru, which we covered in this column, to be about an exciting space journey. Instead, we found the following scholarly translation from the extract I picked (Lines 9 to 14): (9) “An artfully made bright crenellation rising out from the Abzu… (10) … was erected for lord Nudimmud. (11) He built the temple from precious metal…(12) …decorated it with lapis lazuli, and covered it abundantly with gold. (13) In Eridug, he built the house on the bank. (14) Its brickwork makes utterances and gives advice.”
Similarly, in the Enuma Elish epic – perhaps the most famous of the Sumerian epics – the scholarly translation goes (Lines 1 to 5): “(1) When on high the heavens had not been named, (2) [and] below, the earth had not been called by name, (3) but Apsu, the primeval, their progenitor, (4) their waters as one they mingled.” In the Song of the Hoe, the same primordial, Creationist theme was adopted in the scholarly translation, which went thus (Lines 1 to 8): “(1)Not only did the lord make the world appear in its correct form, (2) the lord who never changes the destinies which he determines: (3) Enlil, who will make the human seed of the Land come forth, (4) and not only did he hasten to separate heaven from earth, (5) and hasten to separate earth from heaven, (6) [the name of a cosmic location], he first suspended, (raised) the axis of the world at Dur-an-ki. (7) He did this with the help of the hoe (al), (8) and so daylight broke forth (aled).”
However, with the aid of Setswana to help better translate the poems, we found no such Creationist theme in any of the poems. Instead, in Enki’s Journey to N’ibiru, we did indeed find the expected theme of a journey through space, with the scribe giving us a taste of the excitement of blasting off for N’ibiru at Lord Enki’s invitation.
In the Enuma Elish, we find that scholars did manage to correctly discern that the poem was describing in colourful language an epic battle between Marduk and Tiamat, two powerful entities. But they started off on the wrong footing when talking about when neither heaven nor earth was yet “called by name”. Instead, the scribe had, straight away, created dramatic tension by suggesting that something ominous was still up there, along with the gods, before leaping straight into the battle that followed. It is a wonder that translators were able to discern at all that the epic was about a fight between Marduk and Tiamat!
So is there an epic that actually does speak about Creeation? Such an epic, it seems, is one as equally famous as the Enuma Elish: the Babylonian (Akkadian) Atra-Hasis. The very few lines I have translated thus far seem to support the premise that that it is indeed about Noah, the utra-hashish (ultra-wise). Noah, of course, is the famous human who managed to survive a great Flood that purportedly wiped out every living creature except those safely harboured in an ark – a large boat sanctuary – that Noah had built on God’s advice. (See Genesis xx. Note: In the much older Atra-Hasis it was rather on Enki’s advice). One of the very few lines of the Atra-Hasis I have translated goes as follows: e-nu-ma ilanu im-tas-ku mil-ka i-na matati, a-bu-ba is-ku-nu i-na ki-ib-ra-ti
The conventional translation for these very important couple of lines is: “(1) When the gods took counsel in the lands, (2) and brought about a flood in the regions of the world...” But once again we can make fundamental corrections to this using Sotho-Tswana. First of all, we will, as usual, arrange the original Akkadian syllables rather differently though not affecting their sequence. When we do this we will note that Setswana words just leap out of the lines. Thus, enu (these ones) ma-Ilanu ([sky]-gods), e m’ta (they came) ese ku mila (was it not to grow/foment] ka ina (in there) matati (trouble)? In the conventional translation, although scholars correctly determine that the gods were meeting (“took counsel”), there is nothing in the first line to show that the people suspected that they were fomenting trouble.
Line 2: A buba (they wove) i-s’kunu(tu) (a conspiracy) ina (inside [closed doors]): Ki (Earth) e be (to be) ra-ti! (struck [with a thud!]). Two words here are very interesting. The term kunu seems incomplete, hence my addition of a tu in brackets. Indeed, my own Dictionary of Protolanguage Terms suggests that kunutu and ‘knot’ are of the same etymology. They suggest something tightly-bound with intricate, convoluted insides – just as we can take a conspiracy to be. Although we no longer have the verb buba (to weave) in Setswana, we have bobi (spider’s web) – which in English is ‘bobbin’ (that which weaves). The motion of a bobbin spawned the verb ‘to bob’, thus in boxing, one still ‘bobs and weaves’. Indeed, through the Atra-Hasis, we find a much older and original tale, adopted and adapted by the Israelites when they were in captivity in Babylon…before they sat by the rivers and remembered Zion!!
Comments to leteanelm@gmail.com