Indeed, by the translator’s own admission, whenever the term al appears in the text, he interprets this to mean ‘hoe’. He was, it seems, greatly influenced by scholarly translations of the Atra-Hasis, as well as Samuel N Kramer’s Myth of the Pickaxe: both epics translate al as ‘hoe’ or ‘pickaxe’. But once again, correctly interpreted, the epic is actually harping on the same theme we saw in Enki’s Journey to N’ibiru, whose several layers of meaning we peeled off. But let us first see how conventional scholars have translated it.
Lines 1-8: “(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) [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).” This, of course, describes Enlil as a Creator-god who enacts a Genesis-type creation process…but this interpretation, we will see, is completely wrong and merely helps to bolster the supposition that ‘gods’ were mere figments of ancient, primitive imaginations that sought to explain the universe around them.
