The 12th Planet (63 page)

The texts report the persistent intercession by Atra-
H
asis with his god Enki. "In the house of his god ... he set foot; ... every day he wept, bringing oblations in the morning ... he called by the name of his god," seeking Enki's help to avert the famine.

Enki, however, must have felt bound by the decision of the other deities, for at first he did not respond. Quite possibly, he even hid from his faithful worshiper by leaving the temple and sailing into his beloved marshlands. "When the people were living on the edge of death," Atra-
H
asis "placed his bed facing the river." But there was no response.

The sight of a starving, disintegrating Mankind, of parents eating their own children, finally brought about the unavoidable: another confrontation between Enki and Enlil. In the seventh "passing," when the remaining men and women were "like ghosts of the dead," they received a message from Enki. "Make a loud noise in the land," he said. Send out heralds to command all the people: "Do not revere your gods, do not pray to your goddesses." There was to be total disobedience!

Under the cover of such turmoil, Enki planned more concrete action. The texts, quite fragmented at this point, disclose that he convened a secret assembly of "elders" in his temple. "They entered ... they took counsel in the House of Enki." First Enki exonerated himself, telling them how he had opposed the acts of the other gods. Then he outlined a plan of action; it somehow involved his command of the seas and the Lower World.

We can glean the clandestine details of the plan from the fragmentary verses: "In the night ... after he ..." someone had to be "by the bank of the river" at a certain time, perhaps to await the return of Enki from the Lower World. From there Enki "brought the water warriors"—perhaps also some of the Earthlings who were Primitive Workers in the mines. At the appointed time, commands were shouted: "Go! ... the order ..."

In spite of missing lines, we can gather what had happened from the reaction of Enlil. "He was filled with anger." He summoned the Assembly of the Gods and sent his sergeant at arms to fetch Enki. Then he stood up and accused his brother of breaking the surveillance-and-containment plans:

All of us, Great Anunnaki,

reached together a decision....

I commanded that in the Bird of Heaven

Adad should guard the upper regions;

that Sin and Nergal should guard

the Earth's middle regions;

that the bolt, the bar of the sea,

you [Enki] should guard with your rockets.

But you let loose provisions for the people!

Enlil accused his brother of breaking the "bolt to the sea." But Enki denied that it had happened with his consent:

The bolt, the bar of the sea,

I did guard with my rockets.

[But] when ... escaped from me ...

a myriad of fish ... it disappeared;

they broke off the bolt ...

they had killed the guards of the sea.

He claimed that he had caught the culprits and punished them, but Enlil was not satisfied. He demanded that Enki "stop feeding his people," that he no longer "supply corn rations on which the people thrive." The reaction of Enki was astounding:

The god got fed up with the sitting;

in the Assembly of the Gods,

laughter overcame him.

We can imagine the pandemonium. Enlil was furious. There were heated exchanges with Enki and shouting. "There is slander in his hand!" When the Assembly was finally called to order, Enlil took the floor again. He reminded his colleagues and subordinates that it had been a unanimous decision. He reviewed the events that led to the fashioning of the Primitive Worker and recalled the many times that Enki "broke the rule."

But, he said, there was still a chance to doom Mankind. A "killing flood" was in the offing. The approaching catastrophe had to be kept a secret from the people. He called on the Assembly to swear themselves to secrecy and, most important, to "bind prince Enki by an oath."

Enlil opened his mouth to speak

and addressed the Assembly of all the gods:

"Come, all of us, and take an oath

regarding the Killing Flood!"

Anu swore first;

Enlil swore; his sons swore with him.

At first, Enki refused to take the oath. "Why will you bind me with an oath?" he asked. "Am I to raise my hands against my own humans?" But he was finally forced to take the oath. One of the texts specifically states: "Anu, Enlil, Enki, and Nin
h
ursag, the gods of Heaven and Earth, had taken the oath."

The die was cast.

•

What was the oath he was bound by? As Enki chose to interpret it, he swore not to reveal the secret of the coming Deluge to the people; but could he not tell it to a wall? Calling Atra-
H
asis to the temple, he made him stay behind a screen. Then Enki pretended to speak not to his devout Earthling but to the wall. "Reed screen," he said,

Pay attention to my instructions.

On all the habitations, over the cities,

a storm will sweep.

The destruction of Mankind's seed it will be....

This is the final ruling,

the word of the Assembly of the gods,

the word spoken by Anu, Enlil and Nin
h
ursag.

(This subterfuge explains Enki's later contention, when the survival of Noah/Utnapishtim was discovered, that he had not broken his oath—that the "exceedingly wise"
(atra-
h
asis)
Earthling had found out the secret of the Deluge all by himself, by correctly interpreting the signs.) Pertinent seal depictions show an attendant holding the screen while Ea—as the Serpent God—reveals the secret to Atra-
H
asis. (Fig. 160)

Fig. 160

Enki's advice to his faithful servant was to build a waterborne vessel; but when the latter said, "I have never built a boat ... draw for me a design on the ground that I may see," Enki provided him with precise instruction regarding the boat, its measurements, and its construction. Steeped in Bible stories, we imagine this "ark" as a very large boat, with decks and superstructures. But the biblical term
—teba—stems
from the root "sunken," and it must be concluded that Enki instructed his Noah to construct a submersible boat
—
a submarine.

The Akkadian text quotes Enki as calling for a boat "roofed over and below," hermetically sealed with "tough pitch." There were to be no decks, no openings, "so that the sun shall not see inside," It was to be a boat "like an Apsu boat," a
ulili
; it is the very term used nowadays in Hebrew
(
oleleth)
to denote a submarine.

"Let the boat," Enki said, "be a MA.GUR.GUR"
—
"a boat that can turn and tumble." Indeed, only such a boat could have survived an overpowering avalanche of waters.

The Atra-
H
asis version, like the others, reiterates that although the calamity was only seven days away, the people were unaware of its approach. Atra-
H
asis used the excuse that the "Apsu vessel" was being built so that he could leave for Enki's abode and perhaps thereby avert Enlil's anger. This was readily accepted, for things were really bad. Noah's father had hoped that his birth signaled the end of a long time of suffering. The people's problem was a drought
—
the absence of rain, the shortage of water. Who in his right mind would have thought that they were about to perish in an avalanche of water?

Yet if the humans could not read the signs, the Nefilim could. To them, the Deluge was not a sudden event; though it was unavoidable, they detected its coming. Their scheme to destroy Mankind rested not on an active but on a passive role by the gods. They did not cause the Deluge; they simply connived to withhold from the Earthlings the fact of its coming.

Aware, ,however, of the impending calamity, and of its global impact, the Nefilim took steps to save their own skins. With Earth about to be engulfed by water, they could go in only one direction for protection: skyward. When the storm that preceded the Deluge began to blow, the Nefilim took to their shuttlecraft, and remained in Earth orbit until the waters began to subside.

The day of the Deluge, we will show, was the day the gods fled from Earth.

The sign for which Utnapishtim had to watch, upon which he was to join all others in the ark and seal it, was this:

When Shamash,

who orders a trembling at dusk,

will shower down a rain of eruptions

board thou the ship,

batten up the entrance!