Chapter 7: The Kings of Eden

Saklas called them by the names which are from illusion and their power. On the one hand, through (the names given by the glory of heaven), they are reproved and weakened, like the seasons, while on the other hand, through those (of Saklas) they grow strengthened and increase. And he commanded that seven kings should rule over the heavens and five over the chaos of Hades. (The Apocryphon of John).

In The Makers of Civilization in Race & History (p. 219) by Laurence A. Waddell, he writes that the first ruler of the Akkadian Empire, Sargon of Akkad’s name can be translated as the “King of Eden.”

The name in Sargon’s own and other records hitherto read Subartu “-which is merely a Semitic term-reads I find by its Sumerian signs unequivocally SU-EDIN or .. The Good EDIN Land.”· While its title, as used by Sargon’s sons and descendants and other later Sumerian kings, and hitherto read conjecturally” Shiri-hum,” reads directly by its Sumerian signs Shu-EDIN-hum, or the Garden of EDIN, the fruitful.

In the same book, Waddell (p. 155) proposes the theory that all the Biblical patriarchs correspond to the ancient Sumerian and Babylonian Kings.

The borrowing of these famous names of the earliest Sumerian or Aryan kings and culture heroes--the most famous of all names in the Old World-by the Hebrew compilers of Genesis for their version of the origin of civilization, seems to be sufficiently explained by the fact that according to the best modern Biblical authorities those compilers based their version of the Creation myth upon borrowings from the later Babylonian and Chaldean Creation myths which included these heroes and made these First and Second Sumerian Dynasty Kings “Antediluvian” —the “Flood” myth having Come into currency about the period of the Isin Dynasty. And the “Sons of God” who married “the daughters of men” in the Hebrew legend are seen to have been obviously the Aryan “sons” or descendants of the Aryan King “Adam” who introduced Civilization with the idea of a God of Light in Heaven into the Old World of lowly pre-Adamite men, Chaldean and Semitic worshippers of the Old Serpent and malignant demons of Darkness and the underworld demanding sanguinary sacrifices. But presumably owing to imperfect knowledge of the historical facts they mutilated the tradition and degraded these illustrious kings into their own primitive pre-Adamite ancestors, notwithstanding that these famous kings were not Semitic in race at all, but Sumerians, Early Aryans, or “Nordics” or Goths.

Other authors like Walter Reinhold Warttig Mattfeld y d la Torre[1] identify an old Sumerian tale as the template for not only the Genesis story but also to refute its message.

The Southwind myth was a Mesopotamian explanation for how, once upon a time, man in the form of Adapa had a chance to obtain immortality by consuming “bread and water of life” but by failing to do so, he condemned the rest of mankind to a lifetime of disease and death for all eternity. Adapa refused to consume the “bread and water of life” offered him by Anu in his heavenly abode because his god whom he served on the earth, Ea (Sumerian Enki) had warned him NOT to eat the “bread of death” or “drink the water of death” for he would surely die. Technically speaking Ea didn’t tell Adapa not to eat the “bread of life” or not to drink the “water of life,” it was “bread of death” and “water of death” that he wasn’t to consume. An apparently “confused” and “beguiled” Adapa thought the “bread of life” was the “bread of death.”

For the Mesopotamians then, man lost out on a chance to obtain immortality because the god who had created him and who he served, Ea (Enki) of Eridu in Sumer did not want him to obtain immortality. Anu (Sumerian An) on the other hand was willing to let Adapa become immortal and like a god. Ea had successfully thwarted Anu’s offer. So the Mesopotamians did not envision man’s lost chance at immortality as occurring because he disobeyed his god, but because he obeyed his god (Ea/Enki). The Hebrews are then, in the book of Genesis refuting and denying the Mesopotamian presentation of how man came to lose out on a chance to obtain immortality.

The Adapa and the Southwind myth also deals with man’s obtaining of forbidden knowledge reserved for the gods. Genesis presents Adam and Eve obtaining forbidden knowledge. Ea apparently against Anu’s wishes, has given Adapa the knowledge of powerful spells and incantations to overpower the lesser gods, in this case Adapa via a curse breaks the wing of the southwind stopping breezes. Anu summons Adapa to his heavenly abode wanting to know where he has obtained this knowledge. Realizing Adapa has godly knowledge Anu resolves he might as well make the human into a full-fledged god by bestowing immortality on him by allowing him to consume the bread and water of life. In Genesis man is presented as illegally obtaining knowledge, whereas the Mesopotamians understand that the illegal knowledge was given by Ea to man who he has created to be his servant in Eridu. Again, Genesis is refuting and denying the Mesopotamian presentation of how man obtained knowledge intended to be restricted to the gods.

Indeed, the Hebrew tale of Adam, being offered forbidden food, by Eve, though, is not anywhere in earlier creation accounts. These roles are recast and rewritten. In the Sumerian, Akkadian, and Babylonian stories, the Sumerian high-priest Adapa (Adam) was initiated by the Anunnaki gods (specifically Enki) in their magic, much like the Watchers or Grigori of Enoch. Adapa serves as Enki’s baker and priest at Eridu, preparing Enki’s daily meals (Enki made man to till his garden and to feed him the garden-grown foods). [2]