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Authors: Erich von Däniken
Tags: sci_phys
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mountains arched the gate of the sun. At the gate of the sun he met two giants and after a lengthy discussion they let him pass, because he was two-thirds god himself. Finally Gilgamesh found the garden of the gods, beyond which stretched the endless sea. While Gilgamesh was on his way, the gods warned him twice:
'Gilgamesh, whither are thou hurrying? Thou shalt not find the life that thou seekest. When the gods created man, they allotted him to death, but life they retained in their own keeping.'
Gilgamesh would not be warned; he wanted to reach Utnapishtim, the father of men, no matter what the dangers. But Utnapishtim lived on the far side of the great sea; no road led to him and no ship flew across it except the sun god's. Braving all kinds of perils Gilgamesh crossed the sea. Then follows his encounter with Utnapishtim, which is described in the eleventh tablet.
Gilgamesh found the figure of the father of men neither bigger nor broader than his own and he said that they resembled each other like father and son. Then Utnapishtim tells Gilgamesh about his past, strangely enough in the first person.
To our amazement we are given a detailed description of the Flood. He recounts that the 'gods' warned him of the great flood to come and gave him the task of building a boat on which he was to shelter women and children, his relations and craftsmen of every kind. The description of the violent storm, the darkness, the rising flood and the despair of the people he could not take with him has tremendous narrative power even today. We also hear—just as in Noah's account in the Bible—the story of the raven and the dove that were released and how finally, as the waters went down, the boat grounded on a mountain.
The parallel between the stories of the Flood in the Epic of Gilgamesh and the Bible is beyond doubt and there is not a single scholar who contests it. The fascinating thing about this parallelism is that we are dealing with different omens and different 'gods' in this case.
If the account of the Flood in the Bible is a second-hand one, the first person form of Utnapishtim's narrative shows that a survivor, an eye-witness, was speaking in the Epic of Gilgamesh.
It has been clearly proved that a catastrophic flood did take place in the ancient East some thousands of years ago. Ancient Babylonian cuneiform texts indicate very precisely where the remains of the boat ought to be. And on the south side of Mount Ararat investigators did in fact find three pieces of wood which possibly indicate the place where the ark grounded. Incidentally the chances of finding the remains of a ship that was mainly built of wood and survived a flood more than 6,000 years ago are extremely remote.
Besides being a first-hand report, the Epic of Gilgamesh also contains descriptions of extraordinary things that could not have been made up by any intelligence living at the time the tablets were written, any more than they could have been devised by the translators and copyists who manhandled the epic over the centuries. For there are facts buried among the descriptions that must have been known to the author of the Epic of Gilgamesh, if we look at them in the light of present-day knowledge.
Perhaps asking some new questions may throw a little light on the darkness. Is it possible that the Epic of Gilgamesh did not originate in the ancient East at all, but in the Tiahuanaco region? Is it conceivable that descendants of Gilgamesh came from South America and brought the Epic with them? An affirmative answer would at least explain the mention of the Gate of the Sun, the crossing of the sea and at the same time the sudden appearance of the Sumerians, for as is well known all the creations of Babylon, which came later, go back to the Sumerians. Undoubtedly the advanced Egyptian culture of the Pharaohs possessed libraries in which the old secrets were preserved, taught, learnt and written down. As has already been mentioned, Moses grew up at the
'Gilgamesh, whither are thou hurrying? Thou shalt not find the life that thou seekest. When the gods created man, they allotted him to death, but life they retained in their own keeping.'
Gilgamesh would not be warned; he wanted to reach Utnapishtim, the father of men, no matter what the dangers. But Utnapishtim lived on the far side of the great sea; no road led to him and no ship flew across it except the sun god's. Braving all kinds of perils Gilgamesh crossed the sea. Then follows his encounter with Utnapishtim, which is described in the eleventh tablet.
Gilgamesh found the figure of the father of men neither bigger nor broader than his own and he said that they resembled each other like father and son. Then Utnapishtim tells Gilgamesh about his past, strangely enough in the first person.
To our amazement we are given a detailed description of the Flood. He recounts that the 'gods' warned him of the great flood to come and gave him the task of building a boat on which he was to shelter women and children, his relations and craftsmen of every kind. The description of the violent storm, the darkness, the rising flood and the despair of the people he could not take with him has tremendous narrative power even today. We also hear—just as in Noah's account in the Bible—the story of the raven and the dove that were released and how finally, as the waters went down, the boat grounded on a mountain.
The parallel between the stories of the Flood in the Epic of Gilgamesh and the Bible is beyond doubt and there is not a single scholar who contests it. The fascinating thing about this parallelism is that we are dealing with different omens and different 'gods' in this case.
If the account of the Flood in the Bible is a second-hand one, the first person form of Utnapishtim's narrative shows that a survivor, an eye-witness, was speaking in the Epic of Gilgamesh.
It has been clearly proved that a catastrophic flood did take place in the ancient East some thousands of years ago. Ancient Babylonian cuneiform texts indicate very precisely where the remains of the boat ought to be. And on the south side of Mount Ararat investigators did in fact find three pieces of wood which possibly indicate the place where the ark grounded. Incidentally the chances of finding the remains of a ship that was mainly built of wood and survived a flood more than 6,000 years ago are extremely remote.
Besides being a first-hand report, the Epic of Gilgamesh also contains descriptions of extraordinary things that could not have been made up by any intelligence living at the time the tablets were written, any more than they could have been devised by the translators and copyists who manhandled the epic over the centuries. For there are facts buried among the descriptions that must have been known to the author of the Epic of Gilgamesh, if we look at them in the light of present-day knowledge.
Perhaps asking some new questions may throw a little light on the darkness. Is it possible that the Epic of Gilgamesh did not originate in the ancient East at all, but in the Tiahuanaco region? Is it conceivable that descendants of Gilgamesh came from South America and brought the Epic with them? An affirmative answer would at least explain the mention of the Gate of the Sun, the crossing of the sea and at the same time the sudden appearance of the Sumerians, for as is well known all the creations of Babylon, which came later, go back to the Sumerians. Undoubtedly the advanced Egyptian culture of the Pharaohs possessed libraries in which the old secrets were preserved, taught, learnt and written down. As has already been mentioned, Moses grew up at the
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