http://www.bbc.co.uk/radio4/history/inourtime/
http://www.bbc.co.uk/radio4/history/...20080515.shtml
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In 1849 a young English adventurer called Henry Layard started digging into a small hill. It was on the banks of the River Tigris in Northern Iraq and underneath it was the ancient city of Nineveh.
Layard found extraordinary things - wonderful carved reliefs, ancient palace rooms and great statues of winged bulls. He also found a collection of clay tablets, broken up, jumbled around and sitting on the floor of a toilet. It was the remnants of a library and although Layard didn’t know it at the time, it was one of the greatest archaeological finds ever made.
Contributors
Eleanor Robson, Senior Lecturer at Cambridge University and Vice-Chair of the British Institute for the Study of Iraq
Karen Radner, Lecturer in the Ancient Near Eastern History at University College London
Andrew George, Professor of Babylonian at the School of Oriental and African Studies at the University of London
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Brilliant programme, listen to it!
The following is not from the programme!
This is looking at the time just before Cyrus and the Rivers of Babylon, one of the central themes in the cultural myths that have become the central ones of the West.
Gilgamesh, the flood, (they did not mention it but the Black Sea breach does look like the key to this - and fish people, the ones who told us all the secrets before the end of the golden age with the flood.
But hang on, a fish person is at the centre of a certain mythology that is widespread in the West!
Cyrus and Darius got the one true god established, Jesus as the one true mediator between god and man, the one true fish person?
What are those early symbols about again?
Interesting things like they liked looking at entrails to divine the future - a celtic habit.
Maybe we are brilliant at Chinese Whispers and changing things, but with difficulty things can be tracked back.
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Atrahasis and Ut-napishtim, Like the Sumerian Ziusudra (the Xisuthros of Berossus) or Noah from the Pentateuch, were the long-lived survivors of the great flood which wiped out the rest of humanity. In Atrahasis' case, Ellil had grown tired of the noise that the mass of humanity was making, and after a series of disasters failed to eliminate the problem, he had Enki release the floodgates to drown them out. Since Enki had a hand in creating man, he wanted to preserve his creation, warned Atrahasis, and had him build a boat, with which he weathered the flood. He also had kept his ear open to Enki during the previous disasters and had been able to listen to Enki's advice on how to avoid their full effects by making the appropriate offerings to the appropriate deities. He lived hundreds of years prior to the flood, while Utnapishtim lives forever after the flood. Utnapishtim of Shuruppak was the son of Ubaratutu. His flood has no reason behind it save the stirrings of the hearts of the Gods. As with Atrahasis, Utnapishtim is warned to build an ark by Ea. He is also told to abandon riches and possessions and seek life and to tell the city elders that he is hated by Enlil and would go to the watery Abyss to live with Ea via the ark. He loads gold, silver, and the seed of all living creatures into the ark and all of his craftsmen's children as well. After Ea advises Enlil on better means to control the human population, (predators, famine, and plague), Enlil makes Utnapishtim and his wife immortal, like the gods.
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http://home.comcast.net/~chris.s/assyrbabyl-faq.html
http://www.atour.com/education/20010122a.html
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It turns out, God gets God’s way anyhow, and does it with a sense of irony… You see, Assyria is the enemy of Jonah’s people… they are a threat to Jonah’s people. The capital of Assyria is Ninevah, and Ninevah is named for the Assyrian fish god, Nine.[1] And how does Jonah get to Fish City? In the belly of a fish! Ain’t that just like God?
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http://suncath.org/sermons.aspx?dat=02/06/2008
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Apollo, Bacchus and Saturn known as fish gods? That was news to me. This thing seemed to be more widespread then I had first imagined. I hadn't known that pagan gods were symbolized as fish.
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http://www.seedofabraham.net/fish.html
The above are xian sources but interestingly admit the connection (but the second one states it is a satanic idea and thereby protest too much, especially with the claim that xianity is not magical and if there are any magical bits it is the fault of those heretical catholics!!!)
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Oannes
Mesopotamian mythology
Main
in Mesopotamian mythology, an amphibious being who taught mankind wisdom. Oannes, as described by the Babylonian priest Berosus, had the form of a fish but with the head of a man under his fish’s head and under his fish’s tail the feet of a man. In the daytime he came up to the seashore of the Persian Gulf and instructed mankind in writing, the arts, and the sciences. Oannes was probably the emissary of Ea, god of the freshwater deep and of wisdom.
Related Links
Aspects of this topic are discussed in the following places at Britannica.
Assorted References
- account by Berosus ( in Berosus ) In his first book Berosus described the land of Babylonia, to which the half man-half fish Oannes and other divinities coming out of the sea brought civilization, and told the story of the creation according to the native legend, which led to his account of Chaldean astrology. The second and third books contained the chronology and history of Babylonia and of later Assyria, beginning with the...
in Mesopotamia, history of: The classical and medieval views of Mesopotamia; its rediscovery in modern times ) Berosus’ first book dealt with the beginnings of the world and with a myth of a composite being, Oannes, half fish, half man, who came ashore in Babylonia at a time when men still lived like the wild beasts. Oannes taught them the essentials of civilization: writing, the arts, law, agriculture, surveying, and architecture. The name Oannes must have been derived from the cuneiform U’anna...
Citations
MLA Style:
"Oannes." Encyclopædia Britannica. 2008. Encyclopædia Britannica Online. 15 May. 2008 <http://www.britannica.com/EBchecked/topic/423478/Oannes>.
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05-15-2008, 09:16 AM
The Library at Nineveh and the Fish People
