Identification One: Ubaid Period

Antediluvian Background of Nimrod

Nov 13, 2024

The best place to start our search for actual identifications is within the antediluvian mythos of the Sumerian epics. Sumerian mythology’s most important source for information regarding the timeline of kings is the well known “Sumerian Kings List” including numerous dynasties and rulers - both real and mythological. The list kicks off with a list of antediluvian rulers that dominate a series of five progressive cities: Eridu, Bad-tibira, Larak, Sippar/Zimbir and Shuruppak. It is necessary to go through these early rulers, despite all of them being “Pre-Noah” even within our own timeline being connected to the Ubaid period.

The first of these rulers is a legendary king named Alulim, variously sometimes called Alulu, or Ayyalu. This ruler gives us a clue to the concept of Nimrod since there are no verifiable records of any king named Alulim similar to the lack of any evidence of Nimrod.1 We already see a precedent for this absence of regnal title having any physical record - probably passed down through oral tradition and compiled at a later date. This supposed Alulim actually ruled over 28,000 years making it obviously impossible without some kind of reincarnation process, again similar to the framework we have built up for Nimrod.

While still a tenuous connection, the vizier, or advisor to Alulim was an Apkallu - one of the seven sages who are demigod half-men.2 The first, and most important of these was a sage named “Adapa” who shares an obvious etymological link with the first man Adam. How these sages feature in Sumerian mythology varies throughout the periods, but in some ways they do appear to be extremely similar to the parallel lineages of Cain and Seth. The bible very well could have un-deified these earlier mythological kings, making the ‘realistic’ sages the actual figures represented in the genealogy of Adam. Another king of Eridu named Alalngar is said to have ruled over a similarly impossible 36,000 years, but very few details are known of this mythological figure.

The kingship shifts over from Eridu to Bad-tibira, already dislocating us from our technical site of Babel at Eridu that we identified in previous sections. An important individual named Dumuzid, the Shepard, is king over Bad-tibira, but his main associations come from his deification as a god within the Sumerian and Near Eastern religions known in Hebrew literature as the important “Tammuz”. This name is even the source of the month of July in Hebrew named Tammuz, making this Dumuzid/Tammuz a very unrelated figure to Nimrod even if he holds importance in other aspects. Pictured is Dumuzid and his consort Inanna.

After shifting to Larak, and then again to Zimbir we are told of a man named En-men-dur-ana. This complicated name means something like “chief of the powers of Dur-an-ki” with the Duranki element itself meaning "the meeting-place of heaven and earth".3 This name is very important, and helps signal a shifting role for these kings' importance in mystical religious affairs with the city of Sippar, also known as Zimbir, playing a central role in the worship of the primary sun-god Utu, also called Shamash in semitic.4

While seemingly irrelevant to our purpose, Enmeduranki is associated with a number of mystical practices, namely: the arts of divination, how to inspect oil on water (lecanomancy), how to discern the messages in the liver of animals (haruspicy), and the secrets of heaven and of earth.5678910 The reason this man is so important is probably because this is the Sumerian version of Enoch. Helpfully, Enoch and Enmeduranki share their placement of 7th on the list, they both retain the prefix “En”- the Sumerian term for god - and have mystical powers associated to them triggering their ascension into heaven directly taken there by gods, or in the case of the Torah and Enoch, God Himself. Many of these myths are actually written not in Sumerian, but in Semitic languages, mysteriously paralleling the concept of a “Lashon Kadosh” or Holy Tongue as the Semitic/Hebrew language even in Sumerian religious contexts.

Given that Enoch predates Nimrod and Noah significantly, it’s safe to place Enmeduranki and all the rulers from before his time as definitively not the identification for Nimrod. This makes sense, given they are all ruled before the Sumeiran Flood event. Eventually we get to the ruler named Ubara-Tutu of Shuruppak, the final king before the Flood. This figure again helps date this list in the context of the Bible with Ubara-tutu being the important father of Utnapishtim, the later Akkadian version of Noah who is instructed to build a boat to survive the Flood by the god Ea (also known as En-ki).11

If Enmeduranki is the Enoch, and his son Ubara-tutu is likewise the Methusaleh figure, it is unclear what this means for Lamech, father of Noah, who doesn’t appear to feature in the Sumerian version with Utnapishtim - the Noah in this story - being the son of Ubara-tutu. Noah was the 10th figure including Adam, while Enoch was the 7th. Enmeduranki was the 7th, while Utnapishtim was debatably either 8th or 9th due to the possible insertion of a king named En-men-gal-ana. Lamech’s placement in both the lineages of Cain and Seth might serve as the fusion point between the two lineages, making it difficult to discern the ordering of these lists, but showing a rough parallel.

Since Utnapishtim’s father ruled from Shuruppak, supposedly around the Jemdet Nasr period, it would be impressive if we found sediment deposits from the city around this period from a flood, even if localized.12 Indeed, we find evidence for such an event with scholar Erich Schmidt writing that the Flood story of the bible: “seems to be based on a very real event or a series of such, as suggested by the existence at Ur, at Kish, and now at Fara, of inundation deposits, which accumulated on top of human inhabitation.”13

While I would contradict Schmidt and view this event as merely one of the very common flood events known from all over the world; in various periods that very well could have informed the way ancient readers understood the Bible story, but they are different memories. It was merely an alternative cyclical variant of the proper “Flood” event that seemingly had destroyed the world multiple times before Noah, but only “ended” after Noah’s “Final” Flood. The existence of both Utnapishtim and Noah, as well as any number of “Flood” figures like the previously mentioned Chinese Yu the Engineer, or even the geological Last Glacial Maximum Flood inundation event do not contradict Noah’s flood as the final flood of humankind. If anything, they further reinforce the global cyclicality that unifies Torah throughout the various Cosmic Shemitah cycles.

Utnapishtim is the important transitional figure from before the flood, and seemingly lines up perfectly with Noah, however he is really only a later Akkadian figure taken from the earlier Akkadian figure of Atra-hasis, who himself was lifted from the Sumerian version of the flood hero named Ziusudra. The meaning of each of these names is slightly different, with Ziusudra (Sumerian: 𒍣𒌓𒋤𒁺) meaning “Life of Long Days”, and Utnapishtim (Akkadian: 𒌓𒍣) meaning “He has Found Life”. Even within ancient mythology, Utnapishtim wasn’t “the Noah” or “Flood” figure, he was one of many!

Breaking down these names, the “napištum” in Utnapishtim meanings something like soul, or living being, being a cognate to the common Hebrew term “nefesh” נֶפֶשׁ. In Genesis 8:4 the first usage of the word “Noach” - meaning rest, or rested - pops up in reference to resting on the mountains, rather than the figure Noah. In Akkadian, this term is “napāšu”, as well as “nâhu” lining up with both the term “nefesh” meaning soul, and the term “noach” meaning rested. This form “napasu” might have found its way into Hebrew in the term “נָֽפְצָ֥ה” where it is used to mean “populated” immediately following God’s establishment of a covenant with Noah in Genesis 17-19. In effect, Noah’s soul is encoded as the progenitor of mankind from this point forward within the word structure of the text, but for our purposes it signifies Noah as nearly identical to these flood myth heroes. Nimrod must have come after Utnapishtim, prince and son of King Ubara-tutu of Shuruppak following the Jemdet Nasr inundation flood event.14

Identification One: Ubaid Period

Antediluvian Background of Nimrod

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