Adapa

A shared image does not prove direct borrowing, and even when influence is possible, the later story can transform the meaning completely.

Gilgamesh, Genesis, Adapa, Atrahasis, and other ancient texts all wrestle with the same impossible problem.

Why do humans die while the gods do not? but they do not all give the same answer.

And once we look beyond Gilgamesh, the picture becomes stranger still, because in another Mesopotamian story, a man may lose the food and water of life not to a serpent, not through a flood, but through a trick that turns on a single fatal decision.

That man is Adapa.

And his story is one of the strangest in all Mesopotamian literature, because unlike Gilgamesh, Adapa may come closer than almost anyone to receiving immortality.

Not through strength, not through a journey to the end of the earth, not by diving beneath the waters of death.

He loses it because he obeys instructions.

What do you do if you want to find something? Well, you heard of it in a book or someone wrote about it.

Then you go online, you're like, I want to see the translation for the myth of Adapa.

And you go on and you find a bunch of different things.

You don't know where to look.

Macro means large.

And I actually have a great tablet I can bring up that gives us a perfect example of this.

And it's called the myth of Adapa.

Before I mention that, I want to just point out a very interesting curiosity about humanity's genes, the genome of humanity.

And maybe he's adding a new interpretation to stories that were already established.

So in that sense, yes, there are multiple layers, or you go to the myth of Adapa, and I think you've got an example there of a Babylonian writer playing with an older story, playing with the characters that were well-known to the readers.

I think it's fair to say there might be political layers to some of these stories.

So in the Ascent of Marduk, we're really looking at stories talking about the superiority of Babylonia when compared with ancient Sumer, or a statement that Babylon has now surpassed the city of Eridu or the city of Nippur.

This view is put forward by Thorkild Jakobsson in his book The Treasures of Darkness in 1976, by Simo Parpola, Alastair Livingstone, Francesca Rochberg.

and as early as W.G. Lambert in the 1950s.

You can see a little bit of that sort of retelling of earlier story, even in the Epic of Gilgamesh, or in something like the myth of Adapa.

But none of those academics I just mentioned would argue that the original meaning of Of these core stories, the Atrahasis, the Enuma Elish, the Sumerian Kings list was esoterica.

All right.

One of the really important things I've been focusing on in the past few years is this- is learning about and realizing that Mesopotamian astrologers actually believed that their astrological tradition or system was a divine revelation from an ancient sage named Adapa rather than just like a human invention.

And this is really important because they, they attributed the origins of their astral science to a-as well as their compilation of foundational omen series, which is the Enuma Anu Enlil, to this mythical or ancient sage called Adapa.

And this was supposed to be the first of, um, the antediluvian seven sages, and Adapa is supposed to be the first one who's credited with teaching humanity writing, uh, mathematics, but also astronomy and astrology.

And I think this is really important because it means that in Mesopotamia for hundreds of years before the emergence of Hellenistic astrology there was this precedent essentially for early astrological texts to be framed as ancient revealed wisdom.

And for anybody that studied later hermeti- Hermeticism or Hellenistic astrology that should sound very familiar to you because that's exactly how when Hellenistic astrology was created in the second century BCE We see the emergence of this figure of Hermes Trismegistus Who was associated with the Greek god Hermes and the Egyptian god Toth Or Toth and Uh, who was also said to be Like a God of Writing and Said to be An Ancient Sage Who The Astrological System or Who Different Texts On Philosophy Were Revealed To or Who Subsequently Revealed Those Things to Humanity.

The deluge will occur when the same group of planets meets in the sign of Capricorn." All right, end quote.

So, um, you know, this is important because on the one thing, I mean, scholars sometimes try to like question whether Berosus the historian was really the same as Berosus the astrologer, but it's really obvious to me that he is and that these are probably one in the same people and that Berosus as a Mesopotamian priest and a- an astrologer both wrote a work on history but also talked about astrology potentially within that context.

Yes.

So, um, Adam is Adamu or Adapa.

Okay.

Um, the creation story according to the, the Annunakis, just like I said, we are light beings.

The caprices of these strange beings, their malice and their crafty attacks, often brought upon them vexatious misfortunes.

Shutu, the south wind, one day beheld Adapa, one of the numerous offsprings of Ea, fishing in order to provide food for his family.

In spite of his exalted origin, Adapa was no god.

He did not possess the gift of immortality, and he was not at liberty to appear in the presence of Anu in heaven.

He enjoyed, nevertheless, certain privileges, thanks to his familiar intercourse with his father Ea, and owing to his birth he was strong enough to repel the assaults of more than one deity.

Shutu, thou hast overwhelmed me with thy hatred.

Great as it is, I will break thy wings.

Having thus spoken with his mouth unto Shutu, Adapa broke his wings.

So now they're trying to figure out, well, what genes does it turn off and turn on? And how do we get that back activated again? So we kind of really been disconnected from who we truly are.

We have the power in us because it's talked about in the myth of Adapa, which is an ancient tablet that we were created even greater than the Anunnaki themselves, but that we would have to go on a hero's journey of self-discovery

to get back to it.

So how's this memory reset taking place? Like how have we forgotten so much of this? Great question.