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Graham Hancock – FINGERPRINTS OF THE GODS
Take the case of Oannes, for example.
‘Oannes’ is the Greek rendering of the Sumerian Uan, the name of the
amphibious being, described in Part II, believed to have brought the arts
and skills of civilization to Mesopotamia. 25 Legends dating back at least
5000 years relate that Uan lived under the sea, emerging from the waters
of the Persian Gulf every morning to civilize and tutor mankind. 26 Is it a
coincidence that uaana, in the Mayan language, means ‘he who has his
residence in water’? 27
Let us also consider Tiamat, the Sumerian goddess of the oceans and of
the forces of primitive chaos, always shown as a ravening monster. In
Mesopotamian tradition, Tiamat turned against the other deities and
unleashed a holocaust of destruction before she was eventually destroyed
by the celestial hero Marduk:
She opened her mouth, Tiamat, to swallow him.
He drove in the evil wind so that she could not close her lips.
The terrible winds filled her belly. Her heart was seized,
She held her mouth wide open,
He let fly an arrow, it pierced her belly,
Her inner parts he clove, he split her heart,
He rendered her powerless and destroyed her life,
He felled her body and stood upright on it. 28
How do you follow an act like that?
Marduk could. Contemplating his adversary’s monstrous corpse, ‘he
conceived works of art’, 29 and a great plan of world creation began to
take shape in his mind. His first move was to split Tiamat’s skull and cut
her arteries. Then he broke her into two parts ‘like a dried fish’, using
one half to roof the heavens and the other to surface the earth. From her
breasts he made mountains, from her spittle, clouds, and he directed the
rivers Tigris and Euphrates to flow from her eyes. 30
A strange and violent legend, and a very old one.
The ancient civilizations of Central America had their own version of
this story. Here Quetzalcoatl, in his incarnation as the creator deity, took
the role of Marduk while the part of Tiamat was played by Cipactli, the
‘Great Earth Monster’. Quetzalcoatl seized Cipactli’s limbs ‘as she swam
in the primeval waters and wrenched her body in half, one part forming
the sky and the other the earth’. From her hair and skin he created grass,
flowers and herbs; ‘from her eyes, wells and springs; from her shoulders,
25
Stephanie Dalley, Myths from Mesopotamia, Oxford University Press, 1990, p. 326;
Jeremy Black and Anthony Green, Gods, Demons and Symbols of Ancient Mesopotamia,
British Museum Press, 1992, pp. 163-4.
26
Gods, Demons and Symbols of Ancient Mesopotamia, p. 41.
27
Mysteries of the Mexican Pyramids, p. 169; The God-Kings and the Titans, p. 234.
28
New Larousse Encyclopaedia of Mythology, pp. 53-4.
29
Ibid., p. 54.
30
Ibid. See also Gods, Demons and Symbols of Ancient Mesopotamia, p. 177.
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