The creation tale of Genesis is the edited version of a much older detailed Mesopotamian text, which in turn were an adaptation of the original Sumerian story. The original Sumerian account of creation was called Enuma Elish (When in the heights), or the Epic of Creation. Taken from its opening words, it became the most hallowed religious-political-scientific document of the land read and re-enacted in passion plays to celebrate the New Year in the ancient times. The clay tablets where they are written are prized possessions of the temples.
The decipherment of the writing on the clay tablets discovered in the ruins of Mesopotamia more than a century ago led to the realization that texts existed that related biblical tales millennia before the Old Testament was compiled. Especially important were texts found in the ruins of the Library of Ashurbanipal in Niniveh (City in Ancient Mesopotamia/Iraq) indicating a tale of creation that matches, in some part word for word the tale of Genesis!
George Smith of the British Museum who pieced together the broken clay tablets wrote and published his book, The Chaldean Genesis, conclusively establishing that there indeed existed an Akkadian text of the Genesis tale, written in the Old Babylonian dialect that preceded the biblical text by at least a thousand years.
The various fragments found and pieced together added up to seven tablets; six of them related to the creation process; the seventh tablet is entirely devoted to the exaltation of “the Lord” – Marduk in the Babylonian version, the planet Nibiru on the original Sumerian writing. One can only guess that this seven –tablet division somehow is the basis for the biblical story into a seven-part time-table, of which six parts involved divine handiwork and the seventh is devoted to a restful and satisfactory look back at what had been achieved.
The compilers and editors of the Old Testament, descendants of Abraham- a scion from a royal priestly family from the Sumerian capital of Ur , took the Epic of Creation, shortened and edited it and used it as the foundation of a national religion that glorifies the god Yahweh. In reality, the original writing from the source of Genesis accredited the creation of to a planetary god – Nibiru, whom the Sumerian always depicted as the Winged Disc.
Compiled from Genesis Revisited
