ages - giving the zodiacs the epithets of the various associated gods. We now find that the text uncovered by Ebeling provided
calendarial information not only for men but also for the Nefilim. The Deluge, it informs us, occurred in the "Age of the
constellation Lion":
Supreme, Supreme, Anointed;
Lord whose shining crown with terror is laden.
Supreme planet: a seat he has set up
Facing the confined orbit of the red planet [Mars].
Daily within the Lion he is afire;
His light his bright kingships on the lands pronounces.
We can now also understand an enigmatic verse in the New Year's rituals, stating that it was "the constellation Lion that
measured the waters of the deep." These statements place the time of the Deluge within a definite framework, for though
astronomers nowadays cannot precisely ascertain where the Sumerians set the beginning of a zodiacal house, the following
timetable for the ages is considered accurate.
60 B.C. to A.D. 2100 - Age of Pisces
2220 B.C. to 60 B.C. - Age of Aries
4380 B.C. to 2220 B.C. - Age of Taurus
6540 B.C. to 4380 B.C. - Age of Gemini
8700 B.C. to 6540 B.C. - Age of Cancer
10,860 B.C. to 8700 B.C. - Age of the Lion
If the Deluge occurred in the Age of the Lion, or sometime between 10,860 B.C. and 8700 B.C., then the date of the Deluge falls well within our timetable: According to modern science, the last ice age ended abruptly in the southern hemisphere some twelve to thirteen thousand years ago, and in the northern hemisphere one or two thousand years later.
The zodiacal phenomenon of precession offers even more comprehensive corroboration of our conclusions. We concluded earlier that the Nefilim landed on Earth 432,000 years (120 shar's) before the Deluge, in the Age of Pisces. In terms of the precessional cycle, 432,000 years comprise sixteen full cycles, or Great Years, and more than halfway through another Great Year, into the "age" of the constellation of the Lion.
We can now reconstruct the complete timetable for the events embraced by our findings. Years Ago EVENT
445,000 The Nefilim, led by Enki, arrive on Earth from the Twelfth Planet. Eridu - Earth Station is established in southern Mesopotamia.
430,000 The great ice sheets begin to recede. A hospitable climate in the Near East. 415,000 Enki moves inland, establishes Larsa.
400,000 The great interglacial period spreads globally. Enlil arrives on Earth, establishes Nippur as Mission Control Center. Enki establishes sea routes to southern Africa, organizes gold-mining operations.
360,000 The Nefilim establish Bad-Tibira as their metallurgical center for smelting and refining. Sippar, the spaceport, and other cities of the gods are built.
300,000 The Anunnaki mutiny. Man - the "Primitive Worker" - is fashioned by Enki and Ninhursag. 250,000 "Early Homo sapiens" multiply, spread to other continents. 200,000 Life on Earth regresses during new glacial period.
100,000 Climate warms again. The sons of the gods take the daughters of Man as wives.
77,000 Ubartutu/Lamech, a human of divine parentage, assumes the reign in Shuruppak under the patronage of Ninhursag. 75,000 The "accursation of Earth" - a new ice ago begins. Regressive types of Man roam Earth.
49,000 The reign of Ziusudra ("Noah"), a "faithful servant" of Enki, begins.
38,000 The harsh climatic period of the "seven passings" begins to decimate Mankind. Europe's Neanderthal Man disappears;
only Cro-Magnon Man (based in the Near East) survives. Enlil, disenchanted with Mankind, seeks its demise.
13,000 The Nefilim, aware of the impending tidal wave that will be triggered by the nearing Twelfth Planet, vow to let Mankind
perish.
The Deluge sweeps over Earth, abruptly ending the ice age.
THE DELUGE, a traumatic experience for Mankind, was no less so for the "gods" - the Nefilim.
In the words of the Sumerian king lists, "the Deluge had swept over," and an effort of 120 shar's was wiped away overnight. The south African mines, the cities in Mesopotamia, the control center at Nippur, the spaceport at Sippar - all lay buried under water and mud. Hovering in their shuttlecraft above devastated Earth, the Nefilim impatiently awaited the abatement of the waters so that they could set foot again on solid ground.
How were they going to survive henceforth on Earth when their cities and facilities were gone, and even their manpower - Mankind - was totally destroyed?
When the frightened, exhausted, and hungry groups of Nefilim finally landed on the peaks of the "Mount of Salvation," they were clearly relieved to discover that Man and beast alike had not perished completely. Even Enlil, at first enraged to discover that his aims had been partly frustrated, soon changed his mind.
The deity's decision was a practical one. Faced with their own dire conditions, the Nefilim cast aside their inhibitions about Man, rolled up their sleeves, and lost no time in imparting to Man the arts of growing crops and cattle. Since survival, no doubt, depended on the speed with which agriculture and animal domestication could be developed to sustain the Nefilim and a rapidly multiplying Mankind, the Nefilim applied their advanced scientific knowledge to the task.
Unaware of the information that could be culled from the biblical and Sumerian texts, many scientists who have studied the origins of agriculture have arrived at the conclusion that its "discovery" by Mankind some 13,000 years ago was related to the neothermal ("newly warm") elimalti that followed the end of the last ice ago. Long before modern scholars, however, the Bible also related the beginnings of agriculture to the aftermath of the Deluge.
"Sowing and Harvesting" were described in Genesis us divine gifts granted to Noah and his offspring as part of the post-Diluvial
covenant between the Deity and Mankind:
For as long as the Earth's days shall be,
There shall not cease
Sowing and Harvesting,
Cold and Warmth,
Summer and Winter,
Day and Night.
Having been granted the knowledge of agriculture, "Noah as a Husbandman was first, and he planted a vineyard": He became the first post-Diluvial farmer engaged in the deliberate, complicated task of planting.
The Sumerian texts, too, ascribed to the gods the granting to Mankind of both agriculture and the domestication of animals. Tracing the beginnings of agriculture, modem scholars have found that it appeared first in the Near East, but not in the fertile and easily cultivated plains and valleys. Rather, agriculture began in the mountains skirting the low-lying plains in a semicircle. Why would farmers avoid the plains and limit their sowing and reaping to the more difficult mountainous terrain? The only plausible answer is that the low-lying lands were, at the time when agriculture began, uninhabitable; 13,000 years ago the low-lying areas were not yet dry enough following the Deluge. Millennia passed before the plains and valleys had dried sufficiently to permit the people to come down from the mountains surrounding Mesopotamia and to settle the low-lying plains. This, indeed, is what the Book of Genesis tells us: Many generations after the Deluge, people arriving "from the East" - from the mountainous areas east of Mesopotamia - "found a plain in the land of Shin'ar [Sumer], and settled there." The Sumerian texts state that Enlil first spread cereals "in the hill country" - in the mountains, not in the plains - and that he made cultivation possible in the mountains by keeping the floodwaters away. "He barred the mountains as with a door." The name of this mountainous land east of Sumer, E.LAM, meant "house where vegetation germinated." Later, two of Enlil's helpers, the gods Ninazu and Ninmada, extended the cultivation of cereals to the low-lying plains so that, eventually, "Sumer, the land that knew not grain, came to know grain."
Scholars, who have now established that agriculture began with the domestication of wild emmer as a source of wheat and barley, are unable to explain how the earliest grains (like those found at the Shanidar cave) were already uniform and highly specialized. Thousands of generations of genetic selection are needed by nature to acquire even a modest degree of sophistication. Yet the period, time, or location in which such a gradual and very prolonged process might have taken place on Earth are nowhere to be found. There is no explanation for this botanogenetic miracle, unless the process was not one of natural selection but of artificial manipulation.