Children of Atur

  The author of an unfinished book of historical journalism presents readers with a few chapters. The text has been abridged especially for R+ (part two)

Leyla Sabzali

Baku


The remains of towers, most probably religious buildings, whose architecture was influenced by the Sumerians, stand on the territory of Azerbaijan,. According to the prominent Azerbaijani architect and historian of the architecture of the last century, D. Axundov, this is also apparent in the shape of the ancient monument of Azerbaijani architecture, Maiden's Tower. The architecture and, most importantly, the engineering and construction ideas of the man who built this eight-storey miracle in prehistoric times are without parallel in the world. A miracle, whose original purpose nobody has yet understood. Sumerian influence is also evident in the architecture of the Saba-il fortress, now underwater off Baku. A legacy of the Caspians, the fortress is built as a ziggurat, that is, a Sumerian pyramid-like, stepped temple. How about the place names still being used in Azerbaijan? They are consonant with place names of the Sumero-Akkadian kingdom. For example, "Kish" which is a very common place name in different areas of Azerbaijan. It is absolutely identical to the name of the Sumerian city-state dedicated to the Sumerian deity - Kishar. Or Lahic, one of the districts of Azerbaijan, formed from the name of the ancient and unique people – Lahic (Lahij). This place name echoes the name of one of the first Sumerian city states - Lagash. It was named so by the Sumerians in honour of Lahmu and Lahamu - Sumerian "divine monsters", who personified universal dark matter in their cosmogony. According to a Sumerian myth ("Enki and the World Order"), they are creatures of the God Enki in the ocean of life - Ap-su. According to another, later cosmogonic version (Enuma Elish), they were the children of the primordial elements of life, Ap-su and original chaos - Tiamat. It is the same Lahic, a famed city of craftsmen, where, according to legend, the legendary Monomakh's Cap was made. Monomakh's Cap hat crowned the head of Russian tsars for many centuries. By the way, the name of the ancient Caspian tribe the Utis (modern Udins) is suspiciously consonant with the name of the Sumerian god of the sun and fire - Utu. There are great many such toponymic and ethnonymical matches that lead back to Sumerian influence in Azerbaijan. And they will be described in more detail in the book.

What about the cultural traditions and customs similar to Sumerian ones that are reflected in lexical formulas and expressions? What about the oral traditions closely resembling Sumerian tales, legends, fairy tales, fables and proverbs and the cosmogonic rituals and symbols common to the early beliefs of the ancestors of Azerbaijanis? Starting with the large breasted and thick-thighed female figures so similar to the original Sumerian "mother" of mankind - Damgalnunu-Mami. For many millennia, almost since the time of creation, they have been an object of worship for our ancestors. Their images in the form of rock paintings and statues, and stone idols, have been found in such numbers in Azerbaijan that it may seem that all the Sumerian kingdom did was to send their samples here. What about the Sumerian gods in petroglyph inscriptions at Qobustan? We will talk about the gods in the book. What about the image of two intertwined snakes - the symbol of the Sumerian god Enki - the creator of man? According to present-day Sumerologists and geneticists, they are images of human DNA – a creature that is half earthly and half divine. What about the Sumerian winged disk, which later became the main symbol of Arran Zoroastrianism? Zoroastrianism would appropriate it from ancient cults in a slightly altered form, with the face of the God Ahura Mazda added. There is also an image of the cherished Sumerian Tree of Life, the Sun, the Moon, a huge number of swastikas, different stars, the Sumerian flower - sexfoil - the sign of the gods. For many thousands of years, all these characters were sacred symbols for the peoples of Azerbaijan. And the language of the ancient Caspians is surprisingly close to Sumerian. It remained in the language of Turkic-speaking Azerbaijanis not in Turkish phonetics, but in its own Arran-Azerbaijani phonetics.

Recently, many people have included the Sumerians in their own ethnogenesis. Some consider them Indo-Europeans, others assert they were Elamites (Semite-Hamites), and others that they were Turks (the author does not differentiate between Turks and Aryans, considering that both peoples belong to the single Japhethic group and detailing her views on this issue in the book). Who were the Sumerians? Back in 1853, the father of Assyriology, Sir Henry Rawlinson, outlined the language of the Sumerians as "Scythian or Turkic". Analysis of ancient Sumerian cuneiform texts on clay tablets found in Iraq (Mesopotamia) and dating to the last third of the 3rd millennium BC showed that the roots of many Sumerian words actually resemble Turkic. There are more than 400 matches in a short text. For example, nafta (oil) is identical to the Sumerian-Akkadian word napata. The Sumerian word ada (father) sounds like ada or ata in Turkic. The Sumerian word ama (mother) is ama, aba, apa or ana in Turkic languages, although in the Azerbaijani language the word ana probably derives from the name of the goddess of love, fertility and ... strife - Ana-nna, who was worshiped in ancient times and was revered as the master and mother of the Arran people. Ana-nna is very reminiscent of the threatening Sumerian goddess of carnal love, fertility and war - Ina-nnu. Interestingly, there is another word that exists in all Turkic languages – the Sumerian din-gir (literally, those who descended from heaven). In Turkic languages this word, which means God, sounds exactly the same – dingir, and also - jingir, dingir, tegri and dangir. The derivative – din - means faith in the modern Azerbaijani language. The Sumerian word kir (mud) is kir (mud, clay) in Turkic languages. The Sumerian er or ar (land) and er or ar in Turkic have the same meaning. The words ur, kur (akk) mean country, mountain and temple in Sumerian while the lexeme kurmak, qurmag means to build in Turkic languages. Tu (to give birth) is identical to the Turkic words – tuu, tugu or tuvu and has the same meaning. Ud (fire), a word formed from the name of the Sumerian god of fire and the sun – Utu - is identical to the Turkic word – udun, utun or odun. Gulshe (happy, fun) is identical to the Turkic word gulmak, which means to laugh. The name of a character of a Sumerian epic - Bilgamys (in Akkadian-Semitic pronunciation Gilgamesh), with the root Bilga, which means ancestor in Turkic languages, has a more extensive meaning in Turkic languages. Bilga means wise and knowledgeable. Its derivative bilik means knowledge, wisdom and even science in Turkic languages.

There is something else in Sumerian chronicles... Numerous references in epic works and business records and, even earlier in Sumerian myths, to a certain country about which Sumerian authors write with evident nostalgia. They write about it as a country that is much older than the Sumerian kingdom. The country is called Arata. In one epic text, the Sumerian god Ninurta calls its residents "children of An". An is an ancient Sumerian god of heaven - the parent and the master of younger gods. It turns out that Arata was inhabited by Sumerian gods...? According to earlier Sumerian texts, Arata was located in the place where "those who descended from heaven" set up their first settlement, which they called "E.R.I.D.U". In the language of "those who descended from heaven", it meant "a land away from home" or "foreign land". Later, this name would be reflected in all the languages of the world, in one way or another, meaning "land". Such is the paradox. In Sumerian texts, there are many references to Arata. There is even a detailed list of names of some places in the mysterious Arata. "Ush-Kaya" - Uchqaya - Three Rocks, Uish-Dish - Besh-Dish - Five Teeth, Gan-Tau - Qan-Dag - Blood Mountain, Gizil-Buda - Qizilbunda - Red (Golden) Place and "Ish-Tat-Ty - Hot Land of Life.

The epic texts about Gilgamesh, which relate stories of sea voyages to the mountains of Arata by the Sumerian gods Enmerkar, Lugalbanda and Gilgamesh, who was one-third god, mention Arata as a holy nation of the God of Fire, from where the Sumerians brought white limestone to "clayey" Mesopotamia for the construction of a temple dedicated to the goddess of love - Ina-nna. They brought copper, iron, and precious metals from Arata. They also brought semi-precious blue lapis lazuli - a stone with which the Sumerians decorated temples. There is something else in the Sumerian epic. In "Enmerkar and the Lord of Arata", the gods Enmerkar and Ensuhkeshdan argue about where the goddess of love Ina-nna must live - in Ur in southern Mesopotamia or in Arata - a country of mountains on the fiery coast of the sea of fire? Ina-nna has long lived in Arata. But, the gods argue...

The Danish Sumerologist A. Westenholz interpreted the word Sumer as a distorted word combination "ki-eme-gir", which means "a land of the noble language." At all times, the noble language of the Aryans - the descendants of Japheth, son of Noah - has been called a noble language. Since time immemorial they have lived in the lands of Southern and Northern Azerbaijan which have also been called nothing but Arran since the same "time immemorial". So what is this Arata?

"Blackheads" ... Those who knew about the infinity of the universe and – we shudder to think - the theory of "Big Bang" and the "Chaos Theory"! They knew of the existence of some absolute that stands above all. They knew about the creation of the servant of God - a man of clay Ap-su, mixed with divine blood, about the terrestrial ovule and divine semen, about the creation of woman from man's rib, heaven and hell, the sin of man who tasted the forbidden tree of knowledge through evil instigation, but who failed to get anything from the cherished tree of Eternal Life, which remained an unrealized dream, an eternal desire and an object of worship for ancient people. They knew about the expulsion of man from his ancestral home for disobedience, the Deluge and the righteous survivor. Many of the sacred revelations of the "Blackheads" would later go down in the annals of great religions, sometimes retold literally and sometimes transformed, and perhaps even retold by Abraham himself - the founder of monotheism, who came from the Sumerian city of Ur.

It is a civilization that created the first cities and temples, literature reflecting human suffering in the harsh world and hopes for a miracle, and which left knowledge and skills for future generations, only to fall into oblivion for many thousands of years. Much of the abandoned knowledge will be forgotten in order to be regained by a grown-up and wiser humanity after hard work. After millennia... It is a civilization that left a huge number of questions. And they include Who? Why? Where? and When? were the people who had lived among black and dark-haired Semites for more than five thousand years called "blackheads"...? Are they the blond Aryans with whom the "blackheads" lived side-by-side in a good neighbourhood for thousands of years? Aryans from a "fiery" country of rocks and raging seas. A country named Arrata...

To be continued...