George Murphy wrote:
>I would like to see a citation from a recognized philologist with competence
>in these languages to the effect that "Erech" or "Uruk" is derived from
>"Enoch" - but I won't hold my breath. It reminds me of the claim of the
>apocryphal British Israelite claim that MacDonald is derived from Moses:
Just
>drop the oses and add acDonald.
Originally, George, I come from Kansas City. When I tell people that,
typically
they say, "Oh, you are from Kansas." When I attended college at the
University
of Missouri (pronounced Mizzourah) none of my fellow class mates ever made
that mistake.
Actually, Kansas City, Missouri is more complicated than that. Going north
and
over the river takes you through North Kansas City, a separate city
completely, to
Kansas City North, which puts you back in Kansas City again! Doesn't confuse
us a bit, but to those of you unfamiliar, I can imagine it might.
Now, you don't wish to sit at a desk for two solid years in the Library of
Congress
researching all this stuff, as I did. You would rather sit at your
computer and carp.
It's easier. I understand that.
So, for your edification and illumination, here are three paragraphs of my
book
complete with references:
Naming the city "Enoch" may seem like an unnecessary addendum, a bit of Bible
trivia, but it is not without significance. According to the Sumerians,
kingship
resumed at Kish after the flood. Twenty-three kings ruled there until,
"Kish was
smitten with weapons; its kingship to E-Anna(k) was carried." 1 In The
Makers of
Civilization, Waddell translated E-Anna(k) directly as "Enoch," reckoning
it as the
Sumerian equivalent for Enoch, the city built by Cain. 2
Although the flood erased early inhabitants, at least some of the pre-flood
cities
were rebuilt. It was at Enoch that Mes-kiag-gasher became high priest and
king
and reigned 324 years. 3 His son, Enmerkar, built or continued building Uruk
located virtually across the street. Uruk is the biblical Erech, part of
Nimrod's
kingdom (Gen. 10:10). Enoch or "E-Anna(k)" (translated "the House of Heaven")
is the oldest preserved temple near Uruk, and was supposedly the dwelling
place
of the goddess Inanna, the Accadian "Ishtar." 4
E-Anna(k), now called "Eanna" by archaeologists, has been excavated. A deep
sounding was made in the Eanna precinct at Warka in 1931-32. The pottery was
identified as Ubaid from level 18 up to level 14. It transitioned to the
Uruk period by
level 10. From Woolley's analysis, the pottery from the earliest period he
found at
Ur, that he called "Al 'Ubaid I," was unrepresented at Warka, 5
demonstrating that
both Ur and Eridu were established before E-Anna(k). And, of course, Adam's
Eden would have been older than Enoch, the city Cain built.
Here is an aside from Jacobsen I did not include in the book. It is an
endnote
following the lines, "Kish was smitten with weapons; its kingship was
carried to
E-Anna(k)."
"As first pointed out by Poebel (PBS IV 1, p. 115), the phrase presupposes
that
only the temple precinct E-Anna(k) existed at the time. The city Uruk was
built
under En-me(r)-kar."
Further in the Sumerian king list it says, "Enme(r)-kar, son of
Mes-kiag-gasher,
king of Uruk, the one who built Uruk, became king." By the way, the fourth
king
named at Uruk was the fabled Gilgamesh.
1. Thorkild Jacobsen, The Sumerian King List (Chicago: The University of
Chicago Press, 1939), 85.
2. L. A. Waddell, The Makers of Civilization (New Delhi: S. Chand, 1968), 62.
Jacobsen, The Sumerian King List, 85.
3. Jacobsen, The Sumerian King List, 85.
4. Samuel Noah Kramer, From the Poetry of Sumer (Berkeley: University of
California Press, 1979), 174.
5. Seton Lloyd, "Ur-Al `Ubaid, Uquair and Eridu," Iraq, n.s., 22 (1960), 24.
Dick Fischer - The Origins Solution - www.orisol.com
"The answer we should have known about 150 years ago."
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