We continue considering a paper written by Estonia’s University of Tartu’s Amar Annus, “On the Origin of Watchers: A Comparative Study of the Antediluvian Wisdom in Mesopotamian and Jewish Traditions,” Journal for the study of the Pseudepigrapha, Vol 19.4 (2010 AD): 277-320 (find my series here).
To the specific point about the apkallu which are known as “Mesopotamian primordial sages (apkallu in Akkadian)” whom the “Jewish authors systematically discredited” much as they did the
Watchers and Nephilim. These beings “were occasionally envisaged as evil beings at least in some Mesopotamian theological quarters, and to inhabit the netherworld.” Amar Annus notes:
…the Mesopotamian apkallus were demonized as the ‘sons of God’, and their sons Nephilim (Gen. 6.3-4), who in later Enochic literature appear as Watchers and giants, illegitimate teachers of humankind before the flood (see 1 En.6–8)…many kinds of Mesopotamian sciences and technologies were ideologically conceived as originating with antediluvian apkallus.
The concept of transference of technology, from cutting roots to making weapons and from astrology to abortion, is specified in the Book of Enoch.
Hellenistic-era Babylonian writer Berossus is noted to have recorded that “Oannes and other sages taught all foundations of civilization to antediluvian humankind” which is a common theme in ancient myth and legend. Berossus’s fragment 1 states:
In the first year a beast named Oannes appeared from the Erythrean Sea in a place adjacent to Babylonia. Its entire body was that of a fish, but a human head had grown beneath the head of the fish and human feet likewise had grown from the fish’s tail. It also had a human voice. A picture of it is still preserved today.
He says that this beast spent the days with the men but ate no food. It gave to the men the knowledge of letters and sciences and crafts of all types. It also taught them how to found cities, establish temples, introduce laws and measure land. It also revealed to them seeds and the gathering of fruits, and in general it gave men everything which is connected with the civilized life. From the time of that beast nothing further has been discovered.
But when the sun set this beast Oannes plunged back into the sea and spent the nights in the deep, for it was amphibious. Later other beasts also appeared…He says that these creatures all together explained in detail the things which had been spoken summarily by Oannes [ellipses in Annus’ paper]
I previously considered the Oannes tale (or is it tail?) within the context of Robert K. G. Temple’s Sirius Mystery book, see Dagon and the Dogon: Serious Sirius mystery – Nommo and Oannes.
Note that “Figurines of apkallus were buried in boxes as foundation deposits in Mesopotamian buildings in order to avert evil from the house. The term massare, ‘watchers’, is used of these sets of figurines in Akkadian incantations according to ritual texts. This appellation matches the Aramaic term ‘yryn, ‘the wakeful ones’, for both good angels and the Watchers.”
Sarah J. Denning-Bolle pointed out that “the fish-apkallu is ‘linked with the secrets that dwell in the deep; and its neverclosing, ever-watchful eyes lend it an omniscient sagacity’” (Wisdom in Akkadian Literature: Expression, Instruction, Dialogue, Ex Oriente Lux, 1992 AD).
Thus, Oannes’ relation to fish may have nothing to do with hybridization and being an ever-watcher but were manners whereby to denote a concept symbolically.
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