The Nuclear Holocaust

Doomsday came in the twenty-fourth year when Abraham, encamped near Hebron, was 99 years old.

‘“And the Lord appeared unto him in the terebrinth grove of Mamre as he was sitting at the entrance of the tent, in the heat of the day. And he lifted his eyes and looked, and behold—three men were stationed upon him; and as he saw them he ran from the entrance of the tent towards them, and bowed to the ground.”

Swiftly, from a typical Middle Eastern scene of a potentate resting in the shade of his tent, the biblical narrator of Genesis 18 raised Abraham’s eyes and thrust him—and the reader, too—into a sudden encounter with divine beings.

Though Abraham was gazing out, he did not see the three approaching: they were suddenly “stationed upon him.” And though they were “men,” he at once recognized their true identity and bowed to them, calling them “my lords” and asking them not to “pass over above thy servant” until he had a chance to prepare for them a sumptuous meal.

It was dusk when the divine visitors finished eating and resting.

Asking about Sarah, their leader said to Abraham: “Return I shall unto thee at this time next year: by then Sarah thy wife will have a son.”

The promise of a Rightful Heir to Abraham and Sarah at their old age was not the sole reason for dropping down on Abraham. There was a more ominous purpose: And the men rose up from there to survey over upon Sodom. And Abraham had gone with them to see them off, and the Lord said:

“Can I conceal from Abraham that which I am about to do?” Recalling Abraham’s past services and promised future, the Lord then disclosed to him the true purpose of the divine journey: to verify accusations against Sodom and Gomorrah. “The outcry regarding Sodom and Gomorrah being great, and the accusation against them being grievous,” the Lord said he had decided to “come down and verify; if it is as the outcry reaching me, they will destroy completely; and if not, I wish to know.”

The ensuing destruction of Sodom and Gomorrah has become one of the most frequently depicted and preached-about biblical episodes. The orthodox and the Fundamentalists never doubled that the Lord God had literally poured fire and brimstone from the skies to wipe the sinful cities off the face of the earth. The scholarly and sophisticated have as tenaciously sought to find “natural” explanations for the biblical story: an earthquake; a volcanic eruption; some other natural phenomenon which (they grant) might have been interpreted as an act of God. a punishment befitting the sin.

But so far as the biblical narrative is concerned—and until now it has been the only source for all the interpretations—the event was most definitely not a natural calamity. It is described as a premeditated event: the Lord discloses to Abraham ahead of time what is about to happen and why. It is an avoidable event, not a calamity caused by irreversible natural forces: The calamity shall come to pass only if the “outcry” against Sodom and Gomorrah will be confirmed. And thirdly (as we shall soon discover) it was also a postponable event, one whose occurrence could be made to happen earlier or later, at will.

Realizing the avoidability of the calamity, Abraham embarked upon a tactic of argumentative attrition: “Perhaps there be fifty Righteous Ones inside the city,” he said. “Wilt thou destroy and not spare the place for the sake of the fifty Righteous Ones within it?” Then he quickly added: “Far be it from you to do such a thing, to slay the righteous with the guilty! Far be it from you. the Judge of All the Earth, not to do justice!”

A mortal preaching to his Deity! And the plea is for calling off the destruction—the premeditated and avoidable destruction—if there be fifty Righteous Ones in the city. But no sooner had the Lord agreed to spare the city if there be found such fifty persons than Abraham, who might have chosen the number fifty knowing that it would strike a special chord, wondered out loud if the Lord shall destroy if the number were five short. When the Lord agreed to call off the destruction if only forty-five be found Righteous. Abraham continued to bargain the number down to forty, then thirty, then twenty, then ten. “And the Lord said: ‘I shall not destroy if there be ten’; and he departed as he finished speaking to Abraham, and Abraham returned to his place.”

At evetime, the two companions of the Lord—the biblical narrative now refers to them as Mal’akhim (translated “angels” but meaning “emissaries”)—arrived at Sodom, their task being to verify the accusations against the city and report their findings back to the Lord. Lot—who was sitting at the city’s gate—recognized at once (as Abraham had done earlier) the divine nature of the two visitors, their identity evidently being given away by their attire or weapons, or perhaps by the manner (flying over?) in which they arrived. Now it was Lot’s turn to insist on hospitality, and the two accepted his invitation to spend the night at his home; but it was not to be a restful night, for the news of their arrival had stirred up the whole city.

“They had hardly lain down when the people of the city, the people of Sodom, surrounded the house—young and old, the whole population, from every quarter; and they called unto Lot and said unto him: “Where are the men who came unto you tonight? Bring them out to us, that we may know them.’ " When Lot failed to do so. the crowd surged to break their way in; but the two Mal’akhim “smote the people who were at the house’s entrance with blindness, both young and old; and they wearied themselves trying to find the doorway.”

Realizing that of all the townspeople only Lot was “righteous,” the two emissaries needed no further investigation; the fate of the city was sealed. “And they said unto Lot: ‘Who else hast thou here besides thee—a son-in-law, thy sons and daughters, any other relative—all who are in this city—bring them out from this place, for we are about to destroy it.’ Rushing to convey the news to his sons-in-law, Lot only met disbelief and laughter. So at dawn the emissaries urged Lot to escape without delay, taking with him only his wife and their two unmarried daughters who lived with them at home.

But Lot tarried; so the men took hold of his hand and his wife’s hand and his two daughters’ hands —for Yahweh’s mercy was upon him— and they brought them out, and put them down outside the city. Having literally carried the foursome aloft, then put them down outside the city, the emissaries urged Lot to flee to the mountains: “Escape for thy life, look not behind thee, neither stop thou anywhere in the plain,” they instructed him; “unto the mountains escape, lest thou perish.” But Lot. afraid that they would not reach the mountains in time and “would be overtaken by the Evil and die,” had a suggestion: Could the uphcavaling of Sodom be delayed until he had reached the town of Zoar, the farthest one away from Sodom? Agreeing, one of the emissaries asked him to hurry there: “Haste thee to escape thither, for I will be unable to do anything until thou hast arrived there.” The calamity was thus not only predictable and avoidable but also postponable; and it could be made to afflict various cities at different times. No natural catastrophe could have featured all these aspects.

The sun was risen over the Earth when Lot arrived at Zoar; And the Lord rained upon Sodom and Gomorrah, from the skies. brimstone and fire that had come from Yahweh. And He upheavaled those cities and the whole plain, and all the inhabitants of the cities and all the vegetation that grows from the ground. The cities, the people, the vegetation—everything was “upheavaled” by the gods’ weapon. Its heat and fire scorched all before it: its radiation affected people even at some distance away: Lot’s wife, ignoring the admonition not to stop to look back as they were fleeing away from Sodom, turned to a “pillar of vapor.”*

The “Evil” Lot had feared had caught up with her. . . . *The traditional and literal translation of the Hebrew term Netsiv melah has been “pillar of salt,” and tracts have been written in the Middle Ages explaining the process whereby a person could turn into crystalline salt. However, if—as we believe—the mother tongue of Abraham and Lot was Sumerian. and the event was first recorded not in a Semitic language but in Sumerian. an entirely different and more plausible understanding of the fate of Lot’s wife becomes possible. In a paper presented to the American Oriental Society in 1918 and in a followup article in Beitrage zur Assyriologie, Paul Haupt had shown conclusively that because the early sources of salt in Sumer were swamps near the Persian Gulf, the Sumerian term NIMUR branched off to mean both salt and vapor. Because the Dead Sea has been called, in Hebrew, The Salt Sea. the biblical Hebrew narrator probably misinterpreted the Sumerian term and wrote “pillar of salt” when in fact Lot’s wife became a “pillar of vapor.” In this

One by one the cities “which had outraged the Lord” were upheavaled, and each time Lot was allowed to escape: For when the gods devastated the cities of the plain, the gods remembered Abraham, and sent Lot away out of the upheavaling of the cities.

Lot, as instructed, went on “to dwell in the mountain . . . and dwelt in a cave, he and his two daughters with him.” Having witnessed the fiery destruction of all life in the Jordan plain and the unseen hand of death which vaporized their mother, what were Lot and his daughters to think? They thought, we learn from the biblical narrative, that they had witnessed the end of mankind upon the Earth, that the three of them were the sole survivors of the human race; and therefore, the only way to preserve mankind was to commit incest and have the daughters conceive children by their own father. . . . “And the elder said unto the younger: “Our father is old. and there is not a man on Earth to squire us in the manner of all on Earth; come, let us make our father drink wine, then lie down with him. so that we shall preserve the seed of life from our father.’ " And having done so, both became pregnant and bore children. The night before the holocaust must have been a night of anxiety and sleeplessness for Abraham, of wondering whether enough Righteous Ones were found in Sodom to have the cities spared, of concern about the fate of Lot and his family. “And Abraham got up early in the morning to the place where he had stood facing Yahweh, and he looked in the direction of Sodom and Gomorrah and connection it is noteworthy that in Ugaritic texts, such as the Canaanite tale of Aqhat (with its many similarities to the tales of Abraham) the death of a mortal by the hand of a god was described as the “escape of his soul as vapor, like smoke from his nostrils.” Indeed, in the Erra Epos which, we believe, was the Sumerian record of the nuclear upheaval, the death of the people was described by the god thus: The people I will make vanish, their souls shall turn to vapor. It was the misfortune of Lot’s wife to be among those who were “turned to vapor.” The Nuclear Holocaust 315 the region of the Plain; and he beheld there smoke rising from the earth as the smoke of a furnace.” He was witnessing a “‘Hiroshima” and a “Nagasaki” —the destruction of a fertile and populated plain by atomic weapons. The year was 2024 B.C.

Where are the remains of Sodom and Gomorrah today? Ancient Greek and Roman geographers reported that the oncefertile valley of the five cities was inundated following the catastrophe. Modern scholars believe that the “upheavaling” described in the Bible caused a breach in the southern shore of the Dead Sea, letting its waters pour through to submerge the low-lying region to the south. The remaining portion of what was once the southern shore became the feature figuratively called by the natives el-Lissan (“The Tongue”), and the oncepopulated valley with its five cities became a new, southern part of the Dead Sea (Fig. 102) still bearing the local nickname “Lot’s Sea.”

In the north the outpouring of the waters southward caused the shoreline to recede. The ancient reports have been confirmed in modern times by various researches, beginning with an exhaustive exploration of the area in the 1920s by a scientific mission sponsored by the Vatican’s Pontifical Biblical Institute (A. Mallon, Voyage d’Exploration au sud-est de la Mer Morte). Leading archaeologists, such as W. F. Albright and P. Harland, discovered that settlements in the mountains around the region were abruptly abandoned in the twenty-first century B.C. and were not reoccupied for several centuries thereafter. And to this very day. the water of springs surrounding the Dead Sea has been found to be contaminated with radioactivity, “enough to induce sterility and allied afflictions in any animals and humans that absorbed it over a number of years” (I. M. Blake, “Joshua’s Curse and Elisha’s Miracle” in The Palestine Exploration Quarterly).

The cloud of death, rising in the skies from the cities of the plain, frightened not only Lot and his daughters but also Abraham, and he did not feel safe even in the Hebron mountains, some fifty miles away. We are told by the Bible that he pulled up his encampment and moved farther away westward, to reside at Gerar. Also, at no time thereafter did he venture into the Sinai. Even years later, when Abraham’s son Isaac wanted to go to Egypt on account of a famine in Canaan, “Yahweh appeared unto him and said: ‘Go not down to Egypt; dwell in the land which I will show thee.’ " The passage through the Sinai peninsula was apparently still unsafe. But why?

Fig. 102

The destruction of the cities of the plain, we believe, was only a sideshow: concurrently, the Spaceport in the Sinai peninsula was also obliterated with nuclear weapons, leaving behind a deadly radiation that lingered on for many years thereafter. The main nuclear target was in the Sinai peninsula; and the real victim, in the end, was Sumer itself. Though the end of Ur came swiftly, its sad fate loomed darker ever since the War of the Kings, coming nearer and nearer, like the sound of a distant drummer—an execution’s drummer—getting closer, growing louder with each passing year. The Year of Doom—2024 B.C.—was the sixth year of the reign of Ibbi-Sin, the last king of Ur; but to find the reasons for the calamity, explanations of its nature, and details of its scope, we will have to study the records of those fateful years back from the time of that war. Having failed in their mission and twice humiliated by the hand of Abraham—once at Kadesh-Barnea, then again near Damascus— the invading kings were promptly removed from their thrones. In Ur, Amar-Sin was replaced by his brother Shu-Sin, who ascended the throne to find the grand alliance shattered and Ur’s erstwhile allies now nibbling at her crumbling empire. Although they, too, had been discredited by the War of the Kings, Nannar and Inanna were at first the gods in whom Shu-Sin had put his trust. It was Nannar, Shu-Sin’s early inscriptions stated, who had “called his name” to kingship; he was “beloved of Inanna.” and she herself presented him to Nannar (Fig. 103).

Fig. 103

“The Holy Inanna.” Shu-Sin boasted, “the one endowed with astounding qualities, the First Daughter of Sin,” granted him weapons with which to “engage in battle the enemy country which is disobedient.”

But all this was insufficient to hold together the Sumerian empire, and Shu-Sin soon turned to greater gods for succor. Judging from the date formulas—annual inscriptions, for royal as well as commercial and social purposes, in which each successive year of a king’s reign was designated by the major event of that year—Shu-Sin, in the second year of his reign, sought the favors of Enki by constructing for that god a special boat that could navigate the high seas all the way to the Lower World. The third year of reign was also one of preoccupation with the pro-Enki alignment. Little else is known of this effort, which could have been a roundabout way of pacifying the followers of Marduk and Nabu; but the effort evidently failed, for the fourth and fifth years witnessed the building of a massive wall on the western frontier of Mesopotamia, specifically aimed at warding off incursions by the “Westerners.” followers of Marduk.

As the pressures from the west kept rising, Shu-Sin turned to the great gods of Nippur for forgiveness and salvation. The date formulas, confirmed by the archaeological excavations of the American Expedition to Nippur, reveal that Shu-Sin undertook massive reconstruction works at Nippur’s sacred precinct, on a scale unknown since the days of Ur-Nammu. The works culminated with the raising of a stela honoring Enlil and Ninlil, “a stela as no king had built before.” Desparately Shu-Sin sought acceptance, confirmation that he was “the king whom Enlil, in his heart, had chosen.” But Enlil was not there to answer; only Ninlil, Enlil’s spouse, who remained in Nippur, heard Shu-Sin’s supplications. Responding with compassion, “so as to prolong the well-being of Shu-Sin, to extend the time of his crown,” she gave him a “weapon which with radiance strikes down . . . whose awesome flash reaches the sky.”

A Shu-Sin text catalogued as “Collection B” suggests that in his efforts to reestablish the olden links with Nippur, Shu-Sin may have attempted a reconciliation with the Nippurites (such as the family of Terah) who had left Ur after the death of Ur-Nammu. The text states that after he made the region where Harran was situated “tremble in awe of his weapons,” a peace gesture was made: Shu-Sin sent there his own daughter as a bride (presumably to the region’s chief or his son). She then returned to Sumer with an entouragc of that region’s citizens, “establishing a town for Enlil and Ninlil on the boundary of Nippur.” It was the first time “since the days when fates were decreed, that a king had established a town for Enlil and Ninlil,” Shu-Sin stated in obvious expectation of praise. With the probable assistance of the repatriated Nippurites, Shu-Sin also reinstated the high temple services at Nippurbestowing upon himself the role and title of High Priest. Yet all this was to no avail. Instead of greater security, there were greater dangers, and concern about the loyalty of distant provinces gave way to worry about Sumer’s own territory. “The mighty king, the King of Ur,” Shu-Sin’s inscriptions said, found that the “shepherding of the land”—of Sumer itself—had become the principal royal burden.

There was one final effort to entice Enlil back to Sumer, to find shelter under his aegis. On the apparent advice of Ninlil, Shu-Sin built for the divine couple “a great touring boat, fit for the largest rivers. … He decorated it perfectly with precious stones,” outfitted it with oars made of the finest wood, punting poles and an artful rudder, and furnished it with all manner of comfort including a bridal bed. He then “placed the touring boat in the wide basin facing Ninlil’s House of Pleasure.” The nostalgic aspects struck a chord in Enlil’s heart, for he had fallen in love with Ninlil, when she was still a young nurse, when he saw her bathing naked in the river; and he did come back to Nippur:

When Enlil heard [all this) From horizon to horizon he hurried. From south to north he travelled; Through the skies, over earth he hurried. To greatly rejoice with his beloved queen, Ninlil. The sentimental journey, however, was only a brief interlude. Some crucial lines before the end of the tablet are missing, so we are deprived of the details of what happened then. But the very last lines refer to “Ninurta, the great warrior of Enlil, who befuddled the Intruder,” apparently after “an inscription, an evil inscription” was discovered on an effigy in the boat, intended perhaps to place a curse on Enlil and Ninlil.

There is no record available of Enlil’s reaction to the foul play: but all other evidence suggests that he again left Nippur, this time apparently taking Ninlil with him.

Soon thereafter—February 2031 B.C. by our calendar—the Near East was awed by a total lunar eclipse, which blacked out the moon during the night tor its full course from horizon to horizon. The oracle priests of Nippur could not allay Shu-Sin’s anxiety: It was. they said in their written message, an omen “to the king who rules the four regions: his wall will be destroyed. Ur will become desolate.” Rejected by the great olden gods. Shu-Sin engaged in one final act—either out of defiance or as a last straw to gain divine support. He went ahead and built—in the very sacred precinct of Nippur—a shrine to a young god named Shara. He was a son of Inanna; and like Lugalbanda. who bore this epithet in earlier days, so was this new Shara (“Prince”) a son of a king; in the inscription dedicating the temple. Shu-Sin claimed that he was the young god’s father: “To divine Shara. heavenly hero, the beloved son of Inanna: His father Shu-Sin. the powerful king, king of Ur. king of the four regions, has built for him the temple Shagipada. his beloved shrine; may the king have life.” It was the ninth year of Shu-Sin’s reign. It was also his last.

The new ruler on the throne of Ur, Ibbi-Sin, could not stop the retreat and retrenchment. All he could do was rush the construction of walls and fortifications in the heart of Sumer, around Ur and Nippur; the rest of the country was left unprotected. His own date formulas, of which none have been found beyond his fifth year (although he reigned longer), tell little of the circumstances of his days; much more is learned from the cessation of other customary messages and trade documents. Thus, the messages of loyalty, which the other subordinate urban centers were expected to send to Ur each year, ceased to arrive from one center after the other. First to cease were the loyalty messages from the western districts: then, in the third year, the capitals of eastern provinces stopped their dispatch. In that third year Ur’s foreign commerce “stopped with a significant suddenness” (in the words of C. J. Gadd, History and Monuments of Ur). At the tax collection crossroads of Drehem (near Nippur), where shipments of goods and cattle and the collection of taxes thereon were recorded throughout the Third Dynasty of Ur—records of which thousands of intact clay tablets were found—the meticulous account-keeping also stopped abruptly in that third year.

Ignoring Nippur, whose great gods had left her, Ibbi-Sin put his trust again in Nannar and Inanna, installing himself in his second year as High Priest of Inanna’s temple in Uruk. Repeatedly he asked for guidance and reassurance from his gods; but all he was hearing were oracles of destruction and doom. In the fourth year of his reign he was told that “The Son in the west will arise . . . it is an omen for Ibbi-Sin: Ur shall be judged.”

In the fifth year, Ibbi-Sin sought further strength by becoming High Priest of Inanna at her shrine at Ur. But that, too, was of no help: that year, the other cities of Sumer itself ceased sending the messages of allegiance. It was also the last year in which those cities delivered the traditional sacrificial animals for Nannar’s temple in Ur. The central authority of Ur, her gods, and her great ziggurat-temple were no longer recognized.

As the sixth year began, the omens “concerning destruction” became more urgent and more specific. “When the sixth year comes, the inhabitants of Ur will be trapped,” one omen stated. The prophesied calamity shall come, another omen said, “When, for the second time, he who calls himself Supreme, like one whose chest has been anointed, shall come from the west.” That very year, as messages from the borders reveal, “hostile Westerners had entered the plain” of Mesopotamia; without resistance, they quickly “entered the interior of the country, taking one by one all the great fortresses.”

All Ibbi-Sin held on to was the enclave of Ur and Nippur; but before the fateful sixth year was out, the inscriptions honoring the king of Ur stopped abruptly also in Nippur. The enemy of Ur and her gods, the “One who calls himself Supreme,” had reached the heart of Sumer.

Marduk, as the omens had predicted, returned to Babylon for the second time. The twenty-four fateful years—since Abraham left Harran, since Shulgi was replaced on the throne, since Marduk’s exile among the Hittites had begun—have all converged in that Year of Doom, 2024 B.C. Having followed the separate, but interconnected, biblical tale of Abraham and the fortunes of Ur and its last three kings, we will now follow in the footsteps of Marduk.

The tablet on which Marduk’s autobiography is inscribed (from which we have already partly quoted) continues to relate his return to Babylon after the twenty-four years of sojourn in the Land of Hatti: In Hatti-land I asked an oracle [about] my throne and my Lordship; 322 THE WARS OF GODS AND MEN In its midst [I asked]: “Until when?” 24 years, in its midst, I nested. Then, in that twenty-fourth year, he received a favorable omen: My days [of exile] were completed: To my city I [set my course]; My temple Esagila as a mount [to raise/rebuild]. My everlasting abode to [reestablish]. I raised my heels [toward Babylon] Through . . . lands [I went] to my city her [future? well-being?) to establish. A king in Babylon to [install] In the house of my covenant . . . In the mountlike Esagil . . . By Anu created . . . Into the Esagil . . . A platform to raise . . . In my city . . . Joy . . .

The damaged tablet then lists the cities through which Marduk had passed on his way to Babylon. The few legible city names indicate that Marduk’s route from Asia Minor to Mesopotamia took him first south to the city of Hama (the biblical Hamat), then eastward via Mari (see map, page 304). He had indeed come to Mesopotamia—as the omens had predicted—from the west, accompanied by Amorite (“Westerners”) supporters. His wish. Marduk continued, was to bring peace and prosperity to the land, “chase away evil and bad luck . . . bring motherly love to Mankind.” But it all came to naught: Against his city, Babylon, an adversary god “his wrath had brought.” The name of this adversary god is stated at the very beginning of a new column of the text; but all that has remained of it is the first syllable: “Divine NIN-.” The reference could have been only to Ninurta. We learn little from this tablet of the actions taken by this adversary, for all the subsequent verses are badly damaged and the text becomes unintelligible. But we can pick up some of the missing threads from the third tablet of the Khedorlaomer lexis. In spite of its enigmatic aspects, it paints a picture of total turmoil, with adversary gods marching against each other at the head of their human troops: the Amorite supporters of Marduk swooped down the

Euphrates valley toward Nippur, and Ninurta organized Elamite troops to fight them. As we read and reread the record of those trying times, we find that to accuse an enemy of atrocities is not a modern innovation. The Babylonian text—written, we must keep bearing in mind, by a worshiper of Marduk—attributes to the Elamite troops, and to them alone, the desecration of temples, including the shrines of Shamash and Ishtar. The Babylonian chronicler goes even farther: he accuses Ninurta of falsely blaming on the followers of Marduk the desecration of Enlil’s Holy-of-Holies in Nippur, thereby provoking Enlil to take sides against Marduk and his son Nabu. It happened, the Babylonian text relates, when the two opposing armies faced each other at Nippur. It was then that the holy city was despoiled and its shrine, the Ekur, desecrated. Ninurta accused the followers of Marduk of this evil deed; but it was not so: it was his ally Erra who had done it! How Nergal/Erra suddenly appears in the Babylonian chronicle will remain a puzzle until we return to the Erra Epic; but that this god is named in the Khedorlaomer Texts and is accused of the defilement of the Ekur, there can be no doubt: Erra, the pitiless one, entered the sacred precinct.

He stationed himself in the sacred precinct, he beheld the Ekur. His mouth he opened, he said to his young men: “Carry off the spoil of Ekur, take away its valuables, destroy its foundation, break down the enclosure of the shrine!”

When Enlil, “loftily enthroned.” heard that his temple had been destroyed, its shrine defiled, that “in the holy of holies the veil was torn away,” he rushed back to Nippur. “Riding in front of him were gods clothed with radiance”; he himself “set off brilliance like lightning” as he came down from the skies (Fig. 104); “he made the holy place shake” as he descended to the sacred precinct. Enlil then addressed himself to his son, “the prince Ninurta.” to find out who had defiled the sacred place. But instead of telling the truth, that it was Erra, his ally, Ninurta pointed the accusing finger at Marduk and his followers. . . .

Fig. 104

Describing the scene, the Babylonian text asserts that Ninurta was acting without the required respect on meeting his father: “not fearing for his life, he removed not his tiara.” To Enlil “evil he spoke. . . there was no justice; destruction was conceived.” And so provoked, “Enlil against Babylon caused evil to be planned.” In addition to “evil deeds” against Marduk and Babylon, an attack against Nabu and his temple Ezida in Borsippa was also planned. But Nabu managed to escape westward, to the cities faithful to him near the Mediterranean Sea: From Ezida . . . Nabu, to marshal all his cities set his step; Toward the great sea he set his course. Now there follow verses in the Babylonian text that have a direct parallel in the biblical tale of the destruction of Sodom and Gomorrah: But when the son of Marduk in the land of the coast was, He-of-the-Evil-Wind [Erra] with heat the plain-land burnt.

These are indeed verses that must have had a common source with the biblical description of how “brimstone and fire” rained from the skies “upheavaled those cities and the whole plain”! As biblical statements (e.g.. Deuteronomy 29:22-27) attested. the “wickedness” of the cities of the Jordan Plain was that “they had forsaken the covenant of the Lord . . . and they went and served other gods.” As we now learn from the Babylonian text, the “outcry” (accusation) against them was their rallying to the side of Marduk and Nabu in that last clash between the contending gods. But whereas the biblical text left it at that, the Babylonian text adds another important detail: The attack on the Canaanite cities was intended not only to destroy the centers of support for Marduk. but also to destroy Nabu. who had sought asylum there. However, that second aim was not achieved, for Nabu managed to slip out in time and escaped to an island in the Mediterranean, where the people accepted him although he was not their god: He [Nabu] the great sea entered.

Sat upon a throne which was not his [Because] Ezida, the legitimate abode, was overrun. The picture that can be gathered from the biblical and Babylonian texts of the cataclysm that engulfed the ancient Near East in the time of Abraham is much more fully detailed in The Erra Epic (to which we have already referred earlier). First pieced together from fragments found in the library of Ashurbanipal in Nineveh, the Assyrian text began to take shape and meaning as more fragmented versions were unearthed at other archaeological sites. By now it is definitely established that the text was inscribed on five tablets: and in spite of breaks, missing or incomplete lines, and even some disagreement among the scholars where some fragments belong, two extensive translations have been compiled: Das Era-Epos by P. F. Gossmann, and L’Epopea di Erra by L. Cagni. The Erra Epic not only explains the nature and causes of the conflict that had led to the unleashing of the Ultimate Weapon against inhabited cities and the attempt to annihilate a god (Nabu) believed hiding therein. It also makes clear that such an extreme measure was not taken lightly.

We know from several other texts that the great gods, at that time of acute crisis, were sitting in a continuous Council of War, keeping constant communication with Anu: “Anu to Earth the words was speaking, Earth to Anu the words pronounced.”

The Erra Epic adds the information that before the awesome weapons were used, one more confrontation had taken place between Nergal/Erra and Marduk. in which Nergal used threats to persuade his brother to leave Babylon and give up his claims to Supremacy. But this time, persuasion failed; and back at the Council of the Gods, Nergal voiced the recommendation for the use of force to dislodge Marduk. We learn from the texts that the discussions were heated and acrimonious; “for one day and one night, without ceasing” they went on. An especially violent argument developed between Enki and his son Nergal, in which Enki stood by his firstborn son: “Now that Prince Marduk has arisen, now that the people for the second time have raised his image, why does Erra continue his opposition?” Enki asked. Finally, losing his patience, Enki shouted at Nergal to get out of his presence. Leaving in a huff, Nergal returned to his domain. “Consulting with himself,” he decided to unleash the awesome weapons: “The lands I will destroy, to a dust-heap make them; the cities I will upheaval, to desolation turn them; the mountains I will flatten, their animals make disappear; the seas I will agitate, that which teems in them I will decimate; the people I will make vanish, their souls shall turn to vapor; none shall be spared. . . .” We learn from a text known as CT-xvi-44/46 that it was Gibil, whose domain in Africa adjoined that of Nergal, who alerted Marduk to the destructive scheme hatched by Nergal. It was nighttime, and the great gods had adjourned for rest. It was then that Gibil “these words to Marduk did speak” in regard to the “seven awesome weapons which by Anu were created; . . . The wickedness of those seven against thee is being laid.” he informed Marduk. Alarmed, Marduk inquired of Gibil where the awesome weapons were kept. “O Gibil,” he said, “those seven—where were they born, where were they created?” To which Gibil revealed that they were hidden underground:

Those seven, in the mountain they abide. In a cavity inside the earth they dwell. From this place with a brilliance they will rush forth. From Earth to Heaven, clad with terror. But where exactly is this place? Marduk asked again and again; and all Gibil could say was that “even the wise gods, to them it is unknown.”

Now Marduk rushed to his father Enki with the frightening report. “To his father Enki’s house he fMardukj entered.” Enki was lying on the couch in the chamber to which he retired for the night. “My father,” Marduk said, “Gibil this word hath spoken to me: of the coming of the seven [weapons] he has found out.” Telling his father the bad news, he urged his all-knowing father: “Their place to search out, do hasten thou!” Soon the gods were back in council, for even Enki knew not the exact hiding place of the Ultimate Weapons. To his surprise, not all the other gods were as shocked as he was. Enki spoke out strongly against the idea, urging steps to stop Nergal, for the use of the weapons, he pointed out, “the lands would make desolate, the people will make perish.” Nannar and Utu wavered as Enki spoke; but Enlil and Ninurta were for decisive action. And so, with the Council of the Gods in disarray, the decision was left to Anu. When Ninurta finally arrived in the Lower World with word of Anu’s decision, he found out that Nergal had already ordered the priming of “the seven awesome weapons” with their “poisons”— their nuclear warheads. Though the Erra Epic keeps referring to Ninurta by the epithet Ishum (“The Scorcher”), it relates in great detail how Ninurta had made clear to Nergal/Erra that the weapons could be used only against specifically approved targets; that before they could be used, the Anunnaki gods at the selected sites and the Igigi gods manning the space platform and the shuttlecraft had to be forewarned; and, last but not least, mankind had to be spared, for “Anu, lord of the gods, on the land had pity.” At first Nergal balked at the very idea of forewarning anyone, and the ancient text goes to some length to relate the tough words exchanged between the two gods. Nergal then agreed to giving advance warning to the Anunnaki and Igigi who manned the space facilities, but not to Marduk and his son Nabu, nor to the human followers of Marduk. It was then that Ninurta, attempting to dissuade Nergal from indiscriminate annihilation, used words identical to those attributed in the Bible to Abraham when he tried to have Sodom spared:

Valiant Erra, Will you the righteous destroy with the unrighteous? Will you destroy those who have against you sinned together with those who against you have not sinned? Employing flattery, threats, and logic, the two gods argued back and forth on the extent of the destruction. More than Ninurta, Nergal was consumed by personal hatred: “I shall annihilate the son, and let the father bury him; then I shall kill the father, let no one bury him!” he shouted. Employing diplomacy, pointing out the injustice of indiscriminate destruction—and the strategic merits of selective targeting—the words of Ninurta finally swayed Nergal. “He heard the words spoken by Ishum [Ninurta]: the words appealed to him as fine oil.” Agreeing to leave alone the seas, to leave Mesopotamia out of the attack, he formulated a modified plan: the destruction will be selective: the tactical aim will be to destroy the cities where Nabu might be hiding: the strategic aim will be to deny to Marduk his greatest prize—the Spaceport, “the place from where the Great Ones ascend”:

From city to city an emissary I will send; The son, seed of his father, shall not escape; His mother shall cease her laughter . . . To the place of the gods, access he shall not have: The place from where the Great Ones ascend I shall upheaval. When Nergal finished presenting this latest plan, involving as it did the destruction of the Spaceport, Ninurta was speechless. But, as other texts assert, Enlil approved the plan when it was brought to his decision; so also, apparently, did Anu. Wasting no more time, Nergal then urged Ninurta that the two of them go at once into action: Then did the hero Erra go ahead of Ishum, remembering his words; Ishum too went forth, in accordance with the word given, a squeezing in his heart. Their first target was the Spaceport, its command complex hidden in the “Mount Most Supreme,” its landing fields spread in the adjoining great plain: Ishum to Mount Most Supreme set his course; The Awesome Seven, [weapons] without parallel, trailed behind him. At the Mount Most Supreme the hero arrived; He raised his hand— the mount was smashed; The Nuclear Holocaust 329 The plain by the Mount Most Supreme he then obliterated; in its forests not a tree-stem was left standing. So, with one nuclear blow, the Spaceport was obliterated, the mount within which its controls were hidden smashed, the plain that served its runways obliterated. … It was a destructive feat, the written record attests, performed by Ninurta (Ishum). Now it was the turn of Nergal (Erra) to give vent to his vow of vengeance. Guiding himself from the Sinai peninsula to the Canaanite cities by following the King’s Highway, Erra upheavaled them. The words employed by the Erra Epic are almost identical to those used in the biblical tale of Sodom and Gomorrah: Then, emulating Ishum, Erra the King’s Highway followed. The cities he finished off, to desolation he overturned them. In the mountains he caused starvation, their animals he made perish. The verses that follow may well describe the creation of the new southern portion of the Dead Sea, by breaking through its southern shoreline, and the elimination of all marine life therein: He dug through the sea, its wholeness he divided. That which lives in it, even the crocodiles he made wither. As with fire he scorched the animals, banned its grains to become as dust.

The Erra Epic thus encompasses all the three aspects of the nuclear event: the obliteration of the Spaceport in the Sinai; the “overturning” (“upheavaling” in the Bible) of the cities of the Jordan plain; and the breach in the Dead Sea resulting in its extension southward. One could expect that such a unique destructive event would have been recorded and mentioned in more than a single text; and indeed we find descriptions and recollections of the nuclear upheaval in other texts as well.

One such text (known as K.500] and published in the Oxford Editions of Cuneiform Texts, vol. VI) is especially valuable, because it is in the original Sumerian language and, moreover, it is a bilingual text in which the Sumerian is accompanied by a line-byline Akkadian translation. It is thus undoubtedly one of the earliest texts on the subject; and its wording indeed gives the impression that it is this or similar Sumerian originals that had served as a source for the biblical narrative. Addressed to a god whose identity is not clear from the fragment, it says: Lord, bearer of the Scorcher that burnt up the adversary; Who obliterated the disobedient land; Who withered the life of the Evil Word’s followers; Who rained stones and fire upon the adversaries. The deed performed by the two gods Ninurta and Nergal, when the Anunnaki guarding the Spaceport, forewarned, had to escape by “ascending to the dome of heaven,” was recalled in a Babylonian text in which one king recalled the momentous events that had taken place “in the reign of an earlier king.” Here are the king’s words: At that time,

in the reign of a previous king, conditions changed. Good departed, suffering was regular. The Lord [of the gods] became enraged, he conceived wrath. He gave the command: the gods of that place abandoned it . . . The two, incited to commit the evil, made its guardians stand aside; its protectors went up to the dome of heaven. The Khedorlaomer Text, which identifies the two gods by their epithets as Ninurta and Nergal, tells it this way: Enlil, who sat enthroned in loftiness, was consumed with anger. The devastators again suggested evil; He who scorches with fire [Ishum/Ninurta] The Nuclear Holocaust 331 and he of the evil wind [Erra/Nergal] together performed their evil. The two made the gods flee, made them flee the scorching. The target, from which they made the gods guarding it flee, was the Place of Launching: That which was raised towards Anu to launch they caused to wither; Its face they made fade away, its place they made desolate.

Thus was the Spaceport, the prize over which so many Wars of the Gods had been fought, obliterated: the Mount within which the controlling equipment was placed was smashed; the launch platforms were made to fade off the face of the Earth; and the plain whose hard soil the shuttlecraft had used as runways was obliterated, with not even a tree left standing. The great place was never to be seen again … but the scar made in the face of the Earth that awesome day can still be seen—to this very day! It is a vast scar, so vast that its features can be seen only from the skies—revealed only in recent years as satellites began to photograph the Earth (Fig. 105). It is a scar for which no scientist has hitherto offered an explanation. Stretching north of this enigmatic feature in the face of the Sinai peninsula is the flat central plain of the Sinai—a remnant of a lake from an earlier geological era; its flat, hard soil is ideal for the landing of shuttlecraft—the very same reason which made the Mojave Desert in California and the Edwards Air Force Base there ideal for the landing of America’s space shuttles.

As one stands in this great plain in the Sinai peninsula—its hard, flat soil having served for tank battles in recent history as it did the shuttlecraft in antiquity—one can see in the distance the mountains that surround the plain and give it its oval shape. The limestone mountains loom white on the horizon; but where the great central plain adjoins the immense scar in the Sinai, the hue of the plain—black—stands out in sharp contrast to the surrounding whiteness (Fig. 106).

Black is not a natural hue in the Sinai peninsula, where the whiteness of the limestone and the redness of the sandstone combine to dazzle the eye with hues ranging from bright yellow to light gray and dark brown but nowhere the black which comes in nature from basalt stones.

Fig. 105 Fig. 106

Yet here, in the central plain north-northeast of the enigmatic giant scar, the soil’s color has a black hue. It is caused—as our photograph clearly shows—by millions upon millions of bits and pieces of blackened rock, strewn as by a giant hand over the whole area (Fig. 107).

There has been no explanation for the colossal scar in the face of the Sinai peninsula since it was observed from the skies and photographed by NASA satellites. There has been no explanation for the blackened bits and pieces of rock strewn over the area in the central plain. No explanation—unless one reads the verses of the ancient texts and accepts our conclusion that in the days of Abraham. Nergal and Ninurta wiped out the Spaceport that was there with nuclear weapons: “That which was raised towards Anu to launch they caused to wither, its face they made fade away, its place they made desolate.” And the Spaceport, even the Evil Cities, were no more. Far away to the west, in Sumer itself, the nuclear blasts and their brilliant flashes were neither felt nor seen. But the deed done by Nergal and Ninurta had not gone unrecorded, for it turned out to have had a most profound effect on Sumer, its people, and its very existence.

Fig. 107

For, in spite of all the efforts of Ninurta to dissuade Nergal from harming mankind, a great suffering did ensue. Though the two had not intended it, the nuclear explosion gave rise to an immense wind, a radioactive wind, which began as a whirlwind: A storm, the Evil Wind, went around in the skies.

The radioactive whirlwind began to spread and move westward with the prevailing winds blowing from the Mediterranean; soon thereafter, the omens predicting the end of Sumer came true; and Sumer itself became the ultimate nuclear victim. The catastrophe that befell Sumer at the end of Ibbi-Sin’s sixth year of reign is described in several Lamentation Texts—long poems that bewail the demise of the majestic Ur and the other centers of the great Sumerian civilization. Bringing very much to mind the biblical Book of Lamentations, lamenting the destruction of Jerusalem by the hands of the Babylonians, the Sumerian lamentations suggested to the scholars who had first translated them that the Mesopotamian catastrophe was also the result of an invasion— this one by clashing Elamite and Amorite troops. When the first lamentation tablets were found, the scholars believed that Ur alone suffered destruction, and they titled the translations accordingly. But as more texts were discovered, it was realized that Ur was neither the only city affected, nor the focal point of the catastrophe. Not only were similar lamentations found bewailing the fate of Nippur, Uruk, Eridu, but some of the texts also provided lists of the affected cities: they appeared to begin in the southwest and extend to the northeast, encompassing the whole of southern Mesopotamia. It became apparent that a general, sudden, and concurrent catastrophe had befallen all the cities—not in slow succession, as would happen in the case of a progressive invasion, but all at once. Such scholars as Th. Jacobsen (The Reign of Ibbi-Sin) then concluded that the “barbarian invaders” had nothing to do with the “dire catastrophe,” a calamity he called “really quite puzzling.”

“Whether we shall ever see with full clarity what happened in those years,” Jacobsen wrote, “only time will tell; the full story, we are convinced, is still far beyond our grasp.” But the puzzle can be solved, and the full story grasped, if we relate the catastrophe in Mesopotamia to the nuclear explosion in the Sinai. The texts, remarkable for their length and in many instances also in excellent state of preservation, usually begin by bewailing the abrupt abandonment of all of Sumer’s sacred precincts by their various gods, their temples “abandoned to the wind.” The desolation caused by the catastrophe is then described vividly, by such verses as these:

Causing cities to be desolated, [causing] houses to become desolate; Causing stalls to be desolate, the sheepfolds to be emptied; That Sumer’s oxen no longer stand in their stalls, that its sheep no longer roam in its sheepfolds; That its rivers flow with water that is bitter, that its cultivated fields grow weeds, that its steppes grow withering plants.

in the cities and the hamlets. ’ ’the mother cares not for her children, the father says not ‘O my wife’ … the young child grows not sturdy on their knee, the nursemaid chants not a lullaby . . . kingship has been taken away from the land.” Before World War II had ended, before Hiroshima and Nagasaki were upheavaled with atomic weapons rained on them from the skies, one could still read the biblical tale of Sodom and Gomorrah and leave be the traditional “sulphur and brimstone” for lack of a better explanation. To scholars who had not yet come face-to-face with the awesomeness of nuclear weapons, the Sumerian lamentation texts bespoke (as the scholars titled them) the “Destruction of Ur” or the “Destruction of Sumer.” But that is not what these texts describe: they describe desolation, not destruction. The cities were there but without people; the stalls were there but without cattle; the shcepfolds remained but were empty; the rivers flowed but their waters became bitter; the fields still stretched but they grew only weeds; and on the steppe the plants sprouted, only to wither away.

Invasion, war, killing—all those evils were well known to mankind by then; but. as the lamentation texts clearly state, this one was unique and never experienced before: On the Land [Sumer] fell a calamity, one unknown to man: One that had never been seen before, one which could not be withstood. The death was not by the hand of an enemy; it was an unseen death, “which roams the street, is let loose in the road; it stands beside a man—yet none can see it; when it enters a house, its appearance is unknown.” There was no defense against this “evil which has assailed the land like a ghost: . , . The highest wall, the thickest walls, it passes as a flood; no door can shut it out. no bolt can turn it back: through the door like a snake it glides, through the hinge like a wind it blows in.” Those who hid behind doors were felled inside; those who ran to the rooftops died on the rooftops: those who fled to the streets were stricken in the streets: “Cough and phlegm weakened the chest, the mouth was filled with spittle and foam . . . dumbness and daze have come upon them, an unwholesome numbness … an evil curse, a headache . . . their spirit abandoned their bodies.” As they died, it was a most gruesome death:

The people, terrified, could hardly breathe; the Evil Wind clutched them, does not grant them another day . . . Mouths were drenched in blood, heads wallowed in blood . . . The face was made pale by the Evil Wind.

The source of the unseen death was a cloud that appeared in the skies of Sumer and “covered the land as a cloak, spread over it like a sheet.” Brownish in color, during the daytime “the sun in the horizon it obliterated with darkness.” At night, luminous at its edges (“Girt with dread brilliance it filleth the broad earth”) it blocked out the moon: “the moon at its rising it extinguished.” Moving from west to east, the deathly cloud—“enveloped in terror, casting fear everywhere”—was carried to Sumer by a howling wind, “a great wind which speeds high above, an evil wind which overwhelms the land.”

It was not, however, a natural phenomenon. It was “a great storm directed from Anu … it hath come from the heart of Enlil.” The product of the seven awesome weapons, “in a single spawning it was spawned . . . like the bitter venom of the gods; in the west it was spawned.” The Evil Wind, “bearing gloom from city to city, carrying dense clouds that bring gloom from the sky.” was the result of a “lightning flash:” “From the midst of the mountains it had descended upon the land, from the Plain of No Pity it hath come.” Though the people were baffled, the gods knew the cause of the Evil Wind: An evil blast heralded the baleful storm. An evil blast the forerunner of the baleful storm was; Mighty offspring, valiant sons were the heralds of the pestilence. The two valiant sons—Ninurta and Nergal—unleashed “in a single spawning” the seven awesome weapons created by Anu. “uprooting everything, upheavaling everything” at the place of the blast. The ancient descriptions are as vivid, as accurate as modern eyewitness descriptions of an atomic explosion: As soon as the “awesome weapons” were launched from the skies, there was an immense brilliance: “they spread awesome rays towards the lour points of the earth, scorching everything like fire,” one text stated; another, a lamentation over Nippur, recalled “the storm, in a flash of lightning created.” An atomic mushroom—“a dense cloud that brings gloom”—then rose to the sky; it was followed by “rushing wind gusts … a tempest that furiously scorches the heavens.” Then the prevailing winds, blowing from west to east, began to spread toward Mesopotamia: “the dense clouds that bring gloom from the sky, that bear the gloom from city to city.” Not one. but several, texts attest that the Evil Wind, bearing the cloud of death, was caused by gigantic explosions on a day to remember:

On that day When heaven was crushed and the Earth was smitten, its face obliterated by the maelstrom— When the skies were darkened and covered as with a shadow . . . The lamentation texts identified the site of the awesome blasts as “in the west,” near “the breast of the sea”—a graphic description of the curving Mediterranean coast at the Sinai peninsula—from a plain “in the midst of the mountains,” a plain that became a “Place of No Pity.” It was a place that served before as the Place of Launching, the place from which the gods ascended toward Anu. In addition, a mount also featured in many of these place identifications. In the Erra Epic, the mount near “the place from which Great Ones ascend” was called the “Mount Most Supreme”; in one of the lamentations it was called the “Mount of Howling Tunnels.”

This last epithet brings to mind the descriptions, in the Pyramid Texts, of the tunneled mount with sloping underground passages, to which Egyptian Pharaohs journeyed in search of an afterlife. In The Stairway to Heaven we have identified it with the mount Gilgamesh had reached in his journey to the Place of the Rocketships, in the Sinai peninsula. Starting from that mount, a lamentation text stated, the blast’s deadly cloud was carried by the prevailing winds eastward all the way “to the boundary of Anshan” in the Zagros Mountains, affecting all of Sumer from Eridu in the south to Babylon in the north. The unseen death moved slowly over Sumer, its passage lasting 24 hours—a day and a night that were commemorated in laments, as in this one from Nippur: “On that day, on that single day: on that night, on that single night … the storm, in a flash of lightning created, the people of Nippur left prostrate.”

The Uruk Lament vividly describes the confusion among both the gods and the populace. Stating that Anu and Enlil had overruled Enki and Ninki when they “determined the consensus” to employ the nuclear weapons, the text asserts that none of the gods anticipated the awesome outcome: “The great gods paled at its immensity” as they witnessed the explosion’s “gigantic rays reach up to heaven (and] the earth tremble to its core.” As the Evil Wind began to “spread to the mountains as a net,” the gods of Sumer began to flee their beloved cities. The text known as Lamentation Over the Destruction of Ur lists all the great gods and some of their important sons and daughters who had “abandoned to the wind” the cities and great temples of Sumer. The text called Lamentation Over the Destruction of Sumer and Ur adds dramatic details to this hurried abandonment. Thus. “Ninharsag wept in bitter tears” as she escaped from Isin; Nanshe cried, “O my devastated city” as “her beloved dwelling place was given over to misfortune.” Inanna hurriedly departed from Uruk, sailing off toward Africa in a “submersible ship” and complaining that she had to leave behind her jewelry and other possessions. … In her own lamentation for Uruk, Inanna/Ishtar bewailed the desolation of her city and her temple by the Evil Wind “which in an instant, in a blink of an eye was created in the midst of the mountains,” and against which there was no defense.

A breathtaking description of the fear and confusion, among gods and men alike, as the Evil Wind approached is given in The Uruk Lament text, which was written years later as the time of Restoration came. As the “loyal citizens of Uruk were seized with terror,” the resident deities of Uruk, those in charge of the city’s administration and welfare, set off an alarm. “Rise up!” they called to the people in the middle of the night; run away, “hide in the steppe!” they instructed them. But then, these gods themselves, “the deities ran off . . . they took unfamiliar paths.” Gloomily the text states: Thus all its gods evacuated Uruk: They kept away from it; They hid in the mountains. They escaped to the distant plains.

In Uruk, the populace was left in chaos, leaderless and helpless. “Mob panic was brought about in Uruk … its good sense was distorted.” The shrines were broken in and their contents were smashed as the people asked questions: “Why did the gods’ benevolent eye look away? Who caused such worry and lamentation?” But their questions remained unanswered; and when the Evil Storm passed over, “the people were piled up in heaps … a hush settled over Uruk like a cloak.”

Ninki, we learn from The Eridu Lament, flew away from her city to a safe haven in Africa: “Ninki, its great lady, flying like a bird, left her city.” But Enki left Eridu only far enough to get out of the Evil Wind’s way, yet near enough to see its fate: “Its lord stayed outside his city …. Father Enki stayed outside the city . . . for the fate of his harmed city he wept with bitter tears.” Many of his loyal subjects followed him, camping on its outskirts. For a day and a night they watched the storm “put its hand” on Eridu.

After the “evil-bearing storm went out of the city, sweeping across the countryside.” Enki surveyed Eridu; he found a city “smothered with silence … its residents stacked up in heaps.” Those who were saved addressed to him a lament: “O Enki,” they cried, “thy city has been cursed, made like an alien territory!” and they kept on asking whence should they go, what should they do. But though the Evil Wind had passed, the place was still unsafe, and Enki “stayed out of his city as though it were an alien city.” “Forsaking the house of Eridu,” Enki then led “those who have been displaced from Eridu” to the desert, “towards an inimical land”; there he used his scientific powers to make the “foul tree” edible. From the northern edge of the Evil Wind’s wide swath, from Babylon, a worried Marduk sent his father, Enki, an urgent message as the cloud of death neared his city. “What am I to do?” he asked. Enki’s advice, which Marduk then related to his followers, was that those who could should leave the city—but go only north; and in line with the advice given by the two emissaries to Lot, the people fleeing Babylon were warned “neither to turn nor to look back.” They were also told not to take with them any food or beverage, for these might have been “touched by the ghost.” If escape was not possible, Enki advised hiding underground: “Get thee into a chamber below the earth, into a darkness,” until the Evil Wind was gone.

The storm’s slow advance misled some of the gods into costly delays. In Lagash, “mother Bau wept bitterly for her holy temple, for her city.” Though Ninurtu was gone, his spouse could not force herself to leave. Lingering behind. “O my city. O my city.” she kept crying; the delay almost cost her her life:

On that day, the lady— the storm caught up with her; Bau, as if she were mortal— the storm caught up with her. . . In Ur we learn from the lamentations (one of which was composed by Ningal herself) that Nannar and Ningal refused to believe that the end of Ur was irrevocable. Nannar addressed a long and emotional appeal to his father Enlil, seeking some means to avert the calamity. But “Enlil answered his son Sin” that the fate could not be changed:

Ur was granted kingshipit was not granted an eternal reign. Since days of yore, when Sumer was founded, to the present, when people have multiplied— Who has ever seen a kingship of everlasting reign? While the appeals were made, Ningal recalled in her long poem, “the storm was ever breaking forward, its howling overpowering all.” It was daytime when the Evil Wind approached Ur: “although of that day I still tremble,” Ningal wrote, “of that day’s foul smell we did not flee.” As night came, “a bitter lament was raised” in Ur; yet the god and goddess stayed on; “of that night’s foulness we did not flee,” the goddess stated. Then the affliction reached the great ziggurat of Ur, and Ningal realized that Nannar “had been overtaken by the evil storm.”

Ningal and Nannar spent a night of nightmare, which Ningal vowed never to forget, in the “termite house” (underground chamber) within the ziggurat. Only next day. when “the storm was carried off from the city.” did “Ningal, in order to go from her city . . . hastily put on a garment,” and together with the stricken Nannar departed from the city they so loved. As they were leaving they saw death and desolation: “the people, like potsherds, filled the city’s streets; in its lofty gates, where they were wont to promenade, dead bodies were lying about; in its boulevards, where the feasts were celebrated, scattered they lay; in all of its streets, where they were wont to promenade, dead bodies were lying about; in its places where the land’s festivities took place, the people lay in heaps.” The dead were not brought to burial: “the dead bodies, like fat placed in the sun, of themselves melted away.”

Then did Ningal raise her great lamentation for Ur, the oncemajestic city, head city of Sumer, capital of an empire: O house of Sin in Ur, bitter is thy desolation . . . O Ningal whose land has perished, make thy heart like water! The city has become a strange city, how can one now exist? The house has become a house of tears, it makes my heart like water . . . Ur and its temples have been given over to the wind.

All of southern Mesopotamia lay prostrate, its soil and waters left poisoned by the Evil Wind: “On the banks of the Tigris and Euphrates, only sickly plants grew. … In the swamps grow sickly-headed reeds that rot in the stench. . . . In the orchards and gardens there is no new growth, quickly they waste away. . . .

The cultivated fields are not hoed, no seeds are implanted in the soil, no songs resound in the fields.” In the countryside the animals were also affected: “On the steppe, cattle large and small become scarce, all living creatures come to an end.” The domesticated animals, too, were wiped out: “The sheepfolds have been delivered to the wind. . . . The hum of the turning churn resounds not in the sheepfold. . . . The stalls provide not fat and cheese. . . . Ninurta has emptied Sumer of milk.”

“The storm crushed the land, wiped out everything; it roared like a great wind over the land, none could escape it; desolating the cities, desolating the houses. . . . No one treads the highways, no one seeks out the roads.” The desolation of Sumer was complete.