Newsgroups: alt.magick
Date: Fri,  4 Sep 1992 10:15:47 -0400 
From: Kerwin Yap Chua <kc3u+@andrew.cmu.edu>
Subject: Re: Any other Akkadians out there?
	<1992Sep3.102052.1@cubldr.colorado.edu>

In Reply: to anyone who would like to be informed.

Regardless of the linguistic origin of the word, Akkadian refers mostly
to anything having to do with the six-thousand year old civilisations in
Mesopotamia in what is now Iraq.  It usually refers to the spoken and
written language, but is also used to refer to the people or their
religion.  I consider myself an Akkadian mostly because the Mesopotamian
afterlife and creation mythologies make the most sense to me.

Consider this: In most Judeo-Christian beliefs, the universe is orderly,
perfect and divine.  Then somebody (like Lucifer, the Devil or whatever
you want to call him) rebels, to create the presence of evil, and thus
man, wherever he came from, is forever screwed up.  In Akkadian myths,
the universe began as the Apsu, or the Abyss; a totally evil, vile and
rather sticky ocean of primeval ooze.  Within it lies Tiamat, the
serpent (from which the Old Testament Leviathan originated) and other
lesser gods and dieties (like Kingu, Tiamat's consort).  These gods have
children, one of whom is Marduk (or Ashur, if you are the Akkadian
equivalent of protestant), who thinks that evil is for the birds and
rebels, killing Tiamat (and making the new ordered universe from her
corpse) and killing Kingu (making mankind out of his blood) and most
everybody else who was a threat.  The difference here is that good
rebelled against evil, whereas most  Judeo-Christian beliefs point the
other way.

This makes an intense amount of sense to ME, because I feel people are
always having to struggle to be good, fair, moral human beings, rather
than succumbing to the urge to kill the guy sitting next to you or take
advantage of the nearest person of the opposite gender.  Also, the
Akkadian peoples originated the ideas of original sin (Anu is ejected
from some mysterious garden for eating  the plant of  immortality, in
one myth), suffering just (all men are cursed to be mortal because one
man refuses the food of  life from the gods) and the great flood (in
which Utnapishtim the wise, the Sumerian equivalent of Noah, builds a
cubical (??) ship in which all the animals of the world live in harmony
until the flood subsides and Ishtar holds up her seven colored necklace
(the rainbow)).  I prefer all of these universal ideas and ideals in
their original forms, which  they are in Sumeria.

Note also that I tend to use Mesopotamia, Sumeria and Akkad almost
interchangeably.  I really shouldn't because there is some semantic and
ethnic difference involved, but for the most part we are talking  about
the same set of Gods and the same set of myths, so I will erroneously
continue to do so.

Also for your information, here is a brief summary of major Akkadian
myths and gods

MARDUK- chief and youngest among Sumerian gods, he rose up against
Tiamat and the Ancient ones to establish the good and fair rule of the
elder gods, mush as Zeus did in greek mythology against the Titans.

ANU, EA, ENLIL- sort of  a trinity of  old farts of the elder gods,
these guys were the first children of the Ancient Ones and the elders
who empowered Marduk to battle the Ancient ones.  (note: later myths
call Ashur the one who battled the ancient ones, not Marduk.  Those are
in the minority).

ISHTAR- the goddess of
war/love/hate/fertility/sterility/rainbow/you-name-it.  She doesn't get
a lot of respect in the akkdian myths (Sumerians were also the first to
be sexist pigs, something that bothers me somewhat).  She is basically
involved with Venus (the planet) and corresponds to Venus (the goddess).

THE FLOOD- Archeologists all agree that the flood myth originated in
Sumeria, or at very least the earliest records we have of it are there. 
All the  various parts of the myth (so many days/nights, some guy
building a boat, the rainbow) can be found in the cuniform scripts.

Hope this helps.

Kendrick Kerwin Chua

kc3u@andrew.cmu.edu
Cthulhu for President, 1992!