The First Cities of Mesopotamia
Surprising Relics!
The Invention of Writing
The Dawn of Mesopotamia
Ancient cities exist that show a distinctive flood level. Debate rages between whether this was a local flood or a world-wide flood.
If one believes that the legend of Noah’s ark is true, these cities existed before a worldwide flood occurred and were rebuilt later. It was probably Cain’s family that originally populated the region.
The First Cities of Mesopotamia
The cities discovered to pre-date the flood are: Eridu (Abu Shahrein, Iraq), where tradition says Adam and Eve lived after ejection from the Garden of Eden, Obeid, Erech, Susa, Tepe Gawra, Fara (Shurppah/Shurrupuk), which tradition says was the home of Noah, Ur, Kish, Sippar (Akkad), Larsa, and Jemdet Nasar.
The legends of Adam and Eve and of Noah’s Ark in Genesis have surprisingly similar counterparts in Mesopotamian cultures. Other cultures also support these legends as facts.
Surprising Relics!
A variety of surprising relics have been discovered in the pre-flood layer:
- Pottery painted in geometric patterns and figures of birds. Some pottery is vitrified; that is, some of the clay has turned to glass at high heat, making it waterproof. Wow!
- Tools of copper and stone, including flint and quartz. These include hoes, sickles, and fish hooks.
- In fact, primitive inscriptions brag that Babylonia (Mesopotamia, near the mouth of the rivers) was never inhabited by a people who were unacquainted with the use of metal!
- Models of boats hint at life on the water, perhaps fishing and/or trade.
- A chariot that proves the domestication of the horse, including breeding of small, stocky wild horses into a breed with enough bone and muscle to pull a chariot.
- A rich community is indicated by vanity items: turquoise vases, copper mirrors, and cosmetics to darken eyebrows and eyelids.
- Structures include an underground kiln and ruins of brick temples that were painted red or covered with plaster.
- Seals to assert ownership and/or authority have been found, but also inscriptions on clay tablets.
- In fact, an ancient Babylonian king recorded that he “loved to read the writings of the age before the Flood.”
- Assurbanipal, founder of the great library of Ninevah, referred to “inscriptions of the time before the Flood.”
- How did they come to survive the Great Deluge, as the Babylonians called it? Berosus was a priest who wrote a three-volume book of Babylonian history in Greek and dedicated it to Antiochus I around 300 B.C. In it, he relates the tradition that Ziusudra (the Babylonian name for Noah) buried the sacred writings at Sippur before the Flood and afterward dug them up. (Why do that at Sippur?)
The Invention of Writing
Jewish and Arab tradition says that the Enoch who was descended from Seth invented writing. There is no proof.
He did, however, write three Books of Enoch. They are considered non-biblical texts by many Christians but contain spiritual events and prophecies. Therefore, it is safe to say that he adhered to the God of his ancestors.
But being an author does not mean one has invented writing. I should know!
What is the argument that it was Cain’s son Enoch who invented writing? According to Genesis, all of the inventors were from Cain’s family. And, being much older than the Sethite Enoch, the latter benefitted from a writing system that by his time had advanced in practicality.
Unless significant, specific proof is unearthed, we will never know who invented writing.
Well, this artsy, luxurious lifestyle is far from the Caveman Culture envisioned in most history texts, isn’t it?
Photo credit: Patrick on Unsplash