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Grail Sciences
Grail Sciences is a Podcast that reveals the most occulted (hidden) information on the planet about how we as a species create our reality both individually and collectively. Come join us on a journey of self-discovery and freedom and learn how to change the world by changing your own story and become a Master of Destiny.
Grail Sciences
The Uncensored Behind The Scenes Of Our Wildest Discussions!
Nathaniel Heutmaker of the Grail Sciences Podcast and James Bleckley of the Oldest Stories podcast sat down to discuss Mesopotamian myth from an occult perspective. But they ended up sitting for hours and hours over multiple days and got off track more than once. Because I (James Bleckley) find a bunch of it interesting, I (James Bleckley) cut the most interesting clips together for you today, so here you can hear Nathaniel's take on the oldest archeological findings, King Arthur, Josephus, and more! The Grail Sciences Podcast covers the deeper meaning of the Holy Grail and a variety of occult topics. Nathaniel is deeply read in a variety of world traditions, and expertly weaves it all together over at grailsciences.com/ The Oldest Stories Podcast covers the history, myth, and culture of ancient Mesopotamia, from the invention of writing until the fall of Nabonidas. James has been filling out the story of the oldest civilization for over 6 years at oldeststories.net
In the last few weeks, we've been posting our discussions between Nathaniel Heitmacher of Grail Sciences and James Beckley of older stories. But beyond the topics of those episodes, we discussed a lot of various things and had a lot of fun doing it. I thought that some of what we chatted about might be of general interest, so I've smashed clips together. I hope you enjoyed. If you've liked these, make sure to subscribe to both of our channels. Link in the description. We anticipate doing another round of these at some point in the future. So stay tuned and leave a comment about what you'd like to see.
SPEAKER_03:Stories have existed for thousands upon thousands of years. I mean, like, take takes I mean, some of these have existed for so long that they've been around forever. I think I've said this to you before, but like one of the things is like Mother Nature, right? We refer to Mother Nature as a in that way for what's going on. Okay, so if you go back to the Venus figurines, right, those those things are 30,000, 40,000 years old, and they're kind of these goddess, mother earth goddess type figures, is what our general understanding of it is at this state for what's going on with it. But what they don't tell you, meaning is that the the the archaeologists don't really bring this up too much because it kind of well is really annoying to them, is that they found stuff that's so much older than that that they don't know what to do with it. So an example of this is that they found a Venus figurine in Morocco that's 350,000 years old. Okay. Well, our species is only in terms of our modern anatomical form, let's say, if you go through the scientific aspect of it, is 300,000 years old maximum. So that means that if this thing's dated correctly, that it's 50,000 years past what our species is in terms of our modern anatomical form from that perspective. Now, to make matters even worse, is that they found one in Turkey that is, if again, done correctly. There's a couple of people that are debating it or whatever. I personally fall into the camp that it was based upon reading the actual original documents and all that from the study that was done with it. I fall into the camp that this is legitimate, but you can make the case for it that there's some stuff that makes it like that. I think it's mainly comes down to well, it's just too freaking old, we can't believe it, basically, is why people have a problem with it. Regardless, is that it's 800,000 years old, and it's also a Venus figurine, and much in the same way that you would uh you know fit that same general trope for what's going on there in terms of the that would mean that the notion of the Earth being looked at as a goddess-like figure in some capacity or another, is now 800,000 years old, and there is no debate about whether this can be interspecies or not, from human to humanoid from humanoid to another humanoid, because it's 800,000 years old, and how the hell did that happen? And then a few years later, they went and found another one in the same region in Turkey or a little below it, I forget exactly where, maybe in Syria or something like that, that is two million years old. If again done correctly, and it completely has been brushed aside by the archaeologists because it doesn't fit what they want to look at, and it's going so far outside of what their like their paradigm is that they can't accept it. Now, regardless, let's pretend that it isn't that it is true for just the sake of argument for a moment, and I'm not saying that it is. That last one is a little bit more of a controversial one, is why the 800,000 one, believe it or not, is actually the least controversial out of the three that I brought up, even though it's kind of like the middle one in terms of the age. So that means there's a kernel of a story of the notion of a mother earth goddess figure that we've had that somehow has gone from species to species, passed down in that in terms of an idea to our modern era of mother nature for two million years. That is absurd in terms of a story element, it's not a full story, but it has kernels of a story in it for that length of time for what's going on. I don't know if you looked into the fairyman at all in terms of his origins.
SPEAKER_02:Oh, he's pretty old.
SPEAKER_03:He's a minimum of 30,000 years old, is what our newest data indicates. You look at the cosmic hunt, that's a minimum of a hundred thousand years old. The dragon slaying motif goes back 70,000 years, and then when and then you get into the the earth diver. I don't know if you're familiar with that motif or not.
SPEAKER_01:Not sure I know that one.
SPEAKER_03:That one's 140,000 years old. It's the oldest known creation myth that there is. Basically, what it is is that you have some sort of sometimes it's a humanoid-like figure, but usually it's like a bird of some sort that goes down and deep goes into the waters and then goes and picks up the earth from beneath it and putting it on top and building from it and blah blah blah type deal with it. I'm way, way oversimplifying it, but just to get the general point across for what's going on there. That's a minimum of 140,000 years old. And so, you know, it's like some of these things, it's like they're so old, we have no idea where they came from or what their origins are. Although we're starting to piece that back together now with new techniques, especially with like migration patterns through following genetics and that kind of stuff, that's helping fill in a lot of the gaps for that, uh, as well as phylogenetics, believe it or not. But the phylogenetics that they're using are not based upon the genetic thing, it's based upon myth. So we we've sure we figured out real quickly that myth doesn't change too too often, right? It stays stable for hundreds of years, if not thousands of years, at least in its core, not talking about like the outside layers of it, and it's usually some sort of major event that has to come and make it happen that huge change occurs to it. Usually an invasion by another group or some sort of cataclysmic event that occurs or whatever that happens like that. But we can trace those typically in history, and so by using that same general idea of genetics, it doesn't change all that often, it stays stagnant for the most part, and then a mutation shows up on occasion because of something that or another, we can use those same type of techniques on the mythological side of these stories and be able to show where they branched out from and showcased from with a certain level of probability. And when you get to a probability of 90-some odd percent and above, then you pretty much have the stuff for what's going on there, and you can take that from all the different stories that are mapped out throughout the world. So let's say you want to look at the dragon slaying motif and whatnot, you would take it from all the stories ever that have that that are going on with it that are we would we would call mythology or legend and that kind of stuff. Obviously, we're not going to be looking at like say JK rolling stuff or smog or whatever, because that's that's just not what we're talking about here. So we go and do that, we plot it on the points of on the maps for all where all these different motifs show up, and then you can start building your database from there to showcase where this is and looking at the age of the stories and where they came from and looking at the migration routes, etc. And in the case of the dragon slaying motif, they were able to figure out that it came from South Africa, meaning the country of South Africa, a minimum of 70,000 years ago. And of course, it changed over time period and whatnot, you know, for what it is. And at that point, it wasn't a dragon that was being done with it, it was a serpent instead. But obviously, they're basically the same thing in terms of how they play out for after thousands upon thousands of years for what it is, and then blah, blah, blah. That's how we're able to do that. It's so fascinating that we've been able to take another technique from another field and apply it to this field and have it actually give legitimate data based upon it. So I don't know. I I love I geek out on this crap. So this isn't out yet, but it is something I'm gonna be talking about at some point for what it is. And it's very clear that there are two Arthurs. All right, now hear me out when I'm saying that. There is the historically based one, meaning that the potential for that, and then there's the legendary mythological one, let's say, right? Okay, yeah. In the medieval text, this is the medieval is the important part here, not necessarily the older ones that are more pagan-oriented and that kind of stuff, like the Welsh triads or whatever, the Magma Agion, that kind of thing. There seems to be a huge distinction every time that they use Arthur in a particular way, at least for some of the major texts that are going on there. I'm not saying every text, this is not true of every text, but it is true of a lot of the text to how they use it. I forget the exact like Latin phrase that they used for it and whatnot, but they have a particular one where it's very clear that they are not referring to a historical personage. Every time they use this particular phrase that's inside of it, they are definitely referring to the the constellation aspect, the bear uh that he represents and whatnot. And so it is very, it's not it's very clear that they use it slightly differently, and they have different terminologies for it that are explicitly there for it. So there's one that could potentially lead to okay, this is the non-or at least what they believed at the time period to be the non-mythological size, the non-whatever stellar cult aspect, versus this is definitely 100% stuff that has the sacred truths in it, but may not actually be reality, so to speak, right? So that is that's something that's very interesting to me that I want to deep dive to see if I can't dissect more and being like, okay, this is everything that I know for certain in these texts, that like, okay, this is all 100% mythology. We know it's mythology. They're not even trying to pretend that it's not mythology based upon this particular little phrase that goes on with it there. And then this is what's left over. Now, does this help us in any way, shape, or form find the historical King Arthur? Maybe it doesn't do shit at all, maybe not, but we don't know unless we try, is the point.
SPEAKER_02:Oh, yeah. No, that sounds really neat.
SPEAKER_03:But here's another component to this. I have looked into this, and there's something else that's very, very interesting for what's going on with it. I've been looking for since I've started this, and I don't say I have the answer, I'm not pretending that I have the answer for, but I've been looking into who the potential candidates for the historical Arthur could be, whether we can even find a historical Arthur, blah, blah, blah, for what it is. So that's part of my this is part of my reasoning for why doing that with it. One of the things that I have found that's very interesting for a potential element here of why we can't find the historical Arthur for what's going on, is because the historical Arthur is not in any way, shape, or form associated with the British Isles, but is instead is associated with another element that pops up inside of the medieval literature for what's going on there, and is in the Middle East, and that he's part of that particular component for what's happening. Now, this may sound completely ludicrous at first, but we have the case of Joseph of Arimathea being brought into the stories that are going on there for what's happening. And if you start looking into the history of the potential for the historic historical Christ figure, again, I'm not talking about the I don't want to say mythological because it's not accurate for what it is, but some of the more parts that would be deemed allegorical, let's say, from a scientific mind and that kind of stuff. That if you start really looking into that, I decided to play to do something different for how that analysis was. Everybody that I know that have tried to pinpoint the like the historical Jesus, let's say, they've all failed. But they've all failed for a couple reasons, in my opinion. The major one is that if you read the stories, like I did, meaning the the biblical stories and that kind of stuff that are inside of it that have refer to him, I don't see any evidence whatsoever that it has to, here's the keyword has to, be tied to the timeline that is officially given for it, meaning mainly the 30s and the first century Judea. I see, if I remove that bias, if I remove that bias that's already put there, I don't see any evidence that says it has to be. I see lots of evidence showing that it could be, could be in the 60s instead. 30 years removed. So if you're looking for a character and it actually is 30 years removed, makes it a lot harder to find that particular character, especially if Jesus only lived to be in his 30s and died, meaning he wouldn't be where I'm coming from from what's going on there for that. Now, I'm not saying that that he did die in his 30s, that's not what I'm getting at there, whatever, in terms of the resurrection and all that. That's completely not the point for what's going on there. What I did is that all right, let's look at this from another standpoint. If I'm trying to track down Hitler, right, it's very hard to track down him. There is so much misinformation that's going on about that. And if for whatever reason that there's this misinformation that's out there because of the Roman Empire not wanting to have certain things that are going on with it, because of the Jewish problem that they had during the first century that they didn't like, causing all these problems, and we know that certain things were rewritten after that fact that came in centuries afterwards from the Council of Nicaea onward, etc., for expunging certain things and all that other stuff, for choosing of which books were going to be part of the Bible and which ones weren't, etc., for the gospels and whatnot. Okay, we have all this stuff that can get in the way of it. But what if I don't choose a controversial character like Jesus? If he either existed or didn't, I choose someone around him instead. And I go after like his inner circle, let's say, one of the disciples. They're gonna be potentially a lot easier to place inside of the historical side of things with it, because they're not thinking about eradicating that particular person from history or making it so that way they change elements of it to where you can't find for what's going on with it. It's just gonna be a person, they're not even gonna be considered semi-divine or divine, depending upon how you want to interpret it. It's just a person that's following him, therefore, they're not gonna have all of these allegorical, all these potential legendary aspects surrounding them. Not saying there won't be any, they'll just be less. So they'll be easier to potentially pinpoint. And if you can pinpoint that particular person in time and whatnot, then you could start figuring out the other people that are directly around that point for what it is. And so I if you I've did some of this stuff for what's going on there, and I am utterly convinced that I have figured out one of the people that are in that historical time frame for what it is, and it is someone who, if my analysis is correct, would also lead to the rest of it for what's going on, there meaning the rest of the characters of the of the Bible and the historical side of it. And strangely enough, it is also this is where it gets really weird. It's the person who wrote them all up and whatnot, in terms of the actual history of things with it. In other words, the person that I located who is also inside of the biblical tradition that plays that particular character, which we'll come to in a moment, is also the one who we know historically existed, and is the one that wrote a lot of the Jewish history for that time period, Josephus Flavius. I see. Josephus Flavius, in my analysis, is Saint Paul slash Saul in the Bible. So this makes it so that way if we can locate Josephus Flavius, and we know that he's one of the disciples that's inside of it, this can lead to other potential things that are there for what's going on. Interestingly enough, we know that Josephus Flavius ended up going to the British Isles at one point in his travels. And so when Joseph of Arimathea brings the grail there for what it is, it's not now it's like okay, there is a direct potential connection here for what's going on. Not an indirect, a direct potential potential connection. And it's interesting because I did this all before I started my Arthurian study and whatnot. And now it's like, wait a second, if you look at who the people who wrote a lot of these stories are that down with it and whatnot, or were commissioned to write these stories, they're all Templars for the medieval era, for the medieval era. Because if they're all Templars, for the ones that are known, obviously there's some that are anonymous we don't know, and that kind of stuff, whatever. But for the known authors, if they're all Templar knights, or they're all associated with the Templar Order, like the Cistercians, which are the Templars, is another variant for what's going on of them because of Bernard the Clervaux setting up the Cistercian order as well as the Templar Order, then we also know for a fact that they went to Jerusalem and that they were in the Solomon's temple and whatnot, specifically the stables that were there. So, and we know they did digging, archaeological digging for something, whatever that was. Some people claim it's the Ark, some people claim it's other stuff related to the Last Supper, like maybe the Grail or some other stuff with it. I personally don't know what they were there for. I do know that they did, at least according to their own records, find ancient scrolls and tablets that were there of things with like copper copper writing on some of the stuff or what was going on with it, that they were dealing with it, that made it so that way they translated certain things when they came back to Europe that were going on there with it. And what if what if you have a story that you want to tell that contradicts what the church is putting forth, but you can't go directly against the church at this time period, but you want to tell this particular story that's happening there with it, and then you graft it on to an era where we have almost no historical record of it. See, one of the things that pops up that's the same between King Arthur, let's say, and Jesus Christ as an example, is that they have a tax dispute with Rome. Okay, but if you go with the traditional timeline for Arthur, there is no Rome, it's already fallen, it makes no sense for what's going on there. How can you possibly have that? That's going on that that is absurd. Roman Empire fell a hundred years plus before him and whatnot. And if you want to go with these in the 500s, then it still fell before his time period and whatnot. And he can't go and invade and do all this other stuff that they talk about with them and some of these stories. But if you graft if again, if you're grafting it onto something else and you're making it that way happen for it, then you potentially find some of these other elements that are going on there. And so now I'm looking into this potential threat. Is it true? Who the hell knows? Maybe it's complete nonsense and just a fun intellectual exercise that's been done there with it, and it's leading into weird crap that has nothing to do with reality whatsoever. I don't know yet because I haven't done it yet. It could be like, no, this is complete bullshit. I was completely wrong, this has nothing to do with it whatsoever, but there could be potentially a hidden history that was imported into these stories. That if you remove all of the mythological or romantic parts of the Arthurian tradition, that suddenly you get this leftover hidden history that if you know what you're looking for, because you're the one that wrote it originally, and you want to make it so that way the story can be saved for generations to come, that you go and do it in a particular way for what's happening. And interestingly enough, if you go and you start building the family tree of Jesus' family in the biblical tradition, and you start comparing it to the Arthurian one, at least some of them, because there's variants of it, of course, they start lining up in certain regards. It's very weird. From the limited data that I have currently, I have to say this is at least worth exploring. When I was going back and digging up some of my notes that are old, and when I say old notes and whatnot, I mean they're at least five to six years old, something like that, for when I was studying this stuff. One of the things that that I had come across was the guest inana part. And and then it's like, okay, so what what it you have Inana already in the name for what's going on there. So that part is already gives us a clue as to who her real identity is. And then you have the guest part. Maybe I'm mispronouncing that, but G-E-S-T.
SPEAKER_02:Yeah, it is the I'm pretty sure it's the I should actually check that. I'm pretty sure it's the S with the little squiggle over it. So it's uh S-H.
SPEAKER_03:Oh, so Gesh. Gesh.
SPEAKER_02:Yeah, Gesh Inana.
SPEAKER_03:Gesh. Okay. Uh, if you're correct, then yeah, that makes sense to me based upon my memory of that and how the nomenclature works specifically for their particular stuff with it. Regardless, it means when you translate it, ear. So you have ear and then inan, the ear inanna. And so if you know some of the symbolic meaning of things inside of the Sumerian stuff with it, it means wise inanna. Ear is associated with wisdom for what it is. Think of it like you speak once and listen twice as much thing as we have our adage here and whatnot. And so it is literally telling you that this is another variant of inanna in terms of the story that's going on here for that particular part of it. And then you also have another aspect in the story that's brought up for it, at least in one of the variants. And I forget who it is off the top of my head that's that's with this. I could figure it out. But basically, if you take all three, it's now just the tripart goddess theme that's being played there with Inanna being part of it. In other words, you have the maiden, the bride, and the the old hag slash crone tropes that are being played out with all three of them that are going on there. So Inanna's easy because Inanna is the is the bride, hence why the wedding and all the other stuff that goes along with that. We we know what her role is. It's the other two that you have to figure out a little bit more because wise Inana might think, oh, well, that one is, you know, the old crow and the hag, but no, it's the maiden and whatnot, and you can pull this together from looking at the other parts of their mythologies and other things, and you look into it for those parts for what's going on there. So when it's talking about this, even though they seem like separate characters inside of the story for what's going on with all three of them, they're actually just three aspects of Inanna, or you could even say some other goddess that Inanna is the replacement for for all three, or the goddess figure in general, for what's going on there, which I've obviously we didn't really bring this up last time and whatnot. I just found it interesting when I was kind of going back through, and like something was bothering me when I saw Guest Inana, and you were talking about her name again. I'm like, there's something there that I remember, but I can't quite remember what it is. It's important about this.
SPEAKER_02:So I'll tell you something that you're gonna like.
SPEAKER_03:So the uh this gets into the deep uniform commentary tradition, which I have actually I've actually made fun of it a bit on the explaining what that is briefly for the listeners who won't know what it is.
SPEAKER_02:Absolutely. So you know how in like medieval traditions there was a long, there's a long medieval tradition of commentaries where they'll have a text, maybe it's the Bible or maybe it's Aristotle or something, right? And people will write notes all over the text, and that is like its own scholarly people writing commentaries on whatever, but there was a cuneiform scholarly commentary tradition in ancient Mesopotamia and in the commentaries on especially the epic of Gilgamesh, but also the two I think the two biggest ones that we have commentaries on are the Enuma Elish, which is Marduk's sort of creation myth and Gilgamesh. Because Gilgamesh does seem to have been the single most popular story in the ancient world or in ancient Mesopotamia. But then from that we can see how they were thinking about words, I guess. Because you're over here, you're pulling apart the word gestionana. The cuneiform languages are extremely complicated.
SPEAKER_03:And I fully admit I'm taking it from other scholars on this front, which is not something I know jack about in terms of actually being reading into it and deep diving it.
SPEAKER_02:So well, that's how you're thinking of it exactly how they would think of it. Cudiform is a very complicated language, it's sort of like how Japanese took the Chinese characters, right?
SPEAKER_03:Right. They still kept their own characters and invented their own characters too, yeah.
SPEAKER_02:And so if in if you are a Babylonian scribe during the classical Babylonian period, you know Sumerian, which is a cuneform language, you know Akkadian, and you quite possibly also know one or two other Semitic cuneiform languages.
SPEAKER_03:Dialect or languages or whatever, yeah.
SPEAKER_02:And they all use the same character set. So there's oh, don't quote me on this, but I think something like a thousand Akkadian cuneiform characters. Like seven or eight hundred Sumerian cuneform characters, and then the Assyrian version of Akkadian also has its own set of like four or five hundred. And then, of course, you combine them, and the characters could also just be sound to like. You can have a can you can have oh I'm blanking on all my I'm not a hu I'm not like I can't sit down and just read Akkadian. I'm not gonna pretend I can do that, but I've looked at this commentary tradition. But each every word is made up of usually a couple of characters, and it's also made up of a couple of syllables. So Geshton Anna would have you know her cuneiform symbols and also this the syllables gesh tin an na. And then you can you could read it gesh tina na, you could read it geshina.
SPEAKER_03:Right, you can break it up into various different ways.
SPEAKER_02:And each of those, what they would do is they would say, Oh, this here's the cuneiform letters, and each of them has a meaning, cuneiform characters, and each of them has a meaning in Sumerian. So this contributes to her name. And so you don't get Inanna directly if you go straight to her cuneiform letters, you get something like great vine of heaven, sure, or possibly the lovely, the lovely fruit of heaven, something like that.
SPEAKER_03:Which all fits perfectly with her character.
SPEAKER_02:Oh yeah, and you and but you then you can divide it a lot of different ways. You can find queen in her name, because in a lot of in a lot of ritual contexts, late now once she's you know properly deified and such, she gets the nin, which is the the queen character stuck in her name. You get you get lovely in there, sweet. Uh the Anna at the end has been related to Ama, which is mother. Um you were talking about the maiden mother crone. I personally at least would see actually Ishtar in the maiden role with Geshtan Anna as the loving sister, as the mother role, because it's a very when she goes to Ishtar and weeps over Dumazid, it's a very, it's a very mothering sort of thing. And the we don't actually have a ton of information about the weeping rituals.
SPEAKER_03:We do know they existed and and whatnot, and we know that they survived in pockets for a very, very long time and whatnot. I mean, there was even a handful of places from someone, I forget who it is the top of my head, scholarly doing stuff proving that it was still in existence even up until the 18th century. So, I mean, obviously that was very small, isolated stuff, but the point is it survived forever, even past you know the rise of various different Abrahamic traditions in that area.
SPEAKER_02:So Yeah, and the the prophet Ezekiel in the Bible complains about it, uh complains about Israelite women undertaking the weeping ritual.
SPEAKER_03:I think it's even he even mentions, or at least even mentioned in one of the one of the ones, Tammuz, which is another version, another name of Damuzid, directly inside of it. So there's no contestion, there's no like debate about who it is that they're talking about here.
SPEAKER_02:Yeah, and that seems to have been the two interpretations I've seen of that is women weeping over the idea of a lost crush, like like their first love or whatever, and that is a very Ishtar and maiden keyed sort of way to do it. The other thing I've seen keyed there is mothers weeping over their children, lost children. Because of course this there's also an aspect of this where when Dumasid dies or Dumasid gets carried down to the underworld, there are magic rituals that that in in the Akkadian tradition at least that sort of link that to the death of children. And you want and you you call on Ishtar specifically. Hey Ishtar, don't uh protect my house from having any children die. Remember Dumazid, how he was taken from you, and you get that sort of connection there.
SPEAKER_03:Um, I don't actually hence also why it for my interpretation of it, that she's the motherly figure, the one that wants to protect the children. I'm not saying yours is incorrect, I'm just saying, like the I'm making my argument for why on that side for what it is, because you brought up yours for the sisterly figure part and playing that kind of wanting to protect Dimizid as well for what's going on on that front. So just that way the audience has both sides. Regardless, I still view it as the tripartite aspect.
SPEAKER_02:Yeah, I'm not sure. I'm not sure where the Gestianana as um prone would be.
SPEAKER_03:I'm not saying it's not there, I'm just saying I'm uh let me let me pull up. I have it right here in front of me. It was oh, there we go. The name of the other counterpart that's inside of it for the story. Go ahead, we'll keep talking about your part while you look for it.
SPEAKER_02:Yes, I'm I'm not totally certain. I'm just that's that's sort of the start and end of it. I don't know. There's a there's gestion anna may have had duties in the underworld while she was down there. I know there's at least some art that people interpret as gestionana like keeping the numbers, like maybe counting how many people are in the underworld, or or possibly even distributing the provisions for the un like the rations that the dead people get, which is kind of a funny image, but it would make sense. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, we I don't think we I'm not sure that we know a ton about her down in the underworld. She had her, she had probably her temple, which I remember her, I don't remember what the name is in Akkadian, but the name's meaning was something like the temple established by her brother.
SPEAKER_00:Yeah.
SPEAKER_02:And so it would be, and so it's like the occultic worship of Geshnana then would have been sort of notionally sponsored by DumaZid, which this girl just can't really get a break. She can't have any sort of independent existence all by herself. Her entire existence seems to be poor, poor Dumazid. And I've always thought he had it coming uh when he got dragged down to the underworld. But uh that's just that's just how it goes sometimes.
SPEAKER_03:I'm not being able to find it, so it should be here though. It's the name of the the other figure that that's there. It's like Billily or something like that. Illali. Uh the number another person down in the underworld, or it has to do with another another variant of it that I was trying to shade show that gives the three parts that's that's there.
SPEAKER_02:Oh, another version of Gestan Anna.
SPEAKER_03:Well, yeah, Gestunana, Inana, and then the third one, yeah. That gives that that she's the crone, but that particular one is the crone.
SPEAKER_02:Okay, so oh, so Gestunana herself is she would be in like a trinity of of feminine gods.
SPEAKER_03:Yeah, that's what I'm saying. All three of these characters and are archetypes that go together to make it so that way you can have the feminine figure at the top, uh, making it so that way that would be the case for it, and they're all part of the same story in some capacity or another. They all play small roles, Ishtar slash Inana being the biggest one, so it's obviously about her descent into the underworld for what we were talking about last time. But there's the you should have the other two components that are there, Gestinana being another part, and then Bella Lee or something like that being the other uh component of it. Bella Illy, that's what it is. Yes, thank you. Yeah, I couldn't remember it off the top of my head. She, meaning Bella Li, represents the crone, is what it is.
SPEAKER_02:It doesn't make sense because Bella Illy isn't actually a name, it's actually a title. It's um right literally is queen of the gods, and different different characters get subsumed into Bela Illy at different times in history.
SPEAKER_03:Yes, yes. So in this instance, that title as applied to Inanna slash Gest Inana, making it so that way it's showing the crone archetype there for the tripartite goddess uh notion, where then the other two we could make arguments for which one is which, as we you and I have already kind of talked a little bit about for what's going on, but either way, maiden, bride slash mother, crone slash old hag type concept for what's going on to fulfill the three original tripart goddess conception for what's going on there.
SPEAKER_02:So yeah, and that's a great, and and I I gotta tell you, that's sort of very similar to how Babylonian academics would look at it. They would pull out all three of these names and just tear them apart into like we'd call it etymologies, but it's not really etymology in a literal sense. It's more of I guess a cult etymology, you could call it. But then they'd also syncretize these, especially because Bela Ili and Ishtar were both extremely syncretic figures, they would absorb a lot of different aspects into both of themselves, and they would be very happy to absorb Geshtan Anna as well into whatever ritual context it might be appropriate. So yeah, no, you're thinking like an ancient Babylonian scribe is what I'm what I'm saying here.
SPEAKER_03:Well, at least for the Babylonian time period, my analysis would at least be accurate. I'm not saying that's how the Sumerians necessarily viewed it, but at least in part of the timeline, I am not completely kilter here.
SPEAKER_02:And the only reason we can't say the Sumerians weren't doing it is just because we don't have nearly as much record from them. But the truth is that we that everybody, everybody in the ancient Middle East claimed that all of their scholastic traditions went back to the pre-literate period. And so we would have gone back to the Sumerians, and so we keep them.
SPEAKER_03:Even the ancient Egyptians said the same thing for that until thoth came and gave them writing.
SPEAKER_02:Yeah, so but I mean, we can't say that uh the Sumerians wouldn't have viewed it the same way, though, of course, they wouldn't have had the same richness because they would have just been dealing in the Sumerian language.
SPEAKER_03:Yeah, well, the Sumerians, if you can correct me if I'm wrong, they they believed in a place that they they kind of viewed as like their version of Atlantis, meaning a higher level society than what they were, that they got stuff from, and they called it Arata.
SPEAKER_02:Oh no, I hate to I hate to push back on that, but no, you can.
SPEAKER_03:That's fine. This this is an area that I'm not well versed in. It's just a little bit that I've read from some other people. So I've only just to be clear, it's just something that I know as an idea, not saying it's definitive truth.
SPEAKER_02:So the neat thing about Arita, the neat thing about Arata is you only really see it described in one place, which is the battle, the the war between Enmerkar and Arata. Enrakar being possibly Dumasid's notional grandfather, at least in one Sumerian king's list.
SPEAKER_03:Um, or at least he was two kings before Dumasid, and it doesn't have it doesn't have you know necessarily who was the father of who, but correct, because the they they believed in a type of uh election process for some of the stuff too that they had for what's going on. So it could have just been the king that was uh elected through whatever their councils were during that time period and whatnot.
SPEAKER_02:So yeah, so I mean we notionally he's he's it's it's it's quite possible by two, yeah. And you know, might be a lineage, who knows? But anyway, this is as far as we can tell, the oldest written story, Enmerkar and Arata. And we don't know where Arata is, we know it's in the mountains, and it could be Urartu, which is sort of the Armenian highlands. Yep, it could be Afghanistan because of mineral, because they seem to have been digging up the mineral wealth. And where did all the tin come from? It came from Arata.
SPEAKER_03:I've also seen an argument for it being possibly parts of Ukraine on where the Caucasus are on the southern part for where it is, where it would meet up with our Armenia on the other side of the mountains.
SPEAKER_02:So yeah, it's definitely in the mountains, somewhere, anywhere from the Caucasus Mountains to Afghanistan. When I was doing my episode on it, I said, you know, maybe Western Iran. But the more I've looked into it, the fact is that Enricar represents the Uruk period. And the Uruk period was possibly the first settled colonialism in all of human history. Before that, when cities had been founded, they'd been founded by nomads. But the city of Uruk and the Sumerians in general around them, we can't we don't know if Uruk was in charge of this process or if all the Sumerian cities were doing it, or just Uruk, but certainly Uruk takes credit for it. But anyway, these Sumerian settlers, about 4,000 uh I would if I had to guess, if I had to guess, is that Uruk took credit for it and that there was more places involved.
SPEAKER_03:I'm not saying all of them, but they just like, hey, this is this is this our thing.
SPEAKER_02:Yeah, totally. But like around 4,000 BC, you get expeditions. That's when the city of Asher, where the Assyrian Empire was, they founded that city, they founded cities up in the Armenian highlands, they founded cities in Iran. Most of the Iranian cities, interestingly, didn't survive very long. But and then there's a theory that they settled in Afghanistan, and that's how the tin started to arrive from Afghanistan. I can see that, yeah, I can see that being positive. Yeah, related to the tin trade. Anyway, Arto was somewhere, but we don't know where. The Sumerians certainly knew where it was.
SPEAKER_03:It was probably so obvious to them they didn't even have to write it down.
SPEAKER_02:Yeah, and but I mean for them it was definitely a place much like much like Urk, just a place. But when En Makar is threatening the king of Arita, he says, Hey, do you remember how way back when all the languages were one, and then we built a mountain up to the highest heavens, and it angered the gods, and they shattered it and confused all the languages?
SPEAKER_03:I wonder where this story came from, where that idea came from.
SPEAKER_02:There's an the thing is the one text that we have of that is badly damaged. And so there's a scholarly argument as to whether N. Makar is saying, Hey, do you remember in the past when all the languages were one and we built a mountain up to heaven? Or he could be saying, Hey, in the future, after I conquer you and everybody else, we're going to build a mountain up to the heavens and all the languages will become as one.
SPEAKER_03:Because I see what you're getting at. I understand what you're saying. What the okay, that makes sense. I definitely now this doesn't mean it's true, but I definitely prefer the in the past notion. I think that's more fascinating personally, but that doesn't mean it's true.
SPEAKER_02:So yeah, I also I also quite like the in the past, but the idea that he conquered a whole bunch of places and then built his ziggurat as if he were the biblical Nimrod, him or his direct successors of the biblical Nimrod. Either way, you've got the core of, of course, the Tower of Babel story. And once you've got the core of a Tower of Babel story, there's all kinds of other things attached to that. And that's probably where people get the idea that Enmerkar's kingdom was some great, wonderful place because certainly they believed that the first city, which was probably Eridu, but the first city that the gods made, everyone was very wise and everything went very well, and there were lots of good things there, and then everything just went downhill after that. They also believed nothing had ever changed, but they also believed history went downhill because, of course, it's a different people believing slightly different things, and both both of those are common. And the idea that everything is getting worse is just a very common one throughout all of it.
SPEAKER_03:I you could also make it subways the same in a way for what's going on there. Unlike, say, our modern sensibilities, or we mainly, at least in the Western world, view things as linear, you know, for what it is. A lot of the ancient world viewed things as cyclical, going up and down in various different cycles. Nothing really truly changed, it's just this this you're at this part of the cycle and that part of the cycle. So when you say, Well, nothing really changed or just started going downward, it still would be the same thing in their minds for potentially, potentially.
SPEAKER_02:So, yeah, no, for a very long time, until it's hard to say when exactly it changed. Certainly by the end of the Mesopotamian period, things had changed, but in the early times, they really seemed to believe that uh nothing has ever changed. And so in the Isin Larsa period, which is about the 1800s BC, you get a king Gungun and his son, who might be Sin Idnam, you get Gungunum and his son, and they start to make war against their neighboring cities by damming the flow of the Euphrates River, and they shut it off, they redirect it so that other cities can't get water. Larsa though, their city, is very far downstream and stops getting water. And they were apparently quite surprised by this because they they really seem to believe that even if that nothing changes to such a degree that even if we dam the river, water will still flow through our city. And then you have the the Gungun's son gets overthrown, and the the the and yeah, it's its own drama there. But they that's the extent to which they really do seem to believe that nothing will ever change.
SPEAKER_03:There are they were very much fatalistic then in that regard. Yeah.
SPEAKER_02:Yeah, there are kings that talk about like we can't whatever we do, if we conquer this city, this city and its people will still exist, even if we conquer and enslave them, because this city and its people will always exist. And then one or two hundred years later, that city's gone because they conquered and enslaved and destroyed those people. But when they were doing it, they're like, well, we can't ever totally destroy it. There's no reason to integrate it into our into our little kingdom because they're independent, they'll always be independent, and that seems to be like how they made war. It's just uh just a wild thing. It's great.
SPEAKER_03:I'd forgotten that that was the case with it till you mentioned that story about the that with the because it's been a long time since I've studied the Sumerian traditions and the and the Babylonian traditions. Yeah. I remember I'm that's all coming back to me now about how bizarre that particular notion was.
SPEAKER_02:Yeah, I mean, you see it in like religion and rituals, they're like, oh, this ritual for this god has gone on since the gods gave it to us back then.
SPEAKER_03:Yes, and that is easy to see. There's a difference between, say, like what you could call sacred truths, if you will, versus everyday reality truths, if you will. Yeah. So I when to me, lots of cultures have sacred truths. And that's in fact, that's what makes them their culture, their religions or their myth, what we call mythologies today, because they were just originally religions for those people, but now they're considered myths because nobody really takes them seriously anymore. And there was usually in almost all of them some sort of continuity loss, even if people are maybe like neopaganism or neopagans re-bringing back certain things for what it is, it's not in the original form from what it was from a thousand years ago, two thousand years ago, five thousand years ago, whatever the case may be for that. So the sacred truth notion, you know, I don't have a problem with, of course, it's going to be forever. That's the that's just what it is for anything that's the sacred side of things. But on the everyday thing, I had forgotten about that. They still they took it to that extreme in that level until you brought up the that particular story with the damming of the river.
SPEAKER_02:But that gets us back to Gilgamesh. So Gilgamesh he goes on his big adventure and he tries to get immortality because he wants to live forever, and he fails a couple of times. And at the end of the story, he comes home to the city of Uruk, and it makes a big deal about the scale and permanence of the walls of Uruk. And as he and it's it doesn't say it explicitly, but as he's coming into the city of Uruk to sit on his throne and just be sad because he can't be immortal. The sort of the narrator is telling us about the walls of Uruk, and he's suggesting that as if they're going to be there forever, they will live forever.
SPEAKER_03:They've been here forever, they've always been here, and they will they they they're here now and they will always be here.
SPEAKER_02:Yeah, they are tiny. So it's that and and we talk about Gilgamesh in the sense that oh, of course, he couldn't achieve immortality because I think fundamentally we're all Buddhists, everything goes away in our in our view of the universe, everything fades, even the universe will eventually fails in and of itself, yeah. At some point, but for them, they were like, hey, Gilgamesh was wrong because humans can't have immortality, but structures and institutions and things that the gods put in the world can have immortality, humanity can have immortality, the city of Uruk can have immortality, the city being defined very much by the structure of the walls, but also that throne that he was sitting on. The divine kingship notion, yeah, no matter how far into the future they got, there was a belief, even after the city of Uruk was mostly abandoned, there was this idea, even in much later periods, that the city of Uruk is still there, that the that the throne, that somebody Gilgamesh isn't sitting on it anymore, but there's somebody else is, yeah.
SPEAKER_03:Yeah, I think I think that's important because it's also kind of like if you're looking at it from another thing, with them, this is more from my audience at the moment, just to kind of give them a parallel, is why I'm bringing this up. It's like King Arthur, he's the eternal king. It doesn't matter whether he's dead and he's an Avalon at the moment or whatever, he'll rise back up when the time's necessary for that to defend his people and that kind of stuff. So a little different, it's a different variant in the sense that like obviously it's not Gilgamesh that'll come back for that for the Sumerians, but it's the same concept of this will always be here, and there'll be somebody there to come and and and bring it back, and that kind of stuff with the yeah, that's a very, very good point.
SPEAKER_00:Yeah.
SPEAKER_03:So for those of you who don't know that are listening to this and whatnot, or watching this, the reason why Gilgamesh thinks that he can go and get more immortality is because he's not fully human, he's semi-divine for what it is. And in certain texts, he's even described as two-thirds divine, whatever the hell that means, instead of half divine. Not sure what exactly that means or why that's the case for. I don't know if you have an answer to that.
SPEAKER_02:I just know that he's described just because they talk about they talk about Marduk having sort of three elements to his divinity: his divine parentage, his divine nursing, and his divine titles, his role in the universe. Gilgamesh had divine parentage, yes, and he was probably divinely nursed. I don't think we have that explicitly in the text, but divinely nursed. So he his his he drank the milk of a of a goddess as he was growing up, and then his one-third of the mother more likely than not as a mortal. Yeah, but it's his role as a mortal king, is he or as a human king, that's his one-third of humanity. Because I was also very struck by the idea of being two-thirds divine, but I do think it is birth and nursing are birth, nursing, and fate, I guess you could call it, are the three things that define you as a person for Gilgamesh and for that that culture.
SPEAKER_03:That particular notion that we're talking about here. Yeah, I got you.
SPEAKER_02:And you could internalize that into nature, nurture, and your personal accomplishments. Um, and it becomes a lot more generalizable.
SPEAKER_03:So the nature part would be the parentage, uh, the nurturing part would be the fact that you're talking about the upbringing, in this case, specifically, you know, making it so that way he is getting his milk from a particular deity and whatnot, and being raised in that particular regard for it. But then his accomplishments, in this instance, what he does in the real world, he's unable to achieve immortality. His fate, he's not fated to be so on that final level.
SPEAKER_02:That's an interesting take.
SPEAKER_03:I like that. I like that a lot.
SPEAKER_02:Yeah. No, it's real good. No, Gilgamesh is just a gem that keeps on giving. I really don't understand why we don't have. have a Gilgamesh like HBO show or something. I don't know if they do a good job, but there's just so much there that you you really if I was rich I'd start making ancient Mesopotamia movies like with Hollywood or something. You got a long way to go to be rich. I'll get to this someday maybe.
SPEAKER_03:Now I didn't know this till after I did my research and to Josephus Flavius specifically being potentially Saul slash Paul there was this person I forget when it was like the the the late 1900s I think it excuse me late 1800s early 1900s I think it was where he did not explicitly state as his conclusion that Joseph that Josephus Flavius was Paul slash Saul in the Bible but what he did at the very end or near the very end of his study for what was going on there is he put a list of comparisons between them and how much they were basically the same and whatnot and noted on his particular chart I can't forget his name off the top of my head I have it written down my notes but on his charts that he was doing there with it that literally every single one of the differences that could that was there between them the only source for that difference was Josephus Flavius himself. So if you are the author of these things with it and you are rewriting the history to a certain extent to what's going on to hide yourself from what your role was inside of some of these things with it because you decide to side with Rome, which is afterwards instead of doing that so that way people of later generations don't know that you betrayed your own people for what's going on there and you just go and he's the only source that's left you're the only source that's left for that that makes us that way those slight things that are different from it well and you have the list where almost all the other stuff's the same it's a very compelling argument that this is the case for and again this person did it independently of me for what was going on that made it for me that at least on the case of Josephus Flavius that at least I know I'm not completely fucking insane that it is a highly likely scenario that he was a biblical figure and that he was Paul slash Saul in the biblical tradition. And that I know that I'm at least on that front maybe has nothing to do with the Arthurian tradition but on that front I can use that as a basis to explore further about the my technique for potentially placing Jesus in the timeline for what it is doesn't prove that I have anything it just makes this that way it's like okay there's somebody else out there who went and found the same stuff and came to the basically the same conclusion that I did and therefore since I didn't even know this person existed till after I did that research and a friend of mine pointed it out to me who is a Jewish scholar on it and whatnot that I was like oh well okay then thank you