THE BIRTH OF SATAN

by Alessandro Demontis We all got used to considering Satan as a preterhuman figure, gifted with some sort of powers, whose main purpose is to fight God, steal our souls from his custody by tempting us, leading us into sin, damnation. We commonly hear idiomatics like tempted by Satan or possessed by Satan. We all are used to hearing the term sin to describe whatever behaviour that is not conformed to a series of rules given by a certain religion. So, in the case of Christianity, sins are such things as stealing, killing, having sex with relatives, longing for someone elses woman etc. But let us stop for a while and consider everything under a civil aspect and not under a religious one. We may all agree that stealing is a mean act, the same way we may agree that nobody likes to be cheated. But all considered, what REALLY are all these rules? Commendments to deserve a paradise, or just some rules for common civil life? And if we dont observe one or more of these rules, do we deserve to burn in a tremendous place or just be punished by the governor of a civil society? Let us think it this way, and consider that a religion may not be other than a corpus of codex, tales, legends, that tell a story, garnished with some supernatural and spiritual elements, that has the only purpose to improve a society. It is starting from this, and studying the story and the iconographic evidence, that we can understand what must have happened some 4000 years ago when Judaism began to spread, and gained supremacy over the local religions of the Middle East. A cult, a religion, is always made up of territorial conquests and of abuses of power by who detains it... we have seen it with Crusades, with the colonization of Africa, with the arrival of Europeans in the American continent, with the path to Christianity used to convert the celts. Exactly the same thing that happened millennia ago when the first kings of semithic origin had the strenght of uniting all the regions of Mesopotamia under a common religious and political flag. Religious unity always passes through a political conquest during which a group of men of power (kings and priests) starts a process of rewriting history and rules of life, trying to erase all the main points of reference pursued by the population they conquer. Judaism, a religious cultural and civil phenomenon that can

be identified in starting among the semitic population, in his first appearance (II millennium b.C.) was completely enotheist, that means, it had a major deity (El or El Shaddai) but it used to recognize the figures of the local deities of the regions it spreaded in. It was only later that it evolved to a monotheistic religion. In his enotheistic phase, the semitic judaism, that was pretty Enlilite (that means: evolved generation by generation in the heart of the mesopotamic populations adoring the figure of Enlil) overwhelmed the camite populations that were of Enkite mark (by the adoration of Enki, who was Enlils brother in the mesopotamic pantheon) and exiled all the other deities. All the enkite deities therefore (Enki itself, along with his sons Marduk, Ningishzidda, Nergal, Gibil and Dumuzi) were demonized and defined as Shaytan, the semitic term for adversary. Adversary, obviously, of the main deity that the semites used to adore, Yahweh, son of Baal and grandson of El (in assirian mythology he was called Yaw or Yam) or,in some cases, son of El and brother of Baal and Mot. The camite enkite population was made of libaneses, egyptians and people from the centre-east of Africa. All these deities were united in the figure of the adversary-satan, defining a gerarchy on top of which stood Satan (shaytan) in the figure of Enki, who was folllowed by the hordes of demons, his 5 sons and all the minor deities their followers. Under an iconographic point of view this is evident. The symbol that described Enki, in the mesopotamic culture, was the serpent. Ningishzidda, his son, that in Egypt was adored as Thoth, was rappresented by two entwined serpents. We have many sumeric and akkadian seals showing these two deities rappresented by the serpents and, much important, by the tree of life.

Enki as a snake around the tree of life or wisdom

Ningishzidda, in his classical rappresentation as a pair of snakes

This detail of the tree is very important, because in the Book of Genesis it is told that it was the snake who tempted Eve and inducted her to eat the fruit of the Tree of Wisdom, an act after which God exiled both Adam and Eve to avoid them eating from the Tree of Life. The icon of the serpent is still used by Christianity, a deformation of Judaism, as a rappresentation of Satan.

Icon from and old Bible where Michael stands sentinel over Satan

the temptation of Eve: Satan depicted as a snake with human head, around the tree of wisdom

Sumerians have also left a seal depicting the temptation scene. It is called the Temptation seal and it was part of the personal colletion of Ashurbanipal, it is now visible at the British Museum. It shows a woman and a god sitting, a tree, and a serpent that identifies the god with Enki or an enkite god.

The temptation seal (British Museum)

The passage of Judaism from his enotheistic phase to the monotheistic one, is a path during which all the attributes and works of all the deities (both enkites and enlilites) are given to a single deity: Yahweh. So, while on one side we have a demonization of the enkite gods, on the other side we have a moment when these deities are deprieved of their

peculiarities that are attributed, from that moment on, to Yahweh. This generates all those errors in the Bible, and most important, the ambiguous behaviours of Yahweh in certain moments and his sudden changes of idea and intention. It is the case of the Deluge tale: God decides to kill all the men on Earth but he saves one man with his family because Noahs heart was good at the sight of God. But after the deluge had passed, in the moment when Noah produces the wine as a sacrifice and gets drunk, we can see something happening that must make us think! While Noah is sleeping undressed, his son Cam (remember the camites are followers of Enki) enters the room and sees his father undressed. When Noah knows it, he curses Cam in the name of Yahweh by saying: Cursed be Ham! The last of the slaves He must be for his brothers Then what: was God mistaken and Noah was not so good? Or was he mistaken because Noahs sons were not that good? This can only be explained if we take a look at the sumerian tale of the deluge, where Noah is Ziusudra (Utnapistim in akkadian). In the mesopotamic version we have 2 deities involved: Enlil as the deity who decides to erase the human race, and Enki who decides to save Ziusudra and his family. The act of attributing to Yahweh all the epitets, peculiarities and works of the preceeding gods, has also caused all the plurals in the Bible. We have alot of sumerian records, that tell the same tales told in the Bible, but they were written some 1000 to 2000 years before. One of the many examples is a tablet found in Ninive where we can read the story of the creation of the first man. It is during a council of the Anunna gods, that Enki tells his idea of making a new brand of being that can do the work of the gods in the Absu. Some god observes that: No one ever has been created anew, save from the Great Lord and Enki answers with a phrase arrived to us via the Bible: that, in short way, has

The being I am talking about already lives in the Abzu we only have to put our mark and our image upon him let us create a Lulu who take the burden of work on his shoulder. It is a paradox that, according to sumerian and akkadian tales, it was Enki that created the first man, and then Enlil

stole it and put it in the E.Din near the Euphrate. It is ironic like this act of creation was attributed to Yahweh, and the creator of man, Enki, was then called shaytan, adversary of Yahweh. Man is a creation of Satan.

Ninmah and Enki working to create Adapa

Ninmah holds Adapa in her hands after his birth. Notice the tree of life