‘Trickster god’ used fake news in Babylonian Noah story

Anonymous — Tue, 26 Nov 2019 00:17:54 +0000

Dr Martin Worthington’s new research analysing the word play in the story has uncovered the duplicitous language of a Babylonian god called Ea, who was motivated by self-interest.

Dr Worthington, a Fellow of St John’s College, ̽��ֱ�� of Cambridge, said: “Ea tricks humanity by spreading fake news. He tells the Babylonian Noah, known as Uta–napishti, to promise his people that food will rain from the sky if they help him build the ark. What the people don’t realise is that Ea’s nine-line message is a trick: it is a sequence of sounds that can be understood in radically different ways, like English ‘ice cream’ and ‘I scream’.

“While Ea’s message seems to promise a rain of food, its hidden meaning warns of the Flood. Once the ark is built, Uta–napishti and his family clamber aboard and survive with a menagerie of animals. Everyone else drowns. With this early episode, set in mythological time, the manipulation of information and language has begun. It may be the earliest ever example of fake news.”

̽��ֱ��Gilgamesh Flood story is known from clay tablets that date back around three thousand years.

Dr Worthington is an Assyriologist who specialises in Babylonian, Assyrian and Sumerian grammar, literature and medicine. In his new book launched today (November 26) titled Ea’s Duplicity in the Gilgamesh Flood story, he explores the tricks of ‘wily Ea’, who is also known as the ‘crafty god’ and the ‘trickster god’. This research focuses on nine lines in the 3000-year-old story which can be interpreted in contradictory ways.

Dr Worthington explains: “Ea’s lines are a verbal trick which can be understood in different ways which are phonetically identical. Besides the obvious positive reading promising food, I found multiple negative ones which warn of the impending catastrophe. Ea is clearly a master wordsmith who is able to compress multiple simultaneous meanings into one duplicitous utterance.”

̽��ֱ��Flood Tablet in the British Museum, which bears part of the Gilgamesh Flood story, is probably the world’s most famous clay tablet, and caused a global sensation when its significance was first discovered by Assyriologist George Smith in 1872.

Smith realised this tablet told the same story as Noah and the Ark in the Biblical book of Genesis. Although there were more gods involved than in Genesis, and the Babylonian hero had a different name, the two stories were recognisably the same, with animals taken aboard the ark before the flood and birds sent out at the end once the rain stopped.

Since Smith’s discovery many more clay tablets of the Babylonian flood story have come to light and academics are still analysing the meaning of stories in the ancient language that has not been spoken for 2000 years.

But why would a god lie in the Gilgamesh Flood story?

Dr Worthington explained: “Babylonian gods only survive because people feed them. If humanity had been wiped out, the gods would have starved. ̽��ֱ��god Ea manipulates language and misleads people into doing his will because it serves his self-interest. Modern parallels are legion!”

Ea’s Duplicity in the Gilgamesh Flood story, published by Routledge, will be launched tonight (November 26) in London.

An early example of fake news has been found in the 3000-year-old Babylonian story of Noah and the Ark, which is widely believed to have inspired the Biblical tale. Nine lines etched on ancient clay tablets that tell the Gilgamesh Flood story can now be understood in very different ways – according to a Cambridge academic.

Ea’s message seems to promise a rain of food, its hidden meaning warns of the Flood... It may be the earliest ever example of fake news

Martin Worthington

̽��ֱ��Trustees of the British Museum

̽��ֱ��Adda Seal featuring the god Ea second from the right

At dawn there will be cakes

Two of the nine lines from the flood story in Babylonian are:

ina šēr(-)kukkī

ina lilâti ušaznanakkunūši šamūt kibāti

̽��ֱ��positive sounding interpretation:

At dawn there will be kukku-cakes,

in the evening he will rain down upon you a shower of wheat.

A negative interpretation:

By means of incantations,

by means of wind-demons, he will rain down upon you rain as thick as (grains of) wheat.

Another negative interpretation:

At dawn, he will rain down upon you darkness,

(then) in (this) pre-nocturnal twilight he will rain down upon you rain as thick as (grains of) wheat.

̽��ֱ��text in this work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License. Images, including our videos, are Copyright © ̽��ֱ�� of Cambridge and licensors/contributors as identified. All rights reserved. We make our image and video content available in a number of ways – as here, on our main website under its Terms and conditions, and on a range of channels including social media that permit your use and sharing of our content under their respective Terms.

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Sixth formers see the future in ancient Egypt & Mesopotamia

ta385 — Fri, 27 May 2016 08:00:00 +0000

Fifty students from 24 schools from across the UK attended the inaugural, all-day conference at ̽��ֱ��British Museum in London.

̽��ֱ��students heard experts from the Museum as well as the Universities of Cambridge, Oxford, Liverpool, Cardiff, Swansea, UCL, Durham and SOAS. Participants also joined special tours of the Egyptian and Mesopotamian sections of ̽��ֱ��British Museum, led by specialists from the ̽��ֱ�� of Cambridge.

Egypt and Mesopotamia (modern Iraq, ancient Sumer, Assyria and Babylon) have produced some of the most fascinating discoveries about the ancient world. Today it is possible to learn the languages, study the artefacts, and reconstruct the most varied aspects of these ancient civilisations in astonishing detail.

Recent events, notably the desecration of monuments in the ancient city of Palmyra, in modern-day Syria, have underlined the relevance and fragility of this cultural heritage in the 21st century.

Martin Worthington, Lecturer in Assyriology at Cambridge, said: “These subjects are not offered at A-Level and few sixth formers are aware that they even exist as university subjects. We wanted to show them what makes studying Egypt and Mesopotamia so intellectually and culturally exciting, highlight the various degree courses which are available to them, and explain what admissions tutors are looking for.”

̽��ֱ��programme included talks about careers, information on admissions, and the opportunity to meet current students and academic staff from many of the institutions in the UK that teach these subjects.

Highlights of the day included Kate Spence, Senior Lecturer in Egyptian Archaeology at Cambridge, talking about ‘Egypt in Nubia: cultures in collision’; Richard Parkinson, Professor of Egyptology at Oxford, sharing his passion for reading ancient Egyptian texts; and Paul Nicholson, Professor in Archaeology at Cardiff exploring ‘ ̽��ֱ��Catacombs of Anubis at North Saqqara’.

Adam Agowun, 17, a student at Parmiter’s School in Hertfordshire said: "I loved seeing everything and hearing the various talks. It has reaffirmed everything that I've hoped for. I am going to study Egyptology."

Cambridge, which organised the event, is one of the few universities in the country to teach Egyptology and Assyriology. From October 2017, these subjects will be included in the ̽��ֱ��’s new Single Honours degree in Archaeology. Professor Cyprian Broodbank, Head of Cambridge’s Division of Archaeology, said “ ̽��ֱ��subject embraces a wide range of approaches spanning the sciences and humanities and it’s a superb medium for training the flexible, innovative minds that our society needs.”

After the event, 93 per cent of respondents said the day had made them more likely to study Egypt and Mesopotamia at university.

̽��ֱ�� ̽��ֱ��’s archaeologists recently teamed up with ̽��ֱ��British Museum to inspire sixth formers to consider studying Egyptology and Assyriology, subjects which very few have the opportunity to study at school.

We wanted to show what makes studying Egypt and Mesopotamia so intellectually and culturally exciting

Martin Worthington, Lecturer in Assyriology

Dr Martin Worthington reads a Neo-Assyrian royal inscription in the British Museum

̽��ֱ��text in this work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License. For image use please see separate credits above.

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̽��ֱ�� of Cambridge - Martin Worthington

‘Trickster god’ used fake news in Babylonian Noah story

Sixth formers see the future in ancient Egypt & Mesopotamia