October 18, 2025 • 63 mins
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
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Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
SPEAKER_01 (00:00):
In the last few weeks, we've been posting our
discussions between NathanielHeitmacher of Grail Sciences and
James Beckley of older stories.
But beyond the topics of thoseepisodes, we discussed a lot of
various things and had a lot offun doing it.
I thought that some of what wechatted about might be of
general interest, so I'vesmashed clips together.
I hope you enjoyed.
(00:20):
If you've liked these, make sureto subscribe to both of our
channels.
Link in the description.
We anticipate doing anotherround of these at some point in
the future.
So stay tuned and leave acomment about what you'd like to
see.
SPEAKER_03 (00:38):
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 aroundforever.
I think I've said this to youbefore, but like one of the
things is like Mother Nature,right?
We refer to Mother Nature as ain that way for what's going on.
Okay, so if you go back to theVenus figurines, right, those
(01:02):
those things are 30,000, 40,000years old, and they're kind of
these goddess, mother earthgoddess type figures, is what
our general understanding of itis 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 reallybring this up too much because
it kind of well is reallyannoying to them, is that they
(01:23):
found stuff that's so much olderthan that that they don't know
what to do with it.
So an example of this is thatthey found a Venus figurine in
Morocco that's 350,000 yearsold.
Okay.
Well, our species is only interms of our modern anatomical
(01:43):
form, let's say, if you gothrough the scientific aspect of
it, is 300,000 years oldmaximum.
So that means that if thisthing's dated correctly, that
it's 50,000 years past what ourspecies is in terms of our
modern anatomical form from thatperspective.
Now, to make matters even worse,is that they found one in Turkey
(02:06):
that is, if again, donecorrectly.
There's a couple of people thatare debating it or whatever.
I personally fall into the campthat it was based upon reading
the actual original documentsand all that from the study that
was done with it.
I fall into the camp that thisis legitimate, but you can make
the case for it that there'ssome stuff that makes it like
that.
I think it's mainly comes downto well, it's just too freaking
old, we can't believe it,basically, is why people have a
(02:29):
problem with it.
Regardless, is that it's 800,000years old, and it's also a Venus
figurine, and much in the sameway that you would uh you know
fit that same general trope forwhat's going on there in terms
of the that would mean that thenotion of the Earth being looked
at as a goddess-like figure insome capacity or another, is now
(02:51):
800,000 years old, and there isno debate about whether this can
be interspecies or not, fromhuman to humanoid from humanoid
to another humanoid, becauseit's 800,000 years old, and how
the hell did that happen?
And then a few years later, theywent and found another one in
the same region in Turkey or alittle below it, I forget
exactly where, maybe in Syria orsomething like that, that is two
(03:14):
million years old.
If again done correctly, and itcompletely has been brushed
aside by the archaeologistsbecause it doesn't fit what they
want to look at, and it's goingso far outside of what their
like their paradigm is that theycan't accept it.
Now, regardless, let's pretendthat it isn't that it is true
(03:35):
for just the sake of argumentfor a moment, and I'm not saying
that it is.
That last one is a little bitmore of a controversial one, is
why the 800,000 one, believe itor not, is actually the least
controversial out of the threethat I brought up, even though
it's kind of like the middle onein terms of the age.
So that means there's a kernelof a story of the notion of a
(03:58):
mother earth goddess figure thatwe've had that somehow has gone
from species to species, passeddown in that in terms of an idea
to our modern era of mothernature for two million years.
That is absurd in terms of astory element, it's not a full
story, but it has kernels of astory in it for that length of
(04:22):
time for what's going on.
I don't know if you looked intothe fairyman at all in terms of
his origins.
SPEAKER_02 (04:29):
Oh, he's pretty old.
SPEAKER_03 (04:30):
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 goesback 70,000 years, and then when
and then you get into the theearth diver.
(04:51):
I don't know if you're familiarwith that motif or not.
SPEAKER_01 (04:53):
Not sure I know that one.
SPEAKER_03 (04:56):
That one's 140,000 years old.
It's the oldest known creationmyth that there is.
Basically, what it is is thatyou have some sort of sometimes
it's a humanoid-like figure, butusually it's like a bird of some
sort that goes down and deepgoes into the waters and then
goes and picks up the earth frombeneath it and putting it on top
(05:18):
and building from it and blahblah blah type deal with it.
I'm way, way oversimplifying it,but just to get the general
point across for what's going onthere.
That's a minimum of 140,000years old.
And so, you know, it's like someof these things, it's like
they're so old, we have no ideawhere they came from or what
their origins are.
(05:39):
Although we're starting to piecethat back together now with new
techniques, especially with likemigration patterns through
following genetics and that kindof 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 thatthey're using are not based upon
the genetic thing, it's basedupon myth.
(06:02):
So we we've sure we figured outreal quickly that myth doesn't
change too too often, right?
It stays stable for hundreds ofyears, if not thousands of
years, at least in its core, nottalking about like the outside
layers of it, and it's usuallysome sort of major event that
(06:22):
has to come and make it happenthat huge change occurs to it.
Usually an invasion by anothergroup or some sort of
cataclysmic event that occurs orwhatever that happens like that.
But we can trace those typicallyin history, and so by using that
same general idea of genetics,it doesn't change all that
often, it stays stagnant for themost part, and then a mutation
(06:46):
shows up on occasion because ofsomething that or another, we
can use those same type oftechniques on the mythological
side of these stories and beable to show where they branched
out from and showcased from witha certain level of probability.
And when you get to aprobability of 90-some odd
percent and above, then youpretty much have the stuff for
(07:06):
what's going on there, and youcan take that from all the
different stories that aremapped out throughout the world.
So let's say you want to look atthe dragon slaying motif and
whatnot, you would take it fromall the stories ever that have
that that are going on with itthat are we would we would call
mythology or legend and thatkind of stuff.
Obviously, we're not going to belooking at like say JK rolling
stuff or smog or whatever,because that's that's just not
(07:27):
what we're talking about here.
So we go and do that, we plot iton the points of on the maps for
all where all these differentmotifs show up, and then you can
start building your databasefrom there to showcase where
this is and looking at the ageof the stories and where they
came from and looking at themigration routes, etc.
And in the case of the dragonslaying motif, they were able to
figure out that it came fromSouth Africa, meaning the
(07:49):
country of South Africa, aminimum of 70,000 years ago.
And of course, it changed overtime period and whatnot, you
know, for what it is.
And at that point, it wasn't adragon that was being done with
it, it was a serpent instead.
But obviously, they're basicallythe same thing in terms of how
they play out for afterthousands upon thousands of
(08:10):
years for what it is, and thenblah, blah, blah.
That's how we're able to dothat.
It's so fascinating that we'vebeen able to take another
technique from another field andapply it to this field and have
it actually give legitimate databased upon it.
So I don't know.
I I love I geek out on thiscrap.
So this isn't out yet, but it issomething I'm gonna be talking
(08:36):
about at some point for what itis.
And it's very clear that thereare two Arthurs.
All right, now hear me out whenI'm saying that.
There is the historically basedone, meaning that the potential
for that, and then there's thelegendary mythological one,
let's say, right?
Okay, yeah.
In the medieval text, this isthe medieval is the important
(08:59):
part here, not necessarily theolder ones that are more
pagan-oriented and that kind ofstuff, like the Welsh triads or
whatever, the Magma Agion, thatkind of thing.
There seems to be a hugedistinction every time that they
use Arthur in a particular way,at least for some of the major
texts that are going on there.
(09:19):
I'm not saying every text, thisis not true of every text, but
it is true of a lot of the textto how they use it.
I forget the exact like Latinphrase that they used for it and
whatnot, but they have aparticular one where it's very
clear that they are notreferring to a historical
personage.
(09:41):
Every time they use thisparticular phrase that's inside
of it, they are definitelyreferring to the the
constellation aspect, the bearuh that he represents and
whatnot.
And so it is very, it's not it'svery clear that they use it
slightly differently, and theyhave different terminologies for
(10:02):
it that are explicitly there forit.
So there's one that couldpotentially lead to okay, this
is the non-or at least what theybelieved at the time period to
be the non-mythological size,the non-whatever stellar cult
aspect, versus this isdefinitely 100% stuff that has
the sacred truths in it, but maynot actually be reality, so to
(10:24):
speak, right?
So that is that's somethingthat's very interesting to me
that I want to deep dive to seeif I can't dissect more and
being like, okay, this iseverything that I know for
certain in these texts, thatlike, okay, this is all 100%
mythology.
We know it's mythology.
They're not even trying topretend that it's not mythology
based upon this particularlittle phrase that goes on with
(10:46):
it there.
And then this is what's leftover.
Now, does this help us in anyway, 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 (11:05):
Oh, yeah.
No, that sounds really neat.
SPEAKER_03 (11:08):
But here's another component to this.
I have looked into this, andthere's something else that's
very, very interesting forwhat's going on with it.
I've been looking for since I'vestarted this, and I don't say I
have the answer, I'm notpretending that I have the
answer for, but I've beenlooking into who the potential
candidates for the historicalArthur could be, whether we can
even find a historical Arthur,blah, blah, blah, for what it
(11:31):
is.
So that's part of my this ispart of my reasoning for why
doing that with it.
One of the things that I havefound that's very interesting
for a potential element here ofwhy we can't find the historical
Arthur for what's going on, isbecause the historical Arthur is
(11:54):
not in any way, shape, or formassociated with the British
Isles, but is instead isassociated with another element
that pops up inside of themedieval literature for what's
going on there, and is in theMiddle East, and that he's part
(12:20):
of that particular component forwhat's happening.
Now, this may sound completelyludicrous at first, but we have
the case of Joseph of Arimatheabeing brought into the stories
that are going on there forwhat's happening.
And if you start looking intothe history of the potential for
(12:42):
the historic historical Christfigure, again, I'm not talking
about the I don't want to saymythological because it's not
accurate for what it is, butsome of the more parts that
would be deemed allegorical,let's say, from a scientific
mind and that kind of stuff.
(13:04):
That if you start really lookinginto that, I decided to play to
do something different for howthat analysis was.
Everybody that I know that havetried to pinpoint the like the
historical Jesus, let's say,they've all failed.
But they've all failed for acouple reasons, in my opinion.
(13:24):
The major one is that if youread the stories, like I did,
meaning the the biblical storiesand that kind of stuff that are
inside of it that have refer tohim, I don't see any evidence
whatsoever that it has to,here's the keyword has to, be
tied to the timeline that isofficially given for it, meaning
mainly the 30s and the firstcentury Judea.
(13:48):
I see, if I remove that bias, ifI remove that bias that's
already put there, I don't seeany evidence that says it has to
be.
I see lots of evidence showingthat it could be, could be in
the 60s instead.
30 years removed.
So if you're looking for acharacter and it actually is 30
(14:12):
years removed, makes it a lotharder to find that particular
character, especially if Jesusonly lived to be in his 30s and
died, meaning he wouldn't bewhere I'm coming from from
what's going on there for that.
Now, I'm not saying that that hedid 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 pointfor what's going on there.
What I did is that all right,let's look at this from another
(14:35):
standpoint.
If I'm trying to track downHitler, right, it's very hard to
track down him.
There is so much misinformationthat's going on about that.
And if for whatever reason thatthere's this misinformation
that's out there because of theRoman Empire not wanting to have
certain things that are going onwith it, because of the Jewish
problem that they had during thefirst century that they didn't
(14:57):
like, causing all theseproblems, and we know that
certain things were rewrittenafter that fact that came in
centuries afterwards from theCouncil of Nicaea onward, etc.,
for expunging certain things andall that other stuff, for
choosing of which books weregoing to be part of the Bible
and which ones weren't, etc.,for the gospels and whatnot.
Okay, we have all this stuffthat can get in the way of it.
(15:18):
But what if I don't choose acontroversial character like
Jesus?
If he either existed or didn't,I choose someone around him
instead.
And I go after like his innercircle, let's say, one of the
disciples.
They're gonna be potentially alot easier to place inside of
(15:39):
the historical side of thingswith it, because they're not
thinking about eradicating thatparticular person from history
or making it so that way theychange elements of it to where
you can't find for what's goingon with it.
It's just gonna be a person,they're not even gonna be
considered semi-divine ordivine, depending upon how you
want to interpret it.
(16:00):
It's just a person that'sfollowing him, therefore,
they're not gonna have all ofthese allegorical, all these
potential legendary aspectssurrounding them.
Not saying there won't be any,they'll just be less.
So they'll be easier topotentially pinpoint.
And if you can pinpoint thatparticular person in time and
whatnot, then you could startfiguring out the other people
(16:22):
that are directly around thatpoint for what it is.
And so I if you I've did some ofthis stuff for what's going on
there, and I am utterlyconvinced that I have figured
out one of the people that arein that historical time frame
for what it is, and it issomeone who, if my analysis is
(16:48):
correct, would also lead to therest of it for what's going on,
there meaning the rest of thecharacters of the of the Bible
and the historical side of it.
And strangely enough, it is alsothis is where it gets really
weird.
It's the person who wrote themall up and whatnot, in terms of
the actual history of thingswith it.
(17:09):
In other words, the person thatI located who is also inside of
the biblical tradition thatplays that particular character,
which we'll come to in a moment,is also the one who we know
historically existed, and is theone that wrote a lot of the
Jewish history for that timeperiod, Josephus Flavius.
(17:33):
I see.
Josephus Flavius, in myanalysis, is Saint Paul slash
Saul in the Bible.
So this makes it so that way ifwe can locate Josephus Flavius,
and we know that he's one of thedisciples that's inside of it,
this can lead to other potentialthings that are there for what's
(17:56):
going on.
Interestingly enough, we knowthat Josephus Flavius ended up
going to the British Isles atone point in his travels.
And so when Joseph of Arimatheabrings the grail there for what
(18:17):
it is, it's not now it's likeokay, there is a direct
potential connection here forwhat's going on.
Not an indirect, a directpotential potential connection.
And it's interesting because Idid this all before I started my
Arthurian study and whatnot.
And now it's like, wait asecond, if you look at who the
(18:40):
people who wrote a lot of thesestories are that down with it
and whatnot, or werecommissioned to write these
stories, they're all Templarsfor the medieval era, for the
medieval era.
Because if they're all Templars,for the ones that are known,
obviously there's some that areanonymous we don't know, and
(19:01):
that kind of stuff, whatever.
But for the known authors, ifthey're all Templar knights, or
they're all associated with theTemplar Order, like the
Cistercians, which are theTemplars, is another variant for
what's going on of them becauseof Bernard the Clervaux setting
up the Cistercian order as wellas the Templar Order, then we
(19:23):
also know for a fact that theywent to Jerusalem and that they
were in the Solomon's temple andwhatnot, specifically the
stables that were there.
So, and we know they diddigging, archaeological digging
for something, whatever thatwas.
Some people claim it's the Ark,some people claim it's other
(19:45):
stuff related to the LastSupper, like maybe the Grail or
some other stuff with it.
I personally don't know whatthey were there for.
I do know that they did, atleast according to their own
records, find ancient scrollsand tablets that were there of
things with like copper copperwriting on some of the stuff or
what was going on with it, thatthey were dealing with it, that
made it so that way theytranslated certain things when
(20:08):
they came back to Europe thatwere going on there with it.
And what if what if you have astory that you want to tell that
contradicts what the church isputting forth, but you can't go
directly against the church atthis time period, but you want
(20:32):
to tell this particular storythat's happening there with it,
and then you graft it on to anera where we have almost no
historical record of it.
See, one of the things that popsup that's the same between King
Arthur, let's say, and JesusChrist as an example, is that
they have a tax dispute withRome.
(20:55):
Okay, but if you go with thetraditional timeline for Arthur,
there is no Rome, it's alreadyfallen, it makes no sense for
what's going on there.
How can you possibly have that?
That's going on that that isabsurd.
Roman Empire fell a hundredyears plus before him and
(21:19):
whatnot.
And if you want to go with thesein the 500s, then it still fell
before his time period andwhatnot.
And he can't go and invade anddo all this other stuff that
they talk about with them andsome of these stories.
But if you graft if again, ifyou're grafting it onto
something else and you're makingit that way happen for it, then
you potentially find some ofthese other elements that are
(21:41):
going on there.
And so now I'm looking into thispotential threat.
Is it true?
Who the hell knows?
Maybe it's complete nonsense andjust a fun intellectual exercise
that's been done there with it,and it's leading into weird crap
that has nothing to do withreality whatsoever.
I don't know yet because Ihaven't done it yet.
It could be like, no, this iscomplete bullshit.
I was completely wrong, this hasnothing to do with it
(22:01):
whatsoever, but there could bepotentially a hidden history
that was imported into thesestories.
That if you remove all of themythological or romantic parts
of the Arthurian tradition, thatsuddenly you get this leftover
hidden history that if you knowwhat you're looking for, because
(22:24):
you're the one that wrote itoriginally, and you want to make
it so that way the story can besaved for generations to come,
that you go and do it in aparticular way for what's
happening.
And interestingly enough, if yougo and you start building the
family tree of Jesus' family inthe biblical tradition, and you
(22:47):
start comparing it to theArthurian one, at least some of
them, because there's variantsof it, of course, they start
lining up in certain regards.
It's very weird.
From the limited data that Ihave currently, I have to say
this is at least worthexploring.
(23:12):
When I was going back anddigging up some of my notes that
are old, and when I say oldnotes and whatnot, I mean
they're at least five to sixyears old, something like that,
for when I was studying thisstuff.
One of the things that that Ihad come across was the guest
inana part.
And and then it's like, okay, sowhat what it you have Inana
(23:37):
already in the name for what'sgoing on there.
So that part is already gives usa clue as to who her real
identity is.
And then you have the guestpart.
Maybe I'm mispronouncing that,but G-E-S-T.
SPEAKER_02 (23:51):
Yeah, it is the I'm pretty sure it's the I should
actually check that.
I'm pretty sure it's the S withthe little squiggle over it.
So it's uh S-H.
SPEAKER_03 (24:02):
Oh, so Gesh.
Gesh.
SPEAKER_02 (24:04):
Yeah, Gesh Inana.
SPEAKER_03 (24:06):
Gesh.
Okay.
Uh, if you're correct, thenyeah, that makes sense to me
based upon my memory of that andhow the nomenclature works
specifically for theirparticular stuff with it.
Regardless, it means when youtranslate it, ear.
So you have ear and then inan,the ear inanna.
And so if you know some of thesymbolic meaning of things
(24:29):
inside of the Sumerian stuffwith it, it means wise inanna.
Ear is associated with wisdomfor what it is.
Think of it like you speak onceand listen twice as much thing
as we have our adage here andwhatnot.
And so it is literally tellingyou that this is another variant
of inanna in terms of the storythat's going on here for that
(24:54):
particular part of it.
And then you also have anotheraspect in the story that's
brought up for it, at least inone of the variants.
And I forget who it is off thetop of my head that's that's
with this.
I could figure it out.
But basically, if you take allthree, it's now just the tripart
goddess theme that's beingplayed there with Inanna being
(25:18):
part of it.
In other words, you have themaiden, the bride, and the the
old hag slash crone tropes thatare being played out with all
three of them that are going onthere.
So Inanna's easy because Inannais the is the bride, hence why
the wedding and all the otherstuff that goes along with that.
We we know what her role is.
It's the other two that you haveto figure out a little bit more
(25:41):
because wise Inana might think,oh, well, that one is, you know,
the old crow and the hag, butno, it's the maiden and whatnot,
and you can pull this togetherfrom looking at the other parts
of their mythologies and otherthings, and you look into it for
those parts for what's going onthere.
So when it's talking about this,even though they seem like
(26:06):
separate characters inside ofthe story for what's going on
with all three of them, they'reactually just three aspects of
Inanna, or you could even saysome other goddess that Inanna
is the replacement for for allthree, or the goddess figure in
general, for what's going onthere, which I've obviously we
didn't really bring this up lasttime and whatnot.
(26:28):
I just found it interesting whenI was kind of going back
through, and like something wasbothering me when I saw Guest
Inana, and you were talkingabout her name again.
I'm like, there's somethingthere that I remember, but I
can't quite remember what it is.
It's important about this.
SPEAKER_02 (26:40):
So I'll tell you something that you're gonna
like.
SPEAKER_03 (26:45):
So the uh this gets into the deep uniform commentary
tradition, which I have actuallyI've actually made fun of it a
bit on the explaining what thatis briefly for the listeners who
won't know what it is.
SPEAKER_02 (27:01):
Absolutely.
So you know how in like medievaltraditions there was a long,
there's a long medievaltradition of commentaries where
they'll have a text, maybe it'sthe Bible or maybe it's
Aristotle or something, right?
And people will write notes allover the text, and that is like
(27:26):
its own scholarly people writingcommentaries on whatever, but
there was a cuneiform scholarlycommentary tradition in ancient
Mesopotamia and in thecommentaries on especially the
epic of Gilgamesh, but also thetwo I think the two biggest ones
(27:50):
that we have commentaries on arethe Enuma Elish, which is
Marduk's sort of creation mythand Gilgamesh.
Because Gilgamesh does seem tohave been the single most
popular story in the ancientworld or in ancient Mesopotamia.
But then from that we can seehow they were thinking about
(28:21):
words, I guess.
Because you're over here, you'repulling apart the word
gestionana.
The cuneiform languages areextremely complicated.
SPEAKER_03 (28:32):
And I fully admit I'm taking it from other
scholars on this front, which isnot something I know jack about
in terms of actually beingreading into it and deep diving
it.
SPEAKER_02 (28:43):
So well, that's how you're thinking of it exactly
how they would think of it.
Cudiform is a very complicatedlanguage, it's sort of like how
Japanese took the Chinesecharacters, right?
SPEAKER_03 (28:55):
Right.
They still kept their owncharacters and invented their
own characters too, yeah.
SPEAKER_02 (29:01):
And so if in if you are a Babylonian scribe during
the classical Babylonian period,you know Sumerian, which is a
cuneform language, you knowAkkadian, and you quite possibly
also know one or two otherSemitic cuneiform languages.
SPEAKER_03 (29:21):
Dialect or languages or whatever, yeah.
SPEAKER_02 (29:23):
And they all use the same character set.
So there's oh, don't quote me onthis, but I think something like
a thousand Akkadian cuneiformcharacters.
Like seven or eight hundredSumerian cuneform characters,
and then the Assyrian version ofAkkadian also has its own set of
(29:50):
like four or five hundred.
And then, of course, you combinethem, and the characters could
also just be sound to like.
You can have a can you can haveoh I'm blanking on all my I'm
not a hu I'm not like I can'tsit down and just read Akkadian.
(30:10):
I'm not gonna pretend I can dothat, but I've looked at this
commentary tradition.
But each every word is made upof usually a couple of
characters, and it's also madeup of a couple of syllables.
So Geshton Anna would have youknow her cuneiform symbols and
also this the syllables gesh tinan na.
(30:34):
And then you can you could readit gesh tina na, you could read
it geshina.
SPEAKER_03 (30:41):
Right, you can break it up into various different
ways.
SPEAKER_02 (30:45):
And each of those, what they would do is they would
say, Oh, this here's thecuneiform letters, and each of
them has a meaning, cuneiformcharacters, and each of them has
a meaning in Sumerian.
So this contributes to her name.
And so you don't get Inannadirectly if you go straight to
(31:07):
her cuneiform letters, you getsomething like great vine of
heaven, sure, or possibly thelovely, the lovely fruit of
heaven, something like that.
SPEAKER_03 (31:18):
Which all fits perfectly with her character.
SPEAKER_02 (31:20):
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 onceshe's you know properly deified
and such, she gets the nin,which is the the queen character
(31:41):
stuck in her name.
You get you get lovely in there,sweet.
Uh the Anna at the end has beenrelated to Ama, which is mother.
Um you were talking about themaiden mother crone.
(32:02):
I personally at least would seeactually Ishtar in the maiden
role with Geshtan Anna as theloving sister, as the mother
role, because it's a very whenshe goes to Ishtar and weeps
over Dumazid, it's a very, it'sa very mothering sort of thing.
(32:24):
And the we don't actually have aton of information about the
weeping rituals.
SPEAKER_03 (32:31):
We do know they existed and and whatnot, and we
know that they survived inpockets for a very, very long
time and whatnot.
I mean, there was even a handfulof places from someone, I forget
who it is the top of my head,scholarly doing stuff proving
that it was still in existenceeven up until the 18th century.
So, I mean, obviously that wasvery small, isolated stuff, but
(32:53):
the point is it survivedforever, even past you know the
rise of various differentAbrahamic traditions in that
area.
SPEAKER_02 (33:00):
So Yeah, and the the prophet Ezekiel in the Bible
complains about it, uh complainsabout Israelite women
undertaking the weeping ritual.
SPEAKER_03 (33:11):
I think it's even he even mentions, or at least even
mentioned in one of the one ofthe ones, Tammuz, which is
another version, another name ofDamuzid, directly inside of it.
So there's no contestion,there's no like debate about who
it is that they're talking abouthere.
SPEAKER_02 (33:28):
Yeah, and that seems to have been the two
interpretations I've seen ofthat is women weeping over the
idea of a lost crush, like liketheir first love or whatever,
and that is a very Ishtar andmaiden keyed sort of way to do
(33:51):
it.
The other thing I've seen keyedthere is mothers weeping over
their children, lost children.
Because of course this there'salso an aspect of this where
when Dumasid dies or Dumasidgets carried down to the
underworld, there are magicrituals that that in in the
(34:17):
Akkadian tradition at least thatsort of link that to the death
of children.
And you want and you you call onIshtar specifically.
Hey Ishtar, don't uh protect myhouse from having any children
die.
Remember Dumazid, how he wastaken from you, and you get that
(34:41):
sort of connection there.
SPEAKER_03 (34:43):
Um, I don't actually hence also why it for my
interpretation of it, that she'sthe motherly figure, the one
that wants to protect thechildren.
I'm not saying yours isincorrect, I'm just saying, like
the I'm making my argument forwhy on that side for what it is,
because you brought up yours forthe sisterly figure part and
playing that kind of wanting toprotect Dimizid as well for
(35:07):
what's going on on that front.
So just that way the audiencehas both sides.
Regardless, I still view it asthe tripartite aspect.
SPEAKER_02 (35:15):
Yeah, I'm not sure.
I'm not sure where theGestianana as um prone would be.
SPEAKER_03 (35:22):
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 ofme.
It was oh, there we go.
The name of the othercounterpart that's inside of it
for the story.
Go ahead, we'll keep talkingabout your part while you look
for it.
SPEAKER_02 (35:36):
Yes, I'm I'm not totally certain.
I'm just that's that's sort ofthe start and end of it.
I don't know.
There's a there's gestion annamay have had duties in the
underworld while she was downthere.
I know there's at least some artthat people interpret as
(35:57):
gestionana like keeping thenumbers, like maybe counting how
many people are in theunderworld, or or possibly even
distributing the provisions forthe un like the rations that the
dead people get, which is kindof a funny image, but it would
(36:18):
make sense.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Yeah, we I don't think we I'mnot sure that we know a ton
about her down in theunderworld.
She had her, she had probablyher temple, which I remember
her, I don't remember what thename is in Akkadian, but the
(36:42):
name's meaning was somethinglike the temple established by
her brother.
SPEAKER_00 (36:49):
Yeah.
SPEAKER_02 (36:51):
And so it would be, and so it's like the occultic
worship of Geshnana then wouldhave been sort of notionally
sponsored by DumaZid, which thisgirl just can't really get a
break.
She can't have any sort ofindependent existence all by
(37:15):
herself.
Her entire existence seems to bepoor, poor Dumazid.
And I've always thought he hadit coming uh when he got dragged
down to the underworld.
But uh that's just that's justhow it goes sometimes.
SPEAKER_03 (37:34):
I'm not being able to find it, so it should be here
though.
It's the name of the the otherfigure that that's there.
It's like Billily or somethinglike that.
Illali.
Uh the number another persondown in the underworld, or it
has to do with another anothervariant of it that I was trying
(37:56):
to shade show that gives thethree parts that's that's there.
SPEAKER_02 (38:00):
Oh, another version of Gestan Anna.
SPEAKER_03 (38:03):
Well, yeah, Gestunana, Inana, and then the
third one, yeah.
That gives that that she's thecrone, but that particular one
is the crone.
SPEAKER_02 (38:12):
Okay, so oh, so Gestunana herself is she would
be in like a trinity of offeminine gods.
SPEAKER_03 (38:20):
Yeah, that's what I'm saying.
All three of these charactersand are archetypes that go
together to make it so that wayyou can have the feminine figure
at the top, uh, making it sothat way that would be the case
for it, and they're all part ofthe same story in some capacity
or another.
They all play small roles,Ishtar slash Inana being the
biggest one, so it's obviouslyabout her descent into the
(38:40):
underworld for what we weretalking about last time.
But there's the you should havethe other two components that
are there, Gestinana beinganother part, and then Bella Lee
or something like that being theother uh component of it.
Bella Illy, that's what it is.
Yes, thank you.
Yeah, I couldn't remember it offthe top of my head.
She, meaning Bella Li,represents the crone, is what it
(39:04):
is.
SPEAKER_02 (39:04):
It doesn't make sense because Bella Illy isn't
actually a name, it's actually atitle.
It's um right literally is queenof the gods, and different
different characters getsubsumed into Bela Illy at
different times in history.
SPEAKER_03 (39:24):
Yes, yes.
So in this instance, that titleas applied to Inanna slash Gest
Inana, making it so that wayit's showing the crone archetype
there for the tripartite goddessuh notion, where then the other
two we could make arguments forwhich one is which, as we you
(39:44):
and I have already kind oftalked a little bit about for
what's going on, but either way,maiden, bride slash mother,
crone slash old hag type conceptfor what's going on to fulfill
the three original tripartgoddess conception for what's
going on there.
SPEAKER_02 (40:02):
So yeah, and that's a great, and and I I gotta tell
you, that's sort of very similarto how Babylonian academics
would look at it.
They would pull out all three ofthese names and just tear them
apart into like we'd call itetymologies, but it's not really
(40:22):
etymology in a literal sense.
It's more of I guess a cultetymology, you could call it.
But then they'd also syncretizethese, especially because Bela
Ili and Ishtar were bothextremely syncretic figures,
they would absorb a lot ofdifferent aspects into both of
(40:44):
themselves, and they would bevery happy to absorb Geshtan
Anna as well into whateverritual context it might be
appropriate.
So yeah, no, you're thinkinglike an ancient Babylonian
scribe is what I'm what I'msaying here.
SPEAKER_03 (41:06):
Well, at least for the Babylonian time period, my
analysis would at least beaccurate.
I'm not saying that's how theSumerians necessarily viewed it,
but at least in part of thetimeline, I am not completely
kilter here.
SPEAKER_02 (41:22):
And the only reason we can't say the Sumerians
weren't doing it is just becausewe don't have nearly as much
record from them.
But the truth is that we thateverybody, everybody in the
ancient Middle East claimed thatall of their scholastic
traditions went back to thepre-literate period.
(41:43):
And so we would have gone backto the Sumerians, and so we keep
them.
SPEAKER_03 (42:07):
Even the ancient Egyptians said the same thing
for that until thoth came andgave them writing.
SPEAKER_02 (42:15):
Yeah, so but I mean, we can't say that uh the
Sumerians wouldn't have viewedit the same way, though, of
course, they wouldn't have hadthe same richness because they
would have just been dealing inthe Sumerian language.
SPEAKER_03 (42:28):
Yeah, well, the Sumerians, if you can correct me
if I'm wrong, they they believedin a place that they they kind
of viewed as like their versionof Atlantis, meaning a higher
level society than what theywere, that they got stuff from,
and they called it Arata.
SPEAKER_02 (42:44):
Oh no, I hate to I hate to push back on that, but
no, you can.
SPEAKER_03 (42:52):
That's fine.
This this is an area that I'mnot well versed in.
It's just a little bit that I'veread 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'sdefinitive truth.
SPEAKER_02 (43:02):
So the neat thing about Arita, the neat thing
about Arata is you only reallysee it described in one place,
which is the battle, the the warbetween Enmerkar and Arata.
Enrakar being possibly Dumasid'snotional grandfather, at least
in one Sumerian king's list.
SPEAKER_03 (43:25):
Um, or at least he was two kings before Dumasid,
and it doesn't have it doesn'thave you know necessarily who
was the father of who, butcorrect, because the they they
believed in a type of uhelection process for some of the
stuff too that they had forwhat's going on.
So it could have just been theking that was uh elected through
(43:47):
whatever their councils wereduring that time period and
whatnot.
SPEAKER_02 (43:50):
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 alineage, who knows?
But anyway, this is as far as wecan tell, the oldest written
story, Enmerkar and Arata.
(44:10):
And we don't know where Aratais, we know it's in the
mountains, and it could beUrartu, which is sort of the
Armenian highlands.
Yep, it could be Afghanistanbecause of mineral, because they
seem to have been digging up themineral wealth.
And where did all the tin comefrom?
(44:31):
It came from Arata.
SPEAKER_03 (44:33):
I've also seen an argument for it being possibly
parts of Ukraine on where theCaucasus are on the southern
part for where it is, where itwould meet up with our Armenia
on the other side of themountains.
SPEAKER_02 (44:47):
So yeah, it's definitely in the mountains,
somewhere, anywhere from theCaucasus Mountains to
Afghanistan.
When I was doing my episode onit, I said, you know, maybe
Western Iran.
But the more I've looked intoit, the fact is that Enricar
represents the Uruk period.
And the Uruk period was possiblythe first settled colonialism in
(45:15):
all of human history.
Before that, when cities hadbeen founded, they'd been
founded by nomads.
But the city of Uruk and theSumerians in general around
them, we can't we don't know ifUruk was in charge of this
process or if all the Sumeriancities were doing it, or just
Uruk, but certainly Uruk takescredit for it.
(45:36):
But anyway, these Sumeriansettlers, about 4,000 uh I would
if I had to guess, if I had toguess, is that Uruk took credit
for it and that there was moreplaces involved.
SPEAKER_03 (45:48):
I'm not saying all of them, but they just like,
hey, this is this is this ourthing.
SPEAKER_02 (45:52):
Yeah, totally.
But like around 4,000 BC, youget expeditions.
That's when the city of Asher,where the Assyrian Empire was,
they founded that city, theyfounded cities up in the
Armenian highlands, they foundedcities in Iran.
(46:13):
Most of the Iranian cities,interestingly, didn't survive
very long.
But and then there's a theorythat they settled in
Afghanistan, and that's how thetin started to arrive from
Afghanistan.
I can see that, yeah, I can seethat being positive.
Yeah, related to the tin trade.
(46:34):
Anyway, Arto was somewhere, butwe don't know where.
The Sumerians certainly knewwhere it was.
SPEAKER_03 (46:41):
It was probably so obvious to them they didn't even
have to write it down.
SPEAKER_02 (46:44):
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 threateningthe king of Arita, he says, Hey,
do you remember how way backwhen all the languages were one,
(47:07):
and then we built a mountain upto the highest heavens, and it
angered the gods, and theyshattered it and confused all
the languages?
SPEAKER_03 (47:16):
I wonder where this story came from, where that idea
came from.
SPEAKER_02 (47:23):
There's an the thing is the one text that we have of
that is badly damaged.
And so there's a scholarlyargument as to whether N.
Makar is saying, Hey, do youremember in the past when all
the languages were one and webuilt a mountain up to heaven?
Or he could be saying, Hey, inthe future, after I conquer you
(47:48):
and everybody else, we're goingto build a mountain up to the
heavens and all the languageswill become as one.
SPEAKER_03 (47:54):
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'tmean it's true, but I definitely
prefer the in the past notion.
I think that's more fascinatingpersonally, but that doesn't
mean it's true.
SPEAKER_02 (48:10):
So yeah, I also I also quite like the in the past,
but the idea that he conquered awhole bunch of places and then
built his ziggurat as if he werethe biblical Nimrod, him or his
direct successors of thebiblical Nimrod.
Either way, you've got the coreof, of course, the Tower of
(48:34):
Babel story.
And once you've got the core ofa Tower of Babel story, there's
all kinds of other thingsattached to that.
And that's probably where peopleget the idea that Enmerkar's
kingdom was some great,wonderful place because
certainly they believed that thefirst city, which was probably
(48:58):
Eridu, but the first city thatthe gods made, everyone was very
wise and everything went verywell, and there were lots of
good things there, and theneverything just went downhill
after that.
They also believed nothing hadever changed, but they also
believed history went downhillbecause, of course, it's a
(49:18):
different people believingslightly different things, and
both both of those are common.
And the idea that everything isgetting worse is just a very
common one throughout all of it.
SPEAKER_03 (49:28):
I you could also make it subways the same in a
way for what's going on there.
Unlike, say, our modernsensibilities, or we mainly, at
least in the Western world, viewthings as linear, you know, for
what it is.
A lot of the ancient worldviewed things as cyclical, going
up and down in various differentcycles.
Nothing really truly changed,it's just this this you're at
this part of the cycle and thatpart of the cycle.
(49:50):
So when you say, Well, nothingreally changed or just started
going downward, it still wouldbe the same thing in their minds
for potentially, potentially.
SPEAKER_02 (49:59):
So, yeah, no, for a very long time, until it's hard
to say when exactly it changed.
Certainly by the end of theMesopotamian period, things had
changed, but in the early times,they really seemed to believe
that uh nothing has everchanged.
(50:20):
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 theystart to make war against their
(50:42):
neighboring cities by dammingthe flow of the Euphrates River,
and they shut it off, theyredirect it so that other cities
can't get water.
Larsa though, their city, isvery far downstream and stops
getting water.
And they were apparently quitesurprised by this because they
(51:04):
they really seem to believe thateven if that nothing changes to
such a degree that even if wedam the river, water will still
flow through our city.
And then you have the theGungun's son gets overthrown,
and the the the and yeah, it'sits own drama there.
(51:26):
But they that's the extent towhich they really do seem to
believe that nothing will everchange.
SPEAKER_03 (51:32):
There are they were very much fatalistic then in
that regard.
Yeah.
SPEAKER_02 (51:35):
Yeah, there are kings that talk about like we
can't whatever we do, if weconquer this city, this city and
its people will still exist,even if we conquer and enslave
them, because this city and itspeople will always exist.
And then one or two hundredyears later, that city's gone
(51:57):
because they conquered andenslaved 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 integrateit into our into our little
kingdom because they'reindependent, they'll always be
independent, and that seems tobe like how they made war.
(52:19):
It's just uh just a wild thing.
It's great.
SPEAKER_03 (52:25):
I'd forgotten that that was the case with it till
you mentioned that story aboutthe that with the because it's
been a long time since I'vestudied the Sumerian traditions
and the and the Babyloniantraditions.
Yeah.
I remember I'm that's all comingback to me now about how bizarre
that particular notion was.
SPEAKER_02 (52:43):
Yeah, I mean, you see it in like religion and
rituals, they're like, oh, thisritual for this god has gone on
since the gods gave it to usback then.
SPEAKER_03 (52:54):
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 ofcultures have sacred truths.
And that's in fact, that's whatmakes them their culture, their
religions or their myth, what wecall mythologies today, because
(53:14):
they were just originallyreligions for those people, but
now they're considered mythsbecause nobody really takes them
seriously anymore.
And there was usually in almostall of them some sort of
continuity loss, even if peopleare maybe like neopaganism or
neopagans re-bringing backcertain things for what it is,
it's not in the original formfrom what it was from a thousand
(53:35):
years ago, two thousand yearsago, five thousand years ago,
whatever the case may be forthat.
So the sacred truth notion, youknow, I don't have a problem
with, of course, it's going tobe forever.
That's the that's just what itis for anything that's the
sacred side of things.
But on the everyday thing, I hadforgotten about that.
They still they took it to thatextreme in that level until you
(53:58):
brought up the that particularstory with the damming of the
river.
SPEAKER_02 (54:03):
But that gets us back to Gilgamesh.
So Gilgamesh he goes on his bigadventure and he tries to get
immortality because he wants tolive forever, and he fails a
couple of times.
And at the end of the story, hecomes home to the city of Uruk,
(54:25):
and it makes a big deal aboutthe scale and permanence of the
walls of Uruk.
And as he and it's it doesn'tsay it explicitly, but as he's
coming into the city of Uruk tosit on his throne and just be
sad because he can't beimmortal.
(54:47):
The sort of the narrator istelling us about the walls of
Uruk, and he's suggesting thatas if they're going to be there
forever, they will live forever.
SPEAKER_03 (55:00):
They've been here forever, they've always been
here, and they will they theythey're here now and they will
always be here.
SPEAKER_02 (55:06):
Yeah, they are tiny.
So it's that and and we talkabout Gilgamesh in the sense
that oh, of course, he couldn'tachieve immortality because I
think fundamentally we're allBuddhists, everything goes away
(55:26):
in our in our view of theuniverse, everything fades, even
the universe will eventuallyfails in and of itself, yeah.
At some point, but for them,they were like, hey, Gilgamesh
was wrong because humans can'thave immortality, but structures
(55:48):
and institutions and things thatthe gods put in the world can
have immortality, humanity canhave immortality, the city of
Uruk can have immortality, thecity being defined very much by
the structure of the walls, butalso that throne that he was
sitting on.
(56:09):
The divine kingship notion,yeah, no matter how far into the
future they got, there was abelief, even after the city of
Uruk was mostly abandoned, therewas this idea, even in much
later periods, that the city ofUruk is still there, that the
that the throne, that somebodyGilgamesh isn't sitting on it
(56:31):
anymore, but there's somebodyelse is, yeah.
SPEAKER_03 (56:34):
Yeah, I think I think that's important because
it's also kind of like if you'relooking at it from another
thing, with them, this is morefrom my audience at the moment,
just to kind of give them aparallel, is why I'm bringing
this up.
It's like King Arthur, he's theeternal king.
It doesn't matter whether he'sdead and he's an Avalon at the
moment or whatever, he'll riseback up when the time's
necessary for that to defend hispeople and that kind of stuff.
(56:57):
So a little different, it's adifferent variant in the sense
that like obviously it's notGilgamesh that'll come back for
that for the Sumerians, but it'sthe same concept of this will
always be here, and there'll besomebody there to come and and
and bring it back, and that kindof stuff with the yeah, that's a
very, very good point.
SPEAKER_00 (57:14):
Yeah.
SPEAKER_03 (57:16):
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 goand get more immortality is
because he's not fully human,he's semi-divine for what it is.
And in certain texts, he's evendescribed as two-thirds divine,
whatever the hell that means,instead of half divine.
(57:38):
Not sure what exactly that meansor why that's the case for.
I don't know if you have ananswer to that.
SPEAKER_02 (57:43):
I just know that he's described just because they
talk about they talk aboutMarduk having sort of three
elements to his divinity (57:53):
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 thatexplicitly in the text, but
(58:15):
divinely nursed.
So he his his he drank the milkof a of a goddess as he was
growing up, and then hisone-third of the mother more
likely than not as a mortal.
Yeah, but it's his role as amortal king, is he or as a human
(58:36):
king, that's his one-third ofhumanity.
Because I was also very struckby the idea of being two-thirds
divine, but I do think it isbirth and nursing are birth,
nursing, and fate, I guess youcould call it, are the three
things that define you as aperson for Gilgamesh and for
(59:01):
that that culture.
SPEAKER_03 (59:02):
That particular notion that we're talking about
here.
Yeah, I got you.
SPEAKER_02 (59:05):
And you could internalize that into nature,
nurture, and your personalaccomplishments.
Um, and it becomes a lot moregeneralizable.
SPEAKER_03 (59:15):
So the nature part would be the parentage, uh, the
nurturing part would be the factthat you're talking about the
upbringing, in this case,specifically, you know, making
it so that way he is getting hismilk from a particular deity and
whatnot, and being raised inthat particular regard for it.
But then his accomplishments, inthis instance, what he does in
(59:36):
the real world, he's unable toachieve immortality.
His fate, he's not fated to beso on that final level.
SPEAKER_02 (59:47):
That's an interesting take.
SPEAKER_03 (59:48):
I like that.
I like that a lot.
SPEAKER_02 (59:51):
Yeah.
No, it's real good.
No, Gilgamesh is just a gem thatkeeps on giving.
I really don't understand why wedon't have.
have a Gilgamesh like HBO showor something.
I don't know if they do a goodjob, but there's just so much
there that you you really if Iwas rich I'd start making
(01:00:14):
ancient Mesopotamia movies likewith Hollywood or something.
You got a long way to go to berich.
I'll get to this someday maybe.
SPEAKER_03 (01:00:31):
Now I didn't know this till after I did my
research and to Josephus Flaviusspecifically being potentially
Saul slash Paul there was thisperson I forget when it was like
the the the late 1900s I thinkit excuse me late 1800s early
1900s I think it was where hedid not explicitly state as his
(01:00:56):
conclusion that Joseph thatJosephus Flavius was Paul slash
Saul in the Bible but what hedid at the very end or near the
very end of his study for whatwas going on there is he put a
list of comparisons between themand how much they were basically
the same and whatnot and notedon his particular chart I can't
(01:01:22):
forget his name off the top ofmy head I have it written down
my notes but on his charts thathe was doing there with it that
literally every single one ofthe differences that could that
was there between them the onlysource for that difference was
Josephus Flavius himself.
So if you are the author ofthese things with it and you are
(01:01:47):
rewriting the history to acertain extent to what's going
on to hide yourself from whatyour role was inside of some of
these things with it because youdecide to side with Rome, which
is afterwards instead of doingthat so that way people of later
generations don't know that youbetrayed your own people for
what's going on there and youjust go and he's the only source
(01:02:12):
that's left you're the onlysource that's left for that that
makes us that way those slightthings that are different from
it well and you have the listwhere almost all the other
stuff's the same it's a verycompelling argument that this is
the case for and again thisperson did it independently of
me for what was going on thatmade it for me that at least on
(01:02:35):
the case of Josephus Flaviusthat at least I know I'm not
completely fucking insane thatit is a highly likely scenario
that he was a biblical figureand that he was Paul slash Saul
in the biblical tradition.
And that I know that I'm atleast on that front maybe has
(01:02:56):
nothing to do with the Arthuriantradition but on that front I
can use that as a basis toexplore further about the my
technique for potentiallyplacing Jesus in the timeline
for what it is doesn't provethat I have anything it just
makes this that way it's likeokay there's somebody else out
(01:03:18):
there who went and found thesame stuff and came to the
basically the same conclusionthat I did and therefore since I
didn't even know this personexisted till after I did that
research and a friend of minepointed it out to me who is a
Jewish scholar on it and whatnotthat I was like oh well okay
(01:03:39):
then thank you
In the last few weeks, we've been posting our
discussions between NathanielHeitmacher of Grail Sciences and
James Beckley of older stories.
But beyond the topics of thoseepisodes, we discussed a lot of
various things and had a lot offun doing it.
I thought that some of what wechatted about might be of
general interest, so I'vesmashed clips together.
I hope you enjoyed.
(00:20):
If you've liked these, make sureto subscribe to both of our
channels.
Link in the description.
We anticipate doing anotherround of these at some point in
the future.
So stay tuned and leave acomment about what you'd like to
see.
SPEAKER_03 (00:38):
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 aroundforever.
I think I've said this to youbefore, but like one of the
things is like Mother Nature,right?
We refer to Mother Nature as ain that way for what's going on.
Okay, so if you go back to theVenus figurines, right, those
(01:02):
those things are 30,000, 40,000years old, and they're kind of
these goddess, mother earthgoddess type figures, is what
our general understanding of itis 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 reallybring this up too much because
it kind of well is reallyannoying to them, is that they
(01:23):
found stuff that's so much olderthan that that they don't know
what to do with it.
So an example of this is thatthey found a Venus figurine in
Morocco that's 350,000 yearsold.
Okay.
Well, our species is only interms of our modern anatomical
(01:43):
form, let's say, if you gothrough the scientific aspect of
it, is 300,000 years oldmaximum.
So that means that if thisthing's dated correctly, that
it's 50,000 years past what ourspecies is in terms of our
modern anatomical form from thatperspective.
Now, to make matters even worse,is that they found one in Turkey
(02:06):
that is, if again, donecorrectly.
There's a couple of people thatare debating it or whatever.
I personally fall into the campthat it was based upon reading
the actual original documentsand all that from the study that
was done with it.
I fall into the camp that thisis legitimate, but you can make
the case for it that there'ssome stuff that makes it like
that.
I think it's mainly comes downto well, it's just too freaking
old, we can't believe it,basically, is why people have a
(02:29):
problem with it.
Regardless, is that it's 800,000years old, and it's also a Venus
figurine, and much in the sameway that you would uh you know
fit that same general trope forwhat's going on there in terms
of the that would mean that thenotion of the Earth being looked
at as a goddess-like figure insome capacity or another, is now
(02:51):
800,000 years old, and there isno debate about whether this can
be interspecies or not, fromhuman to humanoid from humanoid
to another humanoid, becauseit's 800,000 years old, and how
the hell did that happen?
And then a few years later, theywent and found another one in
the same region in Turkey or alittle below it, I forget
exactly where, maybe in Syria orsomething like that, that is two
(03:14):
million years old.
If again done correctly, and itcompletely has been brushed
aside by the archaeologistsbecause it doesn't fit what they
want to look at, and it's goingso far outside of what their
like their paradigm is that theycan't accept it.
Now, regardless, let's pretendthat it isn't that it is true
(03:35):
for just the sake of argumentfor a moment, and I'm not saying
that it is.
That last one is a little bitmore of a controversial one, is
why the 800,000 one, believe itor not, is actually the least
controversial out of the threethat I brought up, even though
it's kind of like the middle onein terms of the age.
So that means there's a kernelof a story of the notion of a
(03:58):
mother earth goddess figure thatwe've had that somehow has gone
from species to species, passeddown in that in terms of an idea
to our modern era of mothernature for two million years.
That is absurd in terms of astory element, it's not a full
story, but it has kernels of astory in it for that length of
(04:22):
time for what's going on.
I don't know if you looked intothe fairyman at all in terms of
his origins.
SPEAKER_02 (04:29):
Oh, he's pretty old.
SPEAKER_03 (04:30):
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 goesback 70,000 years, and then when
and then you get into the theearth diver.
(04:51):
I don't know if you're familiarwith that motif or not.
SPEAKER_01 (04:53):
Not sure I know that one.
SPEAKER_03 (04:56):
That one's 140,000 years old.
It's the oldest known creationmyth that there is.
Basically, what it is is thatyou have some sort of sometimes
it's a humanoid-like figure, butusually it's like a bird of some
sort that goes down and deepgoes into the waters and then
goes and picks up the earth frombeneath it and putting it on top
(05:18):
and building from it and blahblah blah type deal with it.
I'm way, way oversimplifying it,but just to get the general
point across for what's going onthere.
That's a minimum of 140,000years old.
And so, you know, it's like someof these things, it's like
they're so old, we have no ideawhere they came from or what
their origins are.
(05:39):
Although we're starting to piecethat back together now with new
techniques, especially with likemigration patterns through
following genetics and that kindof 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 thatthey're using are not based upon
the genetic thing, it's basedupon myth.
(06:02):
So we we've sure we figured outreal quickly that myth doesn't
change too too often, right?
It stays stable for hundreds ofyears, if not thousands of
years, at least in its core, nottalking about like the outside
layers of it, and it's usuallysome sort of major event that
(06:22):
has to come and make it happenthat huge change occurs to it.
Usually an invasion by anothergroup or some sort of
cataclysmic event that occurs orwhatever that happens like that.
But we can trace those typicallyin history, and so by using that
same general idea of genetics,it doesn't change all that
often, it stays stagnant for themost part, and then a mutation
(06:46):
shows up on occasion because ofsomething that or another, we
can use those same type oftechniques on the mythological
side of these stories and beable to show where they branched
out from and showcased from witha certain level of probability.
And when you get to aprobability of 90-some odd
percent and above, then youpretty much have the stuff for
(07:06):
what's going on there, and youcan take that from all the
different stories that aremapped out throughout the world.
So let's say you want to look atthe dragon slaying motif and
whatnot, you would take it fromall the stories ever that have
that that are going on with itthat are we would we would call
mythology or legend and thatkind of stuff.
Obviously, we're not going to belooking at like say JK rolling
stuff or smog or whatever,because that's that's just not
(07:27):
what we're talking about here.
So we go and do that, we plot iton the points of on the maps for
all where all these differentmotifs show up, and then you can
start building your databasefrom there to showcase where
this is and looking at the ageof the stories and where they
came from and looking at themigration routes, etc.
And in the case of the dragonslaying motif, they were able to
figure out that it came fromSouth Africa, meaning the
(07:49):
country of South Africa, aminimum of 70,000 years ago.
And of course, it changed overtime period and whatnot, you
know, for what it is.
And at that point, it wasn't adragon that was being done with
it, it was a serpent instead.
But obviously, they're basicallythe same thing in terms of how
they play out for afterthousands upon thousands of
(08:10):
years for what it is, and thenblah, blah, blah.
That's how we're able to dothat.
It's so fascinating that we'vebeen able to take another
technique from another field andapply it to this field and have
it actually give legitimate databased upon it.
So I don't know.
I I love I geek out on thiscrap.
So this isn't out yet, but it issomething I'm gonna be talking
(08:36):
about at some point for what itis.
And it's very clear that thereare two Arthurs.
All right, now hear me out whenI'm saying that.
There is the historically basedone, meaning that the potential
for that, and then there's thelegendary mythological one,
let's say, right?
Okay, yeah.
In the medieval text, this isthe medieval is the important
(08:59):
part here, not necessarily theolder ones that are more
pagan-oriented and that kind ofstuff, like the Welsh triads or
whatever, the Magma Agion, thatkind of thing.
There seems to be a hugedistinction every time that they
use Arthur in a particular way,at least for some of the major
texts that are going on there.
(09:19):
I'm not saying every text, thisis not true of every text, but
it is true of a lot of the textto how they use it.
I forget the exact like Latinphrase that they used for it and
whatnot, but they have aparticular one where it's very
clear that they are notreferring to a historical
personage.
(09:41):
Every time they use thisparticular phrase that's inside
of it, they are definitelyreferring to the the
constellation aspect, the bearuh that he represents and
whatnot.
And so it is very, it's not it'svery clear that they use it
slightly differently, and theyhave different terminologies for
(10:02):
it that are explicitly there forit.
So there's one that couldpotentially lead to okay, this
is the non-or at least what theybelieved at the time period to
be the non-mythological size,the non-whatever stellar cult
aspect, versus this isdefinitely 100% stuff that has
the sacred truths in it, but maynot actually be reality, so to
(10:24):
speak, right?
So that is that's somethingthat's very interesting to me
that I want to deep dive to seeif I can't dissect more and
being like, okay, this iseverything that I know for
certain in these texts, thatlike, okay, this is all 100%
mythology.
We know it's mythology.
They're not even trying topretend that it's not mythology
based upon this particularlittle phrase that goes on with
(10:46):
it there.
And then this is what's leftover.
Now, does this help us in anyway, 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 (11:05):
Oh, yeah.
No, that sounds really neat.
SPEAKER_03 (11:08):
But here's another component to this.
I have looked into this, andthere's something else that's
very, very interesting forwhat's going on with it.
I've been looking for since I'vestarted this, and I don't say I
have the answer, I'm notpretending that I have the
answer for, but I've beenlooking into who the potential
candidates for the historicalArthur could be, whether we can
even find a historical Arthur,blah, blah, blah, for what it
(11:31):
is.
So that's part of my this ispart of my reasoning for why
doing that with it.
One of the things that I havefound that's very interesting
for a potential element here ofwhy we can't find the historical
Arthur for what's going on, isbecause the historical Arthur is
(11:54):
not in any way, shape, or formassociated with the British
Isles, but is instead isassociated with another element
that pops up inside of themedieval literature for what's
going on there, and is in theMiddle East, and that he's part
(12:20):
of that particular component forwhat's happening.
Now, this may sound completelyludicrous at first, but we have
the case of Joseph of Arimatheabeing brought into the stories
that are going on there forwhat's happening.
And if you start looking intothe history of the potential for
(12:42):
the historic historical Christfigure, again, I'm not talking
about the I don't want to saymythological because it's not
accurate for what it is, butsome of the more parts that
would be deemed allegorical,let's say, from a scientific
mind and that kind of stuff.
(13:04):
That if you start really lookinginto that, I decided to play to
do something different for howthat analysis was.
Everybody that I know that havetried to pinpoint the like the
historical Jesus, let's say,they've all failed.
But they've all failed for acouple reasons, in my opinion.
(13:24):
The major one is that if youread the stories, like I did,
meaning the the biblical storiesand that kind of stuff that are
inside of it that have refer tohim, I don't see any evidence
whatsoever that it has to,here's the keyword has to, be
tied to the timeline that isofficially given for it, meaning
mainly the 30s and the firstcentury Judea.
(13:48):
I see, if I remove that bias, ifI remove that bias that's
already put there, I don't seeany evidence that says it has to
be.
I see lots of evidence showingthat it could be, could be in
the 60s instead.
30 years removed.
So if you're looking for acharacter and it actually is 30
(14:12):
years removed, makes it a lotharder to find that particular
character, especially if Jesusonly lived to be in his 30s and
died, meaning he wouldn't bewhere I'm coming from from
what's going on there for that.
Now, I'm not saying that that hedid 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 pointfor what's going on there.
What I did is that all right,let's look at this from another
(14:35):
standpoint.
If I'm trying to track downHitler, right, it's very hard to
track down him.
There is so much misinformationthat's going on about that.
And if for whatever reason thatthere's this misinformation
that's out there because of theRoman Empire not wanting to have
certain things that are going onwith it, because of the Jewish
problem that they had during thefirst century that they didn't
(14:57):
like, causing all theseproblems, and we know that
certain things were rewrittenafter that fact that came in
centuries afterwards from theCouncil of Nicaea onward, etc.,
for expunging certain things andall that other stuff, for
choosing of which books weregoing to be part of the Bible
and which ones weren't, etc.,for the gospels and whatnot.
Okay, we have all this stuffthat can get in the way of it.
(15:18):
But what if I don't choose acontroversial character like
Jesus?
If he either existed or didn't,I choose someone around him
instead.
And I go after like his innercircle, let's say, one of the
disciples.
They're gonna be potentially alot easier to place inside of
(15:39):
the historical side of thingswith it, because they're not
thinking about eradicating thatparticular person from history
or making it so that way theychange elements of it to where
you can't find for what's goingon with it.
It's just gonna be a person,they're not even gonna be
considered semi-divine ordivine, depending upon how you
want to interpret it.
(16:00):
It's just a person that'sfollowing him, therefore,
they're not gonna have all ofthese allegorical, all these
potential legendary aspectssurrounding them.
Not saying there won't be any,they'll just be less.
So they'll be easier topotentially pinpoint.
And if you can pinpoint thatparticular person in time and
whatnot, then you could startfiguring out the other people
(16:22):
that are directly around thatpoint for what it is.
And so I if you I've did some ofthis stuff for what's going on
there, and I am utterlyconvinced that I have figured
out one of the people that arein that historical time frame
for what it is, and it issomeone who, if my analysis is
(16:48):
correct, would also lead to therest of it for what's going on,
there meaning the rest of thecharacters of the of the Bible
and the historical side of it.
And strangely enough, it is alsothis is where it gets really
weird.
It's the person who wrote themall up and whatnot, in terms of
the actual history of thingswith it.
(17:09):
In other words, the person thatI located who is also inside of
the biblical tradition thatplays that particular character,
which we'll come to in a moment,is also the one who we know
historically existed, and is theone that wrote a lot of the
Jewish history for that timeperiod, Josephus Flavius.
(17:33):
I see.
Josephus Flavius, in myanalysis, is Saint Paul slash
Saul in the Bible.
So this makes it so that way ifwe can locate Josephus Flavius,
and we know that he's one of thedisciples that's inside of it,
this can lead to other potentialthings that are there for what's
(17:56):
going on.
Interestingly enough, we knowthat Josephus Flavius ended up
going to the British Isles atone point in his travels.
And so when Joseph of Arimatheabrings the grail there for what
(18:17):
it is, it's not now it's likeokay, there is a direct
potential connection here forwhat's going on.
Not an indirect, a directpotential potential connection.
And it's interesting because Idid this all before I started my
Arthurian study and whatnot.
And now it's like, wait asecond, if you look at who the
(18:40):
people who wrote a lot of thesestories are that down with it
and whatnot, or werecommissioned to write these
stories, they're all Templarsfor the medieval era, for the
medieval era.
Because if they're all Templars,for the ones that are known,
obviously there's some that areanonymous we don't know, and
(19:01):
that kind of stuff, whatever.
But for the known authors, ifthey're all Templar knights, or
they're all associated with theTemplar Order, like the
Cistercians, which are theTemplars, is another variant for
what's going on of them becauseof Bernard the Clervaux setting
up the Cistercian order as wellas the Templar Order, then we
(19:23):
also know for a fact that theywent to Jerusalem and that they
were in the Solomon's temple andwhatnot, specifically the
stables that were there.
So, and we know they diddigging, archaeological digging
for something, whatever thatwas.
Some people claim it's the Ark,some people claim it's other
(19:45):
stuff related to the LastSupper, like maybe the Grail or
some other stuff with it.
I personally don't know whatthey were there for.
I do know that they did, atleast according to their own
records, find ancient scrollsand tablets that were there of
things with like copper copperwriting on some of the stuff or
what was going on with it, thatthey were dealing with it, that
made it so that way theytranslated certain things when
(20:08):
they came back to Europe thatwere going on there with it.
And what if what if you have astory that you want to tell that
contradicts what the church isputting forth, but you can't go
directly against the church atthis time period, but you want
(20:32):
to tell this particular storythat's happening there with it,
and then you graft it on to anera where we have almost no
historical record of it.
See, one of the things that popsup that's the same between King
Arthur, let's say, and JesusChrist as an example, is that
they have a tax dispute withRome.
(20:55):
Okay, but if you go with thetraditional timeline for Arthur,
there is no Rome, it's alreadyfallen, it makes no sense for
what's going on there.
How can you possibly have that?
That's going on that that isabsurd.
Roman Empire fell a hundredyears plus before him and
(21:19):
whatnot.
And if you want to go with thesein the 500s, then it still fell
before his time period andwhatnot.
And he can't go and invade anddo all this other stuff that
they talk about with them andsome of these stories.
But if you graft if again, ifyou're grafting it onto
something else and you're makingit that way happen for it, then
you potentially find some ofthese other elements that are
(21:41):
going on there.
And so now I'm looking into thispotential threat.
Is it true?
Who the hell knows?
Maybe it's complete nonsense andjust a fun intellectual exercise
that's been done there with it,and it's leading into weird crap
that has nothing to do withreality whatsoever.
I don't know yet because Ihaven't done it yet.
It could be like, no, this iscomplete bullshit.
I was completely wrong, this hasnothing to do with it
(22:01):
whatsoever, but there could bepotentially a hidden history
that was imported into thesestories.
That if you remove all of themythological or romantic parts
of the Arthurian tradition, thatsuddenly you get this leftover
hidden history that if you knowwhat you're looking for, because
(22:24):
you're the one that wrote itoriginally, and you want to make
it so that way the story can besaved for generations to come,
that you go and do it in aparticular way for what's
happening.
And interestingly enough, if yougo and you start building the
family tree of Jesus' family inthe biblical tradition, and you
(22:47):
start comparing it to theArthurian one, at least some of
them, because there's variantsof it, of course, they start
lining up in certain regards.
It's very weird.
From the limited data that Ihave currently, I have to say
this is at least worthexploring.
(23:12):
When I was going back anddigging up some of my notes that
are old, and when I say oldnotes and whatnot, I mean
they're at least five to sixyears old, something like that,
for when I was studying thisstuff.
One of the things that that Ihad come across was the guest
inana part.
And and then it's like, okay, sowhat what it you have Inana
(23:37):
already in the name for what'sgoing on there.
So that part is already gives usa clue as to who her real
identity is.
And then you have the guestpart.
Maybe I'm mispronouncing that,but G-E-S-T.
SPEAKER_02 (23:51):
Yeah, it is the I'm pretty sure it's the I should
actually check that.
I'm pretty sure it's the S withthe little squiggle over it.
So it's uh S-H.
SPEAKER_03 (24:02):
Oh, so Gesh.
Gesh.
SPEAKER_02 (24:04):
Yeah, Gesh Inana.
SPEAKER_03 (24:06):
Gesh.
Okay.
Uh, if you're correct, thenyeah, that makes sense to me
based upon my memory of that andhow the nomenclature works
specifically for theirparticular stuff with it.
Regardless, it means when youtranslate it, ear.
So you have ear and then inan,the ear inanna.
And so if you know some of thesymbolic meaning of things
(24:29):
inside of the Sumerian stuffwith it, it means wise inanna.
Ear is associated with wisdomfor what it is.
Think of it like you speak onceand listen twice as much thing
as we have our adage here andwhatnot.
And so it is literally tellingyou that this is another variant
of inanna in terms of the storythat's going on here for that
(24:54):
particular part of it.
And then you also have anotheraspect in the story that's
brought up for it, at least inone of the variants.
And I forget who it is off thetop of my head that's that's
with this.
I could figure it out.
But basically, if you take allthree, it's now just the tripart
goddess theme that's beingplayed there with Inanna being
(25:18):
part of it.
In other words, you have themaiden, the bride, and the the
old hag slash crone tropes thatare being played out with all
three of them that are going onthere.
So Inanna's easy because Inannais the is the bride, hence why
the wedding and all the otherstuff that goes along with that.
We we know what her role is.
It's the other two that you haveto figure out a little bit more
(25:41):
because wise Inana might think,oh, well, that one is, you know,
the old crow and the hag, butno, it's the maiden and whatnot,
and you can pull this togetherfrom looking at the other parts
of their mythologies and otherthings, and you look into it for
those parts for what's going onthere.
So when it's talking about this,even though they seem like
(26:06):
separate characters inside ofthe story for what's going on
with all three of them, they'reactually just three aspects of
Inanna, or you could even saysome other goddess that Inanna
is the replacement for for allthree, or the goddess figure in
general, for what's going onthere, which I've obviously we
didn't really bring this up lasttime and whatnot.
(26:28):
I just found it interesting whenI was kind of going back
through, and like something wasbothering me when I saw Guest
Inana, and you were talkingabout her name again.
I'm like, there's somethingthere that I remember, but I
can't quite remember what it is.
It's important about this.
SPEAKER_02 (26:40):
So I'll tell you something that you're gonna
like.
SPEAKER_03 (26:45):
So the uh this gets into the deep uniform commentary
tradition, which I have actuallyI've actually made fun of it a
bit on the explaining what thatis briefly for the listeners who
won't know what it is.
SPEAKER_02 (27:01):
Absolutely.
So you know how in like medievaltraditions there was a long,
there's a long medievaltradition of commentaries where
they'll have a text, maybe it'sthe Bible or maybe it's
Aristotle or something, right?
And people will write notes allover the text, and that is like
(27:26):
its own scholarly people writingcommentaries on whatever, but
there was a cuneiform scholarlycommentary tradition in ancient
Mesopotamia and in thecommentaries on especially the
epic of Gilgamesh, but also thetwo I think the two biggest ones
(27:50):
that we have commentaries on arethe Enuma Elish, which is
Marduk's sort of creation mythand Gilgamesh.
Because Gilgamesh does seem tohave been the single most
popular story in the ancientworld or in ancient Mesopotamia.
But then from that we can seehow they were thinking about
(28:21):
words, I guess.
Because you're over here, you'repulling apart the word
gestionana.
The cuneiform languages areextremely complicated.
SPEAKER_03 (28:32):
And I fully admit I'm taking it from other
scholars on this front, which isnot something I know jack about
in terms of actually beingreading into it and deep diving
it.
SPEAKER_02 (28:43):
So well, that's how you're thinking of it exactly
how they would think of it.
Cudiform is a very complicatedlanguage, it's sort of like how
Japanese took the Chinesecharacters, right?
SPEAKER_03 (28:55):
Right.
They still kept their owncharacters and invented their
own characters too, yeah.
SPEAKER_02 (29:01):
And so if in if you are a Babylonian scribe during
the classical Babylonian period,you know Sumerian, which is a
cuneform language, you knowAkkadian, and you quite possibly
also know one or two otherSemitic cuneiform languages.
SPEAKER_03 (29:21):
Dialect or languages or whatever, yeah.
SPEAKER_02 (29:23):
And they all use the same character set.
So there's oh, don't quote me onthis, but I think something like
a thousand Akkadian cuneiformcharacters.
Like seven or eight hundredSumerian cuneform characters,
and then the Assyrian version ofAkkadian also has its own set of
(29:50):
like four or five hundred.
And then, of course, you combinethem, and the characters could
also just be sound to like.
You can have a can you can haveoh I'm blanking on all my I'm
not a hu I'm not like I can'tsit down and just read Akkadian.
(30:10):
I'm not gonna pretend I can dothat, but I've looked at this
commentary tradition.
But each every word is made upof usually a couple of
characters, and it's also madeup of a couple of syllables.
So Geshton Anna would have youknow her cuneiform symbols and
also this the syllables gesh tinan na.
(30:34):
And then you can you could readit gesh tina na, you could read
it geshina.
SPEAKER_03 (30:41):
Right, you can break it up into various different
ways.
SPEAKER_02 (30:45):
And each of those, what they would do is they would
say, Oh, this here's thecuneiform letters, and each of
them has a meaning, cuneiformcharacters, and each of them has
a meaning in Sumerian.
So this contributes to her name.
And so you don't get Inannadirectly if you go straight to
(31:07):
her cuneiform letters, you getsomething like great vine of
heaven, sure, or possibly thelovely, the lovely fruit of
heaven, something like that.
SPEAKER_03 (31:18):
Which all fits perfectly with her character.
SPEAKER_02 (31:20):
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 onceshe's you know properly deified
and such, she gets the nin,which is the the queen character
(31:41):
stuck in her name.
You get you get lovely in there,sweet.
Uh the Anna at the end has beenrelated to Ama, which is mother.
Um you were talking about themaiden mother crone.
(32:02):
I personally at least would seeactually Ishtar in the maiden
role with Geshtan Anna as theloving sister, as the mother
role, because it's a very whenshe goes to Ishtar and weeps
over Dumazid, it's a very, it'sa very mothering sort of thing.
(32:24):
And the we don't actually have aton of information about the
weeping rituals.
SPEAKER_03 (32:31):
We do know they existed and and whatnot, and we
know that they survived inpockets for a very, very long
time and whatnot.
I mean, there was even a handfulof places from someone, I forget
who it is the top of my head,scholarly doing stuff proving
that it was still in existenceeven up until the 18th century.
So, I mean, obviously that wasvery small, isolated stuff, but
(32:53):
the point is it survivedforever, even past you know the
rise of various differentAbrahamic traditions in that
area.
SPEAKER_02 (33:00):
So Yeah, and the the prophet Ezekiel in the Bible
complains about it, uh complainsabout Israelite women
undertaking the weeping ritual.
SPEAKER_03 (33:11):
I think it's even he even mentions, or at least even
mentioned in one of the one ofthe ones, Tammuz, which is
another version, another name ofDamuzid, directly inside of it.
So there's no contestion,there's no like debate about who
it is that they're talking abouthere.
SPEAKER_02 (33:28):
Yeah, and that seems to have been the two
interpretations I've seen ofthat is women weeping over the
idea of a lost crush, like liketheir first love or whatever,
and that is a very Ishtar andmaiden keyed sort of way to do
(33:51):
it.
The other thing I've seen keyedthere is mothers weeping over
their children, lost children.
Because of course this there'salso an aspect of this where
when Dumasid dies or Dumasidgets carried down to the
underworld, there are magicrituals that that in in the
(34:17):
Akkadian tradition at least thatsort of link that to the death
of children.
And you want and you you call onIshtar specifically.
Hey Ishtar, don't uh protect myhouse from having any children
die.
Remember Dumazid, how he wastaken from you, and you get that
(34:41):
sort of connection there.
SPEAKER_03 (34:43):
Um, I don't actually hence also why it for my
interpretation of it, that she'sthe motherly figure, the one
that wants to protect thechildren.
I'm not saying yours isincorrect, I'm just saying, like
the I'm making my argument forwhy on that side for what it is,
because you brought up yours forthe sisterly figure part and
playing that kind of wanting toprotect Dimizid as well for
(35:07):
what's going on on that front.
So just that way the audiencehas both sides.
Regardless, I still view it asthe tripartite aspect.
SPEAKER_02 (35:15):
Yeah, I'm not sure.
I'm not sure where theGestianana as um prone would be.
SPEAKER_03 (35:22):
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 ofme.
It was oh, there we go.
The name of the othercounterpart that's inside of it
for the story.
Go ahead, we'll keep talkingabout your part while you look
for it.
SPEAKER_02 (35:36):
Yes, I'm I'm not totally certain.
I'm just that's that's sort ofthe start and end of it.
I don't know.
There's a there's gestion annamay have had duties in the
underworld while she was downthere.
I know there's at least some artthat people interpret as
(35:57):
gestionana like keeping thenumbers, like maybe counting how
many people are in theunderworld, or or possibly even
distributing the provisions forthe un like the rations that the
dead people get, which is kindof a funny image, but it would
(36:18):
make sense.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Yeah, we I don't think we I'mnot sure that we know a ton
about her down in theunderworld.
She had her, she had probablyher temple, which I remember
her, I don't remember what thename is in Akkadian, but the
(36:42):
name's meaning was somethinglike the temple established by
her brother.
SPEAKER_00 (36:49):
Yeah.
SPEAKER_02 (36:51):
And so it would be, and so it's like the occultic
worship of Geshnana then wouldhave been sort of notionally
sponsored by DumaZid, which thisgirl just can't really get a
break.
She can't have any sort ofindependent existence all by
(37:15):
herself.
Her entire existence seems to bepoor, poor Dumazid.
And I've always thought he hadit coming uh when he got dragged
down to the underworld.
But uh that's just that's justhow it goes sometimes.
SPEAKER_03 (37:34):
I'm not being able to find it, so it should be here
though.
It's the name of the the otherfigure that that's there.
It's like Billily or somethinglike that.
Illali.
Uh the number another persondown in the underworld, or it
has to do with another anothervariant of it that I was trying
(37:56):
to shade show that gives thethree parts that's that's there.
SPEAKER_02 (38:00):
Oh, another version of Gestan Anna.
SPEAKER_03 (38:03):
Well, yeah, Gestunana, Inana, and then the
third one, yeah.
That gives that that she's thecrone, but that particular one
is the crone.
SPEAKER_02 (38:12):
Okay, so oh, so Gestunana herself is she would
be in like a trinity of offeminine gods.
SPEAKER_03 (38:20):
Yeah, that's what I'm saying.
All three of these charactersand are archetypes that go
together to make it so that wayyou can have the feminine figure
at the top, uh, making it sothat way that would be the case
for it, and they're all part ofthe same story in some capacity
or another.
They all play small roles,Ishtar slash Inana being the
biggest one, so it's obviouslyabout her descent into the
(38:40):
underworld for what we weretalking about last time.
But there's the you should havethe other two components that
are there, Gestinana beinganother part, and then Bella Lee
or something like that being theother uh component of it.
Bella Illy, that's what it is.
Yes, thank you.
Yeah, I couldn't remember it offthe top of my head.
She, meaning Bella Li,represents the crone, is what it
(39:04):
is.
SPEAKER_02 (39:04):
It doesn't make sense because Bella Illy isn't
actually a name, it's actually atitle.
It's um right literally is queenof the gods, and different
different characters getsubsumed into Bela Illy at
different times in history.
SPEAKER_03 (39:24):
Yes, yes.
So in this instance, that titleas applied to Inanna slash Gest
Inana, making it so that wayit's showing the crone archetype
there for the tripartite goddessuh notion, where then the other
two we could make arguments forwhich one is which, as we you
(39:44):
and I have already kind oftalked a little bit about for
what's going on, but either way,maiden, bride slash mother,
crone slash old hag type conceptfor what's going on to fulfill
the three original tripartgoddess conception for what's
going on there.
SPEAKER_02 (40:02):
So yeah, and that's a great, and and I I gotta tell
you, that's sort of very similarto how Babylonian academics
would look at it.
They would pull out all three ofthese names and just tear them
apart into like we'd call itetymologies, but it's not really
(40:22):
etymology in a literal sense.
It's more of I guess a cultetymology, you could call it.
But then they'd also syncretizethese, especially because Bela
Ili and Ishtar were bothextremely syncretic figures,
they would absorb a lot ofdifferent aspects into both of
(40:44):
themselves, and they would bevery happy to absorb Geshtan
Anna as well into whateverritual context it might be
appropriate.
So yeah, no, you're thinkinglike an ancient Babylonian
scribe is what I'm what I'msaying here.
SPEAKER_03 (41:06):
Well, at least for the Babylonian time period, my
analysis would at least beaccurate.
I'm not saying that's how theSumerians necessarily viewed it,
but at least in part of thetimeline, I am not completely
kilter here.
SPEAKER_02 (41:22):
And the only reason we can't say the Sumerians
weren't doing it is just becausewe don't have nearly as much
record from them.
But the truth is that we thateverybody, everybody in the
ancient Middle East claimed thatall of their scholastic
traditions went back to thepre-literate period.
(41:43):
And so we would have gone backto the Sumerians, and so we keep
them.
SPEAKER_03 (42:07):
Even the ancient Egyptians said the same thing
for that until thoth came andgave them writing.
SPEAKER_02 (42:15):
Yeah, so but I mean, we can't say that uh the
Sumerians wouldn't have viewedit the same way, though, of
course, they wouldn't have hadthe same richness because they
would have just been dealing inthe Sumerian language.
SPEAKER_03 (42:28):
Yeah, well, the Sumerians, if you can correct me
if I'm wrong, they they believedin a place that they they kind
of viewed as like their versionof Atlantis, meaning a higher
level society than what theywere, that they got stuff from,
and they called it Arata.
SPEAKER_02 (42:44):
Oh no, I hate to I hate to push back on that, but
no, you can.
SPEAKER_03 (42:52):
That's fine.
This this is an area that I'mnot well versed in.
It's just a little bit that I'veread 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'sdefinitive truth.
SPEAKER_02 (43:02):
So the neat thing about Arita, the neat thing
about Arata is you only reallysee it described in one place,
which is the battle, the the warbetween Enmerkar and Arata.
Enrakar being possibly Dumasid'snotional grandfather, at least
in one Sumerian king's list.
SPEAKER_03 (43:25):
Um, or at least he was two kings before Dumasid,
and it doesn't have it doesn'thave you know necessarily who
was the father of who, butcorrect, because the they they
believed in a type of uhelection process for some of the
stuff too that they had forwhat's going on.
So it could have just been theking that was uh elected through
(43:47):
whatever their councils wereduring that time period and
whatnot.
SPEAKER_02 (43:50):
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 alineage, who knows?
But anyway, this is as far as wecan tell, the oldest written
story, Enmerkar and Arata.
(44:10):
And we don't know where Aratais, we know it's in the
mountains, and it could beUrartu, which is sort of the
Armenian highlands.
Yep, it could be Afghanistanbecause of mineral, because they
seem to have been digging up themineral wealth.
And where did all the tin comefrom?
(44:31):
It came from Arata.
SPEAKER_03 (44:33):
I've also seen an argument for it being possibly
parts of Ukraine on where theCaucasus are on the southern
part for where it is, where itwould meet up with our Armenia
on the other side of themountains.
SPEAKER_02 (44:47):
So yeah, it's definitely in the mountains,
somewhere, anywhere from theCaucasus Mountains to
Afghanistan.
When I was doing my episode onit, I said, you know, maybe
Western Iran.
But the more I've looked intoit, the fact is that Enricar
represents the Uruk period.
And the Uruk period was possiblythe first settled colonialism in
(45:15):
all of human history.
Before that, when cities hadbeen founded, they'd been
founded by nomads.
But the city of Uruk and theSumerians in general around
them, we can't we don't know ifUruk was in charge of this
process or if all the Sumeriancities were doing it, or just
Uruk, but certainly Uruk takescredit for it.
(45:36):
But anyway, these Sumeriansettlers, about 4,000 uh I would
if I had to guess, if I had toguess, is that Uruk took credit
for it and that there was moreplaces involved.
SPEAKER_03 (45:48):
I'm not saying all of them, but they just like,
hey, this is this is this ourthing.
SPEAKER_02 (45:52):
Yeah, totally.
But like around 4,000 BC, youget expeditions.
That's when the city of Asher,where the Assyrian Empire was,
they founded that city, theyfounded cities up in the
Armenian highlands, they foundedcities in Iran.
(46:13):
Most of the Iranian cities,interestingly, didn't survive
very long.
But and then there's a theorythat they settled in
Afghanistan, and that's how thetin started to arrive from
Afghanistan.
I can see that, yeah, I can seethat being positive.
Yeah, related to the tin trade.
(46:34):
Anyway, Arto was somewhere, butwe don't know where.
The Sumerians certainly knewwhere it was.
SPEAKER_03 (46:41):
It was probably so obvious to them they didn't even
have to write it down.
SPEAKER_02 (46:44):
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 threateningthe king of Arita, he says, Hey,
do you remember how way backwhen all the languages were one,
(47:07):
and then we built a mountain upto the highest heavens, and it
angered the gods, and theyshattered it and confused all
the languages?
SPEAKER_03 (47:16):
I wonder where this story came from, where that idea
came from.
SPEAKER_02 (47:23):
There's an the thing is the one text that we have of
that is badly damaged.
And so there's a scholarlyargument as to whether N.
Makar is saying, Hey, do youremember in the past when all
the languages were one and webuilt a mountain up to heaven?
Or he could be saying, Hey, inthe future, after I conquer you
(47:48):
and everybody else, we're goingto build a mountain up to the
heavens and all the languageswill become as one.
SPEAKER_03 (47:54):
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'tmean it's true, but I definitely
prefer the in the past notion.
I think that's more fascinatingpersonally, but that doesn't
mean it's true.
SPEAKER_02 (48:10):
So yeah, I also I also quite like the in the past,
but the idea that he conquered awhole bunch of places and then
built his ziggurat as if he werethe biblical Nimrod, him or his
direct successors of thebiblical Nimrod.
Either way, you've got the coreof, of course, the Tower of
(48:34):
Babel story.
And once you've got the core ofa Tower of Babel story, there's
all kinds of other thingsattached to that.
And that's probably where peopleget the idea that Enmerkar's
kingdom was some great,wonderful place because
certainly they believed that thefirst city, which was probably
(48:58):
Eridu, but the first city thatthe gods made, everyone was very
wise and everything went verywell, and there were lots of
good things there, and theneverything just went downhill
after that.
They also believed nothing hadever changed, but they also
believed history went downhillbecause, of course, it's a
(49:18):
different people believingslightly different things, and
both both of those are common.
And the idea that everything isgetting worse is just a very
common one throughout all of it.
SPEAKER_03 (49:28):
I you could also make it subways the same in a
way for what's going on there.
Unlike, say, our modernsensibilities, or we mainly, at
least in the Western world, viewthings as linear, you know, for
what it is.
A lot of the ancient worldviewed things as cyclical, going
up and down in various differentcycles.
Nothing really truly changed,it's just this this you're at
this part of the cycle and thatpart of the cycle.
(49:50):
So when you say, Well, nothingreally changed or just started
going downward, it still wouldbe the same thing in their minds
for potentially, potentially.
SPEAKER_02 (49:59):
So, yeah, no, for a very long time, until it's hard
to say when exactly it changed.
Certainly by the end of theMesopotamian period, things had
changed, but in the early times,they really seemed to believe
that uh nothing has everchanged.
(50:20):
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 theystart to make war against their
(50:42):
neighboring cities by dammingthe flow of the Euphrates River,
and they shut it off, theyredirect it so that other cities
can't get water.
Larsa though, their city, isvery far downstream and stops
getting water.
And they were apparently quitesurprised by this because they
(51:04):
they really seem to believe thateven if that nothing changes to
such a degree that even if wedam the river, water will still
flow through our city.
And then you have the theGungun's son gets overthrown,
and the the the and yeah, it'sits own drama there.
(51:26):
But they that's the extent towhich they really do seem to
believe that nothing will everchange.
SPEAKER_03 (51:32):
There are they were very much fatalistic then in
that regard.
Yeah.
SPEAKER_02 (51:35):
Yeah, there are kings that talk about like we
can't whatever we do, if weconquer this city, this city and
its people will still exist,even if we conquer and enslave
them, because this city and itspeople will always exist.
And then one or two hundredyears later, that city's gone
(51:57):
because they conquered andenslaved 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 integrateit into our into our little
kingdom because they'reindependent, they'll always be
independent, and that seems tobe like how they made war.
(52:19):
It's just uh just a wild thing.
It's great.
SPEAKER_03 (52:25):
I'd forgotten that that was the case with it till
you mentioned that story aboutthe that with the because it's
been a long time since I'vestudied the Sumerian traditions
and the and the Babyloniantraditions.
Yeah.
I remember I'm that's all comingback to me now about how bizarre
that particular notion was.
SPEAKER_02 (52:43):
Yeah, I mean, you see it in like religion and
rituals, they're like, oh, thisritual for this god has gone on
since the gods gave it to usback then.
SPEAKER_03 (52:54):
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 ofcultures have sacred truths.
And that's in fact, that's whatmakes them their culture, their
religions or their myth, what wecall mythologies today, because
(53:14):
they were just originallyreligions for those people, but
now they're considered mythsbecause nobody really takes them
seriously anymore.
And there was usually in almostall of them some sort of
continuity loss, even if peopleare maybe like neopaganism or
neopagans re-bringing backcertain things for what it is,
it's not in the original formfrom what it was from a thousand
(53:35):
years ago, two thousand yearsago, five thousand years ago,
whatever the case may be forthat.
So the sacred truth notion, youknow, I don't have a problem
with, of course, it's going tobe forever.
That's the that's just what itis for anything that's the
sacred side of things.
But on the everyday thing, I hadforgotten about that.
They still they took it to thatextreme in that level until you
(53:58):
brought up the that particularstory with the damming of the
river.
SPEAKER_02 (54:03):
But that gets us back to Gilgamesh.
So Gilgamesh he goes on his bigadventure and he tries to get
immortality because he wants tolive forever, and he fails a
couple of times.
And at the end of the story, hecomes home to the city of Uruk,
(54:25):
and it makes a big deal aboutthe scale and permanence of the
walls of Uruk.
And as he and it's it doesn'tsay it explicitly, but as he's
coming into the city of Uruk tosit on his throne and just be
sad because he can't beimmortal.
(54:47):
The sort of the narrator istelling us about the walls of
Uruk, and he's suggesting thatas if they're going to be there
forever, they will live forever.
SPEAKER_03 (55:00):
They've been here forever, they've always been
here, and they will they theythey're here now and they will
always be here.
SPEAKER_02 (55:06):
Yeah, they are tiny.
So it's that and and we talkabout Gilgamesh in the sense
that oh, of course, he couldn'tachieve immortality because I
think fundamentally we're allBuddhists, everything goes away
(55:26):
in our in our view of theuniverse, everything fades, even
the universe will eventuallyfails in and of itself, yeah.
At some point, but for them,they were like, hey, Gilgamesh
was wrong because humans can'thave immortality, but structures
(55:48):
and institutions and things thatthe gods put in the world can
have immortality, humanity canhave immortality, the city of
Uruk can have immortality, thecity being defined very much by
the structure of the walls, butalso that throne that he was
sitting on.
(56:09):
The divine kingship notion,yeah, no matter how far into the
future they got, there was abelief, even after the city of
Uruk was mostly abandoned, therewas this idea, even in much
later periods, that the city ofUruk is still there, that the
that the throne, that somebodyGilgamesh isn't sitting on it
(56:31):
anymore, but there's somebodyelse is, yeah.
SPEAKER_03 (56:34):
Yeah, I think I think that's important because
it's also kind of like if you'relooking at it from another
thing, with them, this is morefrom my audience at the moment,
just to kind of give them aparallel, is why I'm bringing
this up.
It's like King Arthur, he's theeternal king.
It doesn't matter whether he'sdead and he's an Avalon at the
moment or whatever, he'll riseback up when the time's
necessary for that to defend hispeople and that kind of stuff.
(56:57):
So a little different, it's adifferent variant in the sense
that like obviously it's notGilgamesh that'll come back for
that for the Sumerians, but it'sthe same concept of this will
always be here, and there'll besomebody there to come and and
and bring it back, and that kindof stuff with the yeah, that's a
very, very good point.
SPEAKER_00 (57:14):
Yeah.
SPEAKER_03 (57:16):
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 goand get more immortality is
because he's not fully human,he's semi-divine for what it is.
And in certain texts, he's evendescribed as two-thirds divine,
whatever the hell that means,instead of half divine.
(57:38):
Not sure what exactly that meansor why that's the case for.
I don't know if you have ananswer to that.
SPEAKER_02 (57:43):
I just know that he's described just because they
talk about they talk aboutMarduk having sort of three
elements to his divinity (57:53):
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 thatexplicitly in the text, but
(58:15):
divinely nursed.
So he his his he drank the milkof a of a goddess as he was
growing up, and then hisone-third of the mother more
likely than not as a mortal.
Yeah, but it's his role as amortal king, is he or as a human
(58:36):
king, that's his one-third ofhumanity.
Because I was also very struckby the idea of being two-thirds
divine, but I do think it isbirth and nursing are birth,
nursing, and fate, I guess youcould call it, are the three
things that define you as aperson for Gilgamesh and for
(59:01):
that that culture.
SPEAKER_03 (59:02):
That particular notion that we're talking about
here.
Yeah, I got you.
SPEAKER_02 (59:05):
And you could internalize that into nature,
nurture, and your personalaccomplishments.
Um, and it becomes a lot moregeneralizable.
SPEAKER_03 (59:15):
So the nature part would be the parentage, uh, the
nurturing part would be the factthat you're talking about the
upbringing, in this case,specifically, you know, making
it so that way he is getting hismilk from a particular deity and
whatnot, and being raised inthat particular regard for it.
But then his accomplishments, inthis instance, what he does in
(59:36):
the real world, he's unable toachieve immortality.
His fate, he's not fated to beso on that final level.
SPEAKER_02 (59:47):
That's an interesting take.
SPEAKER_03 (59:48):
I like that.
I like that a lot.
SPEAKER_02 (59:51):
Yeah.
No, it's real good.
No, Gilgamesh is just a gem thatkeeps on giving.
I really don't understand why wedon't have.
have a Gilgamesh like HBO showor something.
I don't know if they do a goodjob, but there's just so much
there that you you really if Iwas rich I'd start making
(01:00:14):
ancient Mesopotamia movies likewith Hollywood or something.
You got a long way to go to berich.
I'll get to this someday maybe.
SPEAKER_03 (01:00:31):
Now I didn't know this till after I did my
research and to Josephus Flaviusspecifically being potentially
Saul slash Paul there was thisperson I forget when it was like
the the the late 1900s I thinkit excuse me late 1800s early
1900s I think it was where hedid not explicitly state as his
(01:00:56):
conclusion that Joseph thatJosephus Flavius was Paul slash
Saul in the Bible but what hedid at the very end or near the
very end of his study for whatwas going on there is he put a
list of comparisons between themand how much they were basically
the same and whatnot and notedon his particular chart I can't
(01:01:22):
forget his name off the top ofmy head I have it written down
my notes but on his charts thathe was doing there with it that
literally every single one ofthe differences that could that
was there between them the onlysource for that difference was
Josephus Flavius himself.
So if you are the author ofthese things with it and you are
(01:01:47):
rewriting the history to acertain extent to what's going
on to hide yourself from whatyour role was inside of some of
these things with it because youdecide to side with Rome, which
is afterwards instead of doingthat so that way people of later
generations don't know that youbetrayed your own people for
what's going on there and youjust go and he's the only source
(01:02:12):
that's left you're the onlysource that's left for that that
makes us that way those slightthings that are different from
it well and you have the listwhere almost all the other
stuff's the same it's a verycompelling argument that this is
the case for and again thisperson did it independently of
me for what was going on thatmade it for me that at least on
(01:02:35):
the case of Josephus Flaviusthat at least I know I'm not
completely fucking insane thatit is a highly likely scenario
that he was a biblical figureand that he was Paul slash Saul
in the biblical tradition.
And that I know that I'm atleast on that front maybe has
(01:02:56):
nothing to do with the Arthuriantradition but on that front I
can use that as a basis toexplore further about the my
technique for potentiallyplacing Jesus in the timeline
for what it is doesn't provethat I have anything it just
makes this that way it's likeokay there's somebody else out
(01:03:18):
there who went and found thesame stuff and came to the
basically the same conclusionthat I did and therefore since I
didn't even know this personexisted till after I did that
research and a friend of minepointed it out to me who is a
Jewish scholar on it and whatnotthat I was like oh well okay
(01:03:39):
then thank you
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