Maazi Kai Mazaar

Maazi Kae Mazaar (Shrines/Temples of the Past):
We should discuss the anthropomorphic concept of God, which has prevailed for millennia in Jewish, Christian and Muslim creeds. But one would be hard to find an intelligent and enlightened person in this day and age, who would be credulous enough to accept that God has arms, legs, eyes and years or that on the day of judgment, He will arrive surrounded (jhurmut) by angels, eight of whom would carry him on a ‘Takht’ and will offer his thigh for the satisfaction (taskeen) of hell.(Al-Ghazali- Author Allama Shibli Nomani-p 149). Besides the Isana Ashari and Mutazzalin (Mushabbaha), Ibne Tammayah (1263 to 11328 CE) also prescribed to the view.

Chap 1:
Many nations which flourished at one time, many creeds which were followed by a lot of people, are extinct now. But the past never dies. It leaves a heritage of knowledge, skills, ideas and culture (fikr wa fun, aur ilm wa hunar ka khazana) to the future.
Nations disappear, but leave an imprint of on new ones. Languages fall into disuse, but traces remain in the languages. The supremacy of old belief system dwindles, but remnants are retained by emerging faiths. Civilizations disappear, but continue to illuminate the succeeding ones.
5,000 years ago, one such civilization emerged in the valley of Dajla and Firat (Euphrates and…), and spread all over near East. It was the first human civilization and dominated the region between the Mediterranean to the Arab sea for 2,500 years. It was superseded by Zoroastrianism, and it merged into Iranian civilization. But we must not forget what it bestowed on us in terms of civilization, culture, learning and arts. The first agricultural villages emerged in the ‘doaba’ (p 12), the wheel of the pot maker was invented, the oldest cities founded, and the first laws framed. But the most notable achievement was the invention of writing. They also started the first schools and the first libraries, and wrote the first stories/fables (dastanain). The valley, now known as Iraq, was divided into three regions. In the North, now known as Mosul, then called Ashur, were found the most ancient traces (Asaar) of human habitation. The mid-portion which is Baghdad now, was called Akkad. The South was called Samaria.
Euphrates came out of Mount Ararat, on which the arc of Noah had reputedly settled.
The characteristic of the rivers of the region was their tendency to sudden and untimely floods, which devastated crops, broke the ‘bunds. That is why denizens of this region regarded the flood gods ‘Nungirsu and Tiamat’ as enemies of mankind.
The ancient people of the valley:
Human habitation has existed in the valley for about 125,000 years. In 1949 CE, Dr Naji Alaseel, former director of Archeology in Iraq found 120,000 years old stone devices. Similar devices were found in 12 miles south of Suleymania in a cave and in another cave nearby. Dr Soleki, another archeologist found four human skeletons, traces of a cooking place, ‘choolha” ashes, stone devices, and bones of an ox, sheep, goat and tortoise, and an skeleton of a six month old baby. Another skeleton with an intact skull, was that of a 35 year old man, who was about 5 feet and 2 inches, with heavy bones and massive jaws, brow bones sticking out forehead tilted back and no chin. He had his left hand (lunja) was amputated with a stone knife.
In Mohen jo Daro, Pakistan, skeletons of four people on whom the roof of a cave had collapsed in 4,500 BCE, were recently found.
The beginning/origin (ibtida)of agriculture:
It started in the Euphrates/Dajla valley about 7,000 BCE. The region was amenable to settled life. Wild barley and wheat plants existed in profusion. Initially hunter/gatherers camped where ever they found the plants, and moved on after running through the supplies. Over time, they learned the art of cultivation.
Scholars of humanities (Umraniat) contend that women invented the art of agriculture as well as that of herding ( maveshi palna)animals. Agriculture put an end to nomadic life, and led to the establishment of villages.
The first village discovered in Iraq was in the vicinity of Karim city. It was spread over 2 acres. The whole area was paved with crushed stones. They presumably built their huts over the floor. Stone devices were also found in the habitation.
The next stage of ‘evolution’ was discovered in a village called ‘Muallaqat’ near Mosul. Here, they built dwelling over dug ground.
We come across the next stage in the habitation known as ‘Jermo’, where 15 levels of dwellings were discovered. The homes were square in shape and had more than one room. They had stone pillows and agricultural devices. Walls were made up of mud. Utensil were of stone, mud, raw (kuchhi matti) and fire treated. They used bone ‘cutlery’, and needles. They could make wool and ‘sun’ fabric. Barley and wheat seeds and bones of sheep, ox, pig and dog were also found. They used stone ornaments like necklaces and earrings. Stone sculptures (Moorti) of pregnant woman and smaller ones of animals were also found in the digs. The woman presumably represented the mother earth and pregnancy an icon of fertility (Afzaish nasl ki allamat). They buried their dead under the floor of homes. They lived in 6500 BCE.
What is notable is that all the finds from the time are in North-East (Ashoor) region of Iraq.
Northern tribes migrated to the delta in the south, and the earliest habitation is Aredo, initially a small village, which over time grew into the most important city of the delta. 17 levels of temples, built of untreated mud bricks with only one room, were dug out there. In front of the room was the sacrificial alter. The temple of Inki, the sweet water’s god was in the town.
The next phase in the development of the delta is called Al-Obaid. People now made treated mud seals and axes and crescent shaped ‘hansya- p 19), mats of ‘narsil’ and homes built of mud laden mats.
Professors Frankfurt and Georges Ro contend that about 5,500 years ago, another group of humans from Elum in south –west Iran, descended on the region. Professor Kramer opines that these people were wild (wahshi) and subjugated the natives. Professor Wooly disagrees, and would have it that they were quite civilized and assimilated with the natives. The amalgam gave rise to the Sumerian people.
Some academics think that Sumerians were ‘Aryan, but their language has little in common with Aryan tongue, it resembled Magyar, Turkish and other languages.
In the Sumerian language the region is called ‘Engi’, ‘Jhao ki zameen’. It was hot, humid and barren land, which was intersticed with small rivulets, nullahs, swamp and Jhao and narsil Jharian (Bushes). The south of Iraq has not, to date, changed much.
Sumerians were very hard working, hardened (jafa kash), intelligent and skilled. They subjugated ( mahoul ko mutee bana liya) their milieu. The first ever canal, dug on the orders of king Lagash, about 5,000 years ago, now called Al Gharrat, which still exists, was dug in the region. Their diet was dates and barley bread. Herodotus (490-425 BCE), writing of the fertility of the land says that one seed produced three hundred fold. Sumerians bartered surplus produce for bronze, silver, wood and other items.
They kept cows, sheep and goats, and hunted fish. They made barley wine and drank it through a tube in a hookah like contraption. They lived in one or two Storey dwellings, with a courtyard in the middle surrounded by rooms.
The greatest achievement of Sumerians is that they developed cities., founded city states and invented writing, in a place called Eric (Darka). Other Sumerian cities adopted the skill promptly.

Chap 2” From Civilization to Culture (Tahzeeb sae Tamaddun Tak).
“Then Anu built five cities in holy places, named them and built prayer centers there. The first city was Aredoo and gave it over to water god Inki. (Lauh e Nefar-The Great Flood)
Every civilization is the forerunner of its culture. But the core of culture is city life. In fact culture is the other name for the organization of relations which city life gives birth to. This organization matures into the (nizam) system of states. Writing is also a manifestation of culture. A people who are not cognizant of writing, may be civilized, but cannot be deemed cultured. The denizens of cities and villages have this relative qualitative difference. They have different social demands, milieu and activities. Agriculture requires open land. City cannot sustain it. City is the master piece of human skills, and enhances consciousness and wisdom, inculcates the faculty of enjoyment of the pleasures of life.
Beginnings of cities:
Initially, cities were trade centers or had shrines and often both. They were situated on riverbanks or near a caravan route or junction. The caravan people stopped, boat people tarried there and so trade emerged. Craftsmen, skilled people and tradesmen settled around the villages. Villages expanded into cities. The villages around cities gradually merged into cities as suburbs.
A tribe in all probability settled on a river bank. The priest built a grass temple. People prayed at the temple, and coincidentally, their wishes were fulfilled. The god became famous, more and more pilgrims visited, shopkeepers opened their stores, and on special festivals, thousands gathered around the temple. The priests raked it in, and indulged in exchange of surplus gifts for artifices, and proceeded to build more permanent structures of temples, and acquired all the land around, the temple became the largest land owner and the most important trade, political and religious center. Of all the slabs (lauh), dug out so far (about 250,0000, 95% relate to the finances of the temples. Only 5% have prayers, songs and fables inscribed on them.
All the notable cities and suburbs of the Euphrates valley were possessions of some god. The center of cities were the temples. The temple treasury hoarded silver, gold, precious stones, grain, wine, dates, fish, wool, skins and agricultural devices. Accounts were kept in a separate department, and their were slave girls (devdasis) for song, dance, the kitchen and wineries.
Ancient cities of Iraq:
Archeologists have found dozens of ancient cities in Iraq-Aredoo (Abu Shahreen), Ur (Moqeer), Larsa (Sankirah), Arek (Darka)…. Babylon (Babul) was the most important city and the capital of Akkad.
The cities had three classes among the residents. On the top were the gentry (Shurfaa), whose symbol (imtiazi nishan) was Ruth (chariot).
The next was that of gardeners, herders, and coachmen. The third was that of farmers and farm workers. Soldiers were recruited from this class. Every village kept a birth and death register; one such from 15th century BCE, was discovered in the digs in Illakh.
Sumerians, like Japan or England of yesteryears, exchanged it s surplus grain for metal and wood.
Only the weak give in to harsh conditions and rule, and descend into inertia. The atrocities of the rulers and the priests could not quite subdue Sumerians.
Sumerian cities were based on commerce and industry. Every profession had a guild, was inherited and blocked outsiders. Most of the manufactories belonged to the temples, but there were a few privately owned ones too. Men and women had equal status in work. Coins had not been invented yet, but workers were paid a stamped standard silver weight.
Sumerians used Bronze devices, which establishes the fact that the people were capable of melting and amalgamating copper and tin together to make bronze. The civilization is therefore dubbed the Bronze civilization. It later on spread to Egypt, Iran, china and the Indus valley.
It is a strange quirk of social evolution that though the Iron age started in 6th-7th century BCE, yet the technology of making devices of war and remained the same, only iron replaced bronze, till the advent of the industrial revolution in the 18th century CE.
Sumerians and Babylonians were experts in international trade, and traveled to Anatolia, Sind, Canaan, Egypt and Iran, despite the many
Hazards of the journey. They exchanged finished products for raw material, and had established settlements in all trading centers. The most important such settlement was in Syria, where they built a temple for Ur’s goddess Nin-Egal. They had to send military expeditions to protect trade, like Hajjaj bin Yousuf sent one under Muhammed bin Qasim to Sind and the British sent to India in aid of the East India company.
The settlements were called ‘Quroom’. The Quroom at Ur contained Sindhi finished products from the Mohen Jo Daro period.
The links between Sind and Sumerians ended abruptly in the 16th century BCE, about the time Cassidis (Cassideon), and Aryans demolished the Indus valley civilization.
The people of the valley of Euphrates made great innovation in building. They initially used mats made up of ‘Narsil’, like bamboo and coconut trees are used in Bangladesh. They built arches by tying the trunks together, which they joined together into tunnel like structure, which they covered with mats. A sketch of such a structure exists on a stone slab in the British museum. Arch, globe (gunmbad) and column ‘sitoon’ on which are based the construction of places and castles, are the inventions of Iraqis. In the digs of Ur a royal tomb with an intact gunmbad from the 27th century BCE was found. In the Ziggurat of Ur was such a structure and a pool, were also found. They were built during the rule of king Arnimo (1250 BCE). In Arek columns of 7-8 feet diameter, made of unbaked bricks from 3000 BCE were found. In a temple in al-Baeed, fig trunk columns with bronze sheet molded on them were discovered. They built in 2700 BCE in the reign of king Anniyadada.
But the Ziggurat remain the most awfully memorable structures.
City States:
Though a civilizational unity, the valley was subdivided into many city-states. One, Lagash was 1800 sq miles, yet Eric and Ur dominated Sumer, which is the most remarkable (Ahd Afreen-epoch making) historic city state. All the city states emerged in 3000 BCE, 2000 years before the Greek ones, yet western academics continue to claim that Greece gave the concept of city states to humanity. This political configuration ( Idara) grew into nation states and empires.
The (Awamil aur moharrikat) dynamic actors of city-states were-centrality of the city temple, emergence of classes, conflicts (bahami raqabatain) between cities and the canal system in Sumer.
The link between the temple and development of cities indicates that the social unity of the stone age (samaj ki hijri wahadat ya ekai) had already been lost. The punchayati nizam, under which land and means of production were collectively owned, no longer applied. The interests of farmers, skilled workers on the one hand clashed with those of priests, traders and landowners, on the other. Their relationship was now that of the ruled and the ruler, and a controlling authority was needed to maintain and strengthen class relations. The sources of power were a) spiritual/intellectual and b) military. The temple was the repository of the former, and the priests (prohat) concocted such prayers, chants, traditions and fables as served the purpose of convincing the common man that the gods had made them to serve the temples/priests day and night. They should not crave assets and riches because their sojourn in the world was only brief, and they should hand over all the wealth as god’s amanat to the temple. No wonder that all city states in Sumer were regarded as the property of gods. The king, however powerful, regarded himself as an assistant and servant ( dewta ka naib aur khadim) of his god. The coronation ceremony was performed in the temple. He always attempted to propitiate the savants of the temple by offering a greater share of the jewels, slaves and other loot (maal e ghanimat mein jo zar wa jwahar aur ghulam). Temples became so rich that the king often asked for a loan from them before military campaigns.
Besides the spiritual power, military one was required to keep the people under control. The city-states were also engaged in incessant fights with each other.
But the essential reason for the existence of city-states, and delineation of boundaries was the canal system. It was because of the canals that Sumerians were able to produce surplus grain. Thus the kings who took care to maintain the canal system, were the popular and successful ones.
Digging, repair, cleaning and equitable distribution of water and collection of dues required army of engineers and workers. That required administrative capacity of a political unit much larger than that of a village.
Initially city-states were established and run on ‘democratic’ lines. They had a consultative assembly (Majlis e shoora), but only the select citizens (amaideen e shahar) could participate in the proceedings. For day to day affairs, there was an assembly of elders (buzurgan shehar). Decision were made by consensus.
The ‘democracy’ did not last long. Wealth soon started accumulating in a few hands, and in order to manage conflicting interests of the ‘haves’, and to fight off invasions of other city-states, power had to be handed over to an individual, and in times of war it was the person of the commander in chief, who wielded all the power. In Sumerian language he was called Logal, the great man. Initially the rank was temporary, and the Logal had to return powers to the consultative assembly after the emergency was over. But it was with Logal’s power to declare an end to emergency. Logals took longer and longer to declare an end of emergency, and the office, over time, became permanent, and Logals morphed into kings. But the consultative assemblies continued to exist for a long time, as indicated in the fable of Gill Gamish, wherein people complain that Gill Gamish did not heed the advice of the assembly.
In certain instances, initially the chief priest (maha prohat) of the temple functioned as the king. He was called Singaya Hingo.
The king combined the offices of the commander in chief, chief justice and in charge (nigraan) of the priests. His holiest duty was to maintain the temple in good repairs. He lived in a building called Egle, the big house.
Ancient historians of Iraq divide the period into a) pre-flood and b) post-flood. This is the same fold which in Semitic traditions became Noah’s flood. A book of ‘kings’ was among the finds of the digs in Iraq. It was written ( Arek kai farman rwa , Hegel naimurattab karwai thi) in the reign of an Arek king, Hegel (2120-2114 BCE) and describes, in addition to old tales and traditions of Sumerians, the actual and fictitious (haqeeqi aur afsanavi) achievements with relevant years. It states that “the first kingdom descended from the heavens (asmaan sai utari gai) in Aredo city”. Tow kings reigned for 64,800 years. For reasons unknown, it then moved to Ba Tibra city, and three kings ruled there for 108,000 years. After the fold, kingship descended again, this time in the city Kesh, and 23 kings ruled, but this time only for 24,500 years.
The first king of Arek was Meskyag Gashar, son of the sun god Atoo. He was the chief priest as well, ruled for 324 years, and was succeeded by his son Anmaker, who ruled for 420 years and built Arek. He was followed by a Logal named Banda. Banda was a shepherd and ruled for 312 years to be followed by Ramuzi. The fifth in line, Gill Gamesh, was the most famous one. His military deeds are the most known.
From this point, we enter the historic period of Iraq.

Chap 3: Lauh wa Qalam ka moajiza (The Miracle of Pen and slate).
“If you would follow my instructions, you will become a skilled scribe (sahib e hunar moharrir)…they were born right after the gods, and could foretell the future…they loved their slates and narsil, mote than they did their progeny and loved the ‘back’ of stone slabs than their wife’s…so remember…a book is more effect than a splendid tomb” (a 12th century BCE script from Egypt).
The art was writing was invented in Euphrates valley in a temple in Arek city which is lauded in the story of Gill Gamesh, about 5,500 years ago, though the Egyptians and Phoenicians learned it soon enough. The ruins of the city, dug up by German starting in 1924, are spread over six miles. They worked for fifteen years, but could not finish the work. Among the hillocks of Varqa, the Germans dug to 50 feet and found a 35 feet high Ziggurat. It was built of mud bricks stuck together with gelatin (Raal). The walls were decorated with small pieces of baked mud. They also found cartridge shaped seals, one of which depicted killing of prisoners (qaidion ko qatl hote huey dikhaya gaya tha), in another a lion is attacking four legged animals, and in a third one priests are performing a religious dance, entirely in the nude. But the most important is the mud slate, which depicts picture alphabets-head of an ox, an oval container (martabaan), sheep and two triangles. This is the first example of human picture script, written about 3,500 BCE.
The art of writing arose out of the fiscal needs of the temples. The accounts were not a matter of personal concern, but the livelihood of thousands was linked It was also necessary for inter-city trade.
But the problem with the picture-words was that they could represent only ‘things’. They could not be used to express ideas or emotions, not could they offer guidance or ask any questions. Writing came into its own only when pictures of various items became signs of verbalization of their names (p 46).
In the count of pictorial words was in excess of 2,000. in the seals dating from 3000 BCE, from the city Sharddpak, the words have been reduced to 800. With in 100 years, the number had been further reduced to 600. but the skill remained confined to priests and the royal family.
Sumerians wrote on wet mud slates with Sarkanda or Baid e Mushk. In Egypt, they wrote on Papyrus with ink, which looked neater.
In the Euphrates valley, two languages were spoken, in the south it was Sumerian, and in center and the west, it was Akkadi. Sumerian had the same grammar as Chinese Turkemenish, Finn or Magyar.
Over time, the importance of pictures dwindled, and they started representing voices. Gradually Tajreedi amal advanced so much that the pictures were transformed into circles and lines.
In contrast to Sumerian, Akkadi was a Semitic language (Arabic, Hebrew, Swahili and Aramaic) and was spoken from Babylon to Ashoor. The Sumerian language gradually faded away to the status Latin was reduced to, of being used only in religious chants, songs and prayers, and Akkadi became the language of culture and government in the whole East.

Chap 4: Ages, Beliefs and Status of Women.
With out keeping in mind the social and muashrati conditions, one can not comprehend the dynamics of the belief system and thought process of an ancient nation. One has to be cognizant of the true meaning of symbols and terms. The ancients used the terms, god and goddess in different ways than we do. Bhagwan, which connotes god, was used in an entirely different context by the Giahistani Aryans. In Sanskrit, Bhag means a portion, and Bhagwan was the chief a hunter tribe, who distributed edibles to members of the tribe equitably. When Aryans settled on the land, and started agriculture and trade, private ownership was introduced, the role of Bhagwan ceased to exist, but the concept of justice and equitable distribution survived. Thus, when Aryans invented the concept of gods, they not only gave them the attributes, but also gifted the name’ Bhagwan’. Now Bhadwan, who till the other day, was a human being who parceled out the produce of the hunt, was now assigned the task of deciding the fate of Hindus.
The same fate awaited Kismet (fate), one’s portion. The office of the distributor faded away, but the idea that ‘there was some one’ who allotted due portions of worldly gifts (Naimatoan) to people arose, and led to conceptions of fate and the slate of fate (kismet aur lauh e taqdeer).
No relicts from 3000 BCE, which could shed light on the belief system of the people of the Euphrates valley, have survived. The slates which have been dug up from the library of Ashur ben Paul or from Nefer, reflect the views of a particular class.
Over a long period of time, class relations remained unaltered from the time of Hammurabi (and shruqeen) to the time of Ashur ben Paul and Bakht Nasar. Only Marduk of Babylon replaced Anu of Sumerians to Atu was renamed Shams.
Means of social production creates new relations among humans, like that of landowner and the peasant, owner and slave, factory owner and worker. These relations reflect the evolution of material forces. They are determined by the conflict between the older and evolving means of production- for example agricultural and industrial. When older means resist change, social revolution occurs. The super structure of society-politics, law, morality, belief system and thought process undergo structural change. In the aftermath of revolution, material and intellectual changes must be distinguished, as it is relatively easier to measure the former in a scientific fashion. No social system, for which there is even a little leeway in society, fades away.
The people of the Euphrates valley did not feel the need to change the elements or relations of production for 2,000 years, and therefore the land did not produce a Zoaraster, a Mani or a Mardak or for that matter any revolutionary movement which would raise a voice of protest against old superstitions and creeds. But these pioneers are from 6th century BCE.
One problem with information from ancient times is that people amended their stories according to the needs of the time..
Before the 19th century CE, our knowledge of olden times was confined to religious tracks and folk stories. Working on them, one priest Usher, from the 17th century CE calculated that Adam made his appearance in 400 BCE, and was much lauded for his erudition. But in the 19th century CE, with development of biology, astronomy archeology and geology, new concepts of evolution arose and the digs revealed layers of epochs from billions of years ago. The discovery by professor Dubois in 1891 CE, of a 400,000 years old human skull in Java, turned Usher’s thesis on its head. In 1907 in Heidelberg in Germany a 500,000 years old human jaw was discovered and the same years 45, 400,000 years old human skeletons were found in a cave near Beijing, China.
Researchers have established that during this half a million year period, changes have occurred from time to time, in devices, instruments, norms, ways of living, creeds and arts and thought process. This evolution is continuing. The epochs of human evolution are, in fact, distinguished on the basis of devices of production (alaat wa auzaar). In 1836, the French academic, Christian Tomsen divided the human civilization into:
-Stone age in which devices were made out of stone, wood or bones.
-Metal age when Bronze was used.
-Iron age, which started in about 1000BCE, and continues to date.
The old stone age lasted from 500,000 BCE to 20,000 BCE, the middle from 20,000 BCE to 12,000 BCE and modern from 12,000 to 5,000 BCE. Tomsen did not pay any heed to the pre-stone age in which the human kind subsisted on wild vegetation. In this ‘vegetable’ age, humans were dependent on the bounty of nature. It is likely that at the end of this age, they developed the skill of digging out roots and tubers and felling fruit from trees by using stone and wood devices. In this period they lived in small tribes in a communal society (primitive communism). Women has one great advantage over men, they could produce children. They had not yet deciphered the link between sexual intercourse and production of babies (this is incredible). Certain primitive tribes of Australia and Americas still believe that babies are produced by women’s innate genius/capability (karnaama).
But women lost their primacy during the hunter age. Hunt required great strength, ( and women were relatively disabled during the late stages of pregnancy and to a lesser extent during menses). That created division of labor. Men hunted, women gathered and in addition looked after babies, the old and the sick, skinned carcasses and made body cover out of them. But hunt/gather was equitably distributed.
Herding, based on baby animals or the injured ones, also started in this period. An added advantage was the milk of the animals.. but nomadic life persisted as fodder/grass was needed for the animals. They has to travel-Aryans to Sind, to Giyahistani regions. Among the digs of this period from the Euphrates valley, no idols were found. People had not yet developed the concept of magic and religion.
Agriculture period, ushered in by women, followed the herding one. This initiated a social revolution, in that humans were irretrievably linked with the land and their life style morphed from a nomadic to a settled mode. They could now produce their own food. Women, by virtue of their leading role, regained their supremacy and that ushered in the proper Matriarchal age which persisted for centuries in Egypt, Iraq, Asia Minor, Greece and the Indus valley. In Egypt, the Queen wielded the real control over the state and the temple and pharaohs could ascend the throne only by marrying the queens. Professor Reverez writes “This was such social organization, in which people’s rights in relations to others and in relation to the whole society, were determined through maternal lineage”. These relations persist in societies which did not proceed further from the agricultural mode, for example the Khasi people in Assam and Bangladesh. Lyall as quoted by Lo Kayala “…children were subservient to mother’s tribe, the father’s inheritance was given over to his sister’s progeny…he did not eat in his wife’s home, and met her only in the darkness of night”.
The oldest idols from Jermo and Hallaf in Iraq depict pregnant women. The pelvis and breast are prominently displayed. Idols (moorti) of this kind have been found in the digs of the Indus valley, Egypt and Phoenicia and in nearly all the ancient cities and regions. They are thus found in great profusion in all the great museums of the world from Cairo to London, Paris, Berlin, Baghdad, NY, Tokyo and Beijing.
Scholars in humanities have dubbed these idols mother earth. They contend that the idols were used in the magical fertility festivals of agriculture. People, at the time, saw the role of women in creation and fertility of the land as two sides of the same coin. Sir John Frazier in his “Golden Bough” writes of the Orneko tribe of America “once a priest told the tribe, you people are very cruel, your women put seeds in earth under broiling sun, while suckling babies, and you don’t help them”. The tribal; peoples responded “holy father, you don’t understand. You do know that women produce children, we don’t; when women insert seeds, there is profusion of growth of barley and potatoes….”.
Sir John Marshall writing of idols of Mohen jo Daro says “in the valleys of Sind and Baluchistan, the idols are like the ones in Iraq, Palestine, Cyprus, Crete, the Balkans, Iran and Egypt…the consensus of archeologists is that the idols are the goddesses of mother earth or mother nature…”.
The people of the Euphrates valley regarded all life forms as a unity, and did not divide the creation into animals, plants and rocks. They held that anything which could affect the mind, passion or intention, was real and what was real, was live and dynamic, was an activist from (faali) and all forms were capable of intention and discrimination (Qadr Sanashi). This form of expression exists in all languages, for example we say the Sun has risen, the wall stood, the roof fell and the shoe bit. Even today, hundreds of millions of people take the sky for a solid structure.
In the early stages of society, humans imagined ‘things’ not as mujarrtdat (static things), but as persons and images (insaan ashia ka tasawwar mujarrdidat kae bajai sakhsi aur tasveeri andaaz mein karta tha), the way we imagine things in dreams or the poets depict in Tashbihoan and images. People of Iraq and Egypt, who were to traveling in boats, regarded the sun as the guide of the boat. In contrast, Central Asians rode horses and regarded the sun god as shahsawar (champion rider).
Now, if life, death, drought, famine, rain, fertility, victory, defeat, disease and health, all had sahib e iradah forms, humans could control the elements and make them subject to their will. In other words, ancient humans were not frightened of natural phenomenon, or he would not have pondered over the means of subjugating them. Magic is the other name for human psychological effort to subdue nature. It could be used for constructive, as well as destructive activities.
The technology of magic could be broadly classified into a) imitative and contagious. The imitative method is used in Homeopathic medicine, that is like affects and produces like and cause and effect, disease and treatment are similar. In the contagious method, disease and treatment have to have contact relations, for example burning the hair of an enemy will hurt the enemy. Indigenous people of British Columbia subsist on fish. If there is scarcity, they make an idol in the shape of a fish and put in the river to regain profusion in the supply of fish.
In the isles of Nicobar and the South of Italy, they believe that if a pregnant woman plants seeds, the crop will be better. (Brafalt). Certain ancient people believed that all trees and plants grow out of a woman’s growth canal. In one of the seals found in Harrappa digs (about 3,500 years old), a woman is depicted standing on her head, with a plant growing out of her vulva. Sir john Marshall writes “…In the UP, an idol from the Gupta period was found, which had a lotus growing out of her vulva”.
The belief that ancient humans worshipped idols is incorrect. They were, in fact, used as magic totems to overcome, rather than seek the goodwill of gods. Frazier has compared magic to static (saqit) science and defective (naaqis) art. In Arabic dictionaries, magic means core of materialism (Qalbe mahiat), and which could change material (p 65 in Maazi kae…-The Holy Quran translated by Mohamed Ali p 45).
Humans could not yet contemplate any being above and beyond the universe. Later on, when they created gods and goddesses, they did not regard their creations as anything more than anthropomorphic shape of natural phenomenon (mazahir e Qudrat). They did not entertain the idea of worship, that we have in our minds. The gods and goddesses were, in fact, national heroes, who had been deified.
Professor Brafalt in his book “Mothers” writes “All the primitive peoples believe that the art of agriculture is dependent mostly on magic…”.this is reinforced by the fact that European refugees started cultivating in America, the indigenous people were surprised that the new comers did not chant incantations, while planting seeds. Dyaks of South Borneo perform ceremonies, and ancient Mexicans and the primitive races in India and Africa, do the same when planting seeds.
It is worth mentioning that many research academics believe that song and dance owe their origin to agriculture.
Iraqis called mother earth ‘Nin Ho Rusg’ In Sumerian and Akkadi tradition, she is also known as Ninto, which gives birth to all etc. The most meaningful fable in the Sumerian and Akkadi traditions is the love affair between Nin Ho Rusg and ‘Inki’ the god of sweet water, wisdom (Danai aur Firasat) and knowledge and arts. It is curious that the biblical story of Adam and Eve has a lot in common with it. It does indicate that the people of Iraq had become wise to the relation between the sexual act between a woman and man and creation. “And when Ninmo gained puberty, Inki had sex with her, she became pregnant, and after nine months, Ninkarra was born and so on…”. Nin Ho Rusg produced eight plants with the seed of Inki. One was the honey plant, the other was Amaltas and the third was a thorny bush and so on.
A related poem written on seals from 2,000 BCE indicates that it was from the early agricultural age, when matriarchy was still prevalent. The heroine of the fable is mother earth, which produces trees and plants, gives birth to gods and goddesses, and punishes even the most potent gods, if they interfere with the act of production.
Ishtar and Aresh are the other two goddesses from the time, the former of love and reproduction and the latter of death and destruction. Ishtar represents spring, Aresh, the winter.
Ishtar’s persona (Sakhsiat) is attractive and colorful as well as universal. In Sumerian tradition (dev mala), she is Inana, Among the Akkadi and Sumerians, she is Ishtar, in Phoenicians, she is Ashirath, In Egypt, Isis (check), in Palestine, Anat, Ashirath and Ishtardut, In Iran, Shala, Anahita and Nania, in India, Durga, Gori, Uma, Sarsauti and Rati, in Greece, Aphrodite and Artemis, among the Arabs, Zahra and Mushtari, who entrapped Haroot and Maroot into love with her, and got the secret of “Isme Azam” from them, and morphed herself into a star and ascended to the sky/heavens (there is a great degree of similarity between the tales of Mushtari/Zahra/Harrot/ Maroot and that of Azeleus a Charb zaban woman of Egypt and the sun god Raa.
There are two stories in the Iraqi dev mala, which illuminate the reproductive characteristic of Ishtar. In one she marries a shepherd, Tammooz. In the second one, she goes on a journey through darknesses (zulmaat) in search of her Jawan Marg husband who had died in his youth, and returns in triumph. The death of Tammooz, and his return reflect change of seasons. Thus, countries in the Near East celebrate the Nau Roz (new year) with great pomp and ceremony. In the mythology of the Euphrates valley, Ishtar’s wedding is depicted in a very interesting fashion. Atu, the sun god, once asked his sister Ishtar why did she not marry Tammooz. She rejected the idea with disdain, and said that she was going to marry Inkimdo, the hill Billy (dahqan). When Tammooz heard of the conversation, he went to Ishtar and courted her assiduously, and persuaded her (Ram kar liya). This story is inscribed in seals (takhtian-Lauh) from 2,500 years BCE, in the digs in Nefer and the biblical story of Habeel and Qabeel, the former was a shepherd and the latter a hill Billy (dahqan). The Palestinian Jews, most likely heard the story during their period of captivity and adopted it.
Ishtar’s voyage through darknesses. Ishtar and Aresh Kigul are sisters. Ishtar is the queen of the sky (heavens) and Aresh that of darkness and a bitter rival of Ishtar. Ishtar’s husband, Tammooz is incarcerated in the depth of darkness… The fable reached Asia Minor via Syria and Phoenicia and then to Greece. In Greece, Aphrodite looks for her Jawan Merg Ashiq Orpheus (the lover who died young) in the depths of darkness. Orpheus returns playing a bansuri (flute).
In fine, in all the fables of early agricultural age, mother earth was the sign (allamat) of spring, harvest, and reproduction of trees, flowers and leaves. They celebrate the advent of spring, and offer dramatic presentations of the eternal conflict (Aawezish) between the spring and fall (khizaan).

Chap 5: Humans who morphed into gods.
The author (musannif) of the Qassasul Ambia (stories of prophets), while describing the claim of Namrood (Nimrod) to godhood, writes that he was the son of Canaan bin Adam bin Saam bin Noah. He spoke Arabic, conquered Syria, Turkistan, India and Rome. His capital was Babylon and he ruled for 1700 years. He was very arrogant and disdained the sky God. God then sent Abraham, who invited Nimrod to accept the heavenly god, but the latter rejected the invitation with contempt (Quran, Surah Baqrah 258).
When Nimrod got word of Abraham smashing idols, he was furious. His courtiers advised him to throw Abraham into flames. He did just that, but a heavenly voice told the fire to extinguish, which it did. Then nimrod launched an arrow at the skies, but the arrow turned back. God ordained that an insect creep into the nostrils of Nimrod, and he suffered a horrible death after four hundred years of agony.
The Quran does not name him, but Nimrod is mentioned in the Old Testament, (Book of genesis chapter 10). But no seal has been found in Iraq, which mentions Nimrod, neither does his name appear in the list of kings. But the place Ashur Naseer Paul ( 883-859 BCE) built a palace and a new capital, 22 miles from Mosul, which was called Nimrod. Ashur was a great conqueror, the tales morphed into the name of the place in the annals of the enslaved Jews. The story of climbing to the sky on the back of a vulture is noted in many scripts of the Ashuri and Nauashuri times (20 centuries BCE. In the Sumerian list of kings, a king Itana, who was a shepherd and ascended to the sky in a similar fashion.
It is rather curious that in neither Akkadi or Ashuri scripts, a king, who claimed godhood, or one whom the public worshipped as god, finds mention. In the fables of the Euphrates valley, godly characteristics were attributed to only one Gill Gamish, but he was only three fourth god, and one fourth human, and he was not destined for eternal life.
But the Pharaohs of Egypt did regard themselves as gods and progeny of gods. According to a royal tradition, the queen after her wedding went to the temple of the Egyptian god Ammon, spent the night in his bedroom, where the god, came in the garb ( Pharoah ka Bhais badal kae) of the pharaoh, and consummated the marriage, and carried on till the queen became pregnant. Egyptian creed would have it that the king never died, but only went to the god, Ammon.
Women lost their primacy, when heavy agricultural devices (bhari hal) were devised, which needed oxen and physical strength. The patriarchal age was ushered in, and women lost their grip on magic too, and the status of female magicians became secondary. Matriarchal age had faded away before city states emerged in the Euphrates valley. And gods/goddesses were created only after the onset of patriarchal age.
But the question is why did they need gods? Archeologists, professors Frankfurt and Jacobson in their book “Before Philosophy” contend that people took all manifestations of nature as dynamic (fa-all) and with inherent intentions (sahib e irada) persona. Some were benign and affectionate (mushfiq aur Meharbaan), such as the earth, the sun and the moon, while others were very strong and potent such as hurricanes, lightening and typhoons. Still others were mysterious like water, if happy would cause green pastures and crops to bloom, but if unhappy, would cause c havoc with flood. Some were terrible like disease and dearth. Early humans termed them gods. But he did not deem them supernatural or unreal, and had in fact then anthropomorphic attributes. They lived, ate, rested married and reproduced like humans. They fell in love and some were lechers too. They committed sins and did good, fought with each other and conspired against each other. They fell sick as well, and though indestructible, yet the queen of darkness (malkai zulmaat) did kill them, once in a whole life style was a reflection of human society. The Greek philosopher, Xenophon wrote in humorous vein that if you accept horses, oxen and lions as gods, the shape, nature and attributes would resemble that of the animals. And Aristotle, in his book “politics” writes that humans not only think of gods in his own image, but also thinks their life style as similar to his own.
But other humanities (Umraniat) scholars, like Herbert Spencer and Grant Allen disagree, and contend that the consciousness required to imagine manifestations of nature, as gods and goddesses was simply not there in the primitive human. He was only conscious of his ancestors. With the vagaries of time (imtidad e zamana), the real personalities of the ancestors was burdened under traditions and fables. Over the course of time, reality was overwhelmed, and they started worshipping fictitious personalities (afsanavi shaksiatein) as gods. If the achievement was confined to a tribe, the person was worshipped as a tribal god, if it was at the national level, it became a national god and so on. The researcher have cited many examples of ancient worship in Egypt, Greece, Rome and India that renowned kings attained godly status after death. In Rig Veda, for example, god Indra was, in fact, a hero of the Aryan tribes, who had despoiled the Indus valley civilization. Ram Chandra and Krishna Maharaj were ancient heroes too. They have cited heroes of recent days too.
The accomplished humanists (danayan e Asaar e Umraniat), discussing the concept of one God, have claimed that humans did not have the consciousness to believe in the concept of the unity of God. There is no historic proof that the human kind believed in the unity of God from the beginning of the species. Grant Allen discussing the God of Jews, establishes that the Jews, for hundreds of years after Moses continued to worship many local and national gods. Their concept of one God did not reach maturity till 5th or 6th centuries BCE. In the valley of Euphrates or the Nile valley, the concept was not known, only the Pharaoh Ahnatun (1375-1358 BCE) tried to impose the concept of the unity of God, but it was for the Sun god Atoon, but the priests (prohat) foiled the attempt.
Regardless of whether the concept of gods/goddesses arose out of fictitious ancestors or deification of manifestations of nature, the creation owes its origin to human mind. The concept has passed through many stages. Sir James Frazier points to them that the first stage was that of magic. At the time food was the biggest problem and humans used magic, in addition to physical effort, to procure it. In the earliest times, the whole tribe participated in the chants, incantations and ceremonies, but with division of labor, the rites were handed over to the most experienced and accomplished member of the tribe, who was exempted from procurement of food. The person was also the physician of the tribe, and looked for metals and vegetation (jari, bootian) for treatment, studied the weather and its effects on animal and plant life. The whole tribe came to believe that the success of the hunt was owed to his magical prowess. He could make rain (Some years ago in Florida an Indian was asked to do a sun dance. He did, and then washed his car as an insurance). or subdue the wind. He could cure the wounds from the hunt and mend broken bones. He also could get animals to reproduce more.
With the induction of private property, the magicians became more powerful. They morphed into kings, and not difficult for them to claim divinity. Sir James Frazier refers to the Zambazi of South East Africa, who worship their king as god, and the king also thinks, he is. Similarly the Bagandas of Central Africa believe that their magical god lives in the hills on the bank of lake Nianza. Both the king and his people are frightened of him. The god cures the sick and advises the people of the unknown (ghaib ki batain batata hai). He can make rain or drought. The king of Siam was also treated as a god, as was the king of Japan, called the son of the sun. Muslims too called the kings Zille Subhani/ Zille Allah (shadow of God) for thirteen hundred years.
We do not have precise knowledge of the gods/goddesses of the Euphrates valley, if An Leil, Anu, and others were magicians or kings whom people made into gods, or they were deified manifestations of nature. But the fact remains that under their cover, the priesthood ruled over the minds and hearts of people for several thousand years. The priests were the magicians of olden days, who had established major centers in every city during the phase of private ownership; they were the political leaders too.
Iraqi dev mala tells us that the characteristics (khad o khal)of the gods/goddesses emerged during the phase of city-states. The sketch they made of god’s society (muashra) was a reflection of their own. But the states were still run on democratic lines, so the gods discussed the issues of the universe in a consultative assembly (Majlis e shoora).
As every one was not equal in a democracy, so the gods had ranks, and the more powerful the god, the more influence she/he wielded in the assembly. The more prominent gods are as follows:
-Anu-
Anu means vastness of the sky, which enclose the sun, moon and the earth, so Anu is the most respected in the assembly. He is the most venerated, serious, moderate and worthy (sahib e waqar), never violates the law, is impartial, pious, kind and forgiving (khata posh).
It was his job to call the assembly. He avoided making his opinion known and was the guardian of the seal (lauh) on which the fate of all creations (maujodaat e Alam) was inscribed.
-Inleel (Aya), son of Anu and god of the wind and typhoons
Inleel was regarded as the reflection (mazhar) of the power of Anu, was deemed the most power and wrath ful of gods (takatwar aur sahib e jalal), and his opinion was generally accepted in the assembly. Most of the songs and prayers (bhajan) in Sumerian and Akkadi languages are in the praise of Inleel. In the 19th century BCE, when Babylon flourished, he was, however, replaced by the local priests by god Mardak of the city.
-Inki, god of the earth and sweet water Inki was the particular god of Aredo, the oldest habitation of the region. He was the god of wisdom and firasat (?acuity) and the chief teacher (muallim).

-Ninorta, god of war
-Nin Ho Rusg, mother earth/universe
-Inana (Ishtar) sister of Inleel and goddess of love and reproduction (Afzaish e nasl).
-Aresh Ki Gill, sister of Inana, goddess of death and queen of darkness
-Nanna (Sen), moon god. In the Rig Veda and the Zoroastrian book Gatha, there are numerous songs and Bhajans for the moon and the Sun. But in contrast to Egypt, India, Iran and Greece, the Iraqis gave precedence to the moon, rather than the sun, probably because in their harsh and hot weather, moon and cold were revitalizing. Indians celebrate the first day and the fourteenth day of the appearance of the moon, while Iraqis venerate the twentieth.
-Atu (shams) Sun God. Iraqis, though they gave precedence to the moon, yet were cognizant of the fact that it was the sun, which ‘gave’ life.
Besides the leading ones, Iraqis worshipped at least another an other three thousand goddesses and gods. In addition, every household had a personal unnamed god, with no idol, but a portion of the home was assigned to her/him, where the elder of the house would worship him/her. The goddess/god was, in fact, a member of the household.
One could conjecture that when Abraham bid good bye to his ancestral home Ar in the 18th century BCE, and proceeded to Palestine via Haran, he took this personal unnamed god with him, and it was this god that is called of Abraham and Isaac in the Bible, because it was Abraham’s personal; god and stayed with at home and in a voyage.

Chap 6: the Belief System of Babylonians.
Plato says that one he and another pupil called the master Aristotle, he had a visitor, the Italian philosopher Timaus, a pupil of Pythagoras and was an expert on astrology and the nature (mahiat) of the universe.
After a while, we requested Tamaus to expound on the secrets of the universe, how and when the sun, moon, earth ,sky and animals had come into being. Have they been there forever, or some one created them? Tamaus spoke for hours.
Plato wrote “Tamaus” 2,500 years ago, but the beginning of creation is still a hotly discussed issue. Religious tracts offer an explanation authoritatively, but not every one accepted them.
When science developed, microscopes and telescopes were invented.
Isolated differences notwithstanding (juziat sae qata nazar), on creation, a common thread runs through the belief system of all religions-Hindu, Muslim, Christian, Jew or Zoroastrian, that some power has created the universe, it has come into being on its own.
The ancient peoples of the Euphrates valley, the Indus valley, Egypt, Anatolia, Greece, Syria, Palestine and Iran also believed in creationism., but for them it was a continual act, renewed every spring and ending with the onset of the winter, the powers of regeneration and destruction at odds with each other all the time. They called regeneration good, and destruction evil. But the concept of good and evil was social, not moral. It was a reflection of social dynamics of reproduction of humans and crops.
In the stone age, magic played an important role in procurement of food. The magician or an experienced hunter would wrap the skin of a deer or a bird and imitate its movements. Other hunters would swarm around him, he would attack them, scream like an animal. They would counterattack. Finally they were convinced that the hunt would go well.
In a similar fashion, in the agricultural age, they would celebrate crop festival, like Basant at the end of winter, Holi at the onset of spring and Baisakhi on fasl katne par (harvesting) Describe the festivals.
In the agricultural age, fertility of the land, rain, change in the weather were such earthly and universal realities (Arzi aur samavi haqiqatain) as affected the lives of the farmer profoundly. If torrential rains hit soon after seeding and sweep them away, or parasites may invade, frost may hit, locus may swarm. The early farmers had had to find relief from the stresses in festivals. The festivals are gradually fading away, as the urban population, a growing majority, is not much affected by changes of weather. The ancient humans celebrated fertility rites at the advent of spring. Creationism is an a sophisticated form of the rites.
Social observances (rasmain), whether reproductive (afzaishi), religious or of nuptials, have two elements, one movements and acts (harkaat wa aamal), the other spoken word. Greeks called the first Dromenon, drama and the other one mythos. In the Hindu performance of Ram Leela, a Pundit sitting on a platform recites the ashloks (stanzas) from Ramayan in a particular tune (dhun), and at the other end, masked actors made up as characters from Ramayan, enact the part. In a third area, girls dance ( bhao bata bata kar nachti rahti hain-?ecstatic dance)in front of the idol of the goddess, Durga. During the Hajj, the pilgrims go around the Kaaba and run between Safaa and Marva, and at Mina, throw pebbles at the ‘Satan’.
Creation stories were common to all ancient peoples. Certain academics contend that the ancient human looked at manifestations of nature with awe and surprise (hairat), and pondered over the ‘reality’ (haqeeqat) and its creator and each authored its own story of creation. But other scholars disagree. According to them, early human did not possess a developed consciousness (shaoor) to ponder over the intricacies of creation, and history establishes that the creation stories were developed as a part of reproductive rituals. Thirdly, the stories have no re4levance to natural phenomenon. The renowned British philosopher Karnford, commenting on the creation stories of Greece and Babylon, says “creation stories are not a product of natural phenomenon. Only a person under ‘Marijuana’ on observing the star spangled night and the vast earth would claim that the earth and sky have been created out of the stomach and the back of an Azdaha (huge snake).
Denizens of the Euphrates valley celebrated three seasonal festivals with great verve and veneration. The first was Nau Roz, at the end of April (Mah e nissan), called Akito by the people of Akkado. The second was Tammuz, that of sorrow, celebrated in July, when greenery (sabza wa Gyah) became extinct. The story of the death of Tammuz and the voyage of Ishtar though the valley of darkness is recited and enacted. The third festival was in September at harvesting time.
The Nau Roz festival lasted eleven day and had three main components. The first was dramatic presentation of creation, the second was the coronation of the king, and third was the wedding of the great god Mardak and his wife. The king played Mardak during the ceremony and he was duly married to the queen or a bawaqqar dev dasi ( dignified female temple slave)of the temple.
The most comprehensive, coherent, detailed, among many such stories, is poem written during the early days of Babylon on seals, which may be 1000 to 2000 years BCE. The idea behind the whole festival was keep the people under the sway (haibat) of the royal family and Babylonian religious establishment (kaleesa-p 130).
The story became so popular, that many religious tracts adopted it.
The poem “Zamzama Takhleeq (The fountain of creation).
“When there was no sky above,
and there was no sold earth below,
Tiamat (salt water) was not there, which gave birth to them eventually,
And Alpaso (sweet water), who was their father,
There was no narsil mat hut,
…
then there was upheaval in the depths of water,
and gods were created, first came Lahmoo (male) and Lihamoo (female),
after a long time Ansher (male) and Kishar (female) were made,
and Anu (sky) was born of them, his successor and rival,
and of Anu was born Iya (earth) and its beloved Damkina,
…”
The whole long poem indicates that the stories which are part of our core beliefs, are in fact, an echo of the echo ancient Babylonian ‘fountains’. There is the eternal conflict of god and Satan, the same old story of Adam’s creation, the sequestration of the earth from the skies, the birth of stars and the moon, which are described in our sacred tracts, are all there in the Babylonian fountain of Creation.

Chap 7: The Creationism of Ancient Egyptians.
Egyptian civilization is also very old. Egypt is a gift of the Nile, today, as it was in the time of the prophet Joseph. The river arises out of the hills of Uganda and passing through the Sahara, ends in the Mediterranean sea. It becomes very wide near Cairo (old Memphis), divides into several streams which engulf a 400 miles long delta, which is made up of black mud which the river brings and makes the north more fertile than the south of the region. Before a united kingdom was established in Egypt (3400 BCE), kingdoms of the south and north used to fight over the delta.
Unlike Euphrates and Dajla rivers, Niles is very smoothly running and a river of regular habits. Its level starts rising when it rains in Central Africa in August. The flow reaches Aswan in September and Cairo in October. When it floods, water overruns miles of land. When it recedes, it leaves a thick layer of fertile mud. Farmers grow crops on this 3% of land, 97% is desert.
Ancient Egyptians were probably inspired by the regularity of the Nile to develop the first calendar in 4241 BCE. They observed that the star Sirius appears a little while before sunrise on the day the folds start. They divided the 365 days of the year into 12 months of 30 days each, and assigned the other five days to the celebration of Nau Roz. They linked Sirius to the goddess of love and reproduction, Isis, the water in the Nile to the blood of her murdered husband Azeris, and the fold to his tears.
Before Egypt was united into one country, it was a collection of small independent states, with its own ruler, gods and goddesses, which were initially given the shape of animals, known as Totems. According to Frazier, “totems are those material things, which the primitive human looked upon with great superstitious awe, and believed in a special friendly relationship between it and self.” The Totems varied from a Peacock to a rabbit, crocodile, ox, hawk or a hippopotomus. That became their ‘caste’. Thus the traditional people of the Punjab still identify themselves as ‘Sial (?Jackal) or a Lomar (fox).
Over time, the states merged with each other. If the process was peaceful, through marriage for instance, the gods/goddesses of both were adopted. If, however, it was through a war, the gods of the defeated tribe were demoted into nonentities.
According to historians, about 4,700 BCE, the people of ‘hawk and vulture’, who lived in central Egypt, became very powerful. Their capital city was Obaidoaz, near Thebes. Obaidoaz was very sacred because the main temple of Horace (hawk) was situated there. In 4777 BCE, the king of Obaidoaz Narimer Menes, after subduing the whole south, proceeded to the delta in the north, which was ruled by the people of Bot (snake), under king Satet. Satet lost to Menes, and thus Egypt became, for the first time, a united kingdom. Menes built his new capital in Memphis. He also added the engraving of snake to that of hawk on his crown. But hawk became grander as the god of united Egypt. Pharoahs, calling themselves the progeny of Horace, adopted the title ‘Zinda Horace’. A lot of songs, dramas and bhajans eulogizing Horace, were written and were enacted in seasonal festivals with all magical and religious pomp and ostentation in the temples.
Azeris and his wife Isis taught Egyptian the art of wine making from grapes, and forbid cannibalism. Azeris was killed in his youth, so his blood would make the earth fertile. Stalofti and Grant have claimed that Azeris was the king of Obaidoaz. The custom of human sacrifice to add fertility to land was a common practice. Tyler and Frazier have cited numerous examples from the primitive peoples of the 19th century CE “Human sacrifice was common in all the less civilized and wild nations of the world. The bodies of the unfortunate people were buried, along with the seeds in the fields…the most known example of the practice is found in the ‘Khond’ nation of Orissa state in India. The sacrificial person is called ‘Maria’, he is venerated and lavishly entertained…On the day of sacrifice, people gather with trumpets in front of the sacrificial site…the body is dismembered and buried, the bones and entrails are burnt, and the ashes sprinkled over the fields…
The king was deemed the most suitable person for the sacrifice.
After Pharaohs took over, they started designating the sacrificial person, in whose favor they would abdicate a few days before the event. After a while, they started sacrificing prisoners, and then animals, starting in the 18th dynasty (1587-1375 BCE).
Vestiges of this custom persisted till the 19th century CE. The first day of Egyptian sun calendar, when the Nile is in full flood, the government suspended all its work for three days, and every town appointed a temporary ruler. The book of the dead is a collection of Egyptian prayers, which were inscribed over the caskets of the aristocrats.
The festival of Azeris was celebrated in October in the two most sacred houses of worship, one in the Delta and the other in Obaidoaz. The enactments were of two kinds, one in which seeds were planted, and the other in which the killing and coming back to life of Azeris and the battle between his son Horace and Tatit and the killing of Tatit are dramatized. The idols of Horace and his four children were filled with spices, barley seeds and precious stones and put in a large vessel (karahao) and covered with mud. The plants growing out of the karahao were called the garden ofAzeris.
The Greek historian Herodotus visited Egypt during the Iranian era. He wrote an eye witness account of the dramatic presentation “when the sun sets, a crowd with sticks in their hands, gathers at the temple. The procession of god starts off from another sacred site, followed by another stick bearing crowd. When this procession reaches the temple, there is a fight between the two groups…they fight furiously, many are hurt (history vol 2, p 131).
The dramatic presentations are based on the ancient Nau Roz festival and the victory over North Egypt.
In the early history of Egypt, gods besides Azeris, Isis, Horace, Satit, and Anobus like Atun. Raa, Amon, Naut, Gabe, Shu or Tifnut are not mentioned. But they never found the acceptability of Azeris and Horace. Amon ( Raa) was an exclusive king’s god, which emerged in the fifth dynasty of Pharaohs. Before the 18th dynasty, (1587-1375 BCE), only the pharaoh could worship the sun god, and the people disdained him.
The creation story of Egyptians enacted during Nau Roz has been lost due to the vagaries of time, the remnants indicate that it was a part of a magical rite. And they date back only to the sixth dynasty (27th century BCE).
The concept of creation is biological (subli), gods, like humans, were born out of the sexual act of a male and a female. According to tradition, in the beginning there was only water. Then a flower or an egg appeared and in due course produced Anum…the earth and the sky were separated. The British museum displays, along with the Book of the Dead and other Egyptology, a painting of the separation of the earth and the sky from the 10th century BCE. The description of separation of the earth and the sky is referred to in the Quran as well. Surah Ambia (30-chapter on prophets); do the believers not see that the earth and the sky were stuck together, and we separated them and we created everything out of water…
The other creation story of Egypt comes from Memphis, now a small village fifteen miles from Cairo, but once the capital of Egypt, whose ancient god was Ptah, that is the earth emerging out of water. In other words Ptah was the other name for Anum. In the story inscribed on a stone slate from the 7th century BCE (but likely from the 27th century BCE) Horace is related to Ptah.
The third creation story comes from the 18th dynasty of Pharaohs (1587-1375 BCE), at the time Thebes was the capital of Egypt, and its main god was Amon Raa, the sun god, according to which the ship of Amon Raa traverses the sea of the skies during the day and through the night, through the sea of darkness…

Chap 8: The Chinese Belief System.
There three accepted eras of ancient Chinese history. The was that of the Chang dynasty (1766-1027 BCE), the second that of Chu (1027-2221 BCE0 and the third one of the Han dynasty (206-226 BCE). The Chu period, which produced Confucius and Laotze is regarded as the golden period. Collections of old writing date from the period.
The Chinese equated creation with creating order in chaos. According to a fable from the 3rd BCE, the king of the north sea, Hu and that of the south sea, Chu used to meet the king of the central sea, Hoon Toon (meaning chaos), in his area. Hoon Toon was disabled, could not see, eat or breathe, but he a gracious host. Hu and Chu, pleased with his hospitality, to relieve him of his disability, decided to burr holes in Hoon Toon's head. But on the 7th day, Hoon Toon died, and the universe emerged. The combination of Hu-Chu means the thunder of lightening. In other words, the universe was born out of thunder.
According to another third century BCE story, Hoon Toon was initially like a hen’s egg, in which Pan Ko was developing. The egg burst after 18,000 years, the light and bright part became the sky and the dark, heavy part became the earth. Then for another 18,000 years, the sky rose 10 feet every day and the earth thickened by 10 feet daily, and Pan Ko which was between the two increased by 10 feet a day and that is why the distance between the sky and the earth is 30,000 miles.
When Pan Ko died, its head became a mountain, the right eye the sun, left eye the moon, its breath the air and clouds, and its voice the thunder. Its blood morphed into the rivers and seas, its tendons and arteries the layers of earth, its flesh the mud and greenery, its hair and brows the stars, its teeth and bones metals, its perspiration the rain. The leeches on its body produced human kind.
Another story, which indicates how the Chinese ruling class used the belief system to promote their class interest, goes as; the earth and the sky had been separated, but the humans had not been produced yet. The goddess Nukua made humans out of the yellow mud. It was very laborious work, so she immersed a rope into the mud, and made humans out of the drops that fell from the rope, the upper class out of the yellow mud, and the poor out of the sludge.
In the older tales, the goddess Nukua works at making humans alone, but when the patriarchy prevails, Fu-His joins her, and she is now describes as his younger sister, and in another version as his wife. When matriarchy faded away completely, creation was taken completely out of women’s hands, and Panko alone resumed the responsibility. Panko was not entirely happy with the creation of the sky, animals and vegetation, so he made effigies in human shape, and when they dried up, they developed Yin and Yang.
In ancient Chinese thought, Yin and Yang are the dynamic and creative principles of the universe. Their interaction causes changes in beings, which reflect the union and separation of Yin and Yang. Yang is active/positive/the sky above and Yin is passive/negative/the earth below. White/black, softness/hardness (narmi/sakhti), good/bad (naiki/badi), big/small (chotai/barai), sorrow/happiness, love/hate…are all manifestations of the interrelations of Yang and Yin, and can not be imagined with out each other.

Chap 9: The Belief system of Aryans.
Aryans from the region between the Volga and Ser rivers (gyahistani illaqa) in central Asia spread to the south to Iran, Afghanistan and the Indus valley, and to the East to Greece, rivers Danube and Rhine valleys (should it not be West).
The sacred text of Indian Aryans is Rig Veda. It contains 1018 Bhajans written in the Indus valley (murattab kiyae gayae thhe) between 500-1,000 BCE. The bhajans eulogize Agni (fire), air/wind, Inder and other gods
The first story of the rig Veda, like the Sumerian one, is a ale of war (razmia kahani) and is situated in the Indus valley, whose indigenous people, they had to fight with. One of them was the Asura nation, meaning live force. Its chief was named Varitter, who was evil incarnate. His mother was named Danoo, (tolerance and self-control). Another chief of the nation was Aditta, who was all good (mujassam neiki). He was the son of Addit (freedom). The Veda does not refer to fathers, as matriarchy was still prevalent). Varitter and Aditta fought together constantly. Once, Aditta was losing, and beseeched the god Inder (power-taaqat). Inder was the son of the earth and the sky, and had been born when the earth and the sky were still stuck (jurae huai thhe) together. Inder had drunk soom rus , which came out the breast of the earth. The rus made him so strong that the sky had run away scared, from the earth, and rule of the space in between fell to Inder.
Inder agreed to help Aditta on the condition that the latter accept him as his overlord. Aditta agreed (beginning of colonization). Inder picked up an electric javelin (bhala) and proceeded to take care of Variitter, but the latter shrewdly morphed into an Ajdaha. But Inder gave him such a strong blow that his belly burst., and out came a pregnant cow, which gave birth to the sun.
When ‘is’ (Satt) had been born out of ‘not is’ (astt-naisti), a path for the sun was made through the roof of the sky. Water also made its way to the sky, and showers came down (nami ki phoar zameen par barasne lagi). A way/routine (reet) was determined for all things, and Varuna was enthroned on the reet throne. He was the Mukhia (chief) of Addiatas (satt) and started looking after the reet. Then Inder and other gods celebrated creation, and the first human was born.
The second story of the Rig Veda relates to Harniae Grubh (the egg), the same which lived in the water in the Greek mythology of creation.
“In the beginning appeared the Herniae Grubh, which was the sole ruler of all existence…”
Narain lay on the egg, which swam on the sea for a thousand years. A kanwal (lotus) came out of the belly button of Narayan, which was brighter than a thousand suns, and was big enough to engulf the entire universe. Brahma, who was self created came out of the lotus. He had the strength of Narayan and used it to create all the things in the world, gave it shape and a name.
The creator is given the names-Praja Pati, ruler of the people, Vishu karma, Porosh and Brahma.
“In the beginning the universe was Brahma, it created the gods and empowered them to ascend to the worlds, one world to fire, another to air, sky to the sun, and then Brahma left the regions…
One Bhajan of Rig Veda is purush shakta (the song of human creation). There are the gods of creation, and the material of which universe is made is actually the body of a god named purush, who is sacrificed and different parts of the universe are made up of different parts of his body. Sanskrit scholars think that this Bhajan was added on, after other Vedas had been compiled. This Bhajan describes the four castes of Hindus and offers religious basis for it. This bhajan also lays the foundation of the Hindu philosophy of unity of thing (wahdatulwajood, hama oast). Brahmans were made out of the mouth of Purush…Inder and Agni were also made out of his mouth (though Inder and Agni pre-existed). This kind of contradiction is common to all tales of creation.
The first philosophic analysis (tashreeh) of creation is in the tenth mandal -part) of the rig Veda. It ends in uncertainty (tashkeek): In the beginning was neither asst (adam-non-existance) nor satt (wajood-existance)…neither death nor amar (abadiat-eternal life)…the whole universe was just and only water…who knows, who can say with certainty how the universe came about…if gods came before or after…only he knows, or does he.
Iranian Belief system:
In the digs in Iran, nothing has yet been found which would inform us of the belief system before Zoaraster. Thus our only source of information is ‘Oasta’ which is a collection of prayers and songs attributed to him (553-630 BCE). It has three parts 1) Yasna (prayers-ibadat kae zamzame), a portion of which is called the Gatha, 2) Yasht, the incantations (duaian) of sacrifice and 3) Vandi dad, which is a collection of rusoom-religious performances. The other two books of the creed written in the Sassanian period are Bundahish, which is a story of creation and Zindaga, which is a collection of religious stories.
Among the existing remnants of Oasta, there is no coherent tale of creation. All it can tell us that the creator is Hormuz. In one place Hormuz is asked “who assigned the paths of the sun and stars…who keeps the clouds from falling down…who created sleep and wakefulness, who reminds the conscious man of his duties? Naturally, the answer to all questions is cone-Hormuz
In the first book of the Sassanian period, there is some detail. For example, in the Bundahish it says “ Hormuz was in the heavens-danai kul and hkair e kul (the all knowing and the all good) and nadaan (ignorant) Ahirman, whose function is to cause harm was in the depths of darkness. There was vacuum between the two. Hormuz was aware of the existence of Ahirman, that he latter would attack him and merge in him, and what and how many weapons (harbae) would he use. The subversive soul was not aware of Hormuz….To avoid bloodshed, Hormuz made a peace pact with Ahirman for 9,000 years.
In the meanwhile, Hormuz created the sky…then made water out of the spices (Masale sae) of the sky, and made earth out of water…and made animals and humans out of the light and freshness of the sky.
In the interpretations of the story of Deenak, another version of creation, close to that of rig Veda, that Hormuz cut a human like body into pieces…

Chap 10: the Belief system of Canaanites.
Canaan was situated between Iraq and Egypt and is now divided into Syria, Lebanon, Jordan and Palestine/Israel. It was a 300 square miles strip. The river Jordan and other rivers of the area emerge out of mountain range from the north to the south of Canaan.
Ancient Canaan was divided into three portions, the north called Ugarat, now called Syria was a center of civilization. Traces of the civilization were found in the digs in Ras Shimra, near the port of Latakia. Many seals (lauh) were discovered which indicate the beliefs and traditions of the people of the area of 1,500 BCE. The central portion, Phoenicia, now Lebanon was the most green and fertile, with streams from the hills and chashmae (water fall…). It grew olives, grapes and figs. The people of Phoenicia were known for shipping (Jahazrani) and monopolized the sea trade of the Mediterranean, and had established extensive settlements on European and African coasts. Aljabal (Babloos) was the most important port of the Mediterranean sea. Saeeda (Saroon), Sur (Tyre), Tarabuls al Sharq were the other main cities.
To the south of Phoenicia was Palestine, itself divided into the North called Galilee, which is described in the Exceptions chapter 8.(istisna) book of the bible “the country of water rivulets and Chashmae, which produces wheat, barley..,Anaar…Olive and honey .
To the south of Galilee was Samaria (Israel), and to further south was Yehuda, which was the most sacred land of the kingship of David and Solomon. Its capital was Jerusalem (Baitul Muqaddas).
Canaan is the land of prophets and messengers. Abraham migrated from Uz to settle in Heron (Qaryatul Arab) in Canaan, Jacob lost Joseph, Moses proclaimed god’s commandments, Daniel was arrested from and taken to Babylon, Ayub’s ( ?English name) patience tested and Jesus declared the will of God ( Bi Izni Allah). Muhammad took trade caravans to and declared it the first Qibla of Islam.
Before Moses, the great god of Canaan was Baal, who is referred to in surah Yunus 125 of the Quran “do you call (entreat) Baal, and ignore the best creator”, so lesser creators were acknowledged and Arabs worshipped Baal (among other gods) and deemed him the god of crop reproduction (afzaish, find a better English translation). The concept survived Islam, for example Baal is the name given to land which does not require irrigation and is fed by water falls, Chashmas (History of the Arabs 1997, and Nolidke Encyclopedia of Religion and Morals).
Baal literally means ruler/master. Every city had its own Baal, and he occupied the same status/role that Mardak did in Iraq and Azeris and Horace did in Egypt. Its festival was also celebrated at the onset of spring in April, when the life, death and revival were offered in a martial simile (razmia tamseel).
The seals obtained from the digs of Ra Shimra indicate that the oldest god of Canaan was El, also called Abu Al El. El has been used as an additive in Bab e El (Babylon) Ishmael, Habeel, Qabeel, Gabriel. Israfil, Israel etc.
Before the advent of Baal, El played the central role in the creation and reproduction festivals. It was celebrated at the beginning of the summer season, when figs, grapes and olives ripened, and dramatized, as found in a seal in Ras Shimra. The dramatic presentation was attended by kings and notables of the state and started with the lines “now will appear the seven kind and affectionate gods of afzaish, the chief of whom is El, their bounty will provide plenty of grain all the year, eat and drink (grape wine) as much as you can.”
But death is always on hand. It appears during the festivities, bearing the sign of widowhood in one hand and the stick (Asaa) of sorrow in the other. Gods grapple with it and cut it into pieces.
In the second scene, two girls engulfed by flames appear on the seaside and proceed towards god El. It is a very sensitive moment. El is old and if he could not perform well with the girls, it would be an omen for a bad harvest. El takes them to a hut, and leaves the Asaa, which is a sign of his organ of procreation at the door. The drama now reaches its climax.. El is trying to cohabit with the girls “if the girls scream’ my husband, my husband and say that thine asaa has bent down, and in us”, the girls will be regarded as El’s wives. But if the girls scream ‘my father, my father’ thine Asaa has bent down and has fallen’ then the girls will be regarded as El’s daughters. But el is successful, he kisses their lips, which are sweet like Anaar (English pomegranate) juice, and the girls become pregnant and give birth to morning and evening.
The drama does not end here. El co-habits with the girls again. They now give birth to seven monsters (dev paikar), one lip of whose is on the earth and the other on the sky, and in their mouths fly the birds of sky and fish of the sea swim.
Like Anu of Euphrates valley had to abdicate in favor of Mardak, El had to yield to Baal, but he did not do it with good grace.
In Canaanite folk lore, El’s wife is named Ashitra (Ishtar in Sumerian) and gives birth to Baal, Maut (death-p 186) and Anaas. El’s favorite was Maut. Maut and Baal hated each other passionately. Anaas loved her brother Baal and married him (in ancient times brothers and sisters married each other, in fact, a Pharaoh, unless the product of a sister brother marriage was not regarded as quite legitimate).
Baal had to legitimate himself in the usual way by adventures (muhmain sar karna pareen). His first encounter was with the sea god Yam. This confrontations are described in the usual martial tales (ramzia tamseelain). In one scene El concedes to Yam. Baal gets infuriated by his old father’s cowardice and charges at the messengers of Yem, but his wife Anaas and mother Ishtira hold him. In the final encounter Baal defeats Yem.
Baal, accompanied by Anaas, proceeds to fight the Asdaha (Lutan) and the predators of the jungle and defeats them too. But he dare not fight Maut. He sent emissaries to Maut to express abject servility.
But obedience to Maut is Maut itself.
Anaas strives to find her husbands body and finds it with the help of the goddess Shams and buries it with pomp and ceremony. But she seeks his assassin and asks Maut, who confesses to the killing. She is infuriated, grabs Maut, and beheads him with a sword…grinds him… burns him and sows him in a field.
El dreams that Baal was alive. The goddess Shams seeks him, and finds him astride Maut (spring is back), but no one can kill Maut. Shams intervenes, Maut gets scared, and Baal returns to Canaan.
No one can deny Maut. In the story of the war between Baal and Maut, like the one between Mardak and Tiamat., the conflict between creation and destruction is depicted. Every fall, Maut overcomes life, but every spring Baal comes back to life. The conflict is eternal.

Chap 11: The Belief systems of Jews and Christians.
About 3,2500 years ago, two races, Aryans and Jews had to leave their ancestral homes to look for livelihood. Aryans spread to East Europe and Iran and the Indus valley. The Jews left Iraq and Egypt and seized the fertile Canaan.
Jews migrated three times. The first, according to Professor ?Bick, Abraham migrated from Iraq to Juraan in the 18th century BCE. The Euphrates valley was in the grip of political chaos at the time, and other Semitic tribes may also have moved to Canaan. The 17th and 15th century BCE Pekani seals first describe the movement of Jaisaro people. These were the first Hebrews.
The second immigration was that of Aramaic tribes, who were pure Bedouin desert dwellers, led by Jacob. He built settlements in Sikkim (Samara). The third was the 13th century immigration of the 13th century BCE from the south led by Moses from Egypt.
The immigrants were herders, lived in tents, were not aware of the norms of urban life and had no experience (sarokar) of agricultural life. They ravaged (takht o taraj) the splendid (pur raunaq) cities of Canaan and killed men, women and children mercilessly. The bloody stories are described in the book of Exodus, book 15, thus “nation shuddered at the news of exodus by the Jews…Canaanites are terror stricken” and “they fought the Medinites and killed all men, also killed the five kings, enslaved women and children, looted all the dwellings and animals, burnt the garrisons (Ginti book of numbers chap 30-?numerology).
Besides the Jews, Canaanites were often attacked for their fertile lands, by Babylon, Ashur and Egypt. Canaan, therefore, could never have a stable government as the Pharaohs and the rulers of Babylon could not countenance a rival.
After overwhelming Canaan, Jews established many small kingdoms and paid tribute to Babylonians and Egyptians, depending upon who was closer. Jewish kings functioned as religious leaders as well, and over time adopted Canaanite customs, worshipping el, Baal and other local gods, amalgamating in Canaanite society (muashra) “Bani Israel settled among Canaanites, intermarried with them and started worshipping their gods (Qazat-? book of the dead chap 3), and started worshipping Baal and Ishtrat, in stead of the god (Qazat chap 2-p 194).
Like Muslims were to do later with Allah (Abdullah),Jews used El and Baal as an additive Yarobaal, Ishmael), but did not quite give up their hereditary god Yahweh whom they had brought from the desert and attributed the victory over Canaanites to him. This very Yahweh was assigned the role of the only god after several centuries (Yahweh is not referred to any writings before 8th century BCE). But the Jews could not escape the local influence and assigned the role of the god of production (afzaish) to Yahweh, who like Baal caused it to rain. Thunder and clouds were also attributed to him. Like Baal, he started crushing Asdaha’s’s skulls and cutting up Loyatan.( Zaboor-74) and merged their festival of sacrifice with the spring festival of Canaanites-March 31. they offered the emancipator from Pharaohs the sacrifice of Halwan and call it Pesach. They celebrate the festival of barley bread, Massoth the same day as the harvest afzaish festival of the Canaanites.
It is not known for certain if the Jews offered dramatic presentations of the victories of Yahweh, but historically, when the Jewish tribal heads and Kahans were released after seventy years of imprisonment from Babylon, they copied the drama of Mardak to dramatize Yahweh’s creations. This imagery (tamseel) was presented at the time of Rosh Shanah, celebrated for seven days. That is why in the old Testament (purana ahd nama) which dates after the imprisonment, the act of creation lasts six days and seventh is the day of rest for Yahweh. On the seventh day, the procession of Yahweh’s Takht emerged from Solomon’s dwelling (haikal) It is possible that other stories of creation like Satan’s defiance of god, eviction of Adam and Eve from the garden of Eden are part of the imagery.
In the old testament, there are two stories about the creation of the universe.
Before the imprisonment:
-In the beginning there was no water or valley ( bae aab o gyah) in the universe. Yahweh created the earth and the sky.
-Yahweh made (garha) humans out of mud (matti), instilled the wind of life (nathnon mein zindagi ka dam phoonka), made Eden in the east, in which there were all kinds of trees, including the tree of life and the tree to recognize good and evil (naik o badd ki pehchan ka darakht). There was a river in the middle, which divided into four parts after exiting from the garden, which were named Jejune, Dajla, Euphrates, and Faison. He then created birds and animals, and Adam named them. He then created Eve from Adam’s rib ( The Book of Genesis chap 2)
After the imprisonment:
In the beginning the universe was a desolate place full of water, then Yahweh produced the following things one after another in seven days and rested on the seventh
-light
-sky/atmosphere (Fizaa)
-earth and vegetation (nabataat)
-The sun, moon and stars
-animals, birds and river animals
-animal couples and humans
-rested on the seventh day (The book of Genesis chap 1)
the first difference between the two narratives is the initial state of the universe, but both proceed from the assumption that the universe is there, and do not throw light on how it came about. They did not want to dwell on the philosophy of creation (Takveen o Afrinash ka falsafa), but only to indicate that it was chaos aur pragandigi and badnazmi in the beginning. Before the imprisonment the universe was bae aab wa gyah (waterless and without ?valley). Jews who had lived in waterless desolation (ba aab wa gyah) for thousands of years before, but in Babylon and the south after imprisonment water was in plenty.
The creation of the story after imprisonment is probably adopted from the Zoroastrian traditions. Zoraoster’s disciple Rosh the great (d 529 BCE) had emancipated the Jews from slavery, given them gold and silver and sent them on to Jerusalem so they could build their Haikal again (Rosh the great is highly lauded in the Old Testament).
Osat’s book Yashna while describing creation says “ who assigned the paths of the sun and the moon…who keeps the clouds from falling down, who created dreams (sleep) and wakefulness., who reminds conscious (ba shaor insan) people of their duties. It is obvious that the answer is Ahur Mazda who is in the heavens (arsh par hai).
In the Bundahish it says “Ahur Mazda made the sky first, then made water out of the spice (masalae sae) of the sky , then made earth which is round, and created metals and mountains in the earth, on the fifth day created the ox, and on the sixth day created Gayomart (kiymars), the first human, and created the ox and human out of mud (matti). Jews distributed the six creations of god Ahur Mazda into six days and attributed them to their god Yahweh. The origin of the sketch of paradise in the Bible is in no doubt. It refers to the rivers of Iraq. Eden is itself an Akkadi word, which means grassland (charagah). In a similar vein, the tree of life and the forbidden tree are trees of old Babylonian stories, noted in the story of Gil Gamish.
But the most entrancing is the story of the creation of Adam and Eve. In the Hebrew language, Adam means mud (mitti) and the word used fir his creation is the same as that used for the clay potter making clay pots on his chak (wheel). Yahweh made Adam the same way as a potter makes utensils out of wet mud. Ancient Egyptians had the same belief that Kanum made humans on potters wheel. It would not be strange that after/while exiting from Egypt Jews brought the belief with them.
Eve (hawwa) is Hebrew for life. Haii (?rising) and hayat (life) are derived from Hawwa. Referring to woman to life indicates that Jews equated women with the origin (sarchashma) of life, though it was a dominantly patriarchal society. To get a perspective of how they came upon the idea of Eve’s creation from Adam’s rib, we will have to revert to Nin Ho Rus g’s Sumerian story, in which mother nature produces eight kinds of plants. But the water god Inki eats them up. Nin Ho Rusg gives the god ‘saraap’-curse and he gets disease in eight organs. At which point, gods beseech mother universe to forgive Inki. She creates eight goddesses to cure the eight organs, one of whom was created out a rib of Inki. The goddess was named Ninti, which literally means ‘woman of the rib’, but in the Sumerian language Ninti also means life., so Ninti can also stand for ‘life of a woman’.
Ninti eventually morphed into Hawwa (Eve) and was made out of Adam’s rib.
Christians adopted the traditions of the Old Testament, but added two traditions-birth of Jesus from virgin Mary, and revival after crucifixation and ascendance to heavens.

Chap 12. Muslim Belief System.
In order to get good perspective, one has to look at the pre-Islam Arab society. The peninsula was divided into several big and small tribes. They herded camels, goats and sheep, and traveled with them in search of water and grazing grounds through the blazing sun across the desert in search of an oasis. They fed on the meat of animals and their milk, cheese and figs. They lived in tents made out of camel skin and hair and made their clothing out of the same material. It was a harsh life, but they enlivened it with poetry, horsemanship and swordsmanship. The redeeming features of life were hospitality and bravery.
Among a lot of settlements, the notables ones were Madina in the north and Mecca in the south. Both were on the trade route to Syria. Taif was near Mecca, but at 6,000 feet above the sea level, cool and with plenty of water, it was the playground for the rich of Mecca.
The Arab nomads and the ones who lived in settlements, both adhered strictly to tribal democracy. But in the cities, traders ruled.
Mecca held a central position in Hejaz.. It was the largest commercial city and held an annual fair called Suaqul Akkaz. The other distinguishing feature was the House of Kaaba, which was the most sacred prayer house for the Arabs and where they gathered in the month of Zil Haj to celebrate the Haj pilgrimage. The passban (administrators) of the Harem collected a tariff from the pilgrims. The revenue was the cause of conflict among the various clans of Mecca. The reason for the prosperity and prominence of Abd Munaf and his son Hashim was the control over Kaaba. When Hashim’s son, Abdul Muttallib dug out the long buried Chah e Zamzam, their influence increased further (Ibne Ishaq-The Life of the Prophet).
The most powerful tribe of Mecca was Quresh, who controlled the administration of the city.
There were five belief systems in the Hejaz- Mushrikin-mixers (?infidels) who believed in other deities besides Allah and worshipped their idols, Kafirs-non-believers, who did not accept Allah, but worshipped their tribal and family gods. The third were Jews, who were not among the ancient people of Hijaz, but had fled Palestine when Romans had captured the city and lived in small oasis along the trade route. They were agriculturists, had adopted Arabic language, but lived separately from the Arabs society. They had brought their own creed and were proud of being people of the Book. They worshipped their one god Yahweh, and looked down upon idolatrous Arabs. They dominated Madina, and their two tribes Aus and Khizraj were the most influential in the city.
The fourth group was that of Nusserians (Nasara), who were few and led a monk like existence in remote deserts and caves.
The fifth were dubbed Hanif by the people of Mecca. They worshipped only Allah. Ummayya ibne Abi Assalat, who was a cousin of the prophet and Warqa bin Nofil, who was a cousin of Khatija, prophet’s first wife, were Hanifs ( Phillip Hitti-The history of Arabs p 108).
Mushrikins were the majority in Mecca and the whole of Hijaz. Though they worshipped a lot of gods/goddesses, the chief deity was Allah.
Rocks with Allah inscribed on them have been found in the digs of Al Oola, Um al Jamal, Safa and Yemen. Among them five date to 5th century BCE and others from five hundred years before the birth of Muhammad, indicating that worship of Allah was a long time practice.
Analysts (mufsireen) differ on the root of the word Allah, but Baizavi (d 1286 CE) opines that Allah is an abbreviation of Al Ilah, which was a common noun (isme nakrah), rather than particular noun which the Quran while making it (isme maarifa) added the adjective wahid (the only). “do you really give witness that are other deities (mabood) besides Allah…say there is only one mabood, and I am sick of shirk (mixing up-Surah Inam 19).
Allah was god’s name among the Semitic people. In the Akkadi and the Canaanite languages, it was called El, and in the Canaanite texts, it has repeatedly been referred to as the creator of all beings (Anet 143). Among the Jews, it is known as Alohem. Arabs, of course, called him Ilah and Allah. The Quran makes repeated references to Meccan’s Allah worship Surah Yunus 22 and Surah Luqman 32). But the people of Mecca did not believe in Allah alone (Surah Raad 16). They swore by Allah (Surah Inam 110) and offered it sacrifices and presents. When the prophet remonstrated with them, they responded that Allah had not forbid them from worshipping other gods (Surah Inam 149).
According to the Mushrikin, Allah had three daughters, Allat, Uzza and Manat. Allat was the goddess of sun, with its idol in Taif. Uzza is identical to Anaas, Ishtar and Naheed. Its idol was in Nakhla, a suburb of Mecca. Manat was the goddess of the region between Mecca and Madina. But the most venerated of Meccan gods was Hubal, whose idol was in side Kaaba, near the water well.
The digs have failed to find any creation stories of the Quresh or those of other tribes. Professor Hitti writes that they believed that Allah was the creator of all things.
The Quran not only declared oneness of God, but also inserted ‘no other god’ in the Muslim Kalma, affirmation of the acceptance of the faith (Surahs Al Rakhwaf 82-Al Momin 7-Al Ramz 75).
The Jewish story of creation does not assert hat Yahweh, though very potent, yet did not bring out the universe out of nothing. The universe pre-existed as waterless and valley less (be aab wa gyah). He only restructured it (islah ki) and created the sun, the moon, vegetation, animals and humans, in turn. The Quran, on the other hand asserts that Allah was capable of (Qadir hai) of bring everything into existence out of nothing (adam- p 208). Though it does not refer to primeval desolation, yet the rest of the story resembles the creation story of the Old Testament. Thus it states that God created the skies and the earth in six days, and on the seventh day, he stayed in heavens (Satvain din Arsh par qaim hua-Surah al Earaf 54), or Surah Hood 7, Surah Furqan 59, Surah Sajda 3, Surah Qaf 38, Surah Hadeed 4).
But in the beginning the sky and the earth were joined together, and Allah separated them (Surah Al Ambia 30), then goes on that he made the sky first and then the earth (Surah Al Nizaat 30). The sky was just smoke at first, then god made it in two days and decorated it with stars (Surah Hum Sajda 11-12). In another place it says that Allah is the one who kept the skies aloft without columns (Surah Raad 2) After completion of the skies, God created the earth in two days (Surah Hum Sajda 19). God created the sun, the moon, day and night, but does not tell us the time took him to. The creation of Adam was a separate undertaking. The creation of Adam is the most magnificent achievement of the creator. In the story of Mardak, it says that Mardak or Raya made humans out of the blood of a rebel god. Ancient Babylonian have made by mother universe.
The story of creation in the Quran “Let it be known (aur tahqeeq) that we created human out of vibrant (khankhaniti hui matti sae) jingling mud, which had been made from rotten sludge (keechar), and when I breathe in (phoonk doon apni rooh sae) my soul, and fall in sajda before him (Surah al Musaffat 11). The concept of human creation in Islam bears great resemblance to the Egyptian and Jewish concepts.
Quran does not give details of Hawwa’s (Eve) creation but Sahib Ahsanul Tafaseer in the Tafseer of Suran Baqra ayat 35, writes “Abdullah ibne Abbas and Abdullah ibne Masood and a party of the companions of the prophet aver (ka qaul hai) that Adam lived alone in paradise, but was bored. One day while he was sleeping, god made Hawwa (Eve) out of his left rib. Bukhari and Muslim (collectors of ‘authentic’ saying of the prophet) referring to Abu Harera (a companion) that because of creation from a rib, there is some ‘bent’ in woman’s nature. It is described in essentially the same way in the Bible (Book of Genesis chap 2).
The point is that the ancient people did not derive creation stories from observation of natural phenomenon, nor they a result of inspiration. They are simply an amalgam of the primitive festivals and traditions of harvest/growth.
In the 3rd century BC, when the successors of Alexander the great prevailed over the near East, the seasonal festivals of Greece found currency in the region. The people found no difficulty in reconciling the Greek god of reproduction/growth (afzaish) with Azeris, Baal and Tammuz. The Greek poet Hessiod’s creation stories are aware that the biggest god of Olympus, Zeus is a duplicate of Babylonian Zamzama e Takhleeq (song of creation).
In the first century BCE, when regions merged into the Roman empire, and Romans started establishing settlements, Canaanites took to Roman festivals in a big way. The festival of the Roman god of reproduction (afzaish), Bacchus also falls in spring, so Canaanites had no emotional compunction in merging the two.
But in 330 CE, when Constantine converted to Christianity, and established his capital in Constantinople, the idols of local and Roman gods were smashed, and their prayer houses demolished. In 378 CE, Emperor Theodosius banned paganism through a royal edict, and three years later, all their festivals were abolished too.
The biggest festival of Christians was Easter, when they grieved over the crucifixation of Jesus, and rejoiced over his rising from the dead. These ceremonies were mirror images of the death and revival of Baal and Azeris. The people missed the spring festivities, so Easter was moved to April, to coincide with the former.

Chap 13: Creation and Evolution.
The two concepts on creation in old cultures are Salbi and Jadli. The first ?biological is older. Humans thought of creation after observing the birth of human and animal babies. He was not yet cognizant of the biology principles of birth. But he had observed that the bellies of all mothers get swollen, and after an appointed time, a baby/babies are born. Over time, they gave the woman the status of creator (takhleeq ka sarchashma and afzaish e nasl ki alamat). They also awarded the status of mother to the earth, as life securing water and trees, plants and greens came out of earth.
The most prominent example of the Salbi concept of creation is the ancient civilization of Mohen jo Daro. They deemed Shakti or Prakarti as the core (mabda) of creation of the universe (p 216), and regarded shakti as a woman
In a similar vein, Hessiod writes “In the beginning was vacuum. Then the wide chested earth, which is the eternal foundation of all beings, came into existence and love, which relaxes the bodies of humans and gods, and subdues their senses and will. The earth gave birth to star studded sky, Uranus, which was its equal in expanse, so it could cover earth completely, then it created tall mountains and wild/agitated (biphrae huay) oceans, all without the sexual act, then it copulated with the sky.
In the Indus valley civilization, which was patriarchal, they added Prush (man) to Prakarti, and gave him active role and reactive/passive (infaali) to women, like the Yang and Yen of Chinese.
The struggles between Ishtar and Aresh Gill, Tiamat and Alepso, Mardak and Tiamat, Baal and Maut, Azeris and Satat, Ahur Mazda (Yazdan, Noor-light) and Angar Manus/Aharmman (darkness) are different shapes of the Jadli concept of creation. The pairs are the contradictory facets of the same reality. The Unitarians (tauheed parast) could not escape the influence, either. They brought Satan to confront God.
The Jadli concept is a manifestation of the class society. It could not be conceived in a classless one. Kingdoms were established, there were wars and the faction, which was victorious acquired all the virtues, and the vanquished became the evil incarnate.
The evolutionary concept of creation negates the creationist concept. Though Darwin enunciated it, it was the logical outcome of the materialist philosophy and scientific discoveries of the 18th and 19th centuries CE. Materialist philosophers claimed that all existence was made of matter, the smallest component of which was the atom. Matter is indestructible, though its shape and properties can change, and that matter was in constant motion. Further there were certain laws of the change and motion of matter. No non-material or supernatural power can interfere with the change and motion.
Faint notions of evolution can be discerned among the ancient, especially philosophers. They did not believe in the creative powers of gods/goddesses, nor did they think that they had anything to do with the management of disruption of the world. They explained the manifestations of nature in natural terms. Some averred that the world was made of water, others that of fire, still others of mud (matti) or air. They enunciated the atomic philosophy. Anaximander (611-547 BCE) went a step further. He stated that the material cause ( maaddi sabab) and the high element (unser e oola) was unlimited (la mahddod). The world came into existence (wajood mein aai) due perpetual motion (daimi harkat), and is done and undone due to mutual clash of contradictions (ziddain kae bahimi tasadum sae banti, bigarti rahti hai).
Anaximander was a resident of Miletos, which was situated at the southern coast of Asia Minor. It was the most prosperous of the Greek states due mainly to its wool trade. The port was a great trading center and had eighty new settlements in other countries where they exchanged their domestic produce for metals, fruit, and wood. Because of trade, it was visited by people of different countries and religions, who naturally exchanged views as well. That had made them very open minded. In the 6th and 5th centuries BCE, it had become the center of sciences and philosophy, and produced such minds as Anaximander.
Anaximander was not just a theoretician. He constructed a sun clock, which depicted the movement of stars. He also modernized (tadveen ki thi) and made the first world atlas to facilitate trade. The first reference to the concept of evolution is also found in his work. He claimed that the earth was initially a liquid (sayyal) material, which over time, dried up under solar heat. The steam thus generated made up the clouds, and the change in the temperature of the atmosphere caused motion (tamawwuj) in the air. Animals were produced also due to humidity. Initially all animals, including humans were fish, and as the earth dried up, animals assumed their current shape. He, astonishingly, hypothesized (qayas arai) that humans had evolved (kisi aur nau kae janwar sae paida hua hain) out of some other animal, because he was so helpless at birth he could not have survived.. He was somewhat aware of survival of the fittest and accommodation to the milieu (mahoul sae mutbiqat-John Burnet: Early Greek Philosophy p 70 NY 1957 and Will Durant: The Life of Greece p 134-139 NY 1939).
The other Greek philosopher, who thought of evolution, was Empedocles (500-430 BCE). He was renowned physician, orator and poet of his time. His claim was that all existence was made up from the four elements-air, water, fire and mud (mitti).The elements are controlled by the dynamic powers of mutual attraction, repellence, love and hate, ( apnae amal mein kashish aur ijtinaab, ya muhabbat wa mukhasimat ki harkati quwatoan kae tabey hotae hain )because of which the four elements get together and separate (wasl wa firaq ki yahi doano quwatain hain jinke sabab anasir e arba kae mabain millap aur judai hoti rahti hai aur cheezain bigarti, banti rahti hain), and things get constructed and destructed. When love and union (mohabbat aur wasl) are in the ascendant, solid material progresses to the state of a plant and organic bodies evolve (Aala sae aala shaklain akhtiar karate jatae hain) into higher and higher shapes. He thought that in nature, there was not much difference between one kind and another kind of things, for example body hair, leaves of trees, wings of the birds and the skin of animals are, in fact the same things. “In the beginning, there were many more kinds of animals, but most could not reproduce and became extinct. Only the ones which could protect themselves, because of their speed, shrewdness, or daring, survived (Benjamin Farrington: Greek Science p 60 Pelican 1953, Will Durant The life of Greece p 366).
Aristotle (384-322 BCE) Qamoosi Skahsiat, is known to all. He was the first Greek philosopher to perform scientific experiments on a large scale. His predecessors observed and made guesses (apne mushahidae ki bina par zin wa qayas sae kaam laitae thhe). He got his disciples to collect plants, flowers and animals and experimented on them. Alexander, the great had instructed his hunters, fishermen and gardeners that if they came across a new kind of plant or animal, they were to send a specimen to Aristotle. Aristotle had classified about five hundred animals, and had dissected about fifty animals, and recorded his findings. (Benjamin Farrington: Greek Science p 60 Pelican 1953 and Will Durant The life of Greece p 366).
Aristotle came to the conclusion from the experiments that the world of animals and plants is a unity, which is like a ladder. On the first step are plants. Up the ladder are animals in ascending pattern of development, and on the highest step are the humans. He had assigned eleven steps, and was of the opinion that there was not much to choose from between one step and the next one( Aristotle: History of Animals Will Durant VII).Aristotle classified creatures according to their physical structure, but asserted that species should be determined by the movements and habits of organic organs. He takes refuge in the supernatural and states that movement and habits of organs are subservient to the Soul.
Aristotle thought that the link between humans and other baby bearing animals is monkey (Will Durant The Life of Greece p 530). He believed that changes in animal organs is due to necessity. Darwin admits that “In Aristotle’s writings, there is a glimpse of ,natural selection’…for example he says that it does not rain because the crops need it or that they be swept away…(Darwin: Origin of Species p 15 NY 1962).
The Greek empire broke up after the death of Alexander, the great and his successors started a war of succession. With Aristotle’s death, the last light of Greek civilization was extinguished. Schools and seminaries were deserted and academics fled to Alexandria in Egypt. The Roman empire exceeded the Greeks in splendor and conquests, but they could not produce Aristotle and Plato And when the establishment accepted Christianity, all scientific inquiry died. People were made to believe that god created the world in six days and it has gone on unchanged since. The changes and progress one sees are satanic illusions.
But their analysis (tashreeh) of the fall (Hiboot) of Adam was worse. They asserted that human kind has been on a downward moral and spiritual spiral since Adam ate the forbidden fruit and was thrown out of paradise. Any one who had the temerity to differ from the priests was stigmatized as Zindeeq, Dahria, Bidaati and a Jaddogar (witch) and burnt or quartered on a stake.
At the end of the 15th century CE, when Europeans discovered the sea routes to America and Asia, international trade laid the foundation of the capitalist system, nation states emerged in Europe and their interests clashed with those of the clergy. The Protestant movement arose because of the parasitical exploitation of resources by the church. Printing press was introduced, literature in local languages started flourishing and the political opponents of the roam Pope started patronizing enlightened academics. The demands of international trade promoted invention of machines, and the process of accumulation of capital ensued. That led to a habit of inquiry, people no longer accepted an argument because it was said so in the bible. They demanded rational thought.
An occasional thinker aside, the concept of evolution arose in the 18th century CE, as a result of the impact of changes in society. The progress in industry, trade and production, crafts and skills and in knowledge and learning, were objective realities. Based on these objective realities, thinkers compiled (murattab kiya) a comprehensive concept of evolution. The idea was advanced first by the French encyclopedists, a (Qamoosioan) group of enlightened thinkers led by the renowned revolutionary philosopher, Derido (spelling). Between 1751-1777 CE, this group published an encyclopedia in twenty-two volumes, with the objective of “collecting all the knowledge scattered all over the world, to develop a comprehensive (jamae) system of thought”. The French Advocate General describes the impact of the encyclopedia on educated minds as {“these philosophers have shaken the throne, and disrupted the Church (darham barham kar diya-Stephen F. Mason: A History of Science p 326 NY 1970).
The French revolutionary messenger (naqeeb) Condorcet, wrote in his “The History of Human Soul” “ I have established with arguments and examples (Shawahid) that the potential (kamiliat) of humans is limitless. The pace of his development may ebb or accelerate, but he will never retrogress”. The biologist Lamark, distilled his experiments in his 1809 CE “The Philosophy of Animal Study (Haivaniat)” that animals, like the machines, evolve under natural laws.
The rationalists of France were much influenced by the Greek philosopher’s concept of evolution. In 1794, Beniot de Maillet, followed in the steps of Anaximander that “all land animals had evolved out of the fish…humans were an altered form of water fairies, whose upper half of the body was shaped like a woman and the lower half like that of fish”. In 1751 CE, Maupertius, like the Greek atomic philosophers, claimed that the different varieties of plants and animals were the consequence of differing arrangement of atoms.
Idealists in Germany were the other group, who took to the concept of evolution in a big way, but in their view the dynamic of the evolution of all existence (Muaujudaat e Alam) was ‘the soul of the universe’ or the absolute concept/ideation (tasawwar e Mutlaq), and they assigned three grades to the evolution of nature. First was ‘mechanical’ like that of the sun and the stars, which are only nominally autonomous (khud Mukhtar). The second and the third, chemical elements and animals, make progress on their own. Every grade has its own peculiarities, but these grades did not evolve from lower forms, neither do they have anything to do with one another. Historic evolution happened only in the inner self (innate self-batini zaat) of the ‘soul of the universe’, which resolved its inner contradictions to create different shapes, which are the consequence of nature’s objectives (jo qudrat kae maaroozaat ka makhraj hein). All existence is objective manifestations of the inner motion of the soul of the universe (tamam maujodaat rooh e alam ki batani harkat kae maroozi mazahir hein), but have no physical ( innate-batini) or historic relations with each other.
The leader of German idealists was Hegel (1770-1831 CE), who compiled (murattab) the whole system of the evolution of the soul of the universe/absolute concept/ideation (tasawwar e mutlaq). He regarded the soul of the universe as the essence (jauhar) of the universe. To him history of the universe was ‘worship’-Ibadat. The evolution, expression and appearance (irtiqa, izhar and namood), the emergence (ujagar) of the hidden powers of the soul, and the evolution of consciousness of independence. When the soul expresses itself in the mechanical (makani) vastness, it is called nature. When it does in epochal-of time (zamani) evolution, it is the evolution of human civilization. Nature, according to him, does not have history, nor can it change or develop further. He declined to countenance that skeletons of extinct animals have been found in digs. He claimed that in contrast to nature, humans and society do advance constantly.
The scientific concept of evolution, was presented for the first time by Jean Lamark (1744-1829 CE). His parents wanted him to become a priest. He did not like it and joined the army. He did not like it either and moved into trade, could not put up with profit and loss. He finally got a job in the royal garden of Paris and was entranced by the life of animals and plants. He began his research on plants and proceeded to a study of lower animals to finally arrive at humans. In his old age, Lamark became blind and spent his last days in poverty and want. His two daughters looked after him and transcribed his work.. but several years after his death, the hundredth anniversary of his masterpiece (in 1909) was celebrated with pomp and splendor, his statue was installed in Paris, with the inscription “inventor of the concept of evolution”. Behind the statue is a painting of a blind old man sitting in an easy chair, which says “the future generation will be proud of you and will avenge the injustice which you were subjected to”.
Lamark asserted that plants and animals have arrived at the current shape after a long period of evolution. They owe changes to the changes in the milieu. The changes are transmitted to new generations. He cited the example of a tree, which grew on the edge of water, and was half submerged in water. The part under water had fine thorns, but the part above water had wide leaves and flowers. If one were to plant the tree on dry land, all its branches bore leaves. If one were to replant it in water, the underwater branches would grow thin thorns again.
The parts of the body which the animals had to use more, developed and became more functional, the part which were not used, became feeble, dwindled and over time disappeared (these are called vestigial organs; appendix in the abdomen of the humans is dysfunctional, but developed in many animals. The animals which live in swamps, have long beaks, legs and necks to help extract food.
But Lamark added a unscientific element to his thesis; every organic being strives for perfection (takmeel e zaat).
The greatness of Darwin consists in that he offered a theory based on evidence and experimentation alone. He was brought up in a science loving household. His father was the renowned naturalist Dr Erasmus Darwin. He was a keen gardener as well. Young Darwin spent most of his time in the garden, watched the birds, and flowers and collected butterflies and moths (Charles Darwin: Autobiography p 6. NY 1958).
He was sent at the age of sixteen to study medicine at the university of Edinburgh, but did not have any inclination towards medicine and kept on collecting flowers, leaves and insects, and went with fishermen to collect fish, and sea shells.
At the age of seventeen, he wrote a paper on water insects, which he delivered in a meeting of the university Plinean (after Pliny) society (ibid).He also attended a professorial natural science society with Professor Grant. He learnt to skin and stuff animals.
When his father found out that Charles had no interest in medicine, he sent the young man to study theology at Cambridge university.. but he was not interested in that either, and continued to attend lectures on natural sciences. (ibid).
In Cambridge University, Darwin came across Professors Adam Sedgwick of Geology and John Hanslow of botany, who encouraged him, and it was on the recommendation of Hanslow that he got a job as a honorary naturist in the ship ‘Beagle’ which was proceeding to Southern hemisphere on an investigative/research trip. That changed his life “the ship embarked in December 1831 CE. It was very stormy and long trip, but Darwin kept his journal/diary with great regularity. In January 1832 CE, it reached the island Cape Verde in the Atlantic Ocean. Darwin collected many unknown plants. He also observed many fossilized skeleton of extinct animals in the southern region.
But his most valuable finds were in the island, Galapagos, situated sixty miles from the coast of South America in the Pacific Ocean, where several ocean currents crossed each other. What surprised him most was that animals of the North Pole were also found in the hot regions. He observed huge tortoises and Girgits, which are extinct now. He recognized fourteen kinds of prawns, the beak of one was longer than that of a Hudhud. He was astonished that the birds of Galapagos resembled those of South America, though there were eight hundred miles of ocean between the two. On the rocky plains of Argentina, in the hills of Andes, the salt lakes of Chile and Australia, thick jungles of Tahiti and Terra Well Poigo, he studied the shells of the pacific and animals and birds of the islands. He also made observations on the mode of living and physical shape of the primitive indigenous people, who lived in isolation.
Darwin brought back a large collection of animals and plants from the memorable voyage, sea shells, butter flies, fish, crabs, lizards, girgit, stuffed birds, bones and skeletons of extinct animals, and fossils, of which even the educated people in Europe were not aware of. The findings created a revolution in the thinking of people, and they gradually came to accept evolution, and rejected creationism.
Darwin had private means, so could devote all his time in scientific inquiry. In order to study animals and plants reared under natural conditions, he settled in a small village called Downs in Kent county and exchanged views with local gardeners, farmers and animal husbandry workers on how to produce better species.
Darwin’s special interest was in the physical changes that animals and plants undergo under natural or artificial conditions. In 1837, he started drafting a summary of his findings on the changes. He writes “I followed the rational ( istiqrai) methods of Bacon…I soon came to the conclusion that that the key to human success in production of useful traits in animals and plants was ‘selection’, but I remained puzzled for while on how the principle pf natural selection could be applied to the animals and plants living under natural conditions(Autobiography p 42). He was once reading the “Principles of population” by Malthus (1766-1834 CE), who claimed that the food supply did not keep pace with the increase in population, leading to constant conflict between humans. War, floods, famine and epidemics create a balance between production and population and came to the conclusion that “…during the struggle for existence, useful traits/variations would persist, and useless ones would be destroyed, and so would arise new species of plants and animals (Autobiography p 43).
Darwin was a very cautious and prudent scientist and pondered over different aspects of his findings for four years, till he was confident that the concept of evolution based on ‘natural selection’ and ‘struggle for existence’ that he had developed was correct, before venturing to produce a thirty five page manuscript, which he over time enlarged to 230 pages, but he was still not ready for publication of the findings, though he published several books in the meanwhile-The diary of the Voyage on the Beagle-1939, The Make of the Rocks of Monge ( p 235) 1842 CE, Volcanic Islands 1844 CE, Sea Insects Stuck to the Bottom of Ships 1851-54 CE, Animal-Plants 1857 CE.
His friends prodded him to publish the work. In the summer of 1858 CE, while working on the draft, Alfred Wallace sent him an article (maqoola) in which the author had offered his views on evolution, identical to those of Darwin. Wallace had also spent many years in South America, and made similar studies, but his work was destroyed in a fire on his ship.. Like Darwin, Wallace was also self-effacing and had sent the article for presentation to Professor Lyall for comments.
Darwin was in a fix-moral dilemma ( shahsh o panj mein par gaya) now. Finally, on the advice of Professor Lyall, he offered his manuscript and Wallace’s article to the Linnean (check spelling) scientific society. Both were published in the society’s journal. No one took any particular notice.
Darwin finally finished the book and published the “Origin of Species” in 1859. the first edition sold out in a day!
Summarizing his work, Darwin wrote, “The idea that all species were created separately, is wrong. Species are not immutable…Further, I am confident that the changes and alterations in species occur mainly through natural selection, but that is not the only method”.
The core of Darwin’s thesis was that evolution occurred through natural selection. He assigned natural selection the role of the dynamics of evolution. Analyzing his views, he offers, “All the individuals of a species can not survive, so engage in the struggle for existence on an ongoing basis… and the individual which adopts suitable changes, is more likely to survive…” (Darwin: Origin of Species p 27). He based the explanation on the artificial animal/plant culture techniques employed by humans to improve the species. History is witness to the fact that over the last 10,000 years, humans produced newer species of animals and by experimentation on naturally existing ones. It is rather difficult to comprehend and accept that the current grains-wheat and barley were once wild grass. The same applies to domestic cows, sheep, dogs, pigeons, which were very different from their current shape/habits. Cross breeding of plants and animals is well established now. Nature performs the service applying the principle of ‘survival of the fittest’.
Origin of Species took the world by storm. Darwin had not discussed Adam and Eve in his book, but priests were fully cognizant of fact that the idea of evolution was a frontal attack on the creation concept of the Bible. It was not just the clergy, the establishment in his own alma mater, Cambridge decided that no copy of the book was to be kept in the library. Newspapers resorted to ridicule by publishing cartons. But he was fortunate in gaining the support of such luminaries as Thomas Huxley and Professor Lyall.
Darwin published his theory of evolution of human kind, twelve years later, and named it “Descent of Man”. In the preface to the book, he wrote “the objective of the book is whether humans too are evolved from an extinct species, and how has man evolved, thirdly, what is the status of the difference between the so called human races. He agreed with Lamark, Huxley, Lyall, Vogut, Lebeck and Haskell, that man had evolved from a ‘lower’ species. In evidence, he offered that the structure of humans is similar to other mammals, his bone structure resembles that of monkeys, bats and seal fish. The same holds for arteries, muscles and tendons. His brain functions in the same way. The process of reproduction, courtship, pregnancy and are not only the same, but the development of the fetus in the womb are the same too. They share diseases like leprosy, plague and epilepsy, which respond to similar treatment. Wounds heal in an identical fashion.
He also established by observations that the physical structure and mental capacity of humans was changing. Science had advanced so much that the genesis of the earth and history of evolutionary epochs has been compiled. It is established that man evolved from chimpanzees/Apes. (Bozina). The first discovery in this direction was in 1891 CE, when a Dutch (Valandezi- ?Portuguese) researcher, Dr Eugene Dubois found a skull, a femur and two teeth in the jungles of Java. Based on the bones, the missing link between chimpanzees and man could be reconstructed, which had existed on the earth about a million years ago. Its eyebrow (frontal) bones were thick, had receding eyes, narrow forehead, sharp teeth, wide chest and narrow waist. His height was five and a half feet, and he walked a little stooped, on the front of the feet. In 1929, in a cave near Beijing, several skeletons of males, females and children were found, who were ‘younger’ than the Java find.
Professor Leakey of East Africa, claims on the basis of years of research that East African man was several hundred thousand years than the Java man. More recently Professor David Pilbeam of Yale university found a complete jaw in Potohar valley, which, he claims, is ten million years old, and is the link ( Ramapicthecus) between the apes and man). He says that similar finds were discovered in 1910 CE in India, in 1962CE in Africa, in 1972 CE in Europe and in 1974 CE in turkey (Dawn Newspaper Karachi Pakistan March 11, 1976)

Chap 14: Fate and the Lauh of Fate.
Qismat, Bhag and Taqdeer (Fate) are the relics of the hunter period of human history, when usually the senior most and venerable person was assigned the task of parceling out portions of the hunt. It was a socialist society, so every one, successful or not in the hunt, got a share according to need. The figure was deemed as food provider (shikar baantne walay ka rutba rizq dainai walay ka hota thha) and no member of the tribe dare disagree with him.
The concept persisted in the agricultural period too, only the status of food provider was now awarded to gods/goddesses.
When writing was invented, and the kings farman (declarations), accounts of the prayer houses, bhajans, songs and medical incantation started being written on mud slates, a slate for fate was also devised (Lauh). No one could change what was written, because the fate of every one had been preordained and inscribed on the Lauh by Qassam Azal-primordial authority p 243).
This belief was potentiated by the vagaries of the primitive agriculture, when every farmer felt helpless and hampered by the milieu and season, unlike the factory workers, who are little affected by the weather. Traditions also kept him bound. These externalities affected his mind set and sentiments.. he loved his tiny piece of land and would sacrifice all for it
On top of these dependencies was the system of absolute monarchs, obedience to whom was the hereditary duty of all. No body had any rights except those gifted by the king. The chain of obedience did not end with the king, wife had to obey her husband, members of the house its head, slave his owner, worshipper the priest, peasant the landowner and the worker his employer, to the extent that in certain countries like Egypt and India, one could not give up one’s ancestral profession. Because of all these factors, ancient society took refuge in fate, though that sapped the will to act, enterprise and or get ahead. But the establishment derived great benefit, as no one could contemplate any reform in the system, and sought salvation in the pleasure of gods.
In the Sumerian and Akkadi dev mala (hierarchy of gods), the inscriber and guardian of the seal of fate was An Leel, and by virtue of the seal, he had full control over the life and death of people. But the powers of darkness/evil were always after the seal.. Once a bird of darkness, called Zu, somehow, got into the heavens and was dazzled by the splendor of An Leel’s court. And somehow managed to capture the seal. But Nin Girsu broke the wings of Zu, and the control of the seal of fate reverted to An Leel.
The concept of preordination and inalterability of fate persisted for centuries, and the Greek philosophers too accepted it in some measure and form. Epicurius (342-270 BCE) was the first major philosopher deemed humans responsible for their acts.
Islam too is inclined towards fate, likely the prevalent view of the time. Several Surah can be cited from The Quran to substantiate the view; Surah Yunus: “If Allah gives you grief (takleef), only he can give relief…and if he gives some comfort, no one can take it away 107) and Surah Al Razm: If he guides anyone, no one can misguide him 37, and no misfortune comes in the world…but is written in the Lauh e Mahfooz (secure Lauh).
Sahib Ahsanutafasir writes “the verse (of the Quran) shows clearly it is all written in the Lauh e Mahfooz according to God’s will (p 829).
The traditions (Ahadis) of the prophet indicate that he too believed in fate. Sahih Muslim (Bukhari, Muslim, Tirmizi are the collectors of authentic traditions of the prophet. The collections are named after them. the process of authentication is complicated, but roughly a credible chain of evidence is looked for) quotes Ibne Umar “ the prophet said that Allah had written the fate (muqaddar) of his creations 50,000 years before the creation of the sky and the earth.(Mishqat Shareef vol 3 p 101).
But fate was not a part of core beliefs in Islam. The prophet discourage futile discussions. The Prophet’s wife Ayesha is quoted as saying that that she heard him say that Allah, on the day of judgment will question those who talked about fate, and not those who do not (ibid 113). He condemned the Qadiryas (those who thought they were autonomous in their acts) by name, that if they get sick, do not visit them…(ibid 112)
There was a group which argued that if we accept that humans were totally helpless (majboor), the Quranic teaching of recompense and punishment becomes meaningless and quoted the Quran in their defense, Surah Al Shoora p 30“the misfortunes (musibatain) which you bear, you have earned with your own hands…” and Surah Al Najam “no one bears the burden of another, and a human does not get anything but what he tries for p 38-39) Fate and compulsion were not just jurisprudence (fiqahi)points, but had societal and political implications. After the prophet passed on and wars of power started, the discussions of compulsion and authority took on a political color. When the tyranny of Umayyad started, the conflict became more intense, and Muslims openly divided into two groups. The Umayyad offered fate in their defense, that whatever was happening was written, so all must obey the rulers without any hesitation. Their opponents had to rely on the arguments of Qadiryas, as they could not otherwise hold Umayyad responsible for their cruelty and transgressions, nor could they incite people to rebel. The Umayyad, cognizant of the fact that the Qadirya (also Mutazzilin), crushed them mercilessly, the most known was Gaillani Damishqi, who was killed on the orders of Caliph Hisham bin Abd al Malik (721-743 CE).
But they could not quite wipe out the Mutazzilin, who produced scholars like Wasil bin Atta and Umar bin Ubaid. The protagonists of Bani Abbasid rival claimants to the caliphate throne) also encouraged them covertly. A large number of academics sided with them. Mutazzilin had a great hand in defeating Umayyad and enthroning the Abbasids.
The Abbasids, after coming to power, patronized the Mutazzilin, but a century had not passed, they too were bothered by the same political considerations. No absolute monarchy of the middle ages could countenance independent thought and action. Repression of the Mutazzilin started all over again.
The fall of Umayyad did bring hard times to Jabaryas (pre-determiners), but only for a short time, because the foundation of the Abbasid rule was also based on repression. But the curious fact is the teachings of jurists of the caliber of Imam Abu Hanifa (d 767 CE), Imam Shafai (715-795 CE),Imam Ahmad bin Hanbal (d 855 CE) were born in the period, and collectors of prophet’s traditions (Muhaddisin) like Imam Bukhari (810-870 CE) and Imam Muslim (821-875 CE) who compiled the Ahadis (traditions), helped diminish the influence and reach (asar wa russokh) of the Mutazzilin, especially the traditions which no Muslim could accept a group whose opinions and views clashed with them.
The Mutazzilin had lost their influence by the time of the Caliph al Mutwakkal (847-861 CE), but the last rites were read by Al Ashari(873-935 CE), who was a disciple of the renowned Mutazzilah academic, Al Jabbai, but came to the conclusion that the school of thought had run out of steam, and went over to the concept that revelation and Ilham (advice from on above), rather than reason and wisdom were the means of knowledge.. he refuted the free will concept and said that god was the absolute determinant (Qadir e Mutlaq), but veering away from pre-determiners (jabarya), he offered the concept of accountability of action (kasab wa intisaab ka nazariya), that humans were liable for their actions to the extent of recompense and punishment, to avoid any blame on the justice of Allah. This view still prevails among the Muslims.
In fine, fate was initially a very useful social belief, and a very important societal rank. In the agricultural age, the rank achieved a very repressive and lethal creed. The establishment-the king, aristocrats and spiritual leaders encouraged it whole heartedly., and the credulous public were assured that the society and the financial system was not responsible for their misery. It was so fated. Put up with it, because to fight it would be tantamount to rebuttal of the Will of God.

Chap 15: Life After Death.
No body has ever come back from death to offer an eyewitness description.
Scientific investigations aside, two beliefs prevail. One is that a live person is a composite of a body and soul. When the soul leaves the body, the person dies, and the soul ascends to heavens above (the abode of souls-Alam e arvah mein chali Jaati hai). On the day of judgment, when Israfael will blow his horn (soor phoonkey ga), all dead people will rise, gather in the hall of judgment (Maidan e Hashr), and God will interrogate them (sawal jawab karega) and weigh the good and evil deeds, the ones with the heavier good deeds will be rewarded with eternal life in paradise (the physical description of paradise-ice cold sharbat (cold drinks), sweet water rivers, cloudy days, all kinds of fruits and flowers, plenty to eat all you want, seventy two nubile girls (houris) for the men, young boys (Ghalman-not quite clear if for men or women), wine ( sharaban Tahoora-pure, sacred wine-not clear if capable of intoxicating), reflects what all the desert Arabs lacked, wanted and cherished).
According to the other belief, physical body is a transient thing, but its Aatma (soul) is eternal and morphs into different beings, the status of the new form depends upon the deeds I life. The soul is freed when it escapes the web of desires. They burn the body as it would never rise again. This is the belief of Hindus (transmigration of soul) held by Pythagoras also.
Early humans did not differentiate between life and death, and regarded the latter as a period of long sleep, and were confident that the body would wake up one day, and did not burn or bury the bodies, nor did he sequestrate them. Some primitive people hold the belief even today.
The buried skeletons from the ice age caves tell us that 40,000-50,000 years ago, they buried bodies held in a fetal position, with knees approximated to the abdomen. They placed stone pillow under the head, and pieces of meat besides the body. Bones, and devices for hunting were placed around the body, so it woke up, would not want for anything. The grave was closed and a stone slab placed on top. A few graves were right next to the hearth (Choolah), perhaps in the belief and hope that the heat will help warm up the cold body again.
But the way they secured the grave with a stone slab would indicate that ancient man had started developing a vague concept of death. They presumably felt that after death, they went to another world to start a new life and sent the hunting and other devices to help settle down (zarooriat e zindagi ke chhezain zaad e raah ke taur par murdae kae sath kar daitai thhe). In the pyramids of Saqqara in Egypt, they even had toilets, and in Khofo’s grand Harem, they have a secret fresh air inlet, so the Pharaoh would not have problem breathing.
Breathing is the sign of life. We now know that we inhale oxygen and exhale carbon dioxide through breathing, but in ancient days, people thought that the body (jism under sae khokhla hai anr usmae hava bahari hui hai) was inflated with air, and the body died when air left it. The Etutama tribe of south America seal the eyes, mouth and nose of the dead, so air may not escape.
In olden times, people thought that the soul had a shape (paikar), some were fat, others slim, some small, others large. They believed that when a person died, its soul merged with the souls of others. He probably reached the conclusion due to dreams, and he did not much distinguish between the dream and wakeful states, and deemed them equally real. When he dreamed of a dead person, he thought that while he was sleeping, his soul went out of his body to meet the souls of dead people.
In fine, the people of ancient times also had a firm belief in life after death.
The findings in the graves in Jamadatunnasar and Al-Obaid in the Euphrates valley contained eating utensils and idols of the queen of darkness, Aresh Ki Gill, indicating a belief in life after death.
Arish Ki Gill was a very ferocious and short tempered and not just the Sumerians and Akkadians, but also gods trembled out of the fear of her. As described earlier, she had treated her own sister Ishtar (anana) and her husband Timmuz, horribly. If the god Aya had not supported his son Nirgal, he would have shared the fate of Timmuz. This story of Nirgul and Aresh Ki Gill was inscribed on a 14th century BCE plate found in Til Amarna (Egypt). Actually in Akkadi literature, there is no clear concept of life after death, only that of its fear and transitory character of life.
While the people of the Euphrates valley fantasized about eternal life, the most popular pastime of the people of the Nile valley was to endeavor to make life after death as pleasant as possible, and had actually made an organized tradition and a religious creed out of it. But we must not forget that people along the several thousand miles of the Nile lived isolated tribal lives, and did not need to interact with others. Boats were the only means of transport, and it took weeks to get to the next tribal habitation. They, therefore, had great variety in their belief systems. Some buried the dead with food and utensils, other threw tem in the rivers of deserts to be eaten up by vultures, and they also raised the scavenger birds to the status of gods. Some tribes believed in transmigration of souls, but the burial rites had pomp and splendor among all tribes.
They obviously believed that the body just did not get obliterated (fana ho jana) after death, or they would not have built mausoleums and preserved the bodies as Mummies.
Their beliefs about the soul were also manifold. Some believed it was the shadow which disappeared after death, others that soul was the real human, still others that it resided in the heart, which they believed was the center of mind and consciousness. Certain people thought it was a bird and when it flew out of the body, the person died. But the oldest conception is the Egyptian ‘Ka”. Ka was universally found in gods, humans, animals, even in plants, fruit and flowers. Professor Brested History of Egypt p 64) “Egyptians believed that there must be a life giving source in the body. Though residing in the body, it leads a separate existence, is born with it, spends life with it and moves into another world with it.
Egyptians thought that the world of the dead which they called ’Duait’ was in the west, which in the opinion was Dare Fana domicile of the dead, and when any one died they used to exclaim that the person had gone west. They probably got the idea from the sun setting in the west. They usually had their graveyards in the deserts to the west of their settlements. The Ahram Misr for the Pharaohs were also built along the west bank of the Nile. The funeral rooms had a window on the western side, to facilitate the dead man’s passage in and out.
But as the fable would have it, it was difficult to reach ‘Duait’, because it was situated on an island in the middle of deep sea in which snakes and Asdahas swam. There was only one boat to traverse the sea, the sailor/seaman’s face was turned to his back and he would let only those embark, who were able to assure him that “we have done no bad deeds, and we are righteous in the eyes of the heavens, the earth and the islands”. In view of the arduous/hazardous journey, the Egyptians added a boat to other devices in the grave.
Like Akkadian Wilmoon, Egyptian Duait was also a green and Shadab (blooming green) place, with no famine, drought, starvation, disease or death. This image of paradise was a reflection of worldly desires and subjective analysis (Tabiati tanzion ka). But entry into this paradise was subject to good deeds-naik Aamaal. The moral concept of paradise was first presented by Egyptians, 5,000 years ago.
No researcher has yet been able to define the Egyptian Ka comprehensively, because they used it in different and varying contexts. It meant strength and vitality, labor and food, male virility, health and welfare (when people came across each other, they greeted by saying ‘may your Ka be well’ and ancestors. They believed that ancestors lived in Ka settlement graveyard, and come out to greet the newly dead.
For the ancient people, the real or imagined strength and bravery of ancestors was exemplary, and they wanted to follow in their footsteps and enhance (naam roshan karein) the name of the nation, tribe and family. The ancestors were not just the ones a person was descended from but of the collective family/tribe/nation. In ancient Iran, the qualities of the ancestors were termed Fraushi, and Romans called them Manes, Chinese, Tzo and Egyptians, Ka. In the old Egyptian script both arms from the fingers to shoulders, which represent (sarchashma of) vitality, labor and creation, were the sign of Ka. Ka was painted as both arms embracing or protecting some one, as though transferring the vitality and the strength of ancestors through Ka. Ancestors were called masters of Ka.
People did not worship graves, but visited the graveyards, made offerings and sacrifices to garner goodwill of the ancestors, as people visit saints, and mausoleums to seek favors in the current times. Mausoleums had a pivotal place in society in ancient Egyptian civilization society. Every family had its own graveyard, where the collective Ks was appeased by incantations and prayers. Ahram (Mausoleums) of the Pharaohs were not individual, but were surrounded by graves of the members of the royal family. Part of the essential ceremonies of Nau Roz (new year), was to visit the graveyard. Azeris was the god of reproduction (afzaish e nasl aur fasal and namood aur hayat) of the race and crop, life and namood (appearance). He had drunk the cup (jaam) of death, so the universe would survive, he died every fall, and revived in the spring. In a painting from ancient Egypt, a goddess with a head like a cow and a body like a woman’s, is pouring water out of a container on the ground, and all kinds of plants are springing up in row after row. A bird is sitting on top of the plants, whose head is that of a man. The goddess Azies, wife of Azeris, and the bird is the Ka of Azeris.
The same Azeris was the ruler of the Dayar e maghrib (dwelling in the west, where every denizen, like Azeris, revives after death.. In one of the oldest writings of Egypt which is inscribed in the Ahram Pharaoh Unis and Pepi II, in Saqqara, says “King Unis, you did not pass on as dead, but as live, because you are sitting on the throne of Azeris…and in another inscription it says “ god Atum, this person is your son, Azeris, whom you saved and who lives…In a third inscription, the dead are given the offering/glad tidings ( Muzda) of eternal life in golden words “the gates of heavens have been opened for you, and god Ra is standing in front of you…Only the Pharaohs could sit on the throne of Azeris, though any one who had performed good deeds could enter his paradise. Like the boatman of Duait, Azeris had set moral standards for entry into paradise. Rakhma, the Prime minister of a Pharaoh in the 14th century BCE, had this inscribed on his mausoleum “I did justice to the poor as well as the rich…”.
But one could not delude Azeris with false claims. He was very shrewd and had a scale on which he weighed the good and the bad deeds.
The Quran also mentions a scale in many places e.g., in Surah Airaf “and weighing is fair on the day…(p 8-9). And in Surah Al Qariah, the Quran paints a very grim picture, that humans will disperse like insects Patangon ki tarah bikhar jaein gae) and mountains will float like dhunki hui wool “After the weighing, the one whose Iman’s balance will be heavier (Iman ka palra bhari hoga), he will be in requisite comfort and the one whose …will be lighter…will find room in a ditch of blazing fire”.
Western researchers aver that the Arabs borrowed the concept of accountability from the Jewish book of Abraham. The book was written by A Jewish convert to Christianity in the 3rd century CE.
How the concept of scale and accountability arose, is difficult to say, but it could possibly a derivation from trade, but in the 18th dynasty of pharaohs (1857-1375 BCE, which was the high point of Egyptian civilization, the concept of scale had already matured. In the book of the dead, the depiction of accountability was very common. A scale stands besides a dead man…
The day of judgment was supposed to be very harsh and severe, and the prohats (priests) took full advantage of the fear, made up prayers and Taveez (prayer packages), and assured the Egyptians that if you took them to the court of Azeris, you will be spared all questionings, like the popes sold missives for easy passage to heavens. This was the practice, against which Martin Luther had rebelled in the 16th century CE. One sect among the Muslims obtains such missives from their Imam, even in this day and age.
The emphasis and attention the Egyptian paid to funerals, was unrivalled. They took it an art form. The museums in Cairo, Paris, London, NY, Boston and Birmingham are brimming with innumerable mummies, caskets and other funeral artifacts , which represents the highest of Egyptian skills, and finesse of workmanship. Some caskets are made of gold and silver, others are gilded, and some are made of black stone, still others of colored and inlaid wood, which seem fresh even after 3,000-4,000 years.
The caskets, whatever they were made of were exact replicas of the head and body of the dead person.
The art of mummification was unique, and they kept it as guarded secret. When Christians conquered Egypt, the art of mummification died with the Egyptian civilization.
The renowned Greek historian, who traveled to Egypt in the 5th century BCE, described the process of mummification in details. The mummies were 1) very expensive, 2) average and 3) cheap. The body was drained of soft tissues like the brain, intestines and washed with date wine and herb mixtures etc.
The Pharaohs did not leave the construction of their final resting places to their successors, lest they scrimp in expense, but had them constructed in their own life time. The aristocrats followed their lead.
But the Egyptians are rightfully proud of the wonders of the Ahram chiseled out of rock and stones. The tradition started in the time of the founder of the third dynasty, Zusar (3000 BCE. Before Zusar, tombs were made of unbaked bricks (Kutchi eint), and were no higher than the sand piles (Tealae).
Zusar was a very enterprising ruler. He discovered copper (Tanba) mines in the Sinai deserts and sent his armies far and wide and filled his treasury with loot (Maal e Ghanimat). But was greatly influenced by the priests (prohat) of the god Ra (sun), and appointed one of them Im Hotup, as his prime minister. He was a highly learned man and gradually came to wield great influence and earn a great name, so that when after centuries, Egypt came under the sway of Greeks, they elevate him to the rank of the god of health and raised a statue to him in Memphis. Im Hotup was very keen on architecture, and later architects invoked his name when offering their plans.
The prohats of god Ra took full advantage of the patronage of Zuser and Im Hotup to consolidate their ascendance, and devised many more ceremonies, and added new beliefs as well. They persuaded Zuser to worship Amon Ra, and finessed it by declaring that only Zuser could do so. The construction of Ahram (Pyramids), and the art of mummification was also started in this period.
The Ahram and the Nile bring back images of Cleopatra in a boat, Abraham staying on the coast, Mary and Jesus seeking shelter after flight from Palestine, the prison of Joseph, the palace of Zulekha, the sea excursions of Akhnatoon and his wife Nefretteti, the river which the mother of Moses entrusted her new born to, the armies of Darius and Alexander parao dala tha ( broke journey), Julius Caesar and Antony took pleasure rides, and Saladin had challenged the crusaders from here. (Egyptians believe that Husain, the grandson of the prophet of Islam, martyred in Karbala, Iraq and his sister, Zainab are buried in Cairo, and the tombs are visited by large number of people).
The Ahram of the pharaohs were built along the western coast of the Nile, from Cairo to far in the south. Most of them have only the platforms left, but 4-5 are well preserved, the oldest and the most splendid is that of Zuser, situated in the vicinity of the old Egyptian capital, Memphis on the hills of Saqqara, some fifteen miles from Cairo. It is a five storied stone building, shaped as a triangle with a wide base, and narrowing to the top. It is built on a 127 square feet large platform. In the time of Zuser, it was surrounded by buildings which were used for funeral rites. There was a temple to which were attached rooms (hujra) for the prohats. The passage to the Ahram is narrow and underground. The grave is in under the Ahram in a basement (Teh khana) which has two rooms, sixteen feet broad and nearly equally high. No cement is visible between stone slabs, but they have stayed in place for 5,000 years without any displacement or a crack. The roof is not held by any columns. The achievements of Zuser are inscribed all over the roof and walls.
Saqqara was the exclusive graveyard of the royal family and aristocrats.
The most interesting scenes are actually in the Mausoleum of Queen Ti, who was the wife of the famous Pharaoh Rameses III (1198-1167 BCE) of the 20th dynasty. She wanted her son Pintevar to succeed his father, but the king designated Rameses IV. Ti conspired with some aristocrats and members of the Harem Sarai to assassinate the king, but it was discovered, and the conspirators sentenced to commit suicide, but it is not established if the king forgave her, or she had to commit suicide.
The walls of her tomb are decorated with colorful scenes. A black boy is crossing a canal with a new born calf on his back…a river horse giving birth, with a crocodile looking on with patent greed…32 women indulging in a delicate dance in front of the king.
But the most renowned of the Ahrams (put the word Ahram-pyramid in…at the end) are the ones in Giza. Up to the 1920s, it was a desolate area, a few miles off the west coast of the Nile, but is a Cairo suburb now. Cairo is divided into three parts, the old one on the east coast of the Nile, a green/fertile island in the middle where the rich and the diplomats live, and has boasts of charming municipal gardens. It also had King Farooq’s palace. The third part on the west coast, spread to Giza, is a new settlement, which started post WW II. The parts are linked to each other with several bridges.
Khofo was the founder of the fourth dynasty of the Pharaohs (2900-2750 BCE). He was not from the royal family of Memphis and was the son of a an aristocrat of mid-Egypt. It is not known how he got on the throne, and what did he achieve, but this much is known, that in contrast to Zuser, Khofo was a big opponent of the power of Prohats, and seized all their property, prohibited the ceremonials the Prohats under Zuser had devised and had most of the temples locked too. He thus gave some relief to the poor from the loot of Prohats too, who wrote ‘poison’ reports against him, especially on ‘misspending’ on Ahram, though the work was done only during the period of floods in the Nile, when Fellaheen’ peasants were unemployed.
Giza has three Ahram, one of Khofo, and one smaller one of Khizra and the smallest one of Minkora. The latter two succeeded Khofo on the throne. Khofo’s Haram, at 481 feet high, on a triangular platform, with each side 755 feet long, is the biggest and the heaviest stone building in the world. A measure of accuracy, there is not even one thousandth inch of level difference in the whole platform. It was built with 2.3 million stone slabs, each on the average, 2 ½ tons in weight. The Haram weights 6.8 million and 40,000 tons, on an area of 13 acres. According to Herodotus, it took twenty years for one hundred thousand workers to build it.
The kings who sought life after death have been gone for thousands of years, but humans still dream of eternal life. Scientist work incessantly to increase the span of life, because life, in spite of all the injustice, inequality and harshness, is still beautiful.

Chap 16: The quest for the Tree of Desire ( Shajr e Murad).
Before the historic times, the ancient nations passed though a semi-historic and semi-documented (neem Asatiri) phase. At the time, humans saw god like attributes in fellow humans. He developed consciousness of self and , he deemed humans capable of great deeds which were heretofore, attributed only to gods. Now songs of praise were sung to humans too. This was the period of supermen, who had part attributes of humans and part god like.
The Euphrates valley passed through this phase too, but unlike the Indians and Romans, they never attributed god like qualities to their heroes, nor did they worship them as incarnations (autar) of god. Their biggest hero was Gill Gamesh, but he too could never become more than two thirds god and had to die. Human imagination has concocted great master pieces of art ( Barae, barae funni shakar takhleeq kiyae hein)out of an amalgam of reality and romance (Haqeeqat aur majaz kae imtizaaj sae)Iliad, Odyssey, Maha Bharat, Ramayana, the Shahnama of Firduasi (a great Farsi poet), the Dastaan of Ameer Hamza, Hatim Tai, Qissa of Chahar Dirvesh and so on.
Iraq’s semi-historic/documented period started about 3,000 BCE, and it is curious that the tales of the heroes, Inmegar, Logal Banda and Gill Gamesh, which have reached us, all hailed from Erik of the Sumerian state.
Ten poems, two for Inmagar, two for Logal Banda and the other six are related (mansoob) to Gill Gamesh. In one of them, the clash between Arek and Arata has been described.
The desire of conquest and the greed for riches is ancient. It is camouflaged with religion, commandments of god or an insult to goddesses/ gods. Once in a while, it is to avenge assault (be abroi) om womanhood. The most curious is the intent to civilize the ‘primitive’ people. But behind all the facades, lies self interest.
The goddess of love, Ishtar, heeded Inmager’s plea, and asked him to send a shrewd messenger, and your wish will come true, the people of Arata will kneel before you like mountain goats and sheep.
Logal Banda’s Martial tales:In the list of kings, Logal Banda was Inmegar’s successor. He was probably came from a village. He performed all his deeds during the reign of Inmegar.
The Story of Gill Gamesh:
Gill Gamesh is a great personality. It is a long story, and discusses the eternal issues of life and death, and depicts the conflict of the old and new society. It is one of the oldest stories and describes the futile attempts of Gill Gamesh at supernatural deeds and quest for eternal life. He was the ruler of the city-state, Arek in the south of Iraq in 28th century BCE. He was very adventurous and enterprising and seized control of several neighboring states by diplomacy, power and wisdom (takat, tadabbur aur firasat sai). The poem in his praise were written in Sumerian and Akkadi languages, 7-8 years after he died. The complete version was inscribed over mud slates in Paikani script in Akkadian language in the 7th century BCE, under orders of Emperor Ahur bani Paul for the royal library of Nainva.
The author, like most of the ancient master pieces, is not known. It is probably a collective, not an individual work, and reflects the desires and artistic consciousness of the whole nation. These poems were recited in the temples, and courts, during the festivities to celebrate the deeds of heroes. They were also used to inspire soldiers during battles. Writing was not very common. The singers and the audience added or amended the poems.
The story depicts Gill Gamesh as a harsh and pleasure loving king. He forced young men into the army, and took any girl he liked into his Harem. People get fed up and beseech the gods, who decide in an advisory council meeting that a rival for Gill Gamesh be created. So En Keddo is born and lives among the jungle animals. Once a Gypsy (Bahlia) boy passes by and frightened, runs to his father, who tells him to go to town and let Gill Gamesh know. He will bestow on you a beautiful Dev Dasi. Seat her naked near a water stream, the wild man will fall in love with her, and when he has satisfied himself, he will lose his wildness and will become harmless. The Gypsy proceeds to Eric, and Gill Gamesh duly sends a maiden with him.
En Keddo, who till now was a friend of the jungle animals and an enemy of humans, now turns into a friend and muhafiz (protector) and with the Dev Dasi, goes to live in the settlement of the Bahlia.
One day a way wayfarer passes by. En Keddo asks him the reason for his journey and anguish. He tells of the brutality and pleasure seeking (aish Koshion) of Gill Gamesh. En Keddo proceeds with Dev Dasi to confront Gill Gamesh, who sends a wrestler to take en Keddo on. En Keddo loses the contest and accepts Gill Gamesh as his master. Gill Gamesh adopts him as his companion and right hand.
Now begin the campaigns of Gill Gamesh. He proceeds to the Chandan jungle of Lebanon and kills its protector, Hambaba. The news gets to Ishtar, who falls in love with Gill Gamesh’s bravery and good looks, and asks him to marry her. Gill Gamesh turns her down, calling a her harjai and beswa (faithless courtesan).
Ishtar complains to god Anu of the rudeness and asks for Zoor e Falak ( p 301) to avenge Gill Gamesh’s insult. Zoor e Flak descends on Eric as an unanticipated disaster. Hundreds of lives are lost, but Gill Gamesh and En Keddo manage to kill Zoor e Falak. Now the case of Gill Gamesh killing the god appointed protector Hambaba is presented in the advisory assembly of gods, to decide whom to kill for the offence, Gill Gamesh or En keddo. The decision is against En Keddo who falls sick and dies.
Gill Gamesh grieves his friend’s death, and abandoning his kingdom, takes to roaming around the jungles. One day, he hears of a person called Khazisastra ( also Ayaitna Pashetam)on an island, on whom the gods have bestowed eternal life, and he knew the secret of eternal life. Gill Gamesh goes to seek him On the way, he comes across a wine maker woman, who advises him to eat and make merry, as eternal life was not fated for him, only the gods have that. But Gill Gamesh insists on meeting Khazisastra. The woman tells him the whereabouts of the venerable man’s boatman, with whose help, Gill Gamesh get to him and requests for the tree of life. But the man tells him the story of the great flood (which is identical to the flood story in the Bible and the Quran),. Gill Gamesh insists and the man tells him the way to the tree of youth, which grows in a well.
Gill Gamesh proceeds to the well, descends into the well and obtains the tree, happy that though he did not get eternal life, but got a plant which will make every one in Eric will become young.
On the way to Eric, he sights a Bowli (small lake or pond) and leaving the plant on the edge, goes into it to bathe. A sake smells the plant and eats it. Gill Gamesh, on coming out of the pond, finds the plant gone, and moaning and groaning proceeds to Eric.
The story (dastaan) of Gill Gamesh is a hero myth found in all languages and nations, for example Rustam, Nausherwan and Sikander in Firduasi’s Shahnama, in Homer’s Odyssey Hercules, in Maha Bharat Arjun, Bhim and Krishan, and Rama and Luxman in the Ramayana. In Urdu literature, we have Ameer Hamza, Hatim Tai and in Punjabi, Raja Risaloo.
Mythology was the philosophy of life and universe for the ancient human. They analyzed the creation of nature and its manifestations on the basis of myth. He imagined, he could and befriended friendly powers and subjugate subversive ones through myth. It was the flight of his imagination., colorful reflection of his social longings and fulfillment of unfulfilled desires. It conferred on him confidence, determination and will to act, in the struggle of life.
There is a lot in common between myth and dreams, and strange and unlikely matters become routine in both. It is therefore that in Asatiri dastanoan mein-in the fables, nothing is impossible, dead men revive, a live person can turn into stone and turn alive again, a person can fly on a horse or Semorgh to distant places instantly, or become invisible by wearing a ‘Sulemani hat’, mountains turn into particles of dust, sea part to offer dry passage, a stick turn into Asdaha, and kill Asdahs, wild animals and monster as we crush a fly/mosquito, subjugate Gins, fairies and monsters (Dev), build palaces instantly. He has supernatural (Ghaibi) powers at his beck and call.
In all languages of the word, sayings are extant which indicate that the ancient human was aware of the illusion-live in mud huts and dream of places (rahain Jhonpri mein and khwab dekhein mahal kai, billi ko khwab mein cheechrae nazar aatai hein). We dream of the unreachable/unattainable, myths are the golden dream of life. The captive dreams of freedom, the colonized of independence, the hungry of delicacies. The difference is that the ancient man’s imagination was collective, while dreams are usually individual. Like dreams, myths are pictorial too. The dastaan (story/fable) of Gill Gamesh also draws word pictures of every incident.
The pictorial representation of views was natural for the ancient human. He could comprehend (idraak kar sakta thha) only solid material. It is thus not strange that the initial specimens of the artistic creations of our ancestors, from the lake Baikal in the East to the West, caves in France, in the north in Sweden, to caves in South of Africa and on rock surfaces, are all pictures of animals, 40,000 to 50,000 years old. They, in fact, are our first books. The first alphabets were pictorial too. Though the alphabets have changed, yet a scale remains the sign of justice.
The hero myth is a composite of 1) hero, 2) campaign and 3) the tree of desire (shajr e murad). Hero is the power, which fulfils unfulfilled longings. Campaigns are to overcome obstructions, difficulties, conditions and opposing forces, like Asdaha, monster (Dev) and magician. Shajre Murad is the objective.
Campaigning is an arduous business and requires courage, fortitude and shrewdness. The greater the hero, the higher the attributes. But the hero is not an individual, but a reflection of the will of the whole society, and achievements have a social value. The essential difference in the concept of a mythical hero and a superman is that the latter attributes important events, be they political, social or spiritual, to a king, a leader or a saint, and in the former the events are deemed a reflection of collective values and realities. Myth does not dwell on the details of the personal life of the hero, but emphasizes (ujagar karta hai) the archetypal values.
Hero myths originated in the patriarchal society, all heroes are of the male gender, but they passed through grades, the closer they are to the matriarchal period, the less masculine, they are. But the distance between the hero and the matriarchal society is not that of time, but that of sensation/feelings (kaifiat). The conscious of the matriarchal hero will be subservient to sub-conscious (shaoor la shaoor kai tabey hota hai), and feminism dominates him (niswaniat ka ghalba hota hai). He is nearly totally devoid of the will to act (quvat e amal sai qarib qarib mahroom hota hai). Their existence depends upon women, and they resemble small children. Gulfaam, the hero of Inder Sabha and the one of Masnavi Sehrul Bayan’s Benazir are such characters.
The other kind of heroes are those whose conscious will has awakened, but they are under the sway of sub-conscious. They are still under the influence of women. They are brave, unafraid of the harsh conditions of campaigns, but lack will and manly essence. Women of such stories are, on the other hand, far more determined and sahib e hausla (fortitude), are not frightened of defamation or death. In the classical tales of the Punjab, this distinction between male and female heroes is very distinct. In Heer and Ranjha, Heer does not heed the social and traditional norms. She sets aside the calls of caution and reason (maslahat, not quite right). In the other renowned tales, Sassi and Pannu and Sohni and Mahenwal, the heroine supersedes the male in enterprise and daring. In the more know Arabic tale of Laila and Majnu, Majnu after being turned away by Laila’s parents takes to the desert, in an overt act of escapism. All these tales are from the transitional period between matriarchal and patriarchal period.
The third type of hero is the one in whom conscious has mastered the subconscious.. He is now totally free of matriarchal influence. Woman is now his subject. Gill Gamesh, Arjun, Rama, Rustam, Sikander, Hercules, Raja Risaloo and Hatim Tai are the pinnacle of hero myth.
Hero is myth of the sun tribe, sun which is consciousness, knowledge, light and life. In the Aryan Dev Mala (glossary/garland of gods/goddesses), most heroes are actually the progeny of the sun, because the sun god had made love to their mothers. Gill Gamesh was also one such hero, and the sun god protected him on all critical occasions. Sun is an emblem (allamat) of hero, it rises out of the belly of darkness, climbs to its zenith, but gradually descends and sinks into the western sea. In a similar fashion, the heroes of the Dev Mala, are born out of woman’s womb, which is dark, gradually cut loose the apron strings of the mother, go from success to success, reach zenith, get apprehensive of the end, which he tries to evade. Gill Gamesh seeks the tree of life from Atna Pashetam, so does Siknader from Khizr.
Gill Gamesh has two personalities, one historic, which being limited in scope, does not interest us. On the other hand, the Asatiri (?mythical) personality is boundless. That is why, in the preface a brief reference is made to his conquests, absolute rule and love of pleasure. But his mythical (asatiri) personality is dealt with in details.
The character of En Keddo and his interaction with Gill Gamesh, on the face of it, appears very complicate. But the fact is that in ancient times, the union (ittehad) of contradictory personalities was a common theme in stories, who ranged from two brothers, to master and slave, father and son, close friends, husband and wife and son. Examples are many like Habeel and Qabeel, Rustam and Sohrab, Yazdan and Aherman, Rama and Luxman, Moses and Aaron. Abraham and Ishmael, Othello and Ayago, Macbeth and lady Macbeth, Don Quixote and Sancho Panza. Psychologists interpret the duo as conscious and subconscious.
The ancient human regarded the universe as a collection of contradictions, like dark and light, high and low. Freud gave instances like god and monster (Dev), thin and fat …”our imagination emerges out of comparison and contest (Muaznae and Muqablae)…humans derived their oldest and simplest views from contradictions. He learned two separate the two aspects on antithesis…”.
If a human becomes entirely ‘conscious-rational- no room will be left for love and passion and other finer (jamaliati) things of life. The conquests of Gill Gamesh wound the subconscious, and En Keddo tries to dissuade him. The end of subconscious is as detrimental for life as that of conscious. After the death of En Keddo, Gill Gamesh loses the balance of mind.
The tree of life:
This concept dates back to the time when humans subsisted on fruit, flowers and vegetation (Jari booti). That lasted for hundreds of thousands of years, and was so imbued in human nature that it lasted after the ‘collector’ phase. They even attributed qualities, which the plants could not have (Salajeet). They started worshipping trees, as they were deemed the abode of gods. Over time trees became an emblem (allamat) of life. In the rig Veda, Vishva Karma created the universe out of a tree. Iranian god, Mehrdad (sun) was born out a treetop. The Egyptian god Azerus returned to life after he was buried in a hollow tree trunk. The parents of Moses had put him in a wooden box, which they consigned to the sea, to save his life. Before Jesus, among the Egyptians, a wooden crucifix was supposed to be a sign of life and was shaped as a tree. Jesus acquired eternal life only after being strung on a wood crucifix. In a church in Strasbourg in Germany, Jesus is shown strung on a tree shaped crucifix. The motif of the tree of life is common in Iranian rugs.
Ancient Palestinian people were familiar with the tree of life myth. In the biblical Book of Genesis, god kept Adam and Eve in the garden of Eden and planted a tree of life and a tree of distinction (Naiki aur badi ki pahchan ka darakht bhi lagaya) between good and evil., and warned Adam and Eve not to go near the trees or eat their fruit, on the pain of death. But the serpent persuaded Eve to eat a fruit from the tree of knowledge, and she made Adam eat it too. That developed consciousness (social) in them, and they blushed on their nudity. When God learned of this development that humans had become one with Him in the knowledge of good and bad, He became apprehensive, lest they partake of the fruit of the tree of life too, and live forever. He promptly banished the pair from the garden of Eden, and assigned the task of protecting the tree of life to Karrobion (p 314) and a revolving flame bearing sword. The sketch of the garden of Eden in the Book of Genesis is the same as that of Babylon.
The tree of life finds mention in the New Testament too. In the revelation (mukashifae) to Uhanna Arif , god promises his venerable adherents (buzurgida bandoan). That those who overcome evil will get fruit from the tree of life in heavens. He also told Uhanna (Muzda sunaya) that he will offer free drinks from the stream of life (Aab e Hyat) to the thirsty. Uhanna was Arif e Kamil (perfect pious person), so angels gave him a tour of Jerusalem in heavens and showed him the crystal clear steam of life (Aab e hayat ka chashma), which emerged from the throne of God and Jesus and flowed on the street in the middle of the city (of Jerusalem) and the tree of life was across the stream.
Amrit phal (nectar .. fruit), given to a Brahmin of Batyal Pacchissi for his tapassiya (worship-weak word) by the gods, also belongs to the ‘tribe’ of the tree of life.
The desire to be immortal is common to all humanity. In the Hindu Dev Mala, it is said that all things came out as a result of stirring (Mathnae sai) the sea. The job was assigned to Purush (man) and Rakhshash (monster). After all things had come out, Dhanonatri Maharaj, who was the Vaid (physician) of gods, came out of the sea bearing a cup (of moon) of nectar, at the sight of which all humans (Purush) and Monsters (Rakhshash) rushed to him. A monster, named Rahu was ahead of all. He snatched the cup out of Dhanunatri’s hand, and put it to his mouth, but gods beheaded him, before he could swallow, but his head became immortal. Ever since Rahu’s head has been chasing the moon. When he is able to put the moon in his mouth, there ids moon eclipse, but the moon escapes through the severed neck and shines again.
When the monsters seized the nectar cup, Vishnu Maharaj got worried, lest they drink it and become immortal. So he changed himself to a beautiful woman, and entranced them with his dance, and they did not think of drinking the nectar. Vishnu, finding an opportunity, grabbed the cup out if the hands of the monsters, gave it to the gods.
The nectar, under the term Aabe Hayat-literally water of life, entered Urdu and Farsi literature as a sign (allamat) of eternity. Firdausi was the first to render the story into poetry. One could conjecture (Qayas) that the story was adopted from the writings of Mufassirs (analysts/interpreters) of the Quran, who identified ‘the venerable Buzurg’ (respected old man) described in the Surah Al Kahaf with Khizr.
The Far East is not immune from the desire for immortality. China’s ancient philosopher, Ko Hung is said to have spent the last years of his life preparing nectar pills.
The Bull and the Snake:
Psychologists regard the Soor e Falak (the bull of the skies) and the snake, and all other animals of fable (Asatiri Janwar), as the allamat (symbol) of the subconscious, and are of the opinion that they are related to the matriarchal age.
Cows and bulls were hunted in the stone-age as well, and in the French caves, there are 15-50,000 years old paintings of frightened and wounded cows and bulls. The cows and bulls had not yet attained the status of members of the god community (Dev Mala). But with the advent of the agricultural age, the utility (Faidai mand pehlu) value of cows and bulls became prominent. Sacrificing a bull came to be deemed essential for enhancing the fertility of the land. In the Crete island, they held biannual festival in which they cut a live bull into pieces and ate it, because they believed that the god of vegetables and grape wine, Dionysus was killed by enemies while he had adopted (bail ka roop akhtiar kiyae huey thhe) the shape of a bull. Sacrificing a bull after harvest was common. The story goes that its king Menes, once sent the sacrificial bull to his farm, and palmed off the god with an inferior specimen. The god punished the king by making his wife fall in love with the handsome bull of the farm and gave birth to a child which was half bull and half human. This animal was man-eater and consumed seven young men and women every year. A Greek hero, Theseus, finally hilled it.
In Athens, they sacrificed a bull when the grain had been delivered to homes in late June or early July. They called the festival Bofonia-killing the bull, and wheat and barley flour were offered to the altars of god Zeus. In China, sacrifice festival is held at onset of spring. In ancient Iranian religion (of god Mithras) sacrifice of a bull was believed to bring good harvests.
Humans have always had mixed feelings about the snake. They worshipped it as a god, and hated it as an enemy, and a sign (allamat-symbol.) of eternal life as well. But it is an ancient pre-historic god. Sykes believes that the ‘snake dev mala’ of the East is older than even mother goddess. Worship of the snake started even before the Aryans invasions. The Vedas refer to Naga nations which waged war with Aryans. Sheesh Nag is the thousand headed god, and rules over the snake worshippers In West Iran, the kings before Aryans were snake worshippers. But a contradiction and hostility lurks behind the worship. In the Zoroastrian creed, a snake, Azi Wahka had cut the first creation of god Ahur Mazda into pieces.
Aryans probably presented the snake in a bad light as it was the god of the conquered people. Hatred of snakes is however, shared by the Semites as well, possibly because it was the god of their past rulers, the pharaohs. In the Bible, it is snake which tempts Eve to eat the forbidden fruit.
But in the Egyptian Dev Mala, snake has a very high status. The goddess of the traders of Southern Egypt is a snake. A snake adorned the crown of the Pharaohs. Magicians used snakes to frighten Moses, and his cane (Asaa) turns into an Asdha (python) and swallows them.
The symbolic value of snakes is indicated in the story (Dasattan) of Gill Gamesh in which it is a snake, which swallows the tree of life. There are number of paintings around the world in which the world is encircled by a snake holding its tail in its mouth. A wooden slate of Qabbatis was found in Babylon, in which such a snake encircles the sun, the moon, the earths and god. There was as similar find on a copper tray in Nigeria, on a stone age calendar in Mexico and a German book of chemistry.
But the most famous and the oldest story is attributed to Vishnu Maharaj. He morphs into a tortoise to stir (mathnae ke liyae) up the sea. He carries a mountain on his back, and the mountain has a snake around it. The mountain, the snake and the back of the tortoise make up the stirring device, with one end of the snake in the hand of a human (Purush), and the other in the hand of a Rakhshash (monster).
Snake is thus a symbol of eternity (abadiat), with no end, back or front. It is the same for the mysterious egg of Phoenicians, the garland of Vishnu, and the Chakkar (wheel) of Asoka.
The slates of Gill Gamesh were first found by an English archeologist, in Nainva in the 1841 CE digs, but no body could read Akkadian. A young Englishman performed this service of translation. He was very keen on Ashuri artifacts and managed to obtain a job in the British museum and learned Akkadi from the plates. Once he was reading a plate, which was broken in the middle, and the other half was missing. In his autobiography, he writes “It must have had six columns once. The third column stunned me. It said that the ship stopped at Mount Koh. A bird (fakhta-sparrow) flew out, but not finding dry land, returned to the ship. I was certain that I had found at least a part of the Akkadian description of Noah’s flood”.
On December 03, 1872, smith caused a sensation in the learned segments, when he read a paper on his discovery to the Bible Asaar (relics) Society in London. The Daily Telegraph offered him a stipend of one thousand pounds to go to Nainva, and find the missing piece, and find it he did in the trash of old digs.

Chap 17: The Reality of Noah’s Flood (toofan e Nooh ki Asal Haqiqat).
There is a great degree of similarity between the flood story of Itna Pashetam, and the story of Noah’s flood. In the former, the gods, tired of the cacophony of humans decide to drown them all. In the bible and the Quran, God decides to drown the na-farman (disobedient) nation of Noah. In Itna Pashetam, Aya fore-warns his favorite adherent (bandae) of the impending doom, and advises him to build a boat, and put the seeds of all living beings. According to the Quran, god warns Noah of the impending flood and “build a boat in front of us and under our orders and do not talk to us of the , but they will drown oppressors (Surah Hudd). After the boat is built god asks Noah to take a pair of all species along. Itna Pashetam’s boat comes to rest on Mount Naseer on the northern border of Iraq, Noah’s boat on Mount Jodi, on the northern border of Iraq. Itna Pashetam sends crows to find dry land. Noah sends pigeon or a sparrow.
In the Islamic traditions Itna Pashetam’s story has been split among several personalities. The central character is Noah. The second is Moses, who undertakes a voyage to a conjunction of rivers to seek knowledge. The third is Khizr, who is the central character of the Moses and Sikander Zulqanain. The fourth is Sikander Zulqarnain, who deprived of the stream of life (chashmai Hayat).
The story of Moses and Khizr is dealt with in great detail in Surah Kahaf. Though Khizr is not mentioned by name, but Bukhari, and other interpreters (mufassirin) that the Quran has implied Khizr. The character of Moses has a great deal in common with that of Gill Gamesh. Gill Gamesh seeks Itna Pashetam, in spite of the advice of notables of the city and the sun god. In a similar vein, Moses tells his servant that he will not rest till he has reached Majma Al Bahrein, the Sangam (conjunction/confluence-find a better word) of two rivers. He wanted to meet the venerable Buzurg, the pious old man, who had the knowledge of the divine. He meets Khizr at the conjunction, and requests pupil-ship, but cannot meet the conditions of tutelage and returns, disappointed. A snake betrays Gill Gamesh. It is a fish for Moses.
Khizr and Itna Pashetam have commonalities too. Both are human but are blessed with eternal life. Both are privy to secrets and both live on a conjunction/confluence of rivers. And it only needs the other name for Itna Pashetam, Khazesa Tira to confirm the inference that they are the same person.
But there is no historic evidence of the flood of Gill Gamesh. Nothing found in the digs of Iraq any remains of the flood. But the impact of the story on the minds of the people of Near-East is great. In the list of kings (Fahrist e Shahan), it enjoys the status of a defining factor (Hadde Fasil) between the ancient and ‘modern’ times. The compiler of the list describes five kingdoms before the flood “In the five cities, eight kings ruled for 241,000 years, then came the flood, after which kingship was sent down from the skies again”. After that kings came and went, but the tradition of the flood persisted and a thousand years later, when the Torah was compiled, the flood was still there. For another 1500 years Jewish and Christian Saheefae (holy scripts) repeated the tradition, and then the Quran took it up.
In 1929, after he was done with the digs in royal places of Ur, Sir Leonard Wooley decided to get to the bottom of the flood. He had a 75 feet long, 60 feet wide and 65 feet deep ditch (gaddha) dug next to the graveyard. Up to 20 feet, they found eight layers of old homes, then the next 18 feet had dumps of broken utensils-it must have been the kiln of Kumhars (potters). Under the layers “we found a heavy mud wheel (matti ka vazni chaak), its diameter was three feet, with a hole in the middle and another near the edge (gagar) for the mutth-handle. This was an specimen of the oldest invention of humans, due to which he embarked upon the age of machines”.
The broken utensils gradually diminished and per our expectations, we found the 11 feet thick layer of the slime/sludge (gaad) brought by the flood. Under the microscope, it revealed itself to be the Tilchhat (sediment) of flood water, and contained bits of Mid-Iraqi items of daily use. Under the sludge were relics asaar of human habitation, like broken unbaked bricks, ash, bits of utensils, mud idols, in three layers. Underneath were found two stone necklaces ( malaian). A similar find was unearthed near Mount Nilgiri in South India. That would indicate Sumerians of the time were very keen on ornaments that they imported stone necklaces from far away. The collection included very delicate mud idols (should we use mud for mitti), which had (inn moortion mein hissi kafiat bharpoor pai jati thhi-this has me floored p 435). “11 feet thick sludge meant that the flood must have been at least 25 feet high and must have inundated 300 mile long and 100 mile low lying area of Iraq, the entire region from the Iranian border to Syria…only a few habitations situated on atolls would survive…so the claim of the book of Genesis, that the flood was probably accurate. It was not a world wide flood, but for the denizens of the region, that was the entire world” (Sir Leonard Wooley: The Digs at Ur-check name).
But other archeologists did not Accept sir Leonard’s claim. If the flood was 25 feet high, the neighboring regions must have been affected. But digs in Aredo, Eric, Lagash and Larsa failed to provide any such evidence. Sir Leonardo responded with the argument that flood sludge does not settle everywhere. If the current (dhara) is very fast, it only deepens the ditch. Sludge forms only when the current slowed down, due to an obstruction. It is possible that the flood may have been caused by a breach in a bund-embankment on the river coast (Ur is still below the level of the Euphrates river).the curious fact is that the story of flood is common to the Asatiri-mythical dastanoan-stories of the civilizations of Mexico, India and other civilizations. One may only conjecture that the concept is a product (karishma saazi) of human sub-conscious, and may have been born in the Ice age when the icy streams (of muntaqai Harra) advanced and receded, there were torrential rains and rivers morphed into seas.

The First Legal Code of the World.
In the Louvre Museum in Paris, a stone slab (Lott) is securely placed in a glass box. The slab is pyramidal (Makhrooti) in shape, eight feet tall and three feet thick. The greatest god of Babylon, Mardak, sits on its top with all his splendor. Hamurabi, the ruler of Babylon stands in front of him, in all humility. He is saluting the god with his right hand, and keeping his left hand on his belly. Mardak is giving him the gift of the Code of Law, which is inscribed on the slab in Akkadi language. The intent was to convince the people that the code was not compiled by any human, but a bestowal of god, and its denial would be a denial of god’s commandments. At the time, gods used to talk to people, keep a strict eye on them, and on an occasion bless them with his commands. All the commandments, though, were routed through the place or the prayer house (Maabad).
Printing press was far in the future and all the ordnances were inscribed on stone slabs which were installed in the temples or on roadways. Hamurabi’s slab is the oldest in the world, and had been installed at Seper in the temple of sun god. In the 12th century BCE, the king of Elm carried it away to Susa and installed it as a sign of victory. After the destruction of Susa, the slab was buried deep in the rubble and was dug out by French archeologists in 1901 CE. It was relatively in good shape, only about 35-36 laws had been rubbed out from 5-6 places. But copies of the laws were found elsewhere, so the whole code of 286 laws could be compiled.
Every law reflects the societal and state needs of its time. It determines the inter-class and the relations between humans and property. Laws are amended and added to from time to time. That indicates that when a law has outlived its utility, it is abrogated. Laws do not precede obedience of humans to it. In fact, societal behavior and relation obtain general consensus, only then they are enacted as laws. The basis/foundation of law is on social custom and experience. The commandments of Moses, or the laws of Emperor Justinian or the code of Napoleon were not the inventions of a few minds, but a reflection of societal conditions and class relations. The greatness of these persons lies in the fact that they could comprehend the requirements of their time and articulate them in a legal body.
The laws of Hamurabi, were similarly a reflection of the ceremonials and traditions extant in the Euphrates valley for centuries prior to their enactment. The jurists in Akkadian states, gave the dicta a composite and central shape. They were devised for the whole empire and to serve the purpose of consolidation of the state and supremacy of the king.
Hamurabi’s code was not the first one of its kind in the world. Three preceded it, the oldest is the one of Ur (South Iraq) of king Arnamo (slave or dog of the goddess Namo), by four hundred years (2113-2096 BCE), but the slates were of unbaked mud and in poor shape. In contrast to Hamurabi’s eye for an eye, the criminal had to pay compensation. The second was in vogue in the kingdom of Ashunanna, a small Akkadian state to the East of Baghdad. It had only 61 clauses, and one of them was a particular exchange weight of silver (shekel) against so much of barley, oil, fat wool, salt etc. A thief caught stealing in the place or the prayer house at night, a rapist of some one else’s fiancée, or a married woman having sex with a non-husband, were all liable to a death sentence.
Marriage was a contract between a man and the girl’s parents, which to obtain legal sanction, had to be duly stamped by witnesses. A war captive’s wife could marry another, but when the captive returned, he could demand his wife back, but could not claim the other man’s children.
One could divorce a barren wife, but divorcing a fertile one would cost all the assets of divorcer.
The third code preceding that of Hamurabi’s was that of the king Lepatashtar of Essene state (1934-1294 BCE). Only eighteen clauses could be deciphered, and described the conditions of inheritance, immovable property, ownership of slaves and agreements.
Hamurabi’s code was much more comprehensive and organized than those of his predecessors. It started with a long preamble, which delineated the objectives:
“When the great god Anum and the master of the earth and the sky, In Leel…appointed Mardak the ruler of humanity…gave Babylon precedence over the world and created a strong kingdom in its midst…and nominated me…and I made the announcement.
The code clarifies apart from the classes linked with the palace and the prayer house (Maabad), who were non-productive, the residents of Akkadian Sumerians were divided into the Ashrafia (elite-Owello), Masakeen (mushkino), the slaves (Verdoo) and ordinary citizens like traders, skilled workers, landowners, farmers, gardeners, laborer, herdsmen and sailors. The elite meant the royal family and courtiers.
Masakeen was the class which had been endowed with estates, stipends and other facilities, in return for army or administrative services. Slaves were chosen from prisoners of war or their children were bought or they were debtors and unable to pay loans, sold themselves, and were branded. They received harsher punishment for crimes than others did. The master could have conjugal relations with a slave girl (Islam too). Slaves could be freed, or their master could adopt them and they could marry a free woman.
Punishment for crimes, in those days, was related to social status, as it is now, though claims to the contrary are made frequently. If some one broke the leg of an elite, the punishment was payment of one Mena (weight 800 grams) in silver, though for breaking the leg of slave, the punishment was halved.
Coins had not been introduced yet. (they were in 7th century BCE), but three weights of silver were in vogue. Compensation for professionals was fixed by the state. The code describes them in detail. The wages in villages were paid in kind, but in the cities, it was in silver.
Besides the wages, the code can be divided into 4-5 parts relating to assets, exchanges, rules/regulations (zabta), armed conflict (faujdari), marital relations and relations between the master and slave. Punishment was of two kinds, physical like cutting off hands, nose, ears, breast, burning or dumping in the river, with hands and feet bound, and monetary like fines. Flogging or imprisonment was not practiced.
Like the code of Moses, which was introduced 800 years later, Hamurabi’s also ordained eye for an eye, If an adopted son told his father that he was not his father, the son’s tongue would be cut off. Per clause 195, if a son hit his father, the son’s hand could be chopped off. The punishment for thievery was death (clause 152).
The code had thirty four crimes punishable with death, but let us keep this mind that in Britain till late 19th century CE, three hundred crimes were punishable by death (theft and fraud-Jaal Saazi). Burglary (Naqb Zani) was punishable by live burial in a wall. If a person stole from a burning home, he was burnt in the same fire.
A woman having an extra marital affair would be thrown, hands and feet bound, into a river, but the husband could forgive her and a court was bound to accept the husbands judgment. If the household of a captive in another country had enough to live on, his wife had o guard the home. If she slept with another man, she was liable to death punishment.
The sale/purchase of a home, garden or a farm of a military or government officer was absolutely forbidden and deemed illicit (na Jaiz). The property could not even be transferred to the wife or sons. But one could transfer earned property to wife and children. In case the owner was held captive and the children were under age, one thirds of the property could be transferred to their mother for subsistence. The restrictions did not apply, if the owner was a prohat or a trader.
Agricultural land was rented for a half or a third share in the crop. If the peasant had paid some in advance, and if the crop were to destroyed, he could not ask for a refund. Agricultural land could be mortgaged.
But the most curious fact is that homes were rented, a practice not found in any other part of the world at the time. Rent could be charged in advance, indicating a regular business of homes (clause 78). An agreement was signed before renting a house “Masqoom son of Rim Adad rented the a house from Rimatim, a prohat of Shams (sun) for a year. The rent for the year is one and a half Shekel, out of which three quarters Shekel was paid in advance”. On the contract were names of two witnesses. Loans and interest were also practiced. The maximum interest was 20%. Compound interest was forbidden.
The code also gave conditions for trade. If a tr4ader took some items from a shop keeper, he had to pay interest plus the cost of the material to the shop keeper.
Wine selling was exclusive to women. Babylon had bars, which people visited for drinking on a regular basis and paid in grain or silver. If the wine seller shortchanged a customer, and the charge was proved, she was thrown in the river. If law breakers gathered in a bar, and the seller did not inform the authorities, the wine seller was liable to death penalty. If a prohat/rahiba (female monk) went into a bar and was caught drinking, she would be burnt alive. It establishes that prohats and rahibas drank on the sly. One could buy wine on credit, but it was more expensive and had to be paid for after harvest. If trust was violated, the criminal had to five times as much as he/she swindled.
Witnesses were essential in exchange and no suit was entertained in which there no eye witnesses.
Both wife and husband had the right to divorce. Men were not allowed a second wife, while the first was around, unless she was chronically sick, but the husband had to look after her. But the first wife had the right to go to her parents home, and take her dowry with her.
Engagement, dowry and Mehr (what husband promised to pay the wife as a part of marriage agreement-marriage portion.) were in vogue. The husband had to pay a part of Mehr before the wedding. At the time of engagement, the prospective husband had to go the prospective wife’s home with cash, jewellery and gifts.
The dowry was considered the private property of the wife. Sons had equal right in inheritance, unless the father had deeded some property to a son at the time of his birth. Half brothers (sons of the same father) had equal right, but of different mothers had no right to the dowry of step-mother.
A father could disown a son, but needed the sanction of a court.
A master could have sexual intercourse with a slave girl and if he called a child of the act ‘my child’ even once, the child had the same rights as those of the wedded wife. After the master’s death, the slave girl and her children had to be freed.
Widows had the right to live their deceased husbands home, children could not turn her out nor could they sell the house in her life.
Slaves had the right to marry free women, and the children of the marriage were considered free. Widows had the right to remarry, but if the children were small, she had to get permission from a court.
Girls got an equal share in inheritance, for their life, they could not pass it on to their children, nor sell or mortgage it. The property would revert to brothers after her death. Surgery had made great progress in Hamurabi’s time and eye surgery has been referred to. The fee for surgery was fixed according to means. But if the patient died or lost vision, the doctor’s hand was chopped off. But if the patient was a slave, the doctor had only to provide another slave.
Many court judgments inscribed on stone slabs were found in the digs. Important Court judgments were probably published.

Chap 19: the Golden Period of Babylon.
The beginning of the greatness of Babylon was Hamurabi time, and its zenith, that of Bakht Nasar. Babylon was known far and wide before Bakht Nasar too, but it was he who made it “Queen of Countries”. The population of the city in his time rose to more than 250,000, and was known for its academia. No other city could compete with it in Algebra, Medicine, Chemistry and Astrology. Greek thought was illuminated by Babylon. But that does not imply that they were free of superstitions, though they did have scientific mind set.
To develop skill is one thing, but to derive principles from experience is another. The slabs from Ashur bani Paul’s library and from the digs in Nefer Ashur, Babylon establish that they had devised certain scientific principles, especially in arithmetic with out which advances in Astrology, Physics, Chemistry and Medicine would not have been possible.
It is not known when people started counting, weighing or measuring time and distances, for no indications have so far been found in the stone age caves. Population was little, every one knew every one else in the tribe and could recognize the animals, so accounting and measurement was probably not necessary any way. But with the advent of settled agricultural life, when production exceeded personal use, all these skills had to be invented. Relics of Mitti ki golian (mud ball) and weights have been found in digs from early agricultural times. Writing arose out of accounting. Sumerian and Akkadian prohats kept meticulous accounts of their temples. But the count ended at sixty, so the system is called sexicecimal. The system was prevalent in India too. Time was divided into sixty minutes in an hour and sixty seconds in a minute. But they were unaware of zero 0, till at least 18th century BCE.
The invention of 0 is supposed to be great revolutionary atonement. Arabs, Greeks and Indians, all claim precedence. But based on the slabs from Hinhaminsh and Suluki period of Babylon establish that it was a Babylonian invention. Eminent archeologists like Professors Nogae Nogae Bawer and Wooley (check spellings from the bibliography at the end of the book) agree. In the beginning Babylonians used 0 as comma, but during the reign of Darius the great (500 BCE), it started getting used as a number between two numbers and by 300 BCE, 0 as a number was in wide usage.
Babylonians laid greater emphasis on Algebra and were not very interested in geometry, but 1,500 years before Pythagoras had developed the shape which found fame as his Theorem.
Calendar:
Agriculturists need a knowledge of changes of season, when to expect rains, flood, cold, heat, spring and fall (Khizaan). In Babylonian times celebrations of seasons was a part of religious rituals, and prohats kept a record of changes of seasons and festivals. They had to keep a record in their memory, before the invention of writing. After that it was written on slabs and consequently calendars were developed. The Babylonian calendar in contrast to the Egyptian one, was lunar, because the prohats had come to the conclusion that the weather on the twelfth day of the lunar appearance was similar to that on the first day, and they had divided the year into twelve months., and assigned 29-30 days to a month. Before Hamurabi, different regions had different names for the same month, but he made them uniform. The names are still in vogue among the Jews-Tishtari, Marhzuan, Kislo, Yibet, Shabaat, Idar, Nissan, Ayar, Swan, Tammuz, Aaab, and Eluli. The moon has four periods (crescent, half moon), so they divided the month into four weeks and the week into seven days, the day began with sunset.
With trade and finance, the deficits of the lunar calendar became explicit. Lunar year has 354 days, and the solar one has 365, so in three years, the difference rises to 33 and in twelve years, it would be over four months. That caused a problem in interest payments and duration of agreements, so Babylonians adopted the solar calendar along side the lunar one. The advantage of the solar calendar is its constancy, the earth revolves around the sun in 365 days and it follows seasons, while the lunar one does not. One can tell by the solar calendar, if it was cold or hot in the month of fasting in the year 1000 CE. With the establishment of Babylonian empire, the importance of moon had diminished as the sun was the symbol if the god Mardak the year started with spring every year.
But Babylonian year started anew with enthronement of a new king. (as happened in the Moghal period in India), so accuracy could not be ascertained, for example, in a slab of Batunadas, he claimed that Narmsen had ruled 32,000 years before him, though the actual period was 318 years.
The Science of Hyaait (Forecast):
One of the reasons of the first Greek philosopher and scientist, Talees’s fame was that had accurately predicted the sun eclipse of 585 BCE. The armies of Greece and Iran were fighting at the time and the eclipse occurred. The soldiers were frightened out of their wits and the contestants agreed to a cessation of hostilities (peace), as they believed that in the eclipse, god had expressed his displeasure.
But for the Babylonian it was old hat. They had mastered the forecast of lunar and solar eclipses at least a thousand years ago. Professors Kirk and Raywin in their “Philosophers Before Socrates” say “The prohats of Babylon had started predicting total and partial eclipses of the sun for reasons of religious rites, by at least 721 BCE and by the 6th century BCE, they were even able to tell where the eclipse would be visible..” Though they were able to predict the occurrence of eclipse by scientific calculations, they explained the occurrence on religious grounds that the sun or moon god was grave trouble, an afariat (evil spirit) had attacked them, and they should pray to god, offer sacrifices and give alms to get relief foot the sun/moon. And people scared out of their wits, followed their dicta, as they were not aware of the scientific knowledge. Even now, when awareness is widespread, people regard eclipses as wrath of god, pray and take dips in sacred rivers. In the 11th century BCE slabs of Nefer, there are clear indications that forecasters had reached the conclusion that that the distance between different stars (Ajram e Falki) and earth was not the same and that it could be measured. Among the eight Ajram e falki, moon was the nearest. The sky was divisible in three zones (Manataqa) and each was in turn divided into 12 sub zones. Each Mantaq (zone) had its own stars and groups of stars (sitara mandal). They had developed a Raas Mandli in 419 BCE, which had twelve Burj (minarets) of 30 angles each. This Raas Mandli is still printed over Jantaris (calendars).
Geography:
The Euphrates region was in the middle of the geographic expanse of the civilized world. Egypt. Canaan and Arab regions to the west, Asia minor and the Mediterranean to the north, Iran, China and India to the east, while to the south was were the coastal areas of the Indian ocean. Babylon Nainva were on the trade routes of all these countries. Trade relations made people aware of the geographic conditions of neighboring countries.
Slabs indicate that Babylonians had a vague (dhundhla) idea of the North pole. On one of the slabs, it says that the sun does not shine on the region, ten months of the year. A slab from the 6th century BCE has an atlas of the world in which the earth is shown flat and Euphrates runs through the middle of it and its is surrounded by a ‘bitter’ river. On all the corners, names of unknown countries are inscribed. Where ‘sun does not shine’.
It is generally believed that the atlas was drawn by a Greek philosopher, Anaximander, who was a resident of the city Miletus in Asia Minor. Other sketches of cities, the most famous being that of the city Nefer, about 1500 BCE, has been authenticated by the digs in the city.
Medicine and Surgery:
Over hundreds of thousands of years, when human subsisted on fruit, flowers and wild vegetation, they must have suffered from ingesting poisonous leaves and roots, before they would have been able to identify and choose the healthy ones. The essence/foundation of most of our medications are still the vegetation and metals discovered long ago.
In the Sumerian language, the word for Jari booti (roots, plants) is the same as for drug. Physicians, Ghaib Daan (prophets) and scribes were all known by the common word, Azu, because knowledge was very limited and knowledgeable people, few. Among the primitive people, one person still functions as physician, poet, prohat and chief adviser. Initially, medicine was independent of religion and magic, In the slabs of the time, pertaining to the time, no mention of gods/goddesses is made. In the ruins of Nefer, a slab on which an unknown physician had inscribes over a dozen prescriptions was found, but perhaps, in order to maintain secrecy, it did not give any indication of what ailment to use each for. But that established that Akkadians knew of the medicinal uses of vegetation (nibatat) and minerals. In the prescriptions of the unknown physician, mention is made of salt and alkali (shoara) as well as milk, snake skin and the skull of tortoise. But most medicines were plant based like Henna, Amaltas, Tez Paat, Jhao. Fig, Nashpati and dates. He was familiar with simple and compound medicines and used water and honey to dissolve them. He advised mixing a bit of barley wine to make bitter medicines palatable. But superstition did play a role. The patient and the doctor, both believed that the entry of evil spirits cause the disease, and magic and incantations, in addition to drugs, were necessary to drive them out. They presumably used these sharp practices (Hathkandai) to enhance their influence and they had devised a goddess of medicine, Bowtha, too. The physicians of Babylon apparently enjoyed the same international fame as European or American physicians do now and they were invited to Egyptian, Canaanite and Hittite courts for treatment. The medicinal slabs (Lauh) of Babylon exhibit a pharmacopoeia of at least 550 medicines, 250 being of vegetative origin (Jari, Booti), 120 of metals and 180 of other materials. 5880 prescriptions have been found.
Physicians used opium, Marijuana, Belladonna and Aabi Shekwan for anesthesia. Stomach pain was treated with Chamomile and Spind ( p 468). Mustard oil was used for constipation, poultice and to make a person throw up. The same medicine was used for several ailments like Sun Flower for scorpion bite, toothache, jaundice and stomach problems. Greeks learned medicine from Babylonians, and Arabs from the latter.
Even in the stone age, humans were aware of surgery, and in earlier pages, a skeleton, with signs of surgery on the leg was referred to. In Hamurabis time, physicians and surgeons were keenly regulated.
The credit of observing creations from a scientific perspective goes to Babylonians. They had devised a few scientific principles too.
Babylonian civilization survived for 3,000 years. Its decline started with Hanimanshi period, but with the emergence of Greek supremacy, it dwindled quickly.
Civilizations die because they lose the innovative capability to fulfill new social needs and imperatives. Civilization is a reflection (Ibarat hoti hai muashai ki Tarz zindagi Sai) of the way of life of society and the essence of the way of life are social Amaal and Afkaar (mind set).
Civilization is the essence of social values and creations. Bit if the society becomes enslaved by traditions, and avoids new ideas and experiences, it ossifies (Jamood ka Shikar ho jati hein), and do not have the vitality for progress or to stand up to other civilizations. That happened to Babylonian civilization too.
Akkadian/Sumerian agri8culture was based on the canal system. History vouches for it that only the rulers who kept the system in good repair were renowned. The greatest mistake of Banu Nidas was that he did not strive to keep the canal system in good working order. After Bakht Nasar, no ruler took care of the canals. In the Hinamanshi period, Babylon instead of receiving Khiraj (financial homage), had to pay it. The very nature of its economy changed. It became a dominated society. Civilization does not flourish in slavery.
Another reason for the downfall of Babylonian society was the repressive clergy, which had chained the people in outdated customs and traditions. No one could defy the prohats. Traditions became sacrosanct.
Learning and education was the exclusive province of the prohats, so a class which could rebel against mental oppression and exploitation of the religious class could not emerge. Prohats just kept on preaching forbearance and contentment (Sabr wa Qinaaat) and preordained fate, so reformism, innovation and revolutionary trends all dwindled. People became total conformists (Lakeer kai Faqeer). The times 6-7th BCE, though, were in ferment. Far reaching social changes were occurring in India and China due to the teachings of Gautama Buddha and Lao Tze. Philosophers and scientists, Talees, Anaximander, Pythagoras, Democritus, Herk Lyaltus were pondering over the creation and changes (Kainaat kai Taghayyur wa Namood khalis Tabbai usoloan par tashreeh kar rahai thhe) in the universe in physical terms. They were imparting the knowledge of laws of nature, rather than reliance on fate, magic and incantations.
During this period two epoch making changes, the use of iron and introduction of minted coins (Taxaali sikkai). It is true that the people in the near East had been familiar with the use of iron for thousands of years, Egyptians had made necklaces out of iron balls (golion sae) and Hittites were able to forge daggers of iron, but that was smelted (Shahahabi) iron, not the mineral one. In 9th century BCE, mining of iron from hills started and being more durable, stronger and harder, the use of Copper and Bronze fell into disuse, but Babylonians were not aware of it. Greece was fortunate in profundity of iron ore.
Coincidentally, the largest sliver ores were also found in Asia Minor and minting of coins also started there. That gave a great boost to international trade. But before Darius the great, no one thought of minting coins in the Euphrates valley. Alexander was taken aback, when he arrived in Babylon that they could not do it.
Humanity owes great favors to the Euphrates valley. For Arithmetic, forecasting (Ilme Haiat)Algebra, medicine, as well as administrative rules and law. They also taught humanity the skills of making domes, minarets and arches. They also left behind scripts, maps and literary master pieces.
Whether a human is from the east or the West, Jewish, Christian, Zoroastrian or Muslim, they owe a debt of gratitude to Babylon for creeds, beliefs, traditions and ceremonies.