The Ancient Tradition

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Music

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Listening to the Ancient Tradition. A Wonk Media Production. Music provided by Joseph McDade. Here’s your host, Dr. Jack Logan.

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Welcome to the Ancient Tradition. I’m your host, Jack Logan. The podcast is doing very well. We are now the number one comparative religion podcast in the cybersphere. So thank you for listening in. I watched the coronation of Charles and Camilla and I was blown away by one particular aspect of the ceremony, which I’ll tell you about in just a second.

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I had originally planned to do three additional episodes on the coronation, do one on the investiture, one on crowns, and one on queenship. But if you’ve been following the coronation of Charles and Camilla, you may be a little bit like me, a little burned out. So I’ve decided to save those topics for future episodes. And believe me, they will come up because kingship, as I’ve mentioned many times, is a quintessential feature of the world’s original religious tradition.

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But I hope the four episodes that we did do on the coronation gave you a much deeper and broader spiritual and religious context for the coronation rites. If you’re a regular listener to this program, I’m wondering if you caught what I caught during the anointing. Did you notice what was on the screen that was placed in front of the congregation when Charles was anointed? This seriously blew me away. If you did,

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You’re not only an astute listener, you’re also an astute viewer, and you’re on your way to seeing the hidden connections between the symbolism that’s used and the more profound spiritual realities that those symbols are meant to convey. If you didn’t notice what was on the screen, that’s okay too. This is a learning process for all of us. In preparation for the anointing, several young men brought out four screens.

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and they placed one on each side of Charles, who was seated on King Edward I’s wooden coronation chair. And they did this to preserve the sacred nature of the anointing, and they wanted to protect it from public view. And like I mentioned in episode number eight, this is done, whether they realize it or not, to create a holy of holies, the sacred location where God anoints kings and queens, where God anointed Adam, a king in the Garden of Eden temple.

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So on the screen facing the congregation, stitched in the fabric was a beautiful blue, the color of lapis lazuli, mind you, tree of life. And like stars glistening against the night sky, there were five pointed blossoming flowers or fruit that dotted all of the leaves. Now I don’t know if the artist purposely made these flowers or fruit five pointed,

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The symbolism is in complete conformity with symbolism that’s used by the ancient Egyptians. Do you recall in our previous episode, in episode number nine, when we talked about how the anointing oil had the power to occupy the king or make him like the gods? Well if you do, you’ll recall that when the king was occupied by the holy anointing oil, he was referred to symbolically as an imperishable star. A glorious being of

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perpetual light. And what’s remarkable is that the tombs of King Unus, King Tete, King Pepe I, and King Pepe II, who are the kings of the 5th and 6th dynasty, where we find the ancient Egyptian pyramid texts, the ancient Egyptians covered the ceilings with gold-colored five-pointed stars. And they did this to represent the king joining the imperishable stars, the glorious gods in the afterlife.

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And this same symbolism was also depicted during the coronation ceremony when Charles, after he’d been anointed, he slipped into the back room and he put on glorious golden robes, which symbolized that the anointing oil had transformed him from a humble man, which was symbolized by the plain gown that he wore for the anointing, to an exalted deified being dressed in the robes of glory.

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a glorious being of light, like an imperishable star. There’s a lot of symbolism attached to five-pointed stars, which I’ll have to tell you about in a future episode. But I’m pretty impressed with whomever decided to stitch them into the tree of life. Because in the Christian tradition, the fruit of the tree of life symbolizes eternal life. It is the fruit promised to all those who are anointed with the myrrh oil.

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the suffering tree and there’s a lot to ponder there. If you take a closer look at this screen, you’ll also notice that King Charles’ monogram is stitched directly on the base of the trunk of the tree, which is a pretty strong way of declaring that King Charles is to be understood as God’s emissary on Earth. You know, and let’s not forget that the Tree of Life is meant to be understood primarily as the quintessential symbol of God, or

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Christ in the Christian tradition. So I’m pretty impressed with whomever decided to stitch the tree of life on this screen which serves to shield the profane public kind of like a veil from the fiery glory of God’s Holy throne in the Holy of Holies. Either this is coincidental or someone working for the crown knows a whole lot more about kingship and the ancient tradition than I ever thought they did.

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And of course, I’d love to talk to them. So much of the British coronation ceremony is modeled after the anointing and coronation of Adam and Eve in the Garden of Eden temple. And I hope you’re able to see that connection now. With the coronation complete, I wanna start building the ancient tradition from the ground up. And this means we need to start from the very beginning. And we’re gonna do this by tackling the greatest mystery in the world.

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life came to be. This is one of the greatest questions ever put forth by human beings. Mircea Eliade, one of the formal scholars of comparative religion, whom I introduced you to in the first episode, says this, quote, “‘The appearance of life is the central mystery of the world.'” Have you ever had one of those existential moments where you’re like, how did I get here? How did any of us get here?

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This is the greatest mystery out there. How did we come into being? How did life start? How did any of this, the trees, the chirping birds, beautiful sunsets, verdant snow-capped mountains, how did any of this come into existence? I’ve had surreal moments here and there when I’ve been struck by how truly odd it is to actually be here, to actually be, to be alive.

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How in the world did I get here? And furthermore, why am I here? I call these existential moments because that’s exactly what they are. The word existential comes from the root exist and means of or relating to existence. Now, how all of this and all of us came to be is the central existential question or mystery of the world. You know, modern scientists, they’ve been working on this mystery every day.

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and they’ve come up with a lot of different theories to explain the origin of life. But every single one of them remains theoretical. Charles Choi and Scott Dutfield of Live Science wrote in February of 2022, quote, “‘Science remains undecided and conflicted as to the exact origin of life.'” Which means they don’t know how life came to be. It remains a total mystery.

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Now, the theories they’ve come up with are pretty interesting though. So let’s take a look at a few of them, but keep in mind that these are theories about how life came to be. The scientific community has not been able to successfully produce life through any of these methods. The first theory hypothesizes that life started by a lightning strike, which theoretically generated amino acids and sugars, which created the building blocks of life. It’s a pretty interesting idea, but when scientists try and use lightning to produce life,

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They get nothing. Another theory argues that clay crystals, because clay crystals stick together when they’re exposed to different environments, that they could theoretically trap other molecules, which may lead to life producing patterns like DNA. But again, this theory has never been replicated by science. A third theory hypothesizes that life began in deep sea vents.

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And this theory hypothesizes that life may have begun in the submarine hydrothermal vents, which theoretically could have spewed elements key to life, such as carbon and hydrogen into the water, which I’m not sure how well that would go with such a high salt content in the ocean, but that’s just some elementary thinking on my part. Another theory argues that ice may have facilitated the birth of life. Jeffrey Bada.

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at the University of California argues that key organic compounds are more stable at lower temperatures. So ice may have been a way to preserve the fragile organic compounds that were necessary for life. Again, this remains a theory since it’s never been replicated by modern science. A fifth theory argues that the origin of life may reside in RNA, which can store information kind of like DNA, and it can serve as an enzyme like

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protein and this protein is needed for many of the processes of life. This theory hypothesizes that life began with a simple RNA molecule that had the ability to copy itself without the help of any other molecules. Now this theory might be one of the more promising theories because scientists have engineered an RNA molecule that’s capable of self replicating and then diversifying and then adding complexity.

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It remains to be seen, however, if these self-replicating RNA molecules can evolve to the level where life can be produced. A sixth theory hypothesizes that life might have begun with tiny, simple molecules that interacted with other tiny molecules, and then over time they developed more and more complex molecules. When labs try to do this, it doesn’t produce anything lifelike at all.

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said it like this, quote, researchers are starting to realize it’s like trying to build a car by making a chassis and hoping that wheels and an engine will spontaneously appear.

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The final theory, the last theory is that life came to earth from somewhere else. It’s called pen spermia, quite the name via meteorites. This suggests that meteorites could have carried microbes with them, microbes that could survive the blazing hot entry. And this of course seems quite implausible to me, but even if it were, it still doesn’t explain how life originated somewhere else.

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A more recent theory argues that life began with a chemical Big Bang. And this theory argues that life emerged kind of fully formed. And I’ve read up on this and I’m not quite sure if they believe this was like coincided with the Big Bang, the original Big Bang, or if this was a separate Big Bang, chemical Big Bang, I’m not exactly sure. All of the chemicals necessary for life then were understood to be produced and began at the Big Bang and not after it.

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Scientists have come up with more than these theories, but these are pretty much the main ones and sometimes I think we forget that these are theories most of them contradict each other and sometimes I think theories are presented as fact by Scientists and the media gives them an even greater perception of concrete truth and is really intellectually honest. These are theories Completely theoretical the riddle of the origin of life is not even close to being solved by science

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Now I personally hope someday it will be. I don’t have any problem believing that a supreme being operates according to universal laws. So why does any of this matter in terms of the ancient tradition? Well, because when we scour the ancient record, we find that the ancients gave a remarkably consistent account of the origin of life. You know, where we would expect to find considerable variability in cosmogonies,

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which are accounts of the origin of life and the beginnings of the universe, we actually find the opposite. We find that the ancients were telling a single story all over the globe, and we don’t see a lot of substantive variability, which suggests that these stories came from a common source. And on this podcast, we refer to that source as the ancient tradition.

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And it’s here that I have to tell you about one of my favorite scholars, a scholar by the name of Marinus van der Sluis. Van der Sluis has a degree in comparative and historical linguistics from Leden University in the Netherlands. And he used to, and I’m not sure if he still does, worked as a consulting scholar at the University of Pennsylvania and Ivy League here in the United States. In 2011, he published this amazing four volume work on traditional cosmology.

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Basically what he did, because he’s an extremely patient and diligent researcher, is he scoured the entire planet for the oldest cosmogonies in the world. And he used almost exclusively primary sources. And from those sources, he compiled a systematic and pretty much comprehensive catalog of the world’s traditional cosmologies.

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I think van der Sloos should be really commended for his work because this is the first time anyone has ever attempted to compile a comprehensive catalog of archaic cosmogonies. I personally couldn’t even comprehend the magnitude of such a scholarly undertaking, especially tracking down all of those primary sources. And once van der Sloos gathered all of the cosmogonies together, he then categorized their central parts.

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He categorized them into themes and motifs. And what he found was remarkable. He writes, quote, it emerges that practically all cultures sustain surprisingly similar notions about the origin, the constitution, and the destiny of the cosmos. A single template can be distilled from the thousands of individual cosmologies collected worldwide.

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story told around the globe. Some of you may be familiar with Joseph Campbell and he said something very similar. He said quote, the cosmogonic cycle is presented with astonishing consistency in the sacred writings of all the continents. You know what’s remarkable is that after van der Sloe’s finished compiling his inventory of traditional cosmologies

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He realized that the same cosmological tradition was being told basically everywhere, all over the planet, in every corner. And he writes, quote, “‘It emerges that people of all creeds and colors have sustained surprisingly similar notions about the origin of the cosmos. The majority of motifs identified in this work recur on different continents and enjoy practically universal attestation.'”

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This justifies one to speak of a globally consistent set of traditional ideas concerning cosmology, a unified archaic cosmology. Archaic cosmologies worldwide display a striking uniformity rarely appreciated. It’s a cross-culturally consistent mythology. Wow, there’s no mincing words there.

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This is the guy who rounded up every single origin story he could find, sorted through all of them, and found that the ancients all over the world told the same story about how life came to be. There is no greater authority on traditional cosmology on the planet than Marinus van der Sloes, and here he is telling us that from his research he found a quote, globally consistent set of traditional ideas concerning cosmology. A unified

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archaic cosmology. In other words, Vander Sluis found that cultures all over the globe told the same story about how the cosmos were born, how the earth was created, how life emerged. The same story from the Yoruba of Nigeria to the Inuit of New Foundland, to the Cherokee of Native America, to the Maya of Guatemala, to the ancient Sumerians and Mesopotamians. You get the picture. And I don’t know about you, but I’ve got questions at this point.

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How is this possible? How is it possible that the same traditional cosmology or origin story is being told all over the planet in regions that are separated by thousands of miles and in time separated by hundreds, even thousands of years? As you can imagine, this in and of itself is a mystery. And in a future episode, we’ll dive into this question head first, but suffice it to say here that Vandersloos found this to be the case that quote, archaic.

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cosmologies displayed a striking uniformity. And I’ll be referring to Vandersloos’s research often. So if you’re interested in learning more about him, his methodology, his research, and his inventory of ancient cosmologies, be sure to visit theancienttradition.com, theancienttradition.com and search for him under scholars. And for the record, I have zero affiliation with Vandersloos. I’m not compensated in any way. In fact, I actually disagree with him on some things.

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especially his hypothesis about the origin of the said traditional cosmology. Vander Sluis’s research is extremely important to a reconstruction of the world’s oldest religious tradition, the ancient tradition, because it establishes that a single cosmology was disseminated somehow throughout the world and that that cosmology had its roots in deep antiquity. And Vander Sluis says it like this, quote,

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The very fact that it proved possible to deduce the model from so many sources is a strong argument in favor of a homogeneous origin of this body of traditions. This is extremely important because this ancient cosmology provides much of the scaffolding or the framing upon which the ancient tradition is built, especially the symbolism that’s used to express the sacred.

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And Vandersleuth says it like this, quote, as a worldview, a traditional cosmology typically functions as the conceptual background against which other ideas and practices, including religious and spiritual ones, are developed. So if we don’t start with the established motifs of archaic cosmology, then we’re going to miss some extremely important spiritual teachings. So.

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Let’s start with the ancient conception of the cosmos as cataloged by van der Sloes. Ancient cosmology always begins with a description of the state of the universe before the creation. So according to the ancients, according to this unified arcade cosmology, what was the universe like before the creation took place? What did it look like? Was there anything there?

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Was it empty? Was it full? Was it light? Was it dark? Well, as Vander Sluis points out, the ancients all over the world described the pre-creative universe in the same way. And sometimes they even use the same words. Most often, the ancients describe the state of the universe before the creation as water. And here’s a sampling of the ways the ancients describe it in the origin stories that

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Vandersloos gathered and these are just excerpts I pulled out. Saltwater sea, a sea, a watery mass, water, the waters, water everywhere, pooled water, a sea of water, water covered everything, there was nothing but salt water. The earth had been covered with water, all open sea. In the beginning the world was all marshy and watery. The world existed in the waters. Ocean of milk, only the sea. The world was submerged.

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Scholars today refer to the ancients description of the pre-creative state of the universe as the primordial waters or sometimes the primeval sea or the cosmic ocean But those are our interpretations of this and the waters are often described as being accompanied by the absence of light And here’s a sampling of how they describe it. There was no light

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No moon, no sun, no stars. All was darkness. It was a continuous thick darkness. In the beginning, our world was dark. The world lay in blackness, darkness before there was sun. It was a time of black darkness, a dark black night. The sun did not shine. A time when the universe was only darkness, there was a thick darkness. The world was not light. There was infinite night in the dark in the night.

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And so scholars today refer to this as the cosmic night. Van der Sluis notes, quote, darkness and water emerge as the two most salient ingredients of the precreative state of the universe. So this conception of the precreative state of the universe as a dark cosmic sea is universally attested to all over the globe. And to demonstrate this, let’s start with some of the oldest.

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ancient examples and then we’ll work our way to more recent times. And let’s start with some very important texts which I’ve noted in previous episodes are dated to between 2400 and 2300 BC and I’ll talk about them in much greater detail in a couple of weeks because like I’ve mentioned I think they’re fantastic. But suffice it to say that there’s internal evidence that suggests that the content of the texts is much much older than 2400 BC. So they likely represent the world’s

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oldest known reference to the primordial waters of creation. The ancient Egyptians personified the primordial waters in the deity Nuh, and it’s spelled N-U, which means watery one or noon. These primordial waters or Nuh or noon are mentioned 46 times in the pyramid text.

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As you listen to the words, tuck them in your pocket because you’re gonna hear nearly the same thing, practically word for word, in various other corners of the earth. Like we mentioned, thousands of miles away from Egypt. The text I’m about to read, pyramid text 486, is found in King Pepe I pyramid in Saqqara, Egypt. These are passages that were to be uttered by King Pepe, and it reads, quote, I was born in new.

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when the sky had not yet come into being, when the earth had not yet come into being, when the establishment of the world had not yet come into being. So in this text, we have two really important doctrines being expressed. The first is that the ancient Egyptians described the state of the universe before the creation of the world as water, and they refer to this water as new. In this passage, new or the primordial waters existed before…

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anything had been created. In other words, the ancient Egyptians contended that something, some sort of substance, some kind of matter, something existed in the universe before the earth was created. Now this is really pretty interesting because it counters the contention by some that the universe emerged out of nothing, that there was nothing in the universe before the creation. And this theory is known as creation ex nihilo. If the ancients lived today they would

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wholeheartedly disagree with the notion of creation ex nihilo. The ancients tell us time and time again that there was something in the universe before the creation of the world and that this substance was somehow similar to water. People who are not familiar with how the ancients used language and symbols might contend that the ancient Egyptians actually believed that the universe before the creation was filled with water, actual water.

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but they would be incorrect. The language of the ancient world was highly symbolic and we have to hone our symbolism literacy to recognize that water is used here by the ancients as a symbol for what actually existed in the universe before the creation. But why use a symbol? Why not just say what it was? What was out there? Well, that’s because symbols are a way not only to express some physical realities, like saying it smells like

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a rose or it looks like a basketball. But more importantly, symbols are used to express inexpressible spiritual realities. And you’ll see as we continue to dive into this that the ancients are using water here to express not only some of the physical characteristics of the pre-creative state of the universe, but more importantly, to convey important spiritual principles and realities.

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So the ancients used water to describe the pre-creative state of the universe because water was a useful way to convey many of the important properties of this primordial substance to something that human beings could relate to. The primordial substance wasn’t water, but it had characteristics and properties that were similar to water. So I dug around into this and an Egyptologist out of Poland, Dr. Joanna Popielska,

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Krubowska, who has studied the concept of new in the pyramid texts says this, quote, the primeval waters is primordial matter, where life came into being. New is an incorporation of primordial matter and potential. And she goes on to say that the primordial waters are quote, the elements of creation.

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In other words, the primordial waters are new, represent a sea or ocean of elements, the building blocks of creation, elements that were basically everywhere in the universe, just like an ocean, but they had not been arranged or organized or formed into what we would call a creative state, like the creation of the Earth. So keep this in mind that the primordial waters actually refer to an ocean of unorganized

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Elements as we go through the next couple of creation accounts because this will help you interpret the accounts But also keep this in mind because it will be important in our next episode And one more thing I want to point out about pyramid text 486 and let me read it to you one more time I was born in new when the sky had not yet come into being when the earth had not yet come into being when the Establishment of the world had not yet come into being this

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pyramid text is really important because it indicates the ancient Egyptians believed the king, in this case King Pepe I, was first born in new, before he was born on earth. He says it right there, quote, I was born in new when the sky had not yet come into being when the earth had not yet come into being. The whole objective of this pyramid

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before the creation of the earth Susan Bickel who is a Egyptologist out of Switzerland wrote a book on Egyptian cosmogony and she argued that new represented in part the concept of pre-existence So in this light new represents not only the primordial elements needed to create the material world but it also represents the doctrinal belief among ancient Egyptians of a

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pre-existence. We find the same belief in a pre-existence reiterated in Pyramid Text number 211, which this time refers to King Unus, who was the last king of the Fifth Dynasty. And King Unus is speaking here and he says, quote, I was conceived in the night. I was born in the night. I was conceived in noon. I was born in new. So in this text, the reference to birth in the pre-existence state

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as conceptualized by new is mentioned four times. Conceived, born, conceived, born. And Dr. Popoleska-Kirbawska says this, quote, he, the king was born there referring to a pre-existence before anything else came into being and consequently existed before anything else and will exist continuously and forever.

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So it’s pretty clear from this pyramid text that the ancient Egyptians believed the king as a being was essentially conceived and born in some other place way before the earth was created and way before he was born physically into the material world. And this suggests that the Egyptians believed the king’s consciousness or what we might call an intelligence or soul came to be or was born in a pre-existent place.

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before it took on flesh and bone on earth. We might not be too far off if we referred to the king’s initial birth as a spiritual birth, when his spirit or soul or ba, as the ancient Egyptians referred to it, was originally born. Then when he came to earth, he experienced a second birth, a physical birth where his soul took on a material body. And we know the ancient Egyptians believed that a person’s ba or soul

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would separate from their body at the time of death and then continue to exist in the afterlife. So from these texts it seems the ancient Egyptians believed the Ba also existed before physical birth and was itself eternal. Now as remarkable as pyramid text 211 is, it kind of leaves us hanging. It doesn’t tell us how the king’s soul or Ba was conceived in new in this pre-existent state.

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Just how was it that the king’s soul was conceived? How was he born in this pre-mortal state? How did the king’s soul initially come to be? Just how did the king suddenly become a living entity way before he was born physically on earth? And these are profound existential questions. When we examine the religious traditions of today, we find the belief in a pre-mortal existence in Hinduism, Buddhism.

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in the Kabbalah, which is the mystical tradition within Judaism. We find it in Shintoism and among many Native American religions. But this doctrine of a pre-mortal existence is not believed by the vast majority of Christian denominations. This is interesting because if you’ve ever listened to or read accounts of near-death experiences, one of the most universal themes in these accounts is a reference to a pre-mortal existence. These individuals.

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give accounts of having mapped out their life plans with a council or group of individuals before they came to earth, and that upon their death, they felt an overwhelming feeling of having come home. They felt that where they went after death was their true home, like they’d been there before. As one person put it, quote, it felt like the real, real.

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Okay, but back to our original question, how was the king conceived and born in this pre-mortal existence state? How did he come into being? Well, luckily for us, there are more pyramid texts and we find the answer in a text inscribed on the walls of King Pepe the first’s pyramid. And this is pyramid text 571. And this text spells out just how this conceiving and birthing of the king’s soul or Ba took

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in a pre-mortal existence. And at first, you may find this hard to believe, but as we continue examining the records of the ancient world, this doctrine will begin to make more and more sense. So let’s read the answer in Pyramid Text 571. It reads, quote, My mother became pregnant with me. Who is in the under sky?

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and I was given birth by my father Atum before the sky came into being, before the earth came into being, before death came into being. Did you catch that? This text is telling us that in new in a pre-mortal existence, Pepe’s soul was conceived through two parents, his mother, a female deity associated with the underworld or the world of the dead and his father Atum, the God associated with the creation of the world.

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In other words, King Pepe’s Ba or soul was created in a pre-existent state through some sort of creative process like our physical bodies that required both a male and female. In this pyramid text, King Pepe clearly speaks of these deities as the source of his conception and birth. They are the parents of his eternal soul.

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Heritage his soul was literally born of godly parents I’ve kind of deviated from the main point of today’s episode but I wanted to point out the association between new the primordial waters and the concept of a pre-existence here in this episode because according to the ancients a lot of very Interesting things happened in this pre-mortal existence and we’ll dive into the theology of this in an in an upcoming episode

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It definitely merits a serious discussion. For the present, however, let’s return to examining a few more creation stories where we see the precreative state described as water and associated with darkness. So before I leave ancient Egypt, let’s take a look at one last passage in an ancient Egyptian hymn from around 2000 BC, which also speaks of the emergence of the earth from a primordial ocean. And it reads, quote,

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thou hast stood as king on the land during its lassitude thou has taken it out of the primeval waters so here you see reference to the creation of the earth coming out of the primordial waters inside the temple of karnak complex and i have been there but it’s been a very long time ago which is near modern day luxor in egypt

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Tourists can see an artificial sacred lake and it’s the largest known artificial sacred lake in Egypt and today it’s still filled with water. This lake was built by King Thutmose II sometime between 1473 and 1458 BC. And you might have surmised that this sacred lake represents the primordial waters of new and it was used by the king to purify himself before he performed sacred rituals.

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So he would go and dip in this water almost daily. And keep that in mind, especially for our next episode. These sacred lakes were built as important features of many Egyptian temple complexes, like the Temple of Mut and the Temple of Basset. Let’s move on now to ancient Mesopotamia, to the Enuma Elish. The Enuma Elish contains the Babylonian creation story or cosmogony.

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And this ancient record changed our knowledge of the ancient world because it gave us a much clearer picture of ancient Mesopotamian beliefs and worldview. Most of what had been understood previous to the Enuma Elish relied on classical sources which proved to be unreliable. So the Enuma Elish is a pretty important record. I think the background stories of how some of these ancient texts were found are pretty interesting. So I’ll share them here and there as they come up. As for the Enuma Elish,

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Sometime between 1848 and 1876, an archeologist by the name of Austin Laird and an Assyriologist by the name of Hormoud Rassam were excavating a mound in Nineveh, which today is in modern day Mosul, Iraq. And this mound turned out to be the royal palace of the Assyrian King, Ashurbanipal, who lived about 668 to 626 BC.

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and he was considered to be the last great Assyrian king. In these palace buildings, King Ashurbanipal kept this really large library. And today we refer to it as the Library of Ashurbanipal. There, Layard and Rassam found over 24,000 clay tablets that were written in Sumerian Akkadian cuneiform script. That’s the little wedge-like shaped impressions.

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Apparently, King Ashurbanipal had sent scribes all over the world to kind of collect and copy records. So most of these tablets that were found date to around 650 BC. The Anuma Elish was one of the records that were preserved on these clay tablets. And it’s basically an Assyrian translation of a much earlier Babylonian record that chronicled the beginning of creation.

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24,000 tablets is a lot of tablets to translate. So the Anuma Elish wasn’t found until many, many years later when in a serologist by the name of George Smith was hired by a newspaper to go through all those tablets to see if he could find the missing parts of the Babylonian flood story. And can you imagine this really is a needle in the haystack, but he found records for the flood and he found the Anuma Elish. And Smith published the Anuma Elish for the first time in English in…

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1876. If you’re interested in taking a look at some of the clay tablets that were found in the Library of Asher Bonipul or the Enuma Elish, you can find them at the British Museum in the Assyrian section. And you can also find pictures of them on our companion website, theancienttradition.com. Just search for this episode. Scholars date the composition of the original Enuma Elish to around

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possibly even earlier. Scholars argue this because illustrations have been found at some of the content of the Enuma Elish as early as about 1600 BC. The text is essentially an epic and the title Enuma Elish means quote, when on high. And these are the first couple of words in the text. Like van der Sluis has found all over the world, the creation story begins before the creation with a description of the pre-creative state of the universe.

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The Enuma Elish reads, quote, when on high the heavens did not exist, nor the earth below. Apsu, the freshwater ocean was there, the first, the begetter. Apsu is the Sumerian Akkadian description for the primordial waters. In the Enuma Elish, the Apsu is depicted as a deity, a personification of the primordial waters. A cylinder sill found at Ur,

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which is in modern day Iraq, depicts the god Aya enthroned, receiving another god encircled by Apsu, the primeval waters. We’ll come back to more of this creation myth in a future episode because there’s a lot of great stuff in it, but for now it establishes the presence of the primeval waters in the Babylonian creation myth. If you’d like to listen to the full English translation of the Enuma Elish,

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the Mesopotamian creation story. You can find that on our sister podcast, the ancient tradition audio writ, and you can find it on this platform or any place that you get your podcasts. Now let’s turn to the Hebrews. Right up front in the second verse of the Hebrew Bible, Genesis chapter one, verse two, in the King James version, it refers to the watery pre-creative state. It says, quote, and the earth was without form and void

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darkness was upon the face of the deep. In this passage we see a clear reference to the two characteristics associated with the pre-creative state that we seem to find everywhere darkness and water. In the Genesis account this water is referred to as quote the deep. The Hebrew word for deep here is techom. Elcott’s Bible commentary notes that techom comes from a root quote

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and is poetically applied to the ocean, as in Psalm 42,7, from the restless motion of the waves, but is used here to describe that chaos as a surging mass of shapeless matter. Most scholars think the present form of the Book of Genesis was composed during the post-exilic period, which dates to around 537 BC, when Jews returned from Babylon.

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However, like the pyramid text, the enuma al-ish is likely composed from much, much older stories which had been passed down. Next, what do we find in Islam? How does the Quran describe the pre-creative state of the universe? The Quran, which is a compilation of revelations given to Muhammad, which were written down by the first caliph Abu Bakr,

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Sometime between 644 and 656 AD also speaks of these primordial waters. In 2130 it states that Allah quote made from water every living thing. 2554 reads and it is he who created humans from water. 2445 reads quote Allah has created every moving living creature from water.

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Let’s move on now to the Maya of Central America and the Popol Vuh. The Popol Vuh is the sacred book of the K’iche Maya in Guatemala. Again, in a future podcast, I’ll talk more about this important text, but for now it’s important to know that it contains the Mayan creation story as it was recorded before the Spanish conquest. The oldest surviving account of the Popol Vuh we have dates to about 1701 AD, but it was originally written down from oral traditions.

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in 1550 AD. And this is what the Popol Vuh says of the pre-creative state of the universe. Quote, whatever there is that might be is simply not there. Only the pooled water, only the calm sea, only it alone is pooled. Whatever might be is simply not there, only murmurs, ripples in the dark in the night. So here again we see the pre-creative state of the universe

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darkness and there are literally hundreds of these examples all over the world but let me add just a couple more so you get a feel for the cross-cultural expanse of this motif. In the Matsya Purana which is a sacred book of the Hindu which preserves the Purana and Purana means ancient or old the Purana Sanskrit literature gives an account of creation starting with the pre-creative state and it reads

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Matya said that during the period of great dissolution, the universe was enveloped in darkness and was in a state of trance as it were, inconceivable, still and undefiable with the desire of creating the universe first created water and planted the seed of creation in it. The importance of the primeval waters is further envisioned as the Kishirasagara or ocean of milk in the Puranic legends.

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So according to these legends, divas who are exalted beings and asuras who are demigods churned the primeval ocean of milk as a necessary precursor to obtaining Amrita, the ancient elixir of immortality. And at this point you should be thinking of episode number nine where we associated these elixirs of immortality with the sacred anointing oil. One of these preronic legends reads, quote, the Lord

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has the sea of milk as his abode. And another Vedic text estimated to have been written by a Vedic sage sometime between the eighth and sixth century BC says, quote, “‘Verily in the beginning this universe was water, “‘nothing but a sea of water, “‘for the water is the foundation of this universe.'” A wonderful depiction of the churning ocean of milk can be seen on the exterior of Angkor Wat.

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which is a vast temple complex built in Cambodia, sometime between 1122 and 1150 AD. It originally began as a Hindu temple, but it was later converted into a Buddhist temple. And Angkor Wat is a Cambodian national treasure, and it’s presently on the register of UNESCO World Heritage Sites. The bas relief depicts 88 divas, those benevolent, shiny, divine beings, and 92 asuras, demigods.

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churning the primordial sea. Vishnu, the supreme being at the center of the Hindu creation myth, is depicted in the center. And note that he resides in the center with the asuras on one side and the divas on the other. At the center is a churning stick which churns the primordial milk when the

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giant serpent kind of like a rope and there are other more modern depictions of this as well. In addition to the depictions of the churning of the milk of the primordial waters on the exterior of the temple if you get an aerial view of the entire temple complex of Angkor Wat it reveals that it’s surrounded by a giant moat of water which no surprise symbolizes the primordial waters just like the sacred lake did.

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in ancient Egypt. If you’d like to see pictures of the churning milk and the moat around Angkor Wat, you can find them on our companion website, theancienttradition.com. If we turn to Africa, we can find the Pre-Creative State described in the same way. Let’s take a look at the Kuba people of Central Africa in the Democratic Republic of the Congo. The Kuba Kingdom flourished between 1600 to the late 1800s AD. So it was a pre-colonial kingdom in Central Africa.

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In the legend of Bombo, who was the creator, we read, quote, in the beginning, there was Bombo or Bumba, the creator, along with water and darkness. Among the Tuamotu of Polynesia, which is modern day French Polynesia, we find the same thing. The Tuamotu creation myth says this, quote, when Tain the gushing waters created the world here, the world existed in the waters. Te via Puna Ariki.

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There was no sand, no bedrocks, no ocean, no sky, and deep darkness was upon the froth of the waters. Scholars believe the French Polynesian islands were settled sometime between 900 and 1200 AD. To cap off our examples, let’s turn to the Cherokee Indians of Native America who reside today in the Eastern and Southeastern United States.

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In 1975, during a Cherokee Treaty Council meeting in New York City, the elders gave an account of the creation, and they started with this, quote, in the beginning also, water covered everything. There are hundreds of examples like these all over the globe, indicating the ancients had a unified understanding of the pre-creative state of the universe, and they described that state as water and covered in darkness.

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That caps this episode and our next episode will decipher what the ancients meant to convey by water, its symbolic meaning. And we’ll take a fascinating look into the scientific community’s answer to the same mystery. How did it all begin? If you’re interested in learning more about the evidence presented in this episode, visit theancienttradition.com, theancienttradition.com, and search for this episode under evidence.

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You can also check out our YouTube channel where you’ll find visual presentations of our past episodes. For now, remember in the words of William Shakespeare, knowledge is the wing wherewith we fly to heaven. I’m Jack Logan. I’ll see you on the next episode of the ancient tradition.

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You’ve been listening to the Ancient Tradition. A Wonk Media Production.