Lugalbanda in the Mountain Cave

Source: Black, J.A., Cunningham, G., Robson, E., and Zólyomi, G., The Electronic Text Corpus of Sumerian Literature, Oxford 1998-.

Sumerian literary tradition states that Lugalbanda (son to Urash (Ninhursag), spouse to Ninsun) in his own right was a god-king of the city of Uruk. He is generally held to be Gilgamesh´s father, and according to the Sumerian Kings List ruled the city for no fewer than 1200 years.

At the time of this adventure, nevertheless, he seems to have been a young officer in Enmerkar´s army commanding a division of Uruk´s troops. Again in this myth, we have Aratta as the city rival to Uruk, and a bizarre adventure that took place on the road from Uruk to Aratta.

(Texts: All Artifacts, Color Coding, & Writings in Bold Type With Italics Inside Parenthesis, are Added by Editor R. Brown, not the Authors, Translators, or Publishers!)

(gods in bluemixed-breed demigods in teal…)

1-19 When in ancient days heaven was separated from earth, when in ancient days that which was fitting ……,

2b - Enlil, parent in-laws Haia, Nisaba, & spouse Ninlil

    (Enlil farming, Haia-barley god in charge of the storehouses, Nisaba the Goddess of Grains, Ninlil of grains, & unidentified)

when after the ancient harvests …… barley was eaten (?), when boundaries were laid out and borders were fixed,

4b - Bau & unknowns 2aa - Bau on stela 4a - Bea, Gula, goddess of medicine (gods & kings boundary-stones)

when boundary-stones were placed and inscribed with names, when dykes and canals were purified,

3a - Enki & Aquarius constellation 3e - Egyptian Khnum, Ptah, Enki creates and manages the Nile (Enki, god-manager of the waters)

when …… wells were dug straight down; when the bed of the Euphrates, the plenteous river of Unug (Uruk),

was opened up, when ……, when ……, when holy An (Anu) removed ……,

7b - High Priest, Nannar, Utu, and Ninurta7c - top, mixed-breed king & mother Ninsun, high-priestess decorates temple in Ur (giant mixed-breed high-priest atop Nannar‘s temple, Nannar, Martu atop earthling, & Ninurta; top: king & Ninsun, bottom: high-priestess decorates Nannar‘s temple)

when the offices of en (priest) and king were famously exercised at Unug,

             (giant offspring of the gods appointed with authority as go-betweens from gods to earthlings)

when the scepter and staff of Kulaba were held high in battle — in battle, Inanna‘s game;

when the black-headed (mixed-breeds) were blessed with long life (living thousands of years),

in their settled ways and in their ……, when they presented the mountain goats with pounding hooves

2b - Dumuzi the shepherd  (Dumuzi the Shepherd. spouse to Inanna with stags)

and the mountain stags beautiful with their antlers to Enmerkar (mixed-breed grandson) son of Utu

20-34 — now at that time the king set his mace towards the city,

 (semi-divine king stands before giant Sun God Utu, Ninurta, & Ninsun)

Enmerkar the son (grandson) of Utu prepared an …… expedition against Aratta,

the mountain of the holy divine powers (indescribable alien technologies).

He was going to set off to destroy the rebel-land; the lord began a mobilization of his city.

The herald made the horn signal sound in all the lands.

2cb-temple-uruk-today  (Uruk city way below home of giant alien gods)

Now levied Unug (Uruk) took the field with the wise king, indeed levied Kulaba followed Enmerkar.

Unug‘s levy was a flood, Kulaba‘s levy was a clouded sky.

As they covered the ground like heavy fogs, the dense dust whirled up by them reached up to heaven.

As if to rooks on the best seed, rising up, he called to the people.

Each one gave his fellow the sign.

35-46 Their king went at their head, to go at the …… of the army.

(King) Enmerkar went at their head, to go at the …… of the army.

2 lines unclear

…… gu-nida emmer-grain to grow abundantly.

  1ae - Enlil, Babylonian (Enlil, son & heir to alien King Anu,  Anu‘s Earth Colony Commander)

When the righteous one who takes counsel with Enlil (i.e. Enmerkar) took away the whole of Kulaba,

like sheep they bent over at the slope of the mountains, …… at the edge of the hills they ran forward like wild bulls.

He sought …… at the side — they recognized the way.

He sought …….

47-58 Five days passed.

On they sixth day they bathed.

…… on the seventh day they entered the mountains.

When they had crossed over on the paths — an enormous flood billowing upstream into a lagoon ……

5 - Ninurta's flying Divine Storm Bird (Ninurta‘s winged sky-disc; ancient example of the disc)

Their ruler (i.e. Enmerkar), riding on a storm, Utu‘s son, the good bright metal (disc of alien technologies),

stepped down from heaven to the great earth (alien descent technologies).

His head shines with brilliance (as did the head of Moses coming down from the mountain),

3 - Adad with divine weapons  (Adad, Thunder God, with trick hammer & lightning bolts)

the barbed arrows flash past him like lightning (alien weaponry);

3a - Utu in the mountains with weapons of brilliance (Utu, Space Port Commander, cut launch & landing pads into mountains)

the …… of the bronze pointed ax of his emblem shines for him,

it protrudes from the pointed ax for him prominently, like a dog eating a corpse.

59-70 At that time there were seven, there were seven —

the young ones, born in Kulaba, were seven (giant mixed-breed brothers).

The goddess Urac (Ninhursag) had borne these seven (semi-divine brothers),

8aa - Ninhursag, young in Sumer, old cow in Egypt (Ninhursag, DNA Medical Scientist, Birth Mother, Wild Cow)

the Wild Cow (Ninhursag) had nourished them with milk.

They were heroes (Genesis 6: “Heroes of Old, Men of Renown”, “Mighty-Men”, __the 1st kings),

1y - Ancient Sumeria2 (“land of the gods” between the rivers, the “Eden”)

living in Sumer, they were princely in their prime.

They had been brought up eating at the god An‘s (Anu) table.

These seven were the overseers for those that are subordinate to overseers,

were the captains for those that are subordinate to captains

were the generals for those that are subordinate to generals.

They were overseers of 300 men, 300 men each; they were captains of 600 men, 600 men each;

they were generals of 7 car (25,200) of soldiers, 25,200 soldiers each.

(2 giant mixed-breeds, Ninsun, mixed-breed, Nannar, & Utu)

They (mixed-breed brothers) stood at the service of the lord as his elite troops.

71-86 (semi-divine King) Lugalbanda (spouse to Ninsun), the eighth of them, …… was washed in water.

In awed silence he went forward, …… he marched with the troops.

When they had covered half the way, covered half the way, a sickness befell him there, ‘head sickness’ befell him.

2aa - Bau & possibly son Damu, medical doctors (Dr. Damu, mother Bau, & Ninurta, medical attention for gods & earthlings)

He jerked like a snake dragged by its head with a reed; his mouth bit the dust, like a gazelle caught in a snare.

No longer could his hands return the hand grip, no longer could he lift his feet high.

Neither king nor contingents could help him.

In the great mountains, crowded together like a dustcloud over the ground, they said:

“Let them bring him to Unug (Uruk)“.

But they did not know how they could bring him.

“Let them bring him to Kulaba.”

But they did not know how they could bring him.

As his teeth chattered (?) in the cold places of the mountains, they brought him to a warm place there.

 5 - Bau gives medical attention (Dr. Damu & his mother Bau with her guard dog)

87-122 …… a storehouse, they made him an arbor like a bird’s nest. …… dates, figs and various sorts of cheese;

they put sweetmeats suitable for the sick to eat, in baskets of dates, and they made him a home.

They set out for him the various fats of the cow-pen, the sheepfold‘s fresh cheese,

oil with cold eggs (3,000 B.C.!), cold hard-boiled eggs,

as if laying a table for the holy place, the valued place (i.e. as if for a funerary offering).

Directly in front of the table they arranged for him beer for drinking, mixed with date syrup and rolls …… with butter.

Provisions poured into leather buckets, provisions all put into leather bags — his brothers and friends,

like a boat unloading from the harvest-place, placed stores by his head in the mountain cave.

They …… water in their leather waterskins.

Dark beer, alcoholic drink, light emmer beer, wine for drinking which is pleasant to the taste,

they distributed by his head in the mountain cave as on a stand for waterskins.

They prepared for him incense resin, …… resin, aromatic resin,

ligidba resin and first-class resin on pot-stands in the deep hole; they suspended them by his head in the mountain cave.

They pushed into place at his head his ax whose metal was tin, imported from the Zubi mountains (3000 B.C.!).

They wrapped up by his chest his dagger of iron (prior Iron Age) imported from the Gig (Black) mountains.

His eyes — irrigation ditches, because they are flooding with water — holy Lugalbanda kept open, directed towards this.

The outer door of his lips — overflowing like holy Utuhe did not open to his brothers.

When they lifted his neck, there was no breath there any longer.

His brothers, his friends took counsel with one another:

2e - Babylonian Shamash 2000B.C.  (giant mixed-breed king stands before Utu / Shamash, Sumerian Sun God)

123-127 “If our brother rises like Utu (symbolized as the Sun God) from bed,

then the god who has smitten him will step aside and,

when he eats this food, when he drinks (?) this, will make his feet stable.

May he bring him over the high places of the mountains to brick-built Kulaba.

128-132 “But if Utu calls our brother to the holy place, the valued place (i.e. the hereafter),

the health of his limbs will leave (?) him.

Then it will be up to us, when we come back from Aratta, to bring our brother’s body to brick-built Kulaba.”

    2i - cattle pens of Nannar in Ur (Nannar & his million cows in pens in his patron city of Ur, home of Biblical Abraham)

133-140 Like the dispersed holy cows of Nannar, as with a breeding bull when, in his old age,

they have left him behind in the cattle pen,

his brothers and friends abandoned holy Lugalbanda in the mountain cave;

and with repeated tears and moaning, with tears, with lamentation, with grief and weeping,

Lugalbanda‘s older brothers set off into the mountains.

141-147 Then two days passed during which (King) Lugalbanda was ill; to these two days, half a day was added.

As Utu turned his glance towards his home, as the animals lifted their heads toward their lairs,

at the day’s end in the evening cool, his body was as if anointed with oil.

But he was not yet free of his sickness.

148-150 When he lifted his eyes to heaven to Utu, he wept to him as if to his own father.

In the mountain cave he raised to him his fair hands:

  (Utu, son to Nannar & Ningal, royal descendants of alien Anunnaki King Anu)

151-170 Utu, I greet you! Let me be ill no longer!

3a - Ningal head (brown-eyed beauty Ningal, spouse to Nannar, mother to Utu & Inanna)

Hero, Ningal‘s son, I greet you!

Let me be ill no longer!

Utu, you have let me come up into the mountains in the company of my brothers.

In the mountain cave, the most dreadful spot on earth, let me be ill no longer!

Here where there is no mother, there is no father, there is no acquaintance, no one whom I value,

my mother is not here to say “Alas, my child!”

My brother is not here to say “Alas, my brother!”

My mother’s neighbor who enters our house is not here to weep over me.

If the male and female protective deities were standing by, the deity of neighborliness would say,

“A man should not perish”.

A lost dog is bad; a lost man is terrible.

On the unknown way at the edge of the mountains, Utu, is a lost man, a man in an even more terrible situation.

Don’t make me flow away like water in a violent death!

Don’t make me eat saltpeter as if it were barley!

Don’t make me fall like a throwstick somewhere in the desert unknown to me!

Afflicted with a name which excites my brothers’ scorn, let me be ill no longer!

Afflicted with the derision of my comrades, let me be ill no longer!

Let me not come to an end in the mountains like a weakling!”

171-172 Utu accepted his tears.

3c - Shamash cutting mountains in Sippar  (Utu at launch & landing site in the mountains)

He sent down his divine encouragement to him in the mountain cave.

173-182 She who makes …… for the poor, whose game (i.e. battle) is sweet,

the prostitute who goes out to the inn, who makes the bedchamber delightful,

who is food to the poor man —Inanna (i.e. the evening star) (Venus, 8-pointed star),

 1e - Inanna in dress - Liberty, atop Leo lion1a - Inanna, 8-pointed star symbolizing Venus1a - Symbols of Gods & Planets

  (Inanna, Goddess of Love & War; arriving from outer space – 6-pointed-star-symbol of Nabu; 8-pointed-star-symbol of Anu / Venus, then given to Inanna, 7-pointed-star-symbol of Enlil / Earth, moon-eclipse-symbol of Enki)

the daughter of Suen (Sin / Nannar), arose before him like a bull in the Land.

       (Inanna, semi-divine king with Anunnaki royal crown of animal horns, & Ninsun)

Her brilliance, like that of holy Cara (Shara, Roman god Cupid, Inanna’s & Shu-Sin‘s son),

her stellar brightness illuminated for him the mountain cave.

When he lifted his eyes upwards to Inanna, he wept as if before his own father.

In the mountain cave he raised to her his fair hands:

 (young Utu & Inanna in Mesopotamia, land of alien Anunnaki giants)

183-196 “Inanna, if only this were my home, if only this were my city!

If only this were Kulaba, the city in which my mother bore me ……!

Even if it were to me as the waste land to a snake!

If it were to me as a crack in the ground to a scorpion!

My mighty people ……!

My great ladies ……!

2c - Uruk & Anu's temple (Anu‘s, Inanna‘s, etc. mountain / temple residence of gods in Uruk)

…… to E-ana (Anu‘s temple residence in Uruk)!”

2 lines unclear

“The little stones of it, the shining stones in their glory, sajkal stones above,

…… below, from its crying out in the mountain land Zabu, from its voice …… open —

may my limbs not perish in the mountains of the cypresses!”

197-200 Inanna accepted his tears.

With power of life she let him go to sleep just like the sleeping Utu.

2f - Inanna wall relief (Inanna seated, & naked Inanna with pilot flight wings)

Inanna enveloped him with heart’s joy as if with a woolen garment.

Then, just as if ……, she went to brick-built Kulaba.

201-214 The bull that eats up the black soup, the astral holy bull-calf (i.e. the moon), came to watch over him.

He shines (?) in the heavens like the morning star, he spreads bright light in the night.

2c - Nannar & his symbol  3aa - Nanna & his symbol

(8-pointed-star-symbol of daughter Inanna, Nannar, Moon Crescent God, widely used today in Islam; Nannar again, & crescent)

Suen (Sin / Nannar, Enlil‘s son), who is greeted as the new moon,

2-nannar-father-of-inanna-utu-ereshkigalsumeria-excib-4

   (Nannar, 1st son born to Enlil & Ninlil; Utu, unidentified god, giant mixed-breed king, Enki, & unidentified god)

father Nannar (to Utu & Inanna), gives the direction for the rising Utu (symbolized by the Sun).

The glorious lord whom the crown befits,

2a - Nannar statue 2,000 B.C. 1ae - Enlil, Babylonian (Nannar, son to royal prince Enlil; Enlil, Earth Colony Commander)

Suen, the beloved son of Enlil, the god (1 ms. has instead: the lord) reached the zenith splendidly.

His brilliance like holy Cara (Shara, Inanna & Shu-Sin‘s son) (1 ms. has instead: Utu)

(1 ms. has instead: like lapis lazuli), his starry radiance illuminated for him the mountain cave.

When (King) Lugalbanda raised his eyes to heaven to Suen, he wept to him as if to his own father.

In the mountain cave he raised to him his fair hands:

215-225 “King whom one cannot reach in the distant sky!

        SYRIA - CIRCA 2002: Limestone stela depicting the Moon God Sin, rear view. Artefact from Tell Ahmar, Syria. Assyrian civilisation, 8th Century BC. Aleppo, Archaeological Museum (Photo by DeAgostini/Getty Images) (Nannar, patron god of Ur with his Moon Crescent Symbols, atop his house in Ur)

Suen (Nannar), whom one cannot reach in the distant sky!

King who loves justice, who hates evil!

Suen (Nannar), who loves justice, who hates evil!

Justice brings joy justly to your heart.

A poplar, a great staff, forms a scepter for you,

you who loosen the bonds of justice, who do not loosen the bonds of evil.

If you encounter evil before you, it is dragged away behind …….

When your heart becomes angry, you spit your venom at evil like a snake which drools poison.”

226-7 Suen accepted his tears and gave him life.

He conferred on his feet the power to stand.

228-239 A second time (i.e. at the following sunrise), as the bright bull rising up from the horizon,

the bull resting among the cypresses, a shield standing on the ground, watched by the assembly,

a shield coming out from the treasury, watched by the young men — the youth Utu extended his holy,

shining rays down from heaven (1 ms. from Ur adds: …… holy, his brilliance illuminated for him the mountain cave),

3h - Utu in the mountains of Sippar (Sun God Utu brings flashes of light from mountain tops)

he bestowed them on holy (King) Lugalbanda in the mountain cave.

His good protective god (Utu) hovered ahead of him, his good protective goddess (Inanna) walked behind him.

The god which had smitten him.