Investment bankers move in on Iraq - Big Suprise...

Even as the US prepares to pull out its last troops from Iraq, well-heeled investment bankers are starting to descend on Baghdad, hoping to capitalise on the strife-torn country’s tentative efforts to rebuild its physical and financial infrastructure.

Safety remains a big concern. Visiting bankers must travel with contingents of security personnel. When in Baghdad, they reside in the heavily guarded “Green Zone”, or in containerised housing units – rudimentary, converted shipping containers – on the outskirts of the city.

More

ON THIS STORY

• Iraq signs $17bn gas deal
• Bankers flock to Iraq despite dangers
• UK plays catch-up on Iraq investment
• Lex Iraq oil
• In depth Iraq

ON THIS TOPIC

• Iraq sees deadliest day since pull-out
• UK secretly supplied Saddam
• Comment Saddam’s mechanics of power are little changed
• Baghdad blasts raise sectarian fears

IN MIDDLE EAST & NORTH AFRICA

• Spoils of Ben Ali regime remain elusive
• Turkey defiant on Iran sanctions
• Russia says Nato plotting against Assad
• Ben Ali feared betrayal by inner circle

Undeterred, investment bankers from institutions including Morgan Stanley, Goldman Sachs, HSBC, Citigroup and BNP Paribas are still flocking to Iraq.

Mandates on offer include advisory work on a sovereign credit rating, stock flotations, billions of dollars worth of infrastructure and project finance, and in the longer term, potentially Iraq’s first publicly sold sovereign bond.

“Iraq is a compelling opportunity for us,” said the regional head of a big global bank. “With all the oil wealth Iraq has, everyone sees the opportunity. It’s virgin territory for the big international banks.”

The first significant deals are likely to be the initial public offerings of Iraq’s three phone operators. Zain Iraq, Asiacell and Korek are required by the authorities to offer a quarter of their shares on the Iraq stock exchange by the end of August, and could raise more than $3bn if the flotations go smoothly.

Zain Iraq is being advised by Citigroup, BNP Paribas and National Bank of Kuwait; Asiacell, controlled by Qatar Telecom, has appointed HSBC and Morgan Stanley to manage its IPO; and Korek, 20 per cent owned by France Telecom , is still finalising its list of advisers.

Still, Iraq remains an exceptionally challenging market to penetrate, and one where shifting, sometimes explosive politics play an important role. A long-delayed oil law, for example, remains in limbo, even after years of negotiations.

“Everything in Iraq is an uphill battle. If it wasn’t, tons of bankers would move to Baghdad tomorrow,” says Shwan Taha, the chairman of Rabee Securities, one of Iraq’s biggest brokerages.

Fearful of falling out with policymakers, bankers are therefore reluctant to talk publicly about their Iraq ambitions, but privately enthuse over the potential business that could be on offer in the coming years.

“It will take a lot of patience before we see Iraq pay off ... [but] there are several transactions in the pipeline that look like they’re going forward now,” said one banker.

More False Discoveries - The Peruvian “Alien Skull”

Posted by MSH under: Ancient Astronauts; archaeology; Cult Archaeology .

If you’ve surfed the web at all in the last day or two you have probably heard about this “discovery.” One piece I saw on Yahoo News described the skeletal remains in the picture below as those of a “giant-headed mummy” with a “triangular skull.” It must be alien — right?

At first glance, the “giant-headed” description may cause readers to zip right past the fact that the specimen is twenty INCHES long. Here is another picture you likely won’t see on the archaeo-porn websites seeking to derive up their hit traffic. It puts things into perspective.

The specimen is most likely an infant whose head was wrapped to achieve the shape, as I have blogged about before (and lots of infants have misshapen heads without wrapping anyway). This is the opinion of the discoverer, at any rate (if it really is a discovery, as opposed to a hoax). But that of course doesn’t deter audience-seeking web journalists from using words like “alien” and “extraterrestrial.” But iust couldn’t be the result of head-wrapping, known to have been practiced over nine millennia, including in Peru.

Otherwise, is it just me, or are several of the teeth in the skull a different color? And maybe it’s my imagination that the jaw is also out of proportion. I’m sure there’s no hoaxing involved. I’m also sure the Colts will be in the play-offs this year.

At any rate, at least one report I read noted that there appears to be the remains of an eyeball in the right eye socket (pardon me while I ignore the fact that if this is ancient that shouldn’t be there). But if by some material this non-bone material survived all this time, that would be prime DNA testing material. We can all wait now for the “oh, if only we had the funding [and please help us with that]” lamentations that will likely follow (either that or “the scientific community won’t allow us to test it”). My money is on this turning out to be another in the long line of “finds” that do nothing but perpetuate the cherished mythology.

Rothschild-owned Central Banks in all but THREE countries

Rothschild-owned Central Banks in ALL BUT THREE countries in 2011

As of the year 2000, there were seven countries without a Rothschild-owned Central Bank:

Afghanistan
Iraq
Sudan
Libya
Cuba
North Korea
Iran

Then along came the convenient terror of 9-11 and soon Iraq and Afghanistan had been added to the list, leaving only five countries without a Central Bank owned by the Rothschild Family:

Sudan
Libya
Cuba
North Korea
Iran

We all know how fast the Central Bank of Benghazi was set up.
The only countries left in 2011 without a Central Bank owned by the Rothschild Family are:

Cuba

North Korea

Iran

And these mono-maniacal speculators in the west, via their nuke-weaponed ally Israel, are blatantly gagging to get that “Central Bank of Iran” set up… you ‘suspect it’ at the very least.

Day Later Supplemental: and this is mental- like the whole internet was just set up in such a two-tier-reality way so that completely insane methods of thought could be passed around in public and shared with ‘those in the know’ right under your nose.Ready?

1930: The first Rothschild world bank, the, “Bank for International Settlements (BIS),” is established in Basle, Switzerland.  [source I AM THE WITNESS]

More Propaganda/Fear Mongering - 2nd Mayan tablet found linked to 2012 Apocalypse

Image credit: De Agostini/DEA Picture Library/Getty Images

Mexico’s National Institute of Anthropology and History now says Mayan ruins show a second reference to the apocalypse occurring in 2012 but said that rumors of the world ending late next year were a Western misinterpretation.

On Thursday, the institute released a statement saying that the date of the apocalypse  had been found on the carved or molded face of a brick at the Comalcalco ruin in the southern part of the country.

Most experts had previously said there was only one reference in Mayan glyphs, a stone tablet from the Tortuguero site in the Gulf coast state of Tabasco.

Arturo Mendez, an institute spokesman, said the fragment known as the  Comalcalco Brick  had been found years ago and studied thoroughly. It is not on display and is kept in storage.

The Tortuguero and Comalcalco inscriptions were probably carved about 1,300 years ago.

The Mexican institute cautioned Thursday that “Western messianic thought has twisted the cosmovision of ancient civilizations like the Maya.” Its experts said that the Mayas believed that time started and ended with regularity, with nothing apocalyptic occurring at the end.

The institute plans to hold a meeting of  Mayan experts next week to “dispel some of the doubts about the end of one era and the beginning of another, in the Mayan Long Count calendar.”

The Associated Press contributed to this story

Mass Suicide warning sparked by 'Apocalypse Predictions', French government agency warns

STORY HIGHLIGHTS

• "Fragile members of the French population" could be at risk, an official says
• Members of the American Ramtha School of Enlightenment are coming to Bugarach
• Suicide resulting from apocalyptic beliefs already has occurred in France

Paris (CNN) -- The specter of a mass suicide tied to the widely predicted end of the world in December 2012 has prompted a warning from a government official in France, where people are already gathering at a place believers predict may provide the only escape from the apocalypse.

Georges Fenech, president of French government agency Miviludes, which observes sect movements and warns the public of potential risks, told CNN that he had alerted French public authorities, including the prime minister, to the issue.

"We fear that this message of fear could have serious consequences on fragile members of the French population," he said.

The small southern mountain village of Bugarach is prophesized by some to be one of the few places, if not the only place, that will survive the devastation.

According to Miviludes, settlements in the surrounding area have been established by members of the American Ramtha School of Enlightenment. The head of this presumed sect, Judy Zebra Knight, claims be in contact with Ramtha, a Lemurean warrior who fought the residents of the mythical Atlantis 35,000 years ago.

She has delivered messages about the 2012 apocalypse in front of thousands of followers in the United States, according to Miviludes.

The coordinator for the Ramtha School of Enlightenment in France, Valerie Sautereau, says that group has no apocalyptic beliefs and no link with the village of Bugarach

Suicide resulting from apocalyptic beliefs has already occurred in France in recent years. In 2002 a suicide and several suicide attempts occurred in the town of Nantes within a small circle of people who believed the end of the world was imminent.

"We know from history and experience that apocalyptic discourse can lead to tragedy," Fenech said. "This is why we have taken measures to notify police and other public authorities in order to monitor the situation."

In the late 1990s there was a series of 74 suicides in the late 1990s in France, Switzerland and Canada by followers of the Order of the Solar Temple.

"Around 500 000 French people belong to cults. They affect all kinds of people from all kinds of social backgrounds, including children." Fenech added.

There are growing concerns for the village of Bugarach, which also is known on Internet sites as an "alien garage" where extraterrestrial visitors supposedly wait beneath 4,000-foot Pic de Bugarach. Properties are being bought in surrounding isolated areas and construction of bunkers with underground tunnels and food supplies has also been noted, according to Miviludes, France's Interministerial Mission of Vigilance Against Sectarianism.

"If we see thousands of people arriving it will not be safe," Fenech said. "It's a mountainous area with dangerous mountain roads which would need to be closed.

"I have visited the site. People are really worried. It's a tiny village which is receiving thousands of visitors. They hold processions, pray, leave objects. It is essential that we anticipate dangers and take precautionary measures."

He expressed concern for a "climate of fear facilitated by the Internet."

The supposed Apocalypse 2012 has already taken on global significance, with around 2.5 million websites dedicated to the phenomenon. The theories are based on interpretations of the Mayan calendar, which it is said ends on December 21, 2012. Several other astrophysical events have been predicted for this time, including an equinox alignment of the planets.

Scientists dismiss the idea.

"There are no planetary alignments in the next few decades." NASA says in a Q&A page on its website. "Earth will not cross the galactic plane in 2012, and even if these alignments were to occur, their effects on the Earth would be negligible. ... Credible scientists worldwide know of no threat associated with 2012."

The president of the French society Suicide Ecoute, Isabelle Chaumeil Gueguen, said the organization has so far received no calls "related to the apocalypse predicted for 2012."

However, she added, "it's certainly true that people who are mentally unstable can react strongly to dramatic announcements in the press. If it begins to be mentioned a lot in the media, especially on television, we can expect to have calls about it.

"People of a weak mental disposition are also much more likely to be influenced by cults, and messages spread by social networking sights can be equally dangerous."

In the past 2 weeks we have witnessed a 'Coup D’état' in Europe

The king of the bibles

As the Queen prepares to mark the 400th anniversary of the King James Version, Peter Mullen pours scorn on some of its modern rivals.

'The big picture’: the Archbishop of Canterbury with the 400-year-old King James Bible in Lambeth Palace library Photo: Matthew Lloyd/Getty

By Peter Mullen

7:06AM GMT 14 Nov 2011

294 Comments

We enjoyed a parish visit recently to St George’s Chapel, Windsor: the Queen’s Chapel. In there was a big sign saying, “Celebrating the 400th anniversary of the King James Bible”. I must say, it was a custom more honoured in the breach than in the observance. For at Choral Evensong, the lessons were both from some illiterate, godforsaken modern version. I knew we were in for trouble from the start when, in the Old Testament lesson, King Solomon addressed the Almighty as, “You God…” – as if the deity were some miscreant fourth-former in the back row. Of course it went from bad to worse.

On Wednesday, the Queen will attend a service of celebration at Westminster Abbey to mark the 400th anniversary of the King James Bible. The address will be given by the Archbishop of Canterbury, who earlier this year urged us to read the King James Bible in order to get a glimpse of what he called “the big picture”. Perhaps this was meant to go with Dave’s idea of “the big society”? This is a strange injunction, coming as it did from a man who has been in positions of power and influence in the church for decades. For in that time the same church hierarchy has ruthlessly suppressed the King James Bible, along with the Book of Common Prayer.

I can add a personal note on this subject. When I came to the City in 1998 I discovered that St Sepulchre’s did not have a lectern Bible in the King James Version (KJV). So I asked St Paul’s if they would lend me one of theirs.

They replied, “Oh yes, and you can keep it. We never use it at St Paul’s, only when the Royal Family comes – awkward people like that.” The King James Bible is a work of literary and spiritual genius. It is the religious register in English and its words and phrases have penetrated deeply into English literature. You cannot read 10 pages of Dickens or Arnold, George Eliot or the Brontës without coming across wholly integrated resonances of the King James Version. And, of course, English poetry is saturated with it. W H Auden said, as he witnessed the sidelining of the King James Bible: “It was our luck to have that translation made when English was at its strongest and most robust. Why spit on our luck?”

C H Sisson said that all we really know is what he called “the reluctant deposit on the mind’s floor”. That is to say, what you remember when you’ve forgotten everything else. For centuries, people of all walks of life have carried around with them echoes of the King James Version. So to throw it out as the church hierarchy has done amounts to a savage act of deprivation and, as this deprivation is of the Word of God in English, it is vicious iconoclasm. Sidelining the King James Version especially deprives our children and is therefore a notable case of child abuse.

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There is no such thing as noble truth expressed in ignoble words. The choice of words determines what is being said. Therefore, we should choose the best.

“Strips of cloth” is no substitute for “swaddling clothes”. And Mary was “with child” – we think of the Madonna and Child – and she had not “fallen pregnant” as it says in one of the modern versions. You cannot satisfactorily replace “through a glass darkly” with the crass literalism “puzzling reflections in a mirror” or “sounding brass and tinkling cymbal” with “noisy gong and clanging cymbal”. The King James Bible was designed to be read aloud in churches. All the modern versions sound as if they have been written by tone-deaf people with tin ears and no rhythm.

What level of vacuity is reached when “Son of Belial” (i.e. the devil himself) is rendered by the New English Bible (NEB) as “a good-for-nothing”? As if the son of the devil is only a truant from the fourth form who has been stealing from the housemaster’s orchard.

The real Bible says, “The fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom.” The NEB gives us instead, “The first step to find wisdom.” But that is only the way in which babyish primary school teachers speak to their charges. The first step to find wisdom – and then, if you are ever so good little children, I’ll show you the second step. This is infantilisation. Sometimes the New Jerusalem Bible’s (NJB) pedantry, this pseudo-scholarly fascination with all that is merely foreign and obscure, is just silly, as in “You, Yahweh examine me.” But occasionally it is mindlessly un-poetic and banal, as in the substitution of “Acclaim Yahweh” for the mesmerisingly beautiful and timelessly familiar “make a joyful noise unto the Lord”. But in one example of supreme idiocy the meaning becomes impenetrable: The King James Version says, “He that dwelleth in the secret place of the Most High shall abide under the shadow of the Almighty. I will say of the Lord …” In the New Jerusalem Bible this degenerates into tasteless obscurantism: “If you live in the shelter of Elyon and make your home in the shadow of Shaddai, you can say to Yahweh …” The Revised Standard Version (RSV) loves to parade the translators’ acquaintance with the slightest nuances in the ancient languages but their utter ignorance of what will go into ordinary English. It renders the “giants” of Genesis as “nephilim” – to the confusion, one supposes, of elderly ladies everywhere. And the “two pence” that the Good Samaritan gave to the innkeeper as “two denarii” – lest we should imagine that the currency of the Roman Empire was the same as that of England, pre-decimalisation.

The RSV makes a habit of iconoclasm, as for instance in its destruction of that very familiar phrase: “Arise, take up thy bed and walk.” The RSV says, “Take up your pallet and go home.” Because we must on no account be allowed to imagine that the poor paralytic slunk off carrying his four-poster, we have forced upon us the literalism pallet: and the result sounds like instructions to a sloppy painter.

The NEB also cannot tell the difference between speech that is poetic and metaphorical and speech that is literal and descriptive. That is why for “wolves in sheep’s clothing” we are given instead the pantomime howler “men dressed up as sheep”. We recall perhaps Ulysses’ escape from the Cyclops or that pejorative expression “mutton dressed up as lamb”. In the KJV men are “at meat” or they “sup”; but the RSV mentions a Pharisee who “asked Jesus to dine” – where, at The Garrick or White’s? Likewise, his rebuke to the disciples on the road to Emmaus, “O fools and slow of heart” is emasculated to become “How dull you are!” How dull indeed. Can you imagine for one minute Our Lord Jesus Christ on the evening of his day of resurrection using such language? “How dull!”

The KJV’s “pearl of great price” is exhibited in more of that infantilised Blue Peter language as “a pearl of very special value”. And then the end of the world itself is described as if it were only an exceptionally hot afternoon at Goodwood: “My dear friends…” (that is the voice of the NEB’s urbane, housetrained St Peter) “…do not be bewildered by the fiery ordeal that is coming upon you, as though it were something extraordinary.” The end of the world not extraordinary?

There is a sort of discreet charm about the KJV’s saying, “It ceased to be with Sarah after the manner of women.” This is marvellous. It seems to reach up the underclothes of words, as that other great admirer of biblical prose, Dylan Thomas, said. But the Jerusalem Bible was written in the era of sex education, so it can confidently come straight out with “ceased to have her monthly periods”. And the KJV’s “great whore of Babylon” seems to have lost what is left of her character when the New Jerusalem Bible refers to her only as “the famous prostitute”. Who is this – Eskimo Nell?

With studied pedantry, the New Jerusalem Bible replaces “inn” with “living space” – I suppose because they imagined readers to be so literal-minded that we might think St Luke meant the Rose and Crown. A similar pedantry removes the KJV’s lovely “coat of many colours” and offers us “a decorated tunic”. The KJV translates Psalm 139: 16 – a beautiful poem in which the Psalmist declares that God knew him “while he was yet in his mother’s womb – as thine eyes did see my substance yet being unperfect.” This is allusive, evocative, tender. Unbelievably, the NJB gives us instead, “Your eyes could see my embryo” – as if God were a member of the Human Fertilisation and Embryology Authority.

There is a pervading irreverence bordering on blasphemy. The translation of the Psalms in the Book of Common Prayer is by Miles Coverdale and he renders the Hebrew, “O let thine ears consider well …” The NJB gives this as “Listen attentively Yahweh”. But is that the way to speak to God? What more is there to be said when we notice that the NJB renders “Vanity of vanities, all is vanity” as “Sheer futility. Everything is futile.” That phrase will serve as the motto for all the modern translations: “Sheer futility”.

How hypocritical and sordid of the church authorities relentlessly to suppress the KJV, only to take it out and gawp at it in an anniversary year, as if it were a museum piece and we were all blundering tourists. The proper place for the KJV is on the lectern in every parish church – to be read, marked, learnt and inwardly digested, week in, week out.

The Rev Dr Peter Mullen is Rector of St Michael, Cornhill, and St Sepulchre in the City of London

THIS IS NO JOKE! It's a conspiracy FACT

Biden- And we'll be faced with equally consequential decisions in the 21st century. Can a microscopic tag be implanted in a person's body to track his every movement? There's actual discussion about that.
You will rule on that — mark my words — before your tenure is over.
Can brain scans be used to determine whether a person's inclined toward criminality or violent behaviour?
You will rule on that. 

Thankyou to C-SPAN-
http://www.c-spanvideo.org

Egypt closes Pyramid to avoid 'Strange Rituals'

Egyptian police officers guard the Pyramid Khafre in Giza, on the outskirts...

Egypt will close the Great Pyramid of Giza on Friday to avoid any rituals by a group rumoured to have plans to mark the date of 11/11/11 at the site, an official said.

The decision came "after much pressure" from Egyptian Internet users that strange rituals were going to be held "within the walls of the pyramid on November 11, 2011," Atef Abu Zahab, head of the Department of Pharaonic Archaeology, told AFP.

The Supreme Council of Antiquities confirmed the closure Friday of the tourist site, in a statement that only referred to the need for maintenance following a busy period during Muslim holidays.

The Pyramid of Cheops is the biggest and most famous of the three Giza pyramids. It houses the tomb of Pharaoh Khufu, and is the only surviving one of the seven wonders of the ancient world.

Numerologists are anxiously awaiting Friday, when the digital alignment of ones occurs at 11:11 am, which some believe will lead to unusual events.

Thousands of people plan to meet at the time around the world for ceremonial dances, and several pages devoted to the date have appeared on social networking website Facebook.

Some attribute the number 11 to paranormal powers that provide a channel of communication with the subconscious, others see a mystical connection between the number and disasters, like the 9/11 attacks on the United States.

New interpretation of 'Epic of Gilgamesh' - Among the World's oldest surviving texts

Gilgamesh, a new interpretation

This was the man to whom all things were known; this was the king who knew the countries of the world. He was wise, he saw mysteries and knew secret things, he brought us a tale of the days before the flood. He went on a long journey, was weary, worn-out with labour, returning he rested, he engraved on a stone the whole story.

The Sumerian story known today as the Epic of Gilgamesh is among the world's oldest surviving texts, commonly dated to the seventeenth to eighteenth century BC, though the earliest Sumerian poems can be traced to the Third Dynasty of Ur (2150-2000 BC). The Akkadian version, consisting of twelve tablets edited by the scribe Sin-liqe-unninni sometime between 1300 and 1000 BC, was rediscovered in 1853 in the library of the Assyrian king Ashurbanipal in Nineveh. Sin-liqe-unninni conflated several much more ancient stories to create the Epic of Gilgamesh we know today, and he is also the oldest known 'author' in history, being the first to sign his name to his work.

At heart, Gilgamesh combines two stories, that of the friendship of Gilgamesh and Enkidu, and later, Gilgamesh's odyssey in search of immortality. Here, we will examine the first part of the epic: the story of Gilgamesh, king of Uruk, "two-thirds god and one-third human... terrifying" in his perfection, and his "noble" companion Enkidu, the domesticated savage, his name literally meaning [the god] Enki's creation, formed of "a pinch of clay, let fall into the wilderness."

Such primal word pictures indicate that Gilgamesh is much more than a mere work of fiction; it is clearly a myth: a story that encodes, preserves and transmits truths about the origins and prehistory of humanity in allusive form.

We know today that we are actually a hybrid species: ancient homo sapiens interbred with Neanderthals until their extinction some 30,000 years ago. Our Neanderthal genetic inheritance ranges from 1% to 5% of our DNA, with the highest percentages found in modern Europeans. With this in mind, the story of the friendship of Gilgamesh and Enkidu takes on an entirely new meaning and is, I believe, in great part a parable recording ancient man's cohabitation with Neanderthals and their subsequent extinction.

Let us first consider Gilgamesh's attributes:
When the gods created Gilgamesh they gave him a perfect body. Shamash the glorious sun endowed him with beauty, Adad the god of the storm endowed him with courage, the great gods made his beauty perfect, surpassing all others, terrifying like a great wild bull. Two thirds they made him god and one third man...

...none can withstand his arms. No son is left with his father, for Gilgamesh takes them all; and is this the king, the shepherd of his people? His lust leaves no virgin to her lover, neither the warrior's daughter nor the wife of the noble.

All this is very clear: Gilgamesh is the "perfect" man, his parentage two-thirds from the gods and the rest from earlier men, with massive strength and lust to match. His fecundity was so boundless and disruptive that the gods needed to quell it by creating "his equal, like him as his own reflection, a second self" as a counterbalance to Gilgamesh's "stormy heart."

That task fell to Araru, goddess of creation, apparently bidden by Enki (above, who also created mankind to serve the gods and saved them from the flood):

She dipped her hands in water and pinched off clay, she let it fall in the wilderness, and noble Enkidu was created... There was virtue in him of the god of war, of Ninurta himself. His body was rough, he had long hair like a woman's; it waved like the hair of Nisaba, the goddess of corn. His body was covered with matted hair like Samugan's, the god of cattle. He was innocent of mankind; he knew nothing of the cultivated land... Enkidu ate grass in the hills with the gazelle and lurked with wild beasts at the water-holes; he had joy of the water with the herds of wild game.

Well, this is all quite obvious, really: Enkidu = Neanderthal. But Enkidu, the wild man, was causing civilized men great trouble by interfering with their hunts. A trapper recounts, "there is a man, unlike any other, who comes down from the hills... He fills in the pits which I dig and tears up my traps; he helps the beasts to escape and now they slip through my fingers." So a clever plot is hatched by the trapper's father; Enkidu will be seduced to sleep with a whore, and once tamed, he will "change the old order" and put King Gilgamesh in his place.

[The whore] was not ashamed to take him, she made herself naked and welcomed his eagerness; as he lay on her murmuring love she taught him the woman's art. For six days and seven nights they lay together, for Enkidu had forgotten his home in the hills; but when he was satisfied he went back to the wild beasts. Then, when the gazelle saw him, they bolted away; when the wild creatures saw him they fled. Enkidu would have followed, but his body was bound as though with a cord, his knees gave way when he started to run, his swiftness was gone. And now the wild creatures had all fled away; Enkidu was grown weak, for wisdom was in him, and the thoughts of a man were in his heart.

Interbreeding with ancient humans has civilized the Neanderthals, but also weakened and deracinated them, estranging them from nature. Indeed, the process is cast as a seduction and wisdom a degenerative corruption perpetrated by a whore (the whore of civilization, who will later reappear as the Biblical whore of Babylon, and their "six days and seven nights" of fornication will echo in the creation story of Genesis. Likewise, Adam's eating of the forbidden fruit of knowledge proffered by Eve also finds a thematic foreshadowing.)

The whore then convinces Enkidu to come to Uruk (above, the city's legendary brick ramparts today), to meet Gilgamesh:
Enkidu was pleased; he longed for a comrade, for one who would understand his heart. ‘Come, woman, and take me to that holy temple, to the house of Anu and of Ishtar, and to the place where Gilgamesh lords himself over the people. I will challenge him boldly, I will cry out aloud in Uruk, "I am the strongest here, I have come to change the old order, I am he who was born in the hills, I am he who is strongest of all."'

But the whore knows already which man will dominate; Gilgamesh, whose mind is more variable, who is more perfect, stronger and wiser and with greater intuition. And after all, it is Gilgamesh who is king:

"O Enkidu, you who love life, I will show you Gilgamesh, a man of many moods; you shall look at him well in his radiant manhood. His body is perfect in strength and maturity; he never rests by night or day. He is stronger than you, so leave your boasting. Shamash the glorious sun has given favours to Gilgamesh, and Anu of the heavens, and Enlil, and Ea the wise has given him deep understanding. I tell you, even before you have left the wilderness, Gilgamesh will know in his dreams that you are coming."

The Neanderthal extinction

As "servant" of King Gilgamesh, Enkidu weakens living in the city:
The eyes of Enkidu were full of tears and his heart was sick. He sighed bitterly and Gilgamesh met his eye and said, 'My friend, why do you sigh so bitterly? But Enkidu replied, 'I am weak, my arms have lost their strength, the cry of sorrow sticks in my throat, I am oppressed by idleness.'

Gilgamesh, seeking both challenge and renown, decides that together they will kill the evil Humbaba, "a great warrior, a battering-ram... the watchman of the cedar forest who never sleeps." They set off on their quest to the cedar-forested mountain and are ultimately victorious in battle, capturing Humbaba. Gilgamesh, swayed by Humbaba's pleas for mercy, considers sparing him, but Enkidu urges his death, warning of future treachery, and Humbaba curses Enkidu, saying, "May he not live the longer of the two."

They cut off his head; trees were felled, including the Great Cedar whose crown scraped the sky. From its timber a door was made—72 cubits high, 24 cubits wide and one cubit thick—for Enlil's temple in Nippur. Gilgamesh and Enkidu: their names will now be remembered by posterity, and by the gods.

Upon their return, the goddess Ishtar, "queen of Heaven," proposes marriage to Gilgamesh, who rejects it, citing her inconstancy and the horrible ends met by her discarded lovers. Enraged, she demands that her father Anu set the bull of heaven (the constellation Taurus) to wreak havoc upon Uruk, but together Gilgamesh and Enkidu slaughter the bull, and Endiku mocks Ishtar by tossing its severed leg at her. (The thigh of the bull was an important constellation to the ancient Egyptians, appearing countless times in their texts, and is assumed by Egyptologists to refer to the "imperishable stars.")

These killings enrage the gods (the bull Taurus was often depicted accompanying man's creator, Enki) and Anu passes judgment upon Enkidu, who sickens and dies over 12 days, and in his delerium curses Enlil: "what ingratitude for the sake of a door!"

As Enkidu slept alone in his sickness, in bitterness of spirit he poured out his heart to his friend. "It was I who cut down the cedar, I who leveled the forest, I who slew Humbaba, and now see what has become of me."

The bull of heaven episode can be understood as a marker for the actual zodiacal age when the epic was composed, the Age of Taurus, which spanned from circa 4300 BC to circa 2150 BC. However, if we accept that Enkidu = Neanderthals, then it appears that the bull story, which leads to Enkidu's death, is more probably encoding the time of the Neanderthal extinction.

To reach that prior Taurean Age requires the completion of a full cycle of precession of the equinoxes, a "Great Year" or "Great Return" of nearly 26,000 years, placing the Neanderthal extinction some 32,000 years ago—exactly in line with current estimates.

According to those who interpret myth in relation to ancient astronomical knowledge, massive trees such as the Great Cedar often symbolize the earth's polar axis and are markers for information about the Great Year—the earth's long, slow axial "wobble" through the twelve houses of the zodiac.

72 (the height in cubits of the temple door hewn from the Great Cedar) is the pre-eminent number in this numerical encoding, since 72 is the closest whole-number value for the number of years (71.6) required for a precessional shift of one degree along the ecliptic. (In Egyptian mythology, for example, Osiris is killed by 72 lackeys of Set.)

Twelve, recurrent in the text (most notably as the number of days of Enkidu's sickness) along with its double 24 (the width of the temple door), is of course the number of constellations in the zodiac, and the linkage of 72 with 24, not 12, may very well have been employed to indicate the second, earlier Age of Taurus. 30, appearing in the text as 300, the number of citizens of Uruk killed by the bull (100 then 200), is the number of arc-degrees each constellation occupies along the ecliptic. Thus 72 years x 12 constellations x 30 degrees of arc = 25,920 years, or one Great Year.

The prologue that begins this post is apparently quite literally true: Gilgamesh did indeed know secret things and brought us a story from a time before the flood (i.e., the end of the last ice age), preserving our earliest history in stone.