Tigris River

78:1.31. The vi­o­let race—Adamites and Ad­am­son­ites. The chief cen­ter of Adamite cul­ture was in the sec­ond gar­den, lo­cated in the tri­an­gle of the Tigris and Eu­phrates rivers; this was in­deed the cra­dle of Oc­ci­den­tal and In­dian civ­i­liza­tions. The sec­ondary or north­ern cen­ter of the vi­o­let race was the Ad­am­son­ite head­quar­ters, sit­u­ated east of the south­ern shore of the Caspian Sea near the Kopet moun­tains. From these two cen­ters there went forth to the sur­round­ing lands the cul­ture and life plasm which so im­me­di­ately quick­ened all the races.

76:0.1When Adam elected to leave the first gar­den to the Nod­ites un­op­posed, he and his fol­low­ers could not go west, for the Eden­ites had no boats suit­able for such a ma­rine ad­ven­ture. They could not go north; the north­ern Nod­ites were al­ready on the march to­ward Eden. They feared to go south; the hills of that re­gion were in­fested with hos­tile tribes. The only way open was to the east, and so they jour­neyed east­ward to­ward the then pleas­ant re­gions be­tween the Tigris and Eu­phrates rivers. And many of those who were left be­hind later jour­neyed east­ward to join the Adamites in their new val­ley home.

76:1.1It re­quired al­most a full year for the car­a­van of Adam to reach the Eu­phrates River. Find­ing it in flood tide, they re­mained camped on the plains west of the stream al­most six weeks be­fore they made their way across to the land be­tween the rivers which was to be­come the sec­ond gar­den.

76:1.2When word had reached the dwellers in the land of the sec­ond gar­den that the king and high priest of the Gar­den of Eden was march­ing on them, they had fled in haste to the east­ern moun­tains. Adam found all of the de­sired ter­ri­tory va­cated when he ar­rived. And here in this new lo­ca­tion Adam and his helpers set them­selves to work to build new homes and es­tab­lish a new cen­ter of cul­ture and re­li­gion.

76:1.3This site was known to Adam as one of the three orig­i­nal se­lec­tions of the com­mit­tee as­signed to choose pos­si­ble lo­ca­tions for the Gar­den pro­posed by Van and Amadon. The two rivers them­selves were a good nat­u­ral de­fense in those days, and a short way north of the sec­ond gar­den the Eu­phrates and Tigris came close to­gether so that a de­fense wall ex­tend­ing fifty-six miles could be built for the pro­tec­tion of the ter­ri­tory to the south and be­tween the rivers.

76:3.8The Adamites greatly ex­celled the sur­round­ing peo­ples in cul­tural achieve­ment and in­tel­lec­tual de­vel­op­ment. They pro­duced the third al­pha­bet and oth­er­wise laid the foun­da­tions for much that was the fore­run­ner of mod­ern art, sci­ence, and lit­er­a­ture. Here in the lands be­tween the Tigris and Eu­phrates they main­tained the arts of writ­ing, met­al­work­ing, pot­tery mak­ing, and weav­ing and pro­duced a type of ar­chi­tec­ture that was not ex­celled in thou­sands of years.

77:4.63. The cen­tral or pre-Sume­rian Nod­ites. A small group at the mouth of the Tigris and Eu­phrates rivers main­tained more of their racial in­tegrity. They per­sisted for thou­sands of years and even­tu­ally fur­nished the Nod­ite an­ces­try which blended with the Adamites to found the Sume­rian peo­ples of his­toric times.

78:8.1When the last And­ite dis­per­sion broke the bi­o­logic back­bone of Mes­o­po­ta­mian civ­i­liza­tion, a small mi­nor­ity of this su­pe­rior race re­mained in their home­land near the mouths of the rivers. These were the Sume­ri­ans, and by 6000 B.C. they had be­come largely And­ite in ex­trac­tion, though their cul­ture was more ex­clu­sively Nod­ite in char­ac­ter, and they clung to the an­cient tra­di­tions of Dala­ma­tia. Nonethe­less, these Sume­ri­ans of the coastal re­gions were the last of the And­ites in Mes­o­po­ta­mia. But the races of Mes­o­po­ta­mia were al­ready thor­oughly blended by this late date, as is ev­i­denced by the skull types found in the graves of this era.

78:8.2It was dur­ing the flood­times that Susa so greatly pros­pered. The first and lower city was in­un­dated so that the sec­ond or higher town suc­ceeded the lower as the head­quar­ters for the pe­cu­liar artcrafts of that day. With the later diminu­tion of these floods, Ur be­came the cen­ter of the pot­tery in­dus­try. About seven thou­sand years ago Ur was on the Per­sian Gulf, the river de­posits hav­ing since built up the land to its pres­ent lim­its. These set­tle­ments suf­fered less from the floods be­cause of bet­ter con­trol­ling works and the widen­ing mouths of the rivers.

78:8.3The peace­ful grain grow­ers of the Eu­phrates and Tigris val­leys had long been ha­rassed by the raids of the bar­bar­ians of Tur­kes­tan and the Ira­nian pla­teau. But now a con­certed in­va­sion of the Eu­phrates val­ley was brought about by the in­creas­ing drought of the high­land pas­tures. And this in­va­sion was all the more se­ri­ous be­cause these sur­round­ing herds­men and hunters pos­sessed large num­bers of tamed horses. It was the pos­ses­sion of horses which gave them a tremen­dous mil­i­tary ad­van­tage over their rich neigh­bors to the south. In a short time they over­ran all Mes­o­po­ta­mia, driv­ing forth the last waves of cul­ture which spread out over all of Eu­rope, west­ern Asia, and north­ern Africa.

78:8.4These con­querors of Mes­o­po­ta­mia car­ried in their ranks many of the bet­ter And­ite strains of the mixed north­ern races of Tur­kes­tan, in­clud­ing some of the Adam­son stock. These less ad­vanced but more vig­or­ous tribes from the north quickly and will­ingly as­sim­i­lated the residue of the civ­i­liza­tion of Mes­o­po­ta­mia and pres­ently de­vel­oped into those mixed peo­ples found in the Eu­phrates val­ley at the be­gin­ning of his­toric an­nals. They quickly re­vived many phases of the pass­ing civ­i­liza­tion of Mes­o­po­ta­mia, adopt­ing the arts of the val­ley tribes and much of the cul­ture of the Sume­ri­ans. They even sought to build a third tower of Ba­bel and later adopted the term as their na­tional name.

78:8.5When these bar­bar­ian cav­al­ry­men from the north­east over­ran the whole Eu­phrates val­ley, they did not con­quer the rem­nants of the And­ites who dwelt about the mouth of the river on the Per­sian Gulf. These Sume­ri­ans were able to de­fend them­selves be­cause of su­pe­rior in­tel­li­gence, bet­ter weapons, and their ex­ten­sive sys­tem of mil­i­tary canals, which were an ad­junct to their ir­ri­ga­tion scheme of in­ter­con­nect­ing pools. They were a united peo­ple be­cause they had a uni­form group re­li­gion. They were thus able to main­tain their racial and na­tional in­tegrity long af­ter their neigh­bors to the north­west were bro­ken up into iso­lated city-states. No one of these city groups was able to over­come the united Sume­ri­ans.

78:8.6And the in­vaders from the north soon learned to trust and prize these peace-lov­ing Sume­ri­ans as able teach­ers and ad­min­is­tra­tors. They were greatly re­spected and sought af­ter as teach­ers of art and in­dus­try, as di­rec­tors of com­merce, and as civil rulers by all peo­ples to the north and from Egypt in the west to In­dia in the east.

78:8.7Af­ter the breakup of the early Sume­rian con­fed­er­a­tion the later city-states were ruled by the apos­tate de­scen­dants of the Sethite priests. Only when these priests made con­quests of the neigh­bor­ing cities did they call them­selves kings. The later city kings failed to form pow­er­ful con­fed­er­a­tions be­fore the days of Sar­gon be­cause of de­ity jeal­ousy. Each city be­lieved its mu­nic­i­pal god to be su­pe­rior to all other gods, and there­fore they re­fused to sub­or­di­nate them­selves to a com­mon leader.

78:8.8The end of this long pe­riod of the weak rule of the city priests was ter­mi­nated by Sar­gon, the priest of Kish, who pro­claimed him­self king and started out on the con­quest of the whole of Mes­o­po­ta­mia and ad­join­ing lands. And for the time, this ended the city-states, priest-ruled and priest-rid­den, each city hav­ing its own mu­nic­i­pal god and its own cer­e­mo­nial prac­tices.

78:8.9Af­ter the breakup of this Kish con­fed­er­a­tion there en­sued a long pe­riod of con­stant war­fare be­tween these val­ley cities for su­prem­acy. And the ruler­ship var­i­ously shifted be­tween Sumer, Akkad, Kish, Erech, Ur, and Susa.

78:8.10About 2500 B.C. the Sume­ri­ans suf­fered se­vere re­verses at the hands of the north­ern Suites and Gui­tes. La­gash, the Sume­rian cap­i­tal built on flood mounds, fell. Erech held out for thirty years af­ter the fall of Akkad. By the time of the es­tab­lish­ment of the rule of Ham­murabi the Sume­ri­ans had be­come ab­sorbed into the ranks of the north­ern Semites, and the Mes­o­po­ta­mian And­ites passed from the pages of his­tory.

78:8.11From 2500 to 2000 B.C. the no­mads were on a ram­page from the At­lantic to the Pa­cific. The Ner­ites con­sti­tuted the fi­nal erup­tion of the Caspian group of the Mes­o­po­ta­mian de­scen­dants of the blended An­don­ite and And­ite races. What the bar­bar­ians failed to do to ef­fect the ru­ina­tion of Mes­o­po­ta­mia, sub­se­quent cli­matic changes suc­ceeded in ac­com­plish­ing.

78:8.12And this is the story of the vi­o­let race af­ter the days of Adam and of the fate of their home­land be­tween the Tigris and Eu­phrates. Their an­cient civ­i­liza­tion fi­nally fell due to the em­i­gra­tion of su­pe­rior peo­ples and the im­mi­gra­tion of their in­fe­rior neigh­bors. But long be­fore the bar­bar­ian cav­al­ry­men con­quered the val­ley, much of the Gar­den cul­ture had spread to Asia, Africa, and Eu­rope, there to pro­duce the fer­ments which have re­sulted in the twen­ti­eth-cen­tury civ­i­liza­tion of Uran­tia.

78:8.13[Pre­sented by an Arch­an­gel of Neb­a­don.]