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“Let’s stand against the killing of innocent civilians. It is time to make the future better than today. Together we can bring peace and unity to our communities.”
― Widad Akreyi

“Enkidu, my brother, whom I loved so dearly, who accompanied me through every danger-- the fate of mankind has overwhelmed him. For six days I would not let him be buried, thinking, 'If my grief is violent enough, perhaps he will come back to life again.”
― Stephen Mitchell, The Epic of Gilgamesh

“It is time to recognize the past and ongoing genocides to prevent new ones. Together we can build a better world!”
― Widad Akreyi

“Cuneiform. It didn’t have the glamour of Egyptian hieroglyphs - it was made up mostly of dashes - yet it was from these marks that history had officially begun.”
― Sarwat Chadda, City of the Plague God

“During the first millennium BCE, even the beer-loving Mesopotamians turned their backs on beer, which was dethroned as the most cultured and civilized of drinks, and the age of wine began.”
― Tom Standage, A History of the World in 6 Glasses

“In those days the world teemed, the people multiplied, the world bellowed like a wild bull, and the great god was aroused by the clamor. Enlil heard the clamor and he said to the gods in council, “The uproar of mankind is intolerable and sleep is no longer possible by reason of the babel.â€� So the gods agreed to exterminate mankind.”
― Anonymous, The Epic of Gilgamesh

“Desde la niñez, nos han hecho considerar este lugar como la cuna de la raza humana.”
― William Loftus

“The daughter of Sin was determined to go
To the dark house, dwelling of Erkalla's god,
To the house which those who enter cannot leave,
On the road where travelling is one-way only,
To the house where those who enter are deprived of light,
Where dust is their food, clay their bread.
They see no light, they dwell in darkness,
They are clothed like birds, with feathers.”
― Stephanie Dalley, Myths from Mesopotamia: Creation, the Flood, Gilgamesh, and Others

“Berossos compiled his History from the temple archives of Babylon (reputed to have contained "public records" that had been preserved for "over 150,000 years"). He has passed on to us a description of Oannes as a "monster," or a "creature." However, what Berossos has to say is surely more suggestive of a man wearing some sort of fish-costume--in short, some sort of disguise. The monster, Berossos tells us: "had the whole body of a fish, but underneath and attached to the head of the fish there was another head, human, and joined to the tail of the fish, feet like those of a man, and it had a human voice ... At the end of the day, this monster, Oannes, went back to the sea and spent the night. It was amphibious, able to live both on land and in the sea ... Later, other monsters similar to Oannes appeared."
Bearing in mind that the curious containers carried by Oannes and the Apkallu sages are also depicted on one of the megalithic pillars at Göbekli Tepe (and [...] as far afield as ancient Mexico as well), what are we to make of all this? The mystery deepends when we follow the Mesopotamian traditions further. In summary, Oannes and the brotherhood of Apkallu sages are depicted as tutoring mankind for many thousands of years. It is during this long passage of time that the five antediluvian cities arise, the centers of a great civilization, and that kingship is "lowered from heaven." Prior to the first appearance of Oannes, Berossos says, the people of Mesopotamia 'lived in a lawless manner, like the beasts of a field.”
― Graham Hancock, Magicians of the Gods: The Forgotten Wisdom of Earth's Lost Civilization

“The period before the deluge was the one of revelation in the Mesopotamian mythology, when the basis of all later knowledge was laid down. The antediluvian sages were culture-heroes, who brought the arts of civilization to the land. During the time that follows this period, nothing new is invented, the original revelation is only transmitted and unfolded. Oannes and other sages taught all fundations of civilization to antediluvian mankind.”
― Amar Annus

“By the fourth millennium BC, the Fertile Crescent was not the only region of coalesced communities; organized agricultural, military, religious, and administrative activity had also begun to appear in the Indus Valley, in what is now Pakistan. Even before written records, there is evidence of trade between these two regions. Archaeologists have discovered lamps and cups in Mesopotamia dating from the late fourth millennium BC and made from conch shells found only in the Indian Ocean and the Gulf of Oman.”
― William J. Bernstein , A Splendid Exchange: How Trade Shaped the World

“In the ancient Armenian texts, which include the book 'Merkhavat,' there are references to the 'Sarmoung Society.' This society is described as a well-known occult school that according to tradition, dates from 2,500 B.C.E. The school is said to have fared in Mesopotamia up until the sixth or seventh century, C.E. Attributed to the school were many great occult mysteries.”
― Laurence Galian, The Sun at Midnight: The Revealed Mysteries of the Ahlul Bayt Sufis

“Studying the world's oldest writing for the first time compels you to wonder about what writing is and how it came about more than five thousand years ago and what the world might have looked like without it.

Writing as I would define it serves to record language by means of an agreed set of symbols that enable a message to be played back like a wax cylinder recording.

The reader's eye runs over the signs and tells the brain how each is pronounced and the inner message springs into life.”
― Irving Finkel, The Ark Before Noah: Decoding the Story of the Flood

“My first-year mentor Leslie taught me that the hurrieder we go, the behinder we get.”
― Weam Namou, Healing Wisdom for a Wounded World: My Life-Changing Journey Through a Shamanic School: Book 1

“Figurines of Apkallus were buried in boxes in the foundation deposits in Mesopotamian buildings in order to avert evil ... The term massare, Watchers, is used of these sets. Likewise the Apkallus were said to have taught antediluvian sciences to humanity and so, too, were the Watchers. As one scholar concludes, however: 'The Jewish authors often inverted the Mesopotamian intellectual traditions with the intention of showing the superiority of their own cultural foundations. [Thus] ... the antediluvian sages, the Mesopotamian Apkallus, were demonised as the 'sons of God' and ... appear as the Watchers ... illegitimate teachers of humankind before the flood.”
― Graham Hancock, Magicians of the Gods: The Forgotten Wisdom of Earth's Lost Civilization

“Another point of interest about the Tiahuanaco [in Bolivia] monoliths is that their garments from the waist down are patterned in the form of fish scales. Here, too, is a parallel to the Apkallus--the bearded, "fish-garbed figures" who brought high civilization to Mesopotamia [...]. Nor is it as though bearded figures are missing from the repertoire of Tiahuanaco. Two have survived, and one on the pillar in the semi-subterranean temple has been identified since time immemorial with the great civilizing deity Kon-Tiki Viracocha, [...] who is described in multiple myths and traditions as being white skinned and bearded.”
― Graham Hancock, Magicians of the Gods: The Forgotten Wisdom of Earth's Lost Civilization

“Legends speak of a primeval Pacific homeland called "Hiva" from which the first inhabitants of Easter Island came--a homeland that also fell victim to the "mischief of Uoke's lever" and was "submerged under the sea." What is particularly intriguing about all this, because of its resonance with the Seven Sages--the Apkallu--spoken of in Mesopotamian antediluvian traditions, and with the Seven Sages of the Edfu Building Texts, who sought out new lands in which to recreate the drowned and devastated world of the gods, is that the Seven Sages--"king's sons, all initiated men"--are also said to have been instrumental in the original settlement of Easter Island. Exactly as was the case with the Apkallu, who laid the foundations of all the future temples of Mesopotamia, and with the Edfu Sages who traveled the length and breath of Egypt establishing the sacred mounds on which all future pyramids and temples were to be built, the first task of the Seven Sages from Hiva after their arrival on Easter Island was 'the construction of stone mounds.”
― Graham Hancock, Magicians of the Gods: The Forgotten Wisdom of Earth's Lost Civilization

“Then the flood swept over.”
― Sumerian King List

“Searching in an ancient rain-fed lake in northern India, paleoclimatologists using radiocarbon dating have discovered that 4,100 years ago, the summer monsoons began a rapid decline. They did not return to normal for two centuries.

For an unimaginable two hundred years, the Harappan region saw hardly any rain. Around the same time in China, Egypt, and Mesopotamia, the three other earliest-known civilizations also were lost to the dry sands of history.”
― Cynthia Barnett, Rain: A Natural and Cultural History

“Any flood would feel like the end of the world if your neighbors drowned and your community washed away. In Mesopotamia when torrential rains hit alongside spring snowmelt, the Tigris and Euphrates would burst their banks, growing the region under hundreds of miles of lakes. Archaeologists say an ancient Sumerian city called Shurrupak (Iraq's Tell Fara) was laid waste by flood nearly 5,000 years ago. A Babylonian version of GILGAMESH mentions Shurrupak by name. It describes a deluge that wipes out mankind, and a pious king called Ziusudra who overhears from a sympathetic god that the great flood is on its way. Ziusudra builds a huge boat and survives.”
― Cynthia Barnett, Rain: A Natural and Cultural History

“Then the gods realized they must create substitutes for themselves: men. But how? For them to be truly alive, a god must die.”
― Roberto Calasso, La Tavoletta dei Destini