Atrahasis Poem
The relationship between the forces of nature was more complex, to crystallize in the poem literally Atrahasis Akkadian, written in the early second millennium BC The poem begins by evoking the dawn of time, when the lesser gods, under the direction of violent Enlil, had to dig channels, raising the levees, repair both and work the land.
Tired of the hard work of draining the marshes, dam water and plowing fields to grow enough to feed themselves and the older gods, burned their picks and shovels, resigned to work and threatened to Enlil, the foreman.
The top three gods, Anu, Enlil and Ea, ie heaven, earth and water, met urgently to try not only to resolve the conflict, but to lay the groundwork for not re-occur.
Ea, the most cunning of them proposed the ingenious solution created beings, humans, who work in place of the gods and for them, giving them part of the food they produced.
These new beings were to be formed from clay mixed with the blood of one of the lesser gods, who had led the rebellion.
From the original mass of clay and blood was created seven men and seven women, who were the beginning of the human lineage.
Since then the gods were not to work more, limited to the offerings of live humans.
However, both worked them, both produced food, which multiplied rapidly, and twelve centuries after its creation were now so numerous that the unbearable noise made by the gods.
The violent Enlil, angered, brought to the great gods and with his consent sent an epidemic that wreaked havoc among humans, threatening to kill them.
The Ea shrewd, concerned about the fate of his creatures, let them know that they should direct their prayers to the god of death, Namtar, which finally took pity on them and ended the plague.
The survivors returned to multiply and, after another 1200 years, touted by his cries to Enlil, who punished them again, wiping all sources. Ea
Advised by his protector, the humans turned their prayers to the god of rain, Adad, who arrived in time to save some starving representatives of mankind.
For the third time again humans disturb the gods, and now Enlil decided to use the same Adad to cause a flood of such magnitude that finally drowned humans. Ea
This time could only save one family, the Atrahasis (who gives name to the poem), the most wise and kind to humans. Recommended time of the conspiracy of the other gods, Atrahasis built a ship and introduced him to his family (in the broadest sense: women, children and close relatives), and with them different pairs of animals, both domestic and wild.
As on previous occasions the gods had continued to receive food from those not too sick or weak in, now starved, since only surviving passenger of the boat, unable to cultivate the land.
With the prospect of having to work to rethink the extent of their punishment and reached an equilibrium point, which accept human existence, but limiting their number through the following provisions: they created a demon whose task would be to increase child mortality after birth, some women would be futile and a fraction of them would give up having children, taking her virginity as a socially recognized value to the position of certain priestesses of goddesses.
Thus, neonatal mortality (and, if infanticide), sterility and virginity were not only recognized as mechanisms of population control, but which are situated in the area of \u200b\u200bdivine decisions, allowed the transfer to these responsibility for those actions and events
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