101 Myths of the Bible: how ancient scribes - Conscious Evolution TV

72 101 Myths of the Bible
Enoch, but ancient custom treated grandsons as if they were sons and the city could
have been named for Irad, Cain’s grandson.
On the one hand, given that Cain the wanderer built only one city, not five as in the
Mesopotamian tradition, and that he originally represented Osiris, we should assume
that he built the city in Egypt. Since his story originated with the Heliopolitan Creation
myth, the most likely choice of city would be Heliopolis,“city of the sun,” east of
the Nile where the sun rises. Or, given that the first Creation story in Genesis derives
from the Theban Creation account, of which the second Creation story is an offshoot,
the first city might be Thebes. The biblical name for Thebes was No, a close
approximation to Nod.
On the other hand, as noted in Myth #30, biblical editors displaced the story of
Cain as Osiris with Sumerian stories about Dumuzi, who, according to the Sumerian
king list, ruled in Bad-tibira,“fort of the metalworkers,” suggesting that the biblical editors
intentionally or mistakenly moved the first city from Egypt to Mesopotamia. The
identification of Bad-tibira with metalworking provided a good connection to Cain, the
metalworker, at least in the mind of the later biblical editors.
Finally, we have one other city as a plausable candidate. Eridu, one of the first five
cities lying southwest of Babylon, always appears first in the list of the five, indicating
that Mesopotamians considered it the most prominent and most important. As the
first and most important Mesopotamian city, it makes a good choice as the place where
Cain might have built his urban center. Cain’s grandson was named Irad, a close
approximation to Eridu, suggesting another possible connection.
In addition, Mesopotamians made Eridu the city of the god Enki. There could be
some connection between the names Enki and Enoch, establishing a direct link to
Cain’s son. Also, some of the ancient literature gives Enki the additional name of
Nudimmud, which seems to provide a root connection to the land of Nod, making
Eridu the land of Nod.
Any connection between Cain’s city and Mesopotamia, however, would be a late
linkage. The city would originally have been located in Egypt.