The Hiram Key

The Hiram Key
In The Beginning Man Made God
had been the common source of religious beliefs that had spread in the
same way that language had done; developing to suit local preferences as
it travelled but retaining an identifiable core.
From the ruins of Nippur archaeologists have recovered many
thousands of tablets that record the history of its people. Their early
writing started out. as far as we know. around 3500 BC and in much the
same way as language must have developed, fundamental objects such
as head, hand and leg were the first items to be identified. These were
easily recognised pictograms with a profile of the object, but quickly
more symbolic words were created. The Sf.
or a man was an
e'aculating penis. looking very much like a candle. From that came the
word for a male slave, which was the candle-shape with three triangles
superimposed to represent hills. This denoted a stranger; Sumer had no
hills and the only resident non-Sumerian males were slaves. The marks
they made were created by pushing a stick into wet clay and this tended
to give a broader indentation and deposit where the writing instrument
started and finished a line. This triangular effect at each end of the line
was later translated as a serif; the small marks that you can see on the
extremities of the leiters on this page.
It is not just the stylisti c treatment of our letters that stems from the
land of Sumer; our very alphabet owes it much. The letter 'A', for
example, derives from the image of a bull's head, which was a near
triangle with two of the sides being overlong giving the impression of
horns. This was first evolved by the Phoenicians, then entered early
Greek where it looked like the bull's head on its side, for as the Greeks
developed capitals in lheir alphabet the letter 'A' was rotated another
ninety degrees and became 'alpha', a character very simil ar to our
modem capital 'A', which is essentially a bull's head upside down.
Today the English language sti ll contains a few almost pure Sumerian
WOras, such as 3lcohol, cane:gypsum, myrrh and saffron. --
As well as passing down to us, amongst other things, the wheel. glass,
our alphabet, our divisions of the time of day, mathematics. the art of
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building, the Sumerians ga,[e us something else: God. They also have
provided us with the earliest written hi stories, and as Freemasons we
were particularly interested in Sumerian references to Enoch, who is
important in Masonic lore, and the Sumerian story of the great flood
which figures so largely in the ritual of lhe Masonic Ark Mariners
Degree. _
Etymologists have shown that the story of the Garden of Eden .. ~ " "
Book of Genesis is the story ofSumer;moreover, cities such as Ur, Laesa
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and Haram. mentioned in the Book of Genesis, were actually in the land
of Sumer. Genesis gives us the creation story:
'In the beginning God created (he heaven and the earth. And the
earth was without/onn, and void; and darkn ess was UpOIl theface
0/ the deep. And the Spirit 0/ God moved upon the face of the
waters. And God said, Let there be light: and there was light ... And
God said, Let there beafirmament in the midst o/thewaters, and let
it divide the waters/rom the waters. And God made thefinnament,
and divided the waters which were under the firmament from the
waters which were above the firmament: and it was so ... And God
said, Let the walers under the heaven be gathered together umoone
place, and let the dry land appear: and it was so. And God called
the dry land Earth; and the gathering together of the waters called
he seas ... And God said. Let (he earth bring forth grass, the herb
yielding seed, and the fruit tree yielding fruit after his kind ... '
Compare this to an abstract from a Babylonian account of the creation
known as 'Enuma Elish' from its first two words, meaning 'when on
high'. It was written down in both Babylonian and Sumerian nearly a
thousand years before Genesis and survives almost complete on seven
cuneiform tablets:
'A ll lands were seQ. Then there was a movement on the midst of the
sea; At that time Eridu was made ... Marduk laid a reed on the/ace
of the waters, He formed dust and poured it out beside the reed.
That he might cause the Gods to dwell in the dwelling of their
heart's desire, He fo~d.nu;mkin.!l.JYJ1.hipuhL.go.des.Aruru _
. CIeatrd.Jhwwi..o/JI!!!llkilJ{i. The beasts 0/ the field and living
things in the field he formed. The Tigris and the Euphrates he
created and established in their place: Their name he proclaimed
in goodly manner. The grass, the rush and the marsh, the reed and
theJorest he created, The lands, the marshes and the swamps; The
wild cow and her young, the lamb of the fold, Orchards and forests;
The he-goat and the mountain-goat .. , The Lord Marduk built a
dam beside the sea .. . Reeds he/armed, trees he created; Bricks he
laid, buildings he erected; Houses he made. cities he built ... Ereeh
he made ....
This Mesopotamian epic of creation is without doubt the source of the
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