The 12th Planet by Zecharia Sitchin Read Free Book Online Page B

Urukagina listed the evils of his time first, then the reforms. The evils consisted primarily of the unfair use by supervisors of their powers to take the best for themselves; the abuse of official status; the extortion of high prices by monopolistic groups.
     
    All such injustices, and many more, were prohibited by the reform decree. An official could no longer set his own price "for a good donkey or a house." A "big man" could no longer coerce a common citizen. The rights of the blind, poor, widowed, and orphaned were restated. A divorced woman—nearly 5,000 years ago—was granted the protection of the law.
     
    How long had Sumerian civilization existed that it required a major reform? Clearly, a long time, for Urukagina claimed that it was his god Ningirsu who called upon him "to restore the decrees of former days." The clear implication is that a return to even older systems and earlier laws was called for.
     
    The Sumerian laws were upheld by a court system in which the proceedings and judgments as well as contracts were meticulously recorded and preserved. The justices acted more like juries than judges; a court was usually made up of three or four judges, one of whom was a professional "royal judge" and the others drawn from a panel of thirty-six men.
     
    While the Babylonians made rules and regulations, the Sumerians were concerned with justice, for they believed that the gods appointed the kings primarily to assure justice in the land.
     
    More than one parallel can be drawn here with the concepts of justice and morality of the Old Testament. Even before the Hebrews had kings, they were governed by judges; kings were judged not by their conquests or wealth but by the extent to which they "did the righteous thing." In the Jewish religion, the New Year marks a ten-day period during which the deeds of men are weighed and evaluated to determine their fate in the coming year. It is probably more than a coincidence that the Sumerians believed that a deity named Nanshe annually judged Mankind in the same manner; after all, the first Hebrew patriarch—Abraham—came from the Sumerian city of Ur, the city of Ur-Nammu and his code.
     
    The Sumerian concern with justice or its absence also found expression in what Kramer called "the first 'Job.'" Matching together fragments of clay tablets at the Istanbul Museum of Antiquities, Kramer was able to read a good part of a Sumerian poem which, like the biblical Book of Job, dealt with the complaint of a righteous man who, instead of being blessed by the gods, was made to suffer all manner of loss and disrespect. "My righteous word has been turned into a lie," he cried out in anguish.
     
    In its second part, the anonymous sufferer petitions his god in a manner akin to some verses in the Hebrew Psalms:
     
My god, you who are my father,
     
who begot me—lift up my face....
     
How long will you neglect me,
     
leave me unprotected ...
     
leave me without guidance?
     
    Then follows a happy ending. "The righteous words, the pure words uttered by him, his god accepted; ... his god withdrew his hand from the evil pronouncement."
     
    Preceding the biblical Book of Ecclesiastes by some two millennia, Sumerian proverbs conveyed many of the same concepts and witticisms.
     
If we are doomed to die—let us spend;
     
If we shall live long—let us save.
     
When a poor man dies, do not try to revive him.
     
He who possesses much silver, may be happy;
     
He who possesses much barley, may be happy;
     
But who has nothing at all, can sleep!
     
Man: For his pleasure: Marriage;
     
On his thinking it over: Divorce.
     
It is not the heart which leads to enmity;
     
it is the tongue which leads to enmity.
     
In a city without watchdogs,
     
the fox is the overseer.
     
    The material and spiritual achievements of the Sumerian civilization were also accompanied by an extensive development of the performing arts. A team of scholars from the University of California at Berkeley made