- Marduk, Bel, Ba'al and the worship of The Master -
So having discussed the emergence of The Horned Beast in Canaan and Amon let's talk about the Sumerians and the babylonians; specifically to begin with a late born deity in the pantheon known as Marduk, in Sumerian 'amar utu.k' which is to mean 'calf of the sun, or solar calf', so by now you can probably see where this is going, the depiction of the horned aspects can be traced back to at least Sumeria, with a fairly distint lineage evolving through time, that this was represented in Marduk as the 'Solar Calf' the Golden Calf that the Canaanites worshiped referenced as the king of kings/great lord/master, the origins of Moloch and the act of worship by MLK. But let's discuss it anyway, Marduk was the patron deity of the city Babylon, and as Babylon aquired further political power in the latter half of the second millenium BC he rose to the forefront of the pantheon, interestingly Marduk was likely to have been pronounced as 'Marutuk' in which the etymology of the word could suggest an ascociation with 'amar-Utu' which means 'bull calf of the sun god Utu' so you can see how they might well be connected. Utu being worshipped as a Sun god around 3500BC roughly a thousand years prior to the rise of Marduk to prominence.
Chase Lopez
But anyway let's get back on track to the over arching point of this section and talk about Bel and ba'al [Baal] now both terms roughly translated as we have talked about before mean something akin to king or great king, but they also mean Master and the two forms of the word Bel/Baal-Ba'al were interchangable to take some examples: Bel = Lord, Bel rabim = Great Lord, bl blim = Lord of Lords. And when babylon became the capitol for want of a better word of southern mesopotamia under the reign of 'Hammurabi' Marduk being the patron deity of babylon was elevated to the status of a supreme god, a leader of gods, a 'Lord of Lords' and the texts of the Enma Eli were written to describe Marduk's rise to supremacy, in which the Anunnaki [Sumerian pantheon] promise Marduk the role of supreme god if he can help them defeat the gods rising against them in a sort of divine civil war.
David Roberts
So Ba'al and Bel, which means Master were used to refer to Marduk which would later down the line evolve into Mo loch and the 'bull calf' aspect of Marduk would be emphasised into the physicality of Moloch as the bull, but of course the 'solar calf' aspect was not to be forgotten and so we can quite easily see how the concept of the 'Solar calf' would later become Moloch the Bull to whom's flames the sacrifices would be made, the flames of the 'solar calf' which is the Sun. Now it is also interesting to note that the Babylonian/Assyrian god 'Nabu' known as 'Nisaba' in the Sumerian pantheon gained great prominance around the 1st millenium BC so shortly after Marduk, and was identified in fact as being the son of Marduk. Fascinatingly he was depicted wearing a horned cap [An obvious reference to the Solar Calf, the Horned Beast] and rode upon a dragon harkening to Marduk's companion the dragon, which will become fairly important later on when we talk about the Roman pantheon, but let's not get ahead of ourselves now. Nabu makes an apparence in Jeremiah 48:1 mentioned as Nebo but quite clearly is refering to Nabu as you will see, the text is as follows:
Caleb Nelson
'Bel bows down, Nebo stoops low; their idols are borne by beasts of burden. The images that are carried about are burdensome, a burden for the weary.'
So here they are refering to the Idols of Bel [Who is Ba'al, who is Marduk] and his son Nabu being carted away by beasts of burden, this passage is concerning the fall of Babylon, which is explained more in Jeremiah 50:1-3 which is as follows:
'This is the word that the LORD spoke through Jeremiah the prophet concerning Babylon and the land of the Chaldeans: Announce and declare to the nations; lift up a banner and proclaim it; hold nothing back when you say, Babylon is captured; Bel is put to shame; Marduk is shattered, her images are disgraced, her idols are broken in pieces. For a nation from the north will come against her; it will make her land an object of horror. No one will live in it; both man and beast will flee.'
Daniel Butler
So you may be wondering why I was making such a point of Ba'al/Bel meaning 'Master' as well as 'King', well that is an interesting story, so bare with me while I set this up, because now we are going to go back even further than Marduk, to his father in fact, 'Enki' of the Anunnaki [Pantheon of the Sumerians]. Who was step brother of 'Enlil' and son of 'An or Anu'; Anu being considered the supreme god and progenator of the Annunaki, that is until later on when Marduk was given that posistion when Babylon rose to power, as we have discussed and Anu takes something of a backbench in the mythology, yes even more of a backbench then he already had, at least when we look at the creation mythology of the Sumerians Anu pretty much rests on his laurels after the immediate creation of the universe and the Annunaki race etc.
Isaiah Diaz
Too long didn't read
Jayden Smith
So back to Enki, long story short orignally when the Anunnaki arrived on Earth they had to do the toiling themselves, after a while they got quite tired of this and it seemed that the seeds of malcontent were being readily sowed, Enki being seen as a wise creator, an inventor of sorts suggested that they ought to create a new race of beings to do the toiling for them, so that the Anunnaki might be at rest. Below is some text relating to this acquired from 'ETCSLtranslation : t.1.1.2' [A link will be supplied in the sources section at the end of this discourse] The translations are incomplete due to either wear on the original tablets from which they are transcribed or inability for a relatable meaing to be devined for the missing words, indicated by '...' and (?), The readable texts are as follows:
Sections 1-11: 'the senior gods oversaw the work, while the minor gods were bearing the toil. The gods were digging the canals and piling up the silt in ?arali. The gods, crushing the clay, began complaining about this life.'
Nolan Young
Sections 12-23: 'At that time, the one of great wisdom, the creator of all the senior gods, Enki lay on his bed, not waking up from his sleep, in the deep engur, in the subterranean water, the place the inside of which no other god knows. The gods said, weeping: "He is the cause of the lamenting! Namma, the primeval mother who gave birth to the senior gods, took the tears of the gods to the one who lay sleeping, to the one who did not wake up from his bed, to her son: "Are you really lying there asleep, and not awake? The gods, your creatures, are smashing their . My son, wake up from your bed! Please apply the skill deriving from your wisdom and create a substitute (?) for the gods so that they can be freed from their toil!'
Sections 24-37: 'Enki reached out his arm over them and turned his attention to them. And after Enki, the fashioner of designs by himself, had pondered the matter, he said to his mother Namma: "My mother, the creature you planned will really come into existence. Impose on him the work of carrying baskets. You should knead clay from the top of the abzu; the birth-goddesses (?) will nip off the clay and you shall bring the form into existence. Let Ninma? act as your assistant; and let Ninimma, u-zi-ana, Ninmada, Ninbarag, Ninmug, and Ninguna stand by as you give birth. My mother, after you have decreed his fate, let Ninma? impose on him the work of carrying baskets."'
Justin Sullivan
So here we can see Enki deciding to undertake the creation of a new set of beings of a lower order who will take up the toiling of the gods; in which he states he will mould the form of these beings from clay [Not metioned in the above text translations but it is widely considered in the Sumerian creation mythology that the clay was mixed with the blood of one of the gods who was slain for this purpose]. You may already see here the parralel with the greek promethean mythology in which the titan does exactly the same and moulds the form of man from clay, but more on that later, back to Enki. So followed a period of seeming trial and error as various deformed and maladied versions of man are created. So what does this have to do with the concept of Mastery? well we have shown how originally the Anunnaki created man to be a slave race, the word 'Worship' means 'to work for' and so the slaves would 'Worship' their master and creator Enki, and they too would worship Enki's son, Marduk, whom they would refer to as Bel or Ba'al to mean 'Master' to whom one would be enslaved to toil for.
Elijah Thompson
So perhaps now having explored what the 'Solar calf' is one can see the linkage with the 'Golden idol of canaan' a literal golden bull, a 'Solar calf' so to speak, and also the recuring idoltry of a horned beast of the earth and the element of fire as we see in representations of Moloch and Cronus. One might also see how the concept of the 'Solar calf' in itself implies the mastery of the Solar body over the beasts of the earth. That is to say, I do belive it could be construded literally, the solar calf is a representation of the creatures of the earth being the scions of the Solar body which provides the energy that nourishes them and is responsible for their initial creation. This also makes sense when we look at Marduk's relation to his name and to his his father, Marduk is the solar calf, so what does this tell us about his father Enki? well we can certainly point out that as we have just discussed Enki is credited with the creation of man. But the truth is that the connotations of Marduk and Enki actually go a little further when we bring Enki's father into the mix.
