Trices Group Book Review Journal 
 
   
 
   
 
   
 
  Genesis of the Grail Kings 
 Gardner, Laurence 
 by: 
 
 Fair Winds Press, 33 Commercial St
 Publisher:
 Gloucester, MA 01930 
Location: 
2001 
Copyright: 
 
   
Cover:
 Softcover
 Type: 
 
 
   
 
  Lynard Barnes 
 reviewed by: 
    
 
 
 Comment: Excellent take off on Zecharia Sitchin premise that the Anunnaki from 
  
 Where did the Sumerians come from?

In GENESIS OF THE GRAIL KINGS, author Laurence Gardners makes the point a couple of times that the Sumerian language is not related to any known family of languages which have existed or which currently exist. When the Sumerians first emerged around 4,000 BC in southern Mesopotamia (Iraq, known as Uruk in ancient times), they were already highly advanced. What made Sumerian texts decipherable was the discovery in the early 20th century of Akkadian script with footnotes related to Sumerian records. Sumerian script is dated back to 3400 BC and is a cuneiform (wedge-shaped) script. Gardner leans heavily toward present day eastern Europe as the origin of the Sumerian language and the people who spoke it. He states that "the Sumerian people could well have originated by way of migration from ancient Scythia and the Black Sea regions". Indeed they may have, but the evidence he sites is extremely circumstantial. It is not a major point of his book however.

It is odd to realize that practically no one took Sumerians and the Sumerian civilization seriously until the mid-19th century--whole libraries of ancient clay tablets found at archeological sites describing various aspects of Sumer were uncovered. After these discoveries, Sumer no longer existed only in the Bible. The Bible sets the tower of Babel in the land of Shinar, which is how the Hebrews wrote Sumer. Also in the Bible, Moses' ancestral home is in the land of Ur, which is also Sumer. Sumer did not become a real place for most until the discovery of those clay tablets in the 19th century with Sumerian-Akkadian script. The city of Ur itself was not found until the 20th century. Indeed, Gardner traces the origins of Judaism and Christianity from the ancient people of Sumer and their pantheon, the Anunnaki. Zecharia Sitchin, in his Earth Chronicles series of books, does the same. But there is plenty of other material interpreting the life and times of the Sumerians.

For more, see http://www.sron.nl/~jheise/akkadian/mesopotamia.html).

The special contribution Gardner makes to the history of religion is his examination of the Bible and the various adaptations, omissions and mis-interpretations found therein. Works of fiction have been created around these issues. Gardner cites the book of Genesis quoting God as saying, "Let us make man in our image, after our likeness". Was there one God or many? After citing other examples of plural and singular use of the term God in the Bible,		 
 
 
 
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 Gardner goes on to say, "Old Testament entries such as these are quite indicative of historically recorded texts of Sumerian era . . ., but they are surprisingly different from our traditional religious conditioning that there was but one God."

The author makes a compelling case that the God of Abraham originated from the Sumerian god Enlil. It was Enlil who "promised Abraham . . . and his descendants that he would exalt their race above all others . . ." With the passage of time and under the pressures to solidify the tribal-nation (not "race"), Enlil's name was transformed to Jehovah ("or Yahweh, from YHWH: 'I am that I am'). The evidence for this comes from the book of Genesis in which Gardner points out that there are two consecutive Creation stories. He also points out that over time, the feminine contingent of the Gods was gradually reduced to inconsequence, acquiring a tint of evil. On page 142 he quotes from the book of Judges (10:6) where it states that the Israelites, "after the death of Moses, 'did that which was evil in the sight of Jehovah, and served the Baalim and the Asheteroth . . . and they forsook Jehovah and served him not'". The Ashteroth was the plural name for the Sumerian goddesses.

Whereas the Anunnaki gods were a real presence in the lives of old Sumer, under the "Hebrew perception of Jehovah", God became a total abstraction. This is one of the most significant threads running through Gardner's book and he supports the opinion well. If, as apparently for the Sumerians, the Gods were corporate entities of flesh and blood, and for the Hebrews an abstraction in the ether world of Space, where does that leave the concept of God for the rest of us? This is the question for our age and it is not going away. Gardner touches upon this issues when he writes, "In erstwhile Mesopotamian, Canaanite and Egyptian thought, the unexplainable divine was manifest within Nature, and Nature enveloped both the gods and society." The foundations of Christianity "forsook harmony in favor of subservience", thus destroying "the relationship between humankind and the phenomenal world". When we look at some fo the Nature based religions, there may be something to Gardner's view. But it raises even more questions on the subject rather than resolve the one already raised.

Like Sitchin, Gardner speculates that modern humans were a DNA creation of these gods from the Heavens, the Anunnaki. Thus far, modern Man does not appear to have any ancestors. Even if you buy into the evolution theory, there is no evidence that modern humans evolved from Neanderthal or Cro-Magnon man. Related, yes. Descendants, no. Gardner takes up this subject and arrives at a conclusion differing from Sitchin in degree. In this, Gardner's conclusion on the origin of modern humans is more acceptable within the totality of the historical records, but still on the farthest fringes of science.

Finally, in a broader context, Gardner argues for looking at history as history rather than as a confirmation of prevailing dogma. The relatively recent phenomena of ideas challenging the tenets of Christianity, Judaism and Islam (from Dan Brown's THE DA VINCI CODE to not so renowned works as RAISING ATLANTIS by Thomas Greanis and DISAPPEARANCE OF THE UNIVERSE by Gary R. Renard), highlight a receptiveness at re-evaluating some fairly cherished beliefs.

GENESIS OF THE GRAIL KINGS is a book well worth reading. However, it should be read for the questions raised, not answers provided. There are a myriad of books touching upon the foundations of modern civilization. Some of these books are more speculative than others. A comprehensive approach to finding answers to questions of origin should encompass the traditional as well as the speculative. As Gardner correctly implies when it comes to history, there are incentives for some to suppress speculation at the expense of		 
 
 
 
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 truth.
 
 
 
 
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