c1500 BCE ENUMA ELISH – records the Sumerian-Babylonian doctrine of the world ages whose timing is based on the precession of the Equinoxes through the zodiac constellations. (31.) This recording on 7 tablets is in Akkadian. Enuma Elish may be translated as ‘When on High’ and it also documents the struggle of imposing cosmic order on chaos in the act of creation which is known as the discipline of Cosmogony. This text is recited on the fourth day of the New Year in the remembrance of the beginning of time. That beginning is marked by the birth of the gods who spring from the primordial Apsu, and the subsequent battle of Marduke with Tiamat, which results in the creation of the world. (192)
Markuk and the monster Tiamat
Around this time, Aryan migration (thought to be the ancestors of the Indo-European race) reaches North India via the Iranian Plateaux. These people spoke an archaic form of Sanskrit. Knowledge of the Aryan race comes from the Indian literature called the ‘Veda’. Aryan worship is based on the principle of fire and probably in turn will form the basis of the later Mithraism of the Persians. Ordinary fire is taken as a symbol of the more subtle, invisible Cosmic Fire.
The tight family structure and social classing of the Iranian Aryans will become the class system of India. The original Theocratic three divisional structure of Aryan society is the warrior nobility, the priesthood, and the working common people. The latter dealt with the material affairs of everyday life. (40. 102)
Persian sculpture
Between 1500 and 600 BCE there is a mass migration of Indo European and Semitic people infiltrating already settled lands of the Eurasian land mass. The invaders are Indo-Europeans originating in the steppes of Eurasia and the Semitic people from around the areas of Arabia and North Africa. The Indo-European group brought refinements and invention to the existing cultures. Meanwhile the civilizations of China in the east and the Chavin and Olmecs of South America in the west continue to flourish. (96)
Avalokitesvara of India
Kwan-yin of China
The Indo-European section of the migrating peoples, known as the Mycenaeans, replace the ancient Minoans in the Aegean. The section known as the Latins replace the ancient Etruscans on the Italian Peninsula. The Indo-European section settled the west and north of Europe became known as the Celts, Germans, Balts, Slavs etc. (96)
Celtic dancing sorcerer
It is thus seen that in the latter half of the second millennium BCE there are to be extensive movement and migration of people’s around the world. Masses of peoples moving across the sea and its coast-lands, displacing or merging with the older populations. These migrations ended such civilizations as the Minoans of Crete, and contributed to the historical populations of Greece and Italy. Such migrations wiped out the Hittite Empire, thrust the Philistines into Canaan and washed up on the shores of Egypt. (192)
Canaanite
