part0040

The Myth: And Adam knew Eve his wife; and she conceived, and bare Cain, and said, I have gotten a man from the LORD. And she again bare his brother Abel. And Abel was a keeper of sheep, but Cain was a tiller of the ground. And in process of time it came to pass, that Cain brought of the fruit of the ground an offering unto the LORD. And Abel, he also brought of the firstlings of his flock and of the fat thereof. And the LORD had respect unto Abel and to his offering: But unto Cain and to his offering he had not respect. And Cain was very wroth, and his countenance fell. And the LORD said unto Cain, Why art thou wroth? and why is thy countenance fallen? If thou doest well, shalt thou not be accepted? and if thou doest not well, sin lieth at the door. And unto thee shall be his desire, and thou shalt rule over him. And Cain talked with Abel his brother: and it came to pass, when they were in the field, that Cain rose up against Abel his brother, and slew him.

And the LORD said unto Cain, Where is Abel thy brother? And he said, I know not: Am I my brother’s keeper? And he said, What hast thou done? the voice of thy brother’s blood crieth unto me from the ground. (Gen. 4:1–9)

Adam and Eve had three male children named Cain, Abel, and Seth. Cain killed Abel, and Seth founded the Hebrew line of descent from Adam to Abraham. In Myth #17, we showed the parallels between these three sons of Adam and Eve and the three sons of Geb and Nut in the Heliopolitan Creation cycle—Osiris, Horus, and Set. Not only does the Genesis story preserve one of the Egyptian names (Set and Seth are philological equivalents) but, as in the Egyptian story, one brother killed the other and the third founded the legitimate line of rule. Despite the parallels, the Genesis author seems to have been confused about who was who in the original story .

If Genesis had relied solely on the Egyptian legends, Osiris and Cain, the oldest brother in each story, should correspond to each other, and there are some parallels. Osiris symbolized the grain and Cain became a planter of crops. Osiris wandered the world teaching skills to humanity and Cain wandered the world teaching skills to humanity. Genesis describes some of Cain’s descendants as the founders of various arts, such as metalworking, music, and cattle raising. And, according to their respective stories, Osiris and Cain each built the first city.

But if Cain corresponded to Osiris then the Egyptian plot requires that Cain be the brother that gets killed instead of the brother that does the killing. This suggests that other influences caused changes to the story, confusing the identity of the victim. The source materials appear to have been Sumerian legends about a shepherd named Dumuzi. In post-Sumerian times, Mesopotamians changed Dumuzi’s name to Tam-muz, whose name corresponds to one of the months in the Hebrew calendar.

Cain was a farmer and Abel was a shepherd. Both sought God’s favor by presenting samples of their produce to God. The Hebrew deity chose Abel’s gift over Cain’s and the farmer was upset. Soon after, he killed Abel, although no specific reasons are given.

In a story known as Dumuzi and Enkimdu, we find the theme of competition between a shepherd (Dumuzi) and a farmer (Enkimdu). In this instance, both sought the favor of the goddess Innana, and she made her decision based on the importance of the respective produce. At first, Inanna preferred Enkimdu the farmer, but Dumuzi the shepherd pleaded his case and she eventually chose him to be her husband. By way of parallel, in both the Sumerian and biblical stories, the deity chose the shepherd over the farmer, but in the Sumerian account no one is killed.

In a second story known as The Descent of Inanna, however, Dumuzi, like Abel, dies a horrible death. The death of Dumuzi appears to have substituted for what would have been the death of Cain, but because Dumuzi was a shepherd rather than a farmer, the biblical editor, in order to conform to the Babylonian tradition, changed the identity of the deceased brother from farmer to shepherd, from Cain to Abel.

In The Descent of Inanna, the goddess descended into the underworld in order to take it over from her sister, but failed to do so. Before her sister would allow her to return to the land of the living, Innana had to find a substitute to take her place. Accompanied by a host of demons known as the galla, Inanna traveled from city to city in search of her replacement, eventually arriving in the city where Dumuzi, her husband, ruled as king. Dumuzi angered Inanna and she put the eye of death upon him. He then raised his hands in prayer to the sun god Utu and begged for help in escaping the demon horde. Unfortunately, the tablet breaks off at this point but a separate set of tablets, dating to about 1750 B.C., has a related account of Dumuzi’s efforts to avoid death. In this version, Utu intervened on several occasions to assist Dumuzi but to no avail. Finally, Dumuzi surrendered to the demons.

The first galla enters the sheepfold ,
He strikes Dumuzi on the cheek with a piercing (?) nail (?) ,
The second one enters the sheepfold ,
He strikes Dumuzi on the cheek with the shepherd’s crook ,
The third one enters the sheepfold ,
Of the holy churn, the stand (?) is removed ,
The forth one enters the sheepfold ,
The cup hanging from a peg, from the peg falls ,
The fifth one enters the sheepfold ,
The holy churn lies (shattered), no milk is poured ,
The cup lies (shattered), Dumuzi lives no more ,
The sheepfold is given to the wind .

In this Sumerian tale of the shepherd’s death, we may have the missing details from the biblical account of how Cain slew Abel, with Cain replacing the galla as the killer. Dumuzi’s various prayers and cries to Utu on the several occasions when the galla try to drag him into the underworld echo in Genesis when God says to Cain, “What hast thou done? the voice of thy brother’s blood crieth unto me from the ground” (Gen. 4:10).