The Inside Assyria Discussion Forum #5

=> The Gilgamesh Games Interview

Posted by Tiglath (Guest) - Tuesday, November 11 2008, 3:31:33 (CET)
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The Gilgamesh Games Interview

On the eve of the 2008 Beijing Olympic Games one of Zinda's own reporters from Australia, David Chibo, published an archaeological article, with help from Assyriologist Professor Simo Parpola, showing that the ancient Olympic Games were in fact based on the older Gilgamesh Games (click here). We managed to secure this exclusive interview with David Chibo on this startling revelation.

1. What exactly does the Gilgamesh Games thesis reveal?

My article focuses on one of the pillars of "Western civilisation," the Olympic Games. Using original cuneiform and Greek sources I show that the ancient Greek Olympic Games were in fact based on even older Middle Eastern funerary games established in honour of King Gilgamesh.

2. How did you make this discovery?

Having an Engineering background I confess that I have had no formal training in archaeology. I have however always been a great fan of our ancestor's ancient epics and myths. Over the years while reading I came to discover that other pillars of ‘Western civilisation' had been quietly acknowledged but not publicised for years. This fascination with our undisclosed history made me curious to know more.

And so it was with this mindset that I stumbled across Professor Andrew George's translation of the Death of Bilgames[Gilgamesh]. The passage below first sparked the conviction that the Olympic games were indeed influenced by the rituals of the Ancient Gilgamesh ceremonies.

The Dream God Sissig, son of Utu,
shall provide light for him in the Netherworld, the place of darkness.
Men, as many as are given names,
when their statues are fashioned for future days,
the warriors, the young men and the onlookers shall make a semi-circle around a doorway (lit. form a doorway like a crescent),
and in front of it (or them) wrestling matches and trials of strength will be conducted.
In the month of Torches [Abu], the festival of Ghosts,
without him being present light shall not be provided before them.

This paragraph alone distinguishes the three main similarities that tie the Gilgamesh Games to the ancient Olympic Games. Both took place in the month of August; consisted of ‘feats of strength,’ including wrestling, and were conducted during a torch-lit ceremony.

3. Who assisted you with this thesis?

I originally wrote up a very brief article describing the similarities above. I then contacted Assyriologists throughout the world and asked if any would be interested in co-authoring an article with me.

Needless to say I received a couple of responses that were very negative towards my main contention connecting Eastern and Western civilisation.

There was however one person who actually listened and gave me encouragement and advice on pursuing my main contention further. That was none other than Assyriologist Professor Simo Parpola from Helsinki University. Professor Simo Parpola had previously proven that the Jewish Kabbalah had roots in ancient Assyrian mysticism so he was more easily able to take the ‘leap of faith’ and question what had previously been unquestioned historical fact.

He then proceeded to send me a list of numerous Mesopotamian athletic event sources that he suggested may hold further evidence. I spent months incorporating these links into my article and upon completion he proceeded to edit the article before we released it for publication in Nikephoros, an ancient sports magazine.

4. How is it that trained Assyriologists studying the same text for years had never connected the two historical events?

The answer to your question in two words is, Historical Orientalism.

Over the last two or three hundred years, the history of ancient Greece has been grossly distorted. At the distant beginning of Western civilization, according to Western tradition, Greece stands as an insular, isolated, near-miracle of burgeoning culture.

Until modern times, the foreign origin of ancient Greece, according to ancient sources continued to be acknowledged. That trend changed with the advent of European nationalistic tendencies of the eighteenth century, which began increasingly to highlight Greece as the "cradle of civilisation."

The Western world's geographical and historical distinction between the "West" and the "East" was first crystallised in the Greco-Persian War of the fifth century BC, when Athenian historians drew a sharp, distinguishing line between their civic culture and Persian despotism.

The late Edward Said explained this prejudiced and distorted historical interpretation of Eastern histories, cultures and peoples by Westerners in his theory of Orientalism which purports that Western history functions primarily to serve colonial and political ends.

The majority of Assyriologists have unfortunately been trained within this distorted framework and are unable to see that civilisation cannot be categorised into Western or Eastern compartments.

There is in fact no such thing as Western civilisation.

The belief in Western civilisation is the illogical belief that the elements of civilisation began – not at the natural confluence of three continents over the course of 3,000 years under the Sumerian, Babylonian and Assyrian Empires - but miraculously in the isolated mountainous terrain of Greece within a span of a couple of hundred years.

Even Zacharia Sitchin’s science fiction ancient astronaut theory of human origins purporting that aliens gave the Sumerians the gifts of civilisation is more plausible than this misguided theory.

5. What message would you like to convey to Assyriologists?

In no other field can a layman walk in, literally off the street, and make such an astounding discovery. How is it that I, a novice, was able to make such a startling breakthrough?

The answer for this is simple.

For the past couple of hundred years most Assyriologists have unintentionally viewed their work through Orientalist glasses. This now needs to stop.

The discovery of the origin of the link between the Gilgamesh Games and the Olympic Games should be a wake up call for them to not only go back and reread their cuneiform texts but to also stop framing ancient civilisations along the same retrograde nationalistic framework that was first used to define the modern nation state.

6. Could this discovery be misused?

I expect some Western historians, authors and writers to persist in maintaining the Western civilisation myth. In a few years time once this revelation has had a chance to circulate I believe that a search of the internet will find them calling the Gilgamesh Games the ‘primitive-Olympics,’ or ‘proto-Olympics’ or even make the absurd claim that the Gilgamesh Games “anticipated” the Olympic Games. Those that define the Gilgamesh Games in this manner are persisting within this outdated Orientalist framework.

I also expect that a minority of Assyrian nationalists will use this discovery within the Eugenics framework to insinuate that Western civilisation began with their ancestors, hence making them genetically superior to the Greeks. In doing this they will be repeating the mistakes of Western scholars and merely substituting an Orientalist framework for a nationalistic framework, while reinforcing the same racist ideals.

It was never the Greeks who claimed that civilisation began with them. Ancient Greek sources attribute their knowledge to Middle Eastern sources. It was Colonialism that constructed the framework of Orientalism and along with compliant Western scholars was responsible for spreading this myth.

It was always inevitable that civilisation would eventually trace its roots back to the Middle East, just as the human race can today trace its ancestry back to Africa. This will not be due to ethnic or racial superiority of its indigenous inhabitants but due to the Middle East's prime location at the confluence of three continents; Asia, Europe and Africa.

7. Are you doing anything to promote this new cultural link between East and West?

I intend to contact the International Olympic Committee (IOC) and send them a copy of the published article for consideration with the hope that one day they will acknowledge the true origin of the modern Olympic Games.

I also intend to send the European Union (EU) a copy and keep them updated on the origin of this “pillar of Western civilisation.” This is important as one of the drafts of the preamble to the European Constitution included a line about "drawing inspiration from Greece."

Meanwhile I have also contacted Dr Jorg W. E. Fassbinder who believes that his team may have discovered the ancient tomb of King Gilgamesh in Uruk. Anyone familiar with the Death of Bilgames [Gilgamesh] will know that upon his death the river Euphrates was diverted and the water-proof tomb of Gilgamesh was sealed before the river was again allowed to flow over the tomb concealing it forever. Using magnetic scanning, he has managed to identify what appears to be a tomb like structure in modern day Uruk. It is his belief that they may have discovered the ancient tomb of King Gilgamesh - the founder and judge of the ancient Gilgamesh Games, the antecedent of which is today's modern Olympic Games. He has since been forced to withdraw his team from Iraq due to the US neo-colonial invasion and occupation of Iraq and its covert policy of destabilising the country.

8. Are there any other discoveries you believe are yet to be made connecting the East to West?

I think we live in a time when the final pillars of so-called Western civilisation have come crashing down. It has been well known for quite some time that writing, the alphabet, mathematics, medicine, science, astrology and astronomy were all inherited from the ancient Mesopotamians. But today even the Western concepts of democracy, athletics, religion and philosophy are not considered safe and can be traced back to the ancient Middle East.

I have joined with a team of like-minded individuals and we intend to continuously update the Gilgamesh Games site with mew discoveries and evidence of other Middle Eastern discoveries that have been erroneously claimed by the West.

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