The Sources
The Tablets
Everything known about the Anunnaki survives on baked clay: wedge-marks pressed with a reed stylus, buried in temple archives, and unread for two thousand years.
- 01
The Sumerian King List
c. 2000 BCE · Sumerian, many recensions
Kingship descends from heaven to Eridu, and the first rulers reign for tens of thousands of years — the passage most often quoted, and most often misread, by modern theorists.
KingshipChronologyThe FloodRead the source → - 02
Atrahasis
c. 1900 BCE, Old Babylonian · Akkadian, three tablets
The lesser gods strike over forced labour on the canals. Humans are made to take the work, multiply, grow noisy, and are nearly erased by plague, drought and finally flood.
CreationThe FloodLabourRead the source → - 03
Inanna's Descent
c. 1900 BCE, Sumerian · Sumerian, c. 410 lines
Inanna enters the underworld and is judged by the seven Anunnaki, who fix on her the eye of death. Her release costs a substitute: her husband Dumuzi.
UnderworldRitualEpicRead the source → - 04
The Epic of Gilgamesh
c. 1200 BCE, standard version · Akkadian, twelve tablets
Tablet XI retells the flood, with the Anunnaki lifting torches to light the land as the storm breaks and later weeping at what they have unleashed.
The FloodEpicMortalityRead the source →