A story of London and Mesopotamia 11/9/25
640 BC In the ancient city of Nineveh, on the bank of the River Tigris, King Ashurbanipal of Mesopotamia, erudite but ruthless, built a great library that would crumble with the end of his reign. Epic of Gilgamesh the great poem emerged.
Lamassus are protective spirits with eagle wings and body of a bull or lion and head of a man. Splendor of the Assyrian Empire. A ziggurat dedicated to Ishta, goddess of love , sex, beauty passion and war. In his luxurious garden with fruit trees hangs the head of his enemy Elamite king Teumman
Nisaba is the goddess of stories, the king was the 3rd son and so not trained in marshal arts to be the king but in philosophy and literature but then his father chose him to be the heir. The kings tutor who had taught him to appreciate literature by whose guards found the man was not loyal to the king by supporting the kings brother. The kings in his name soldiers had been expanding the empire by destroying many people. Instead of stabbing the traitor to death he has him set on fire and the burning man runs to try and get into the Khosr River thus burning the kings childhood memories with him.
1840 The crowded city of London which pollutes the Thames river in every way. Toshers people who scavenged along the river and the dangerous sewers for valuables like copper, rings. They worked in groups and one women Annabel went into labour with dirt around her, and gives birth to a boy, with the help of the tosher team. But she say throw it into the Thames. Her husband who was a successful carpenter has become a drunk and she has had to be the breadwinner. .The Team name him King Author of the sewers and slums. Arthor Smyth has a fantastic memory but becomes a terrible curse. At the same time 21 year old Queen Victoria was giving birth to her first baby a girl called Victoria (Vicky)
He knows everyone in the street and by the time he is 5 he has picked up Yiddish. At 9 he goes to a charity school. Where he points out to the teacher that the figures in the sum are wrong and gets beaten for bad manners..
At the British museum he sees Lamasus(symbolizes the kings divine power) being unloaded. He tell a man that he has seen there is a book by Austen Henry Layard on Nineveh. The Man Dr. Samuel Birch (1813 to 1865) invites him to visit him in his office at the museum.*
1853 Arthurs did odd jobs like collecting horse dropping to take to tanners who used it in their work. Cages of budgies are popular since Queen Victoria was given pair from Australia. His father takes him to a printer who agree to give him a weeks trial. There is the book by Omar Khayyam which he says he is keen to read.. At first he has to do odd jobs around but slowly he starts being trained to run the machines. When you publish a book you are setting a caged bird free. When he get home with his first wage packet his father says it belongs to him. Mr Bradbury lend him any book he wants to read however except for moon full nights he is unable to red till he is also given a gift of 2 tallow candles. He read every important book available at the time. He wants to be involved in book publication as books "never end even when you have finished reading them"
Austen Henry Layard 1817 to 1894 Archeologist in Assyria, writer and politician. Wrote on Nineveh.
1851 The World Exhibition in Hyde Park but only the wealthy could enter as it was expensive. By 1854 it had been rebuild at Sydenham and was finally only a shilling entrance so Arthur saw manufactures from every country and finally a Lemusus displayed from the British Museum. At the end of a day he is chatting to Mr. Bradbury about a picture of the Thames .a century ago. Mr. . Bradbury " all to often we humans destroy nature and call it progress." Arthur wants to visit the British museum but can't afford a jacket to go in respectably. Next morning he finds Mr Bradbury dead in the office - the only person who took an interest in him.
There are 300,000 horses in the capital and the leave and that leaves 12,000 tones of crap all over the city. His one twin brother drinks the water from the flask he brought home and dies very quickly of Cholera. Dr. John Snow has figured out that Cholera comes from water and from the Broad Street pump but everyone laughs at him. He can't get the municipality to take the handle of the pump, puts up a warning which is stolen. 1853 to 1894 10,740 people die of cholera in London. Finally the people recognize that they are killing the water. We humans destroy nature and call it progress. In the office he meets up with Charles Dickens (1812-1870). Who tells him that nobody is useless in this world who lifts the burdens of others. Arthur can't visit the British museum as he does not have the clothes. A parcel arrives in the office from Dickens containing a set of clothes his correct size.
Every spare minute Arthur is at the Museum and fascinated by the cuneiform tablets. This is noticed by the staff there and he is offered a part time position. A museum in deciding what will be remembered is also deciding what will be forgotten. 1857 Later on he takes up a full time position at the museum for a lower wage and works out the epic poem of Gilgamesh. Author his lost contact with his father and family his whole effort is his work.
The story of the flood and Noah's Ark appear in the coniform writings so this all predate the Bible.
Charles Darwin (1808 to 1882) His book the Origen of Species(1859) had a profound effect on society later book Descent of Man (1871)
He is invited to give a lecture at the Society of Biblical Archaeology and the Prime Minister William Gladstone (1808- 1898)is there to listen. He is now invited to mix and toast with lawyers, bankers, politicians and philanthropists but down below feels frustrated. The Daily Telegraph offers him a £1,000 to lead an expedition, of archaeological exploration. His mother is in a asylum and he was not allowed to visit her now that he is famous he is given permission. There has recently been an need for asylums to treat cases caused by syphilis
1872 he describes the trip staying in Paris which also has cesspools and pollution. Which he knows about from reading Victor Hugo's (1802–1885) .Les Misérables.
The British Embassy Constantinople looks like a mini Buckingham Palace. He has to wait to get a firman to be able to got to Nineveh and dig there .Here he hears Turkish, Armenian ,Kurdish , Arabic, Persian , Ladino and French spoken. The Hammams or public baths are also a place of prostitution, women are taken as spoils of war and are displayed naked and auctioned across the empire. Sometimes if they bear their master a child may get freedom. Arthurs firman has arrived but also a letter that his mother died.
King Sennecherib (705 till assassinated in 601)expanded his dream of empire as did his grandson Ashurbanipal the last of the great kings of Assyria (reigned 668 to 627 bce)
Arthur arrives in Zerav the nearest village to Nineveh but the guide will not stay in a devil worship village of Yazidis and absconds. Yazidis are "heretical Moslems, renegade Christians perhaps apostate Jews or odd Zoroastrians?" They do hot have a sacred scripture which fascinated someone like Arthur. He is treated very well here and meets Leila the diviner. For decades the British have excavated to the north here and French to the south, and people in London and Paris are waiting for the antiques.
1876Arthur arrives in Constantinople the 2nd time when the sultan Abdel Aziz has been associated but made to look like a suicide. The pasha of Mosul with the help of the qadi have mustered the army to massacre the Yazidis. First they destroyed the bridge and removed all boats leaving no escape before the massacre. When Arthur gets to the village the people who entertained him are gone including the girl who enchanted him Leila.
When King Gilgamesh died his body was interred under the Euphrates which had to be diverted to do this. The greediest kings had corralled the rivers and the bloodiest wars were fought over water. Arthur also discovers that what is called civilization is so destructive and sooner or later will engulf everything in its path.
Arthur realizes that he has to return home as their is a cholera plague but the Museum no longer wants to employ him. He found a lapis lazuli tablet amongst the archeological dump. This show information on the goddess Nisiba and he had now achieved something for his trip . He is now ill in a shepherds hut near the village of Castrum Kefa . A thief finds the blue tablet and takes it and he dies there.
2014 The Tigris flowing from Turkey a girl is to be baptized Narin, They originate in the valley of Lalish in Iraq to a Yazidi family. Lamb of faith. Along the shores of the river where a llisu dam , Sirnak Province Turkey (built between 2006 and2018)is being build that will flood the whole area and the destroy a millennium of history. The village Hasankeyf will be flooded by 2020 and they people have all received a pittance as compensation in their bank accounts. The bulldozer driver wont let them have the ceremony and Narin reads his lips "filthy fallen devil worshipper" She has heard this before. The grandmother say this is an omen that the ceremony should take place in Lalish Narin has a genetic disease and will go completely deaf. Her mother died giving birth and her father is never around as he is a musician and plays at weddings and festivals everywhere to Iraq and Lebanon and says they can now travel to Iraq. 72 times the Yazidis have been massacred.
The government has promised that all their graves will be moved but they don't believe them. What about the Englishman's grave his family don't even know where it is, it is never attended to. Some people travel they are restless like rivers. We know now that the Englishman was Arthur from the sewer and slum as Narin's cousins visit from Germany and figure this out. Narin's grandmother tells her that she heard the story of the Englishman from her grandmother Leila., "Some people are restless like rivers"
Grandma says that when she was a girl there were 500 oryxes today the are gone. The Mosul Dam built between 1981-1986 on the Tigris river by Saddam Hussein (1937-2006) also displaced thousand year old Yazidi settlements. Saddam also destroyed the swamplands to get rid of the marsh Arabs.
The Kurdish forces Peshmerga who protect their village leave. ISIS arrive and tell the population to come out with their phones and valuables and hand them over. The men are taken and executed by a pit the women are taken to be slaves and converted Islam. High peaks are considered religious sanctuaries and Yazidis flee there, there is no water and grandma devines for water.
Narin and the women are taken in truck and will be made slaves , servants and sex objects.to accompany the noble army in Jihad, because their fathers were heathen. Because Narin speaks Turkish she is good for the commander who also does. The commanders wife speaks Arabic with an American accent. Salma who knew Narins grandmother warns the jihadist that Narin has special powers. Salma say it would have been better to die by Sadam Hussein gassing the Kurds of Halabja in 1988. While ISIS rape murder and pillage that also have a sideline business of selling antiquities which the are supposed to destroy.
2018 Zeleika ( Potiphar's wife in the Bible) or Dr. Z Clark has divorced her husband after 3 and a half years or marriage because he wanted children?. Both were Water Scientists she has moved to a London house boat on the Thames in Chelsea. Her family are immigrants from the Middle East and her parents died and she was brought up by the Uncle Malik with his daughter. She is planning to drown herself.
A man is collecting Chinese mitten crabs are alien creatures on the Thames they were first seen in 1930. A man is collecting them and she thinks of the plastics they find in these creatures. Global warming is going to be felt by lack of water in places, and water will be the big issue.
She visits her uncle Malik in his mansion in Kensington where she was brought up from the age of 7 when her parents died. She and Helen their daughter was regarded as siblings but Helen got married and had 3 children, and they parted ways. Immigrants always have to be prepared for contingencies. Malik came from Mesopotamia to England had everything about him is English including his wife and business partners. They discuss her marriage and he tells her he hates eating fish but will have a fish dinner not to upset his wife.
They discuss that all the great cities are places on rivers, even Athens you are not aware that it has 3 rivers. Uncle Malic at 8 years old was sent to boarding school in England he was the first of his family, after that he always considered himself British. Became a successful businessman and a politician and philanthropist.
They discuss that there are many hidden rivers that have been concealed and culverted like the River Effra of South London. Zeleika works for the Centre for Ecology and Hydrology. She has left her husband after 3 years of marriage and moved to a house barge on the Thames. She visits her landlady Nen next to the British Museum where she has a tattoo shop with the slogan Our tattoos last longer than most marriages. Most of her tattoos are cuneiform words. A script used by Sumerians , Arcadians Babylonians Assyrians ,Elamites and Hittites. She says people think tattoos are a form of rebellion to her they are a form of story telling. Zeleika has a tattoo of the sign for water. Nen often goes mudlarking, A mudlark is someone who scavenges the banks and shores of rivers for items of value they use metal detectors nowadays.
As a child Uncle Maliks house was more a shelter from a storm rather than a home.
With Nen she goes to the British Museum the bas-reliefs have no women on them. People can be cultured but still commit cruel acts.
We know that 1 in 4 children today across the world are living with water so polluted it will kill them. She is always surprised that Uncle Malik has never shown an interest in visiting the part of the world he came from and totally cut ties with his childhood. Helen tells her they have found a donor of a kidney for her daughter Lily and are going to Istanbul to a private hospital to get her daughter a kidney. Zeleika for the first time is busy kissing a women Nen.
Nisaba is the god of literacy and libraries, later women are stripped of powers so the god Nuba takes her place, and references to her have been erased.
We now discover that on a vacation to their homeland her parents wanted to stay in the hotel and she wanted them to camp on the banks of the Tigres while Zeleika got up to have a pee they were washed away by the sudden river surge. Uncle Malik had to collect Zeleika at the police station in Turkey.
Zeleika finds a picture of a young girls that looks just like her and it is marked that she is to be the donor.
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