Page 582 - Atlas of Creation Volume 2

The picture to the side shows a "god of lightning," one of the Sumerians' false deities that emerged when
the one true Divine belief became corrupted.

Archaeological Finds from Egypt and Mesopotamia

The Mesopotamian plain, not far from the civilization of ancient Egypt, is known as the
"cradle of civilizations."
Among the most important information to emerge from archaeological research in these
areas came from discoveries regarding these societies' religious beliefs. Inscriptions tell of
the activities of countless false deities. As more information was discovered and researchers

discovered better methods to interpret the data, some details about these civilizations' reli-
gious beliefs began to emerge. One of the most interesting things is that above all the false
deities these people believed in, they also believed in one God. Historical evidence shows

that true religion always existed. The following pages will examine the Mesopotamian,
Egyptian, Indian and European civilizations together with the Aztecs, Incas and Mayans to
prove that they all believed in one God and were visited by messengers who communicated
true religion to them. The first researcher to discover that polytheism had originally con-
tained monotheism was Stephen Langdon of Oxford University. In 1931, he announced his

findings to the scientific world, saying that they were quite unexpected and totally at odds
with previous evolutionist interpretations. Langdon explained his findings as follows:

... the history of the oldest civilization of man is a rapid decline from monotheism to extreme poly-
theism and widespread belief in evil spirits. 73
Five years later, Langdon would state in The Scotsman as follows:

The evidence points unmistakably to an original monotheism, the inscriptions and literary re-
mains of the oldest Semitic peoples also indicate ... monotheism, and the totemistic origin of

Hebrew and other Semitic religions is now entirely discredited. 74
Excavations at modern Tell Asmar, the site of a Sumerian city dating from 3,000 BCE,
unearthed findings that completely corroborated Langdon's ideas. The excavation director,

Henry Frankfort, gave this official report:
In addition to their more tangible results, our excavations have established a novel fact, which the

student of Babylonian religions will have henceforth to take into account. We have obtained, to the
best of our knowledge for the first time, religious material complete in its social setting.

We possess a coherent mass of evidence, derived in almost equal quantity from a temple and from
the houses inhabited by those who worshiped in that temple. We are thus able to draw conclusions,
which the finds studied by themselves would not have made possible.

For instance, we discover that the representations on cylinder seals, which are usually connected
with various gods, can all be fitted into a consistent picture in which

a single god worshiped in this temple forms the central figure. It
seems, therefore, that at this early period his various aspects
were not considered separate deities in the Sumero-Accadian

pantheon. 75

When Sumerian tablets were translated, it emerged that the
large number of false deities in the Babylonian pantheon
emerged as a result of the gradual misinterpretation of the
various names and titles of a single Deity.
The false deity Marduk, from the Babylonian pantheon

580 Atlas of Creation Vol. 2