US-Iraq War and the Epic of Gilgamesh

In 2003, German archaeologists working in Iraq stumbled upon what they believed to be the long-lost tomb of the mystical King Gilgamesh, the protagonist of The Epic of Gilgamesh, one of the oldest stories human beings ever wrote.

Until recently, historians had been divided over whether or not the story of Gilgamesh existed based upon a real-life persona - as a consequence of the Epic's description of him as a 17-foot-tall giant - a crossbreed between a normal human and a Mesopotamian goddess. However, with the help of modern technology, Jorg Fassbinder and his team of archaeologists discovered an entire ancient city beneath the desert which perfectly matched the description in the Epic. In addition to houses and gardens and fields, they also found an incredibly sophisticated system of canals, leading them to believe this was the tomb of the ancient king. Whether or not this is Gilgamesh's tomb remains to be seen, but it looks very similar to what is described in the Epic.

Gilgamesh's grave may have been similar to the one described in the epic, suggesting that Fassbinder and his team might have discovered a tomb with the body of a 17-foot-tall giant.

The discovery was simply mind-blowing and can also be acknowledged as a long-lost piece of the history of human existence. The scientists were under the impression that the revelation that followed would unravel the mysteries that we didn’t even know were ever there. But then happened something no one ever thought of. Just a few weeks after the discovery of Gigimesh’s tomb, the Iraq invasion by the United States came about. This also forced the team of scientists including Fassbinder’s out of Iraq leaving the greatest enigma unsolved.

An even early occurrence of a historical discovery made by Austen Henry Layard an English archeologist and a historian was in regards to finding the ruins of a 7th-century Library in Northern Iraq of Assyrian king Ashurbanipal. The library was believed to be one of the oldest libraries in human history. He further uncovered an old clay tablet found at the sight of the remains of the ancient library which may have been thousands of years old and was covered in a curious script that couldn’t be deciphered.

The discovery was, however, just the tip of the iceberg as more than 15,000 fragments of a similar tablet containing scripts of a similar fashion were discovered throughout the early 1850s. For decades these scripts were attempted to be deciphered by British scholars taking in reference to the other ancient tablets that were not yet deciphered and were preserved at British Museums. Finally, in the year the 1870s, a man named George Smith came in with some light of hope. Smit was born in 1840 and by the time he was 14, he had left his school and started working as an engraver of banknotes. Although Smith was not too educated, he became smitten with the report of an indecipherable artifact from Iraq, older than any recorded history ever found.

Filled with inquisitiveness, Smith managed a daily visit to the British Museum during his lunch and invested his time to research its holdings, making himself equipped with the knowledge of the ancient languages and comforting himself with the ancient written script. By 1866, he was offered a job at the museum as a translator of 15,000 fragments originally found by Austen Henry Layard.

After four years of exhaustive work, Smith led to the revelation of the tablets. But the revelation was, however, shocking for Smith as it elucidated an unbelievable story. The table contained the record of an ancient deluge, it was about the great flood that wiped out the entire humanity except for one man and his family. Smith presents the finding to the Society of Biblical Archeology in the year 1872 in the presence of the British Prime Minister. This sent a shock wave across Europe and the world. As per some scholars and theologians, the finding corroborates the story of Noah in the Bible.

Although eventually Smith published his full transcription in the year 1875, he wasn’t, aware that he had begun deciphering the oldest story ever told which later on was acclaimed as The Epic of Gilgamesh. But tragically Smith passed away in the year 1876 at the age of 36. But whatever he started went on for decades and generations, even to this date. With the further translation of the tables, new revelations were made, divulging the full story. No doubt it went far beyond the story of the flood, further talking about the fanatic tales of the ancient Mesopotamian king named Gilgamesh, whose kingdom expanded to that much of present-day Iraq, thousands of years in the past. It talked about his beginning as a tyrant when the gods decided to teach him a lesson by creating a rival for him named Enkidu. They wrestled until they apprehended no one was better than the other and became friends. Together they set for a series of adventures described in detail in the Epic. Upon the demise of Enkidu, Gilgamesh spent the rest of his life searching for the secrets of eternal life, leading to another series of adventures. The Scolars agreed that the ancient work of compilation became an inspiration for many Epic literary genres including some of the famous works of Lliad and Homer’s Odyssey. The translation of the Gilgamesh character in terms of his personality traits was used as a reference in the modern-day findings as well, like the fact that he was an offspring of a human and a goddess which made him one-third of a human and two-thrid of a divine, giving him a massive physical stature of a 17 feet tall height. With this height came superhuman strength and endurance, along with an unequivocal level of intelligence. But these personality traits also helped Gilgamesh vanquish all the challenges giving him total wisdom about everything as the story states, he had reached the end of the maze where he had obtained the furthest wisdom. This was also the reason that the discovery of his tomb in the year 2003 was an earth-shattering incident.

If only the archeologist were able to look inside the tomb, imagine the hidden secrets that would have found their way out in the world. It would have led to the revelation ranging from very basic facts regarding the height of Gilgamesh based upon his skeleton to the records that his tomb would have hoarded for thousands of years with reference to the total wisdom acquired by him.

No doubt, these secrets were such that people from across the globe would have done anything to get their hands on them. This further led to the debate among scholars regarding the real reason behind the invasion of Iraq by the United States. Iraq did not even have any direct association with the mishap of 9-11 but still as per the official government records the leader of Iraq Saddam Hussein was said to have hidden some unknown weapons of mass destruction, which eventually showed itself to be an outright lie. Reasons like the US wanting to have control over Iraq’s oil supplies or President George W. Bush effectuating what his daddy George H. W. Bush commenced in the early 90s with Iraq were not as convincing of a reason as suggested by some. Maybe it was not just a coincidence that the invasion start right after the discovery of Gilgamesh's tomb and all the potential secrets were confiscated considering that as the military invaded the country, encampments of the Gilgamesh site came about. Soon after all the scientists and media members were sent home which included important figures from ABC News and the BBC. The story of the discovery of Gigamesh's tomb was also instantly taken off the air from the global news channels. Stranger accounts of witnesses have further surfaced where they claimed to have observed the US military carrying out excavation around the tomb site. If the story holds any base at all, what was exactly found in the tomb of Gilgamesh?

Eventually, as the US military took over, Gilgamesh was not the only site where such strange military activities were observed. The capital of Iraq, Baghdad housed a legendary National Museum which was one of the most important houses of human history anywhere on Earth. It is a repository of some of the oldest and most significant manuscripts, coins, and statues going back through the entire human race. The museum was left unguarded during this time and the facility was thronged by citizens that broke in and cleared out with tens and thousands of invaluable artifacts. This negligence was commended in the international community while the president of the International Council of Monuments asserted that this was on any day less than a “crime committed against humanity.” But with the passage of the day stories regarding the looting only got worse. Some witnesses even said that a special US military unit had entered the museum and divested the place, emptying vaults filled with relics and taking them away on heavy-duty trucks. If this was true, what did the takeaway, and what made it so important for them?

With all this in circulation and due to the apprehension of the international communities, the US government finally made a special team consisting of specialists from the FBI, CIA, and US Immigration and Customs Service, and sent them to investigate the matter. The team was led by a marine commander and a lawyer, Colonel Micheal Bogadanos who also happened to have a degree in classic studies from Columbian University. The team on their arrival reported that the facility was vandalized. The report of Bagdanos further stated that the sight as observed by them was not pretty as it had been used as a fighting position and had Iraq and expended RPGs uniform scattered all over the place.

They found hundreds of files and Ba’ath party cards smoldered in the courtyard. It also left many wondering why the Iraq army position themselves at a sacred site like this to take up defense, even if they knew the fight was futile. But there was something else that was even more concerning for the team and Bagdanos. As they made their way through the concealed bolts of the museum, they realized that someone else has been there before them. Although, there were missing items, fakes, and empty boxes to through away thieves were, however, left untouched. This clearly indicates that whoever has been there before knew exactly where to look and what to look for. Therefore, Bagdanos specified in his words, “organized and selective” in his description of this episode.

Another odd sitch that they bumped into, which made things more evident was, artifacts including the world's finest collection of cylinder seals and tens of thousands of golden and silver coins have been left behind by the thieves. If the event was some random robbery, why were some of the most valuable stuff left as it is? Also, if the place was marauded by someone else, what were they looking for exactly?

Luckily, some people claim to have the answer to this. There was a spread of bizarre rumors during the 1920s in Iraq. These rumors spread from government to government around the world powers about an advanced ancient technology named ‘Stargate.’ It was an unfathomable piece of technology that sort of allowed its user to be teleported from one location to another. As unbelievable as it may sound, it was, however, not a rumor that Iraq was unaccustomed to. In the stories from the ancient text of the Sumerians, the original inhabitants of the place, there are mentions of their encounters with their gods the Anunnaki, and how the gods had the wisdom and technologies that they bestowed upon the Sumerians which effectively influenced the present day human race.

As per some beliefs, the Anunnaki were not gods but some ancient extraterrestrial visitors who visited Earths thousands of years ago. Anunnaki the gods or the extraterrestrials, if visited Iraq in the distant past, the possibility of them leaving behind their advanced technology is not that steep after all. The remnants of these technologies being discovered become even less unthinkable.

The idea of Iraq possessing an ancient Stargate was believed to be probable by governments from across the globe, back in the 1920s, prompting them to send their representative in the hopes of discovering this lost technology. There are some who even believe that the Anglo-Iraqi war of 1941 was just a front to cover the curiosity of German and British forces about the Stargate. But eventually, there were no official claims of having found the Statget, and the idea of it eventually spiraled out from the popular view. But it, however, found its way back when rumors of Saddam Hussein getting its hand on Stargate were back in the brights. It went further with the notion of attempts being made to make it functional, based on the rigorous studies that were being conducted on this extraterrestrial technology. By the end of the 1990s, people believed that the concerns about Sadam Hussain figuring out the functionalities of the stargate which might further enable him to travel to far-off places and maybe even interact with extraterrestrials and get hands-on technologies that are unfathomable, made the US officials worried. A professor, an Australian historian, and a serious scholar from the American University at Washington DC, Dr. Michael Salla was the first to write an Academic paper on this matter shortly after the Iraq invasion, where Iraqi stargate was said to be the actual reason behind the war.

It doesn’t really stop here as more than a decade in the past, even before the Iraq war had ever started, a Gulf war was fought between the US military and Saddam Hussein in the years 1991. Back then, a piece of astonishing news was published in a Russian newspaper named Pravda about a report that became famous as “Iraq’s Roswell.” The report mentioned a Russian colonel posted in Iraq where he witnessed an air strike by the US Air Force which lead to a takedown of a UFO, as it streaked across the sky. Colonel further reported that he was stunned when he reached the crashed site. He wrote in his report that the aircraft that we had taken down was round in shape and was made of a material he could not recognize as being from Earth. He further mentioned the blast had the best of at least a third of the craft but they were not permitted by the Saudis to lay their hands on any appliances or mechanisms. They, however, still manages to at least see them and were absolutely bewildered to have witnessed whatever they could. Colonel described the aircraft to be relatively small with an approximate diameter of 15 feet. It had space for only three crew members as there were only three chairs that could accommodate aliens of three feet in height only as if it were meant for children. The most incredible mention was that no bodies were found and even more astonishing mention was that nothing resembling an engine could also be discovered at the crash site. On further inquiries done by Colonel on this matter, he learned from the operators at the Saudi radar station that there was no detection of any precrash ejections or any drop of any subject out of the spacecraft. Searches were conducted across the desert with the help of helicopters but no surviving crew members were detected anywhere near the crash site.

If the description given by the colonel was true, then how did the pilots go missing and where did the engine go? Have these been acclaimed by Iraquis even before Saudi, Russian, or American representatives reached the crash site? The news of this incident resurfaced in 2002 - when a caller on an American Show claiming to be military personnel answered that indeed the recoveries were made by the Iraqis and that there were conducting reverse engineering on the Alian tech.

The caller further mentioned that the US government had a notion that the Iraqi scientists were close to a breakthrough and, therefore, it was imperative to put a stop to their operations. A month later Iraq got invaded by the US and the possible reason for it was the technological breakthroughs Iraq was eying upon. Is it possible that it was this reverse engineering tech that the US government retrieved from the national museum before it was robbed by the looters? Perhaps these were only the actual weapons of mass description or a code word for the alien tech and the intentions of the US government were never to lie in the first place. Regardless of whether it is true or not, the question still remains whether that was, “the totality of all wisdom” of Gilgamesh a Stargate, or the alien tech retrieved from the crash site. It seems that there are more secrets to the Iraqi war and the US invasion than what is still known and what we are yet to uncover.