Brilliant:
Sumerians Look On In Confusion As God Creates World
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"I do not understand," reads an ancient line of pictographs depicting the sun, the moon, water, and a Sumerian who appears to be scratching his head. "A booming voice is saying, 'Let there be light,' but there is already light. It is saying, 'Let the earth bring forth grass,' but I am already standing on grass."
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Historians believe that, immediately following the biblical event, Sumerian witnesses returned to the city of Eridu, a bustling metropolis built 1,500 years before God called for the appearance of dry land, to discuss the new development. According to records, Sumerian farmers, priests, and civic administrators were not only befuddled, but also took issue with the face of God moving across the water, saying that He scared away those who were traveling to Mesopotamia to participate in their vast and intricate trade system.
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"These two people made in his image do not know how to communicate, lack skills in both mathematics and farming, and have the intellectual capacity of an infant," one Sumerian philosopher wrote. "They must be the creation of a complete idiot."
http://www.theonion.com/content/news/sumerians_look_on_in_confusion_as
Fantastic!
The Onion is, as usual, better informed than most and there is more to this story than meets the eye at first.
The god of Israel was indeed first revered by the Sumerians as one of many city gods and only later did Semitic tribes, who copied almost anything the Sumerians did, take to worshipping Sumerian gods. (Egyptian gods are unrelated to the Semitic pantheon.)
All this happened between 8000 and 6000 years ago. In fact "Eden" is a Sumerian word meaning "steppe" (although it means "delight" in Hebrew) and the "garden" is believed to have been located in today's Persian Gulf which was back then still somewhat dry and fertile land just south of the Sumerian kingdoms.
Legends about Eden can be found in Hebrew and Sumerian mythology.
Related interesting tidbit: the word "paradise" and its many versions, originally perhaps Iranian, is probably the oldest word that exists as a loan word from several languages into several languages all through Semitic and Indo-European languages. It exists in Hebrew as "pardes" (orchard), in Akkadian as "pardesum" and in Arabic as "firdaus" (classical Arabic only has the fricative of the p/f sound).
The English version "paradise" derives via French via Greek via Hebrew via Akkadian from an ancient Iranian language over 4000 years ago.