safely assume, had surely existed. The evidence strongly suggests that the person whom the Bible called Adam was the one whom the Sumerians called Adapa, an Earthling "perfected" by Enki and deemed to have been genetically related to him. "Wide understanding Enki perfected for him, to disclose the designs of the Earth; to him he gave Knowing; but immortality he did not give him." "Portions of the "Tale of Adapa" have been found; the complete text might have well been the "Book of the Generations of Adam" to which the Old Testament refers. "....The Book of Genesis relates that the first son of Adam and Eve, Cain, "was a tiller of the earth," and his brother Abel "was a herder of sheep." "Cain had a son whom he named Enoch, and built a city called likewise, the name meaning "Foundation." The Old Testament, having no particular interest in the line of Cain, skips quickly to the fourth generation after Enoch, when Lamech was born. "....The pseudepigraphical Book of Jubilees, believed to have been composed in the second century B.C. from earlier material, adds the information that Cain espoused his own sister Awan and she bore him Enoch "at the close of the fourth Jubilee. And in the first year of the first week of the fifth Jubilee, houses were built on the earth, and Cain built a city and called its name Foundation, after the name of his son." Where did this additional information come from? "It has long been held that this part of the Genesis tale stands alone, without corroboration or parallel in the Mesopotamian texts. But we have found that it is just not so. "First we have come upon a Babylonian tablet in the British Museum (No 74329), catalogued as "containing an otherwise unknown myth." Yet it may in fact be a Babylonian/Assyrian version from circa 2000 B.C. of a missing Sumerian record of the Line of Cain! "As copied by A.R. Millard and translated by W.G. Lambert (Kadmos, vol. VI), it speaks of the beginnings of a group of people who were ploughmen, which correspons to the biblical "tiller of the land." They are called Amakandu - "People Who In Sorrow Roam"; it parallels the condemnation of Cain: "Banned be thou from the soil which hath received thy brother's blood . . . a restless nomad shalt thou be upon the earth." And, most remarkably, the Mesopotamian chief of these exiled people was called Ka'in! He built in Dunnu a city with twin towers Ka'in dedicated to himself the lordship over the city. "....After the death (or murder) of Ka'in, "he was laid to rest in the city of Dunnu, which he loved." As in the biblical tale, the Mesopotamian text records the history of four following generations: brothers married their sisters and murdered their parents, taking over the rulership in Dunnu as well as setting in new places, the last of which was named Shupat ("Judgement"). "....We also find among traditional Assyrian eponyms of royal names the combination Ashur-bel-Ka'ini ("Ashur, lord of the Ka'inites"); and the Assyrian scribes paralleled this with the Sumerian ASHUR-EN.DUNI ("Ashur is lord of Duni"), implying that the Ka'ini ("The people of Kain") and the Duni ("The people of Dun") were one and the same; and thus reaffirming the biblical Cain and Land of Nun or Dun. "Having dealt briefly with the line of Cain, the Old Testament turned its full attention to a new line descended of Adam: "And Adam knew his wife again, and she bore a son, and called his name Seth, for [she said] the Lord hath granted me another offspring instead of Abel, whom Cain had slain." "....The name of Seth's son and the next pre-Diluvial patriarch in which the Bible was interested was Enosh; it has come to mean in Hebrew "Human, Mortal," and it is clear that the Old Testament considered him the progenitor of the human lineage at the core of the ancient chronicles. It states in respect to him, that "It was then that the name of Yahweh began to be called," that worship and priesthood began. "There are a number of Sumerian texts that shed more light on this intriguing aspect. The available portions of the Adapa text state that he was "perfected" and treated as a son by Enki in Enki's city Eridu. It is likely then, as William Hallo (Antediluvian Cities) had suggested that the great-grandson of Enosh was named Yared to mean "He of Eridu." Here, then, is the answer: While the Bible loses interest in the banished descendants of Adam, it focuses its attention on the patriarchs from Adam's line who had stayed in Eden - southern Mesopotamia - and were the first to be called to priesthood. "In the fourth generation after Enosh the firstborn son was named Enoch; scholars believe that here the name's meaning stemmed from a variant of the Hebrew root, connoting "to train, to educate." Of him the Old Testament briefly states that he "had walked with the Deity" and did not die on Earth, "for the Deity had taken him." The sole verse in Genesis 5:24 is substantially enlarged upon in the extra-biblical Books of Enoch. They detail his first visit with the Angels of God to be instructed in various sciences and ethics. Then, after returning to Earth to pass the knowledge and the requisities of priesthood to his sons, he was taken aloft once more, to permanently join the Nefilim (the biblical term meaning "Those Who Had Dropped Down") in their celestial abode.There is another indication of priests who were able to approach the gods: "The Sumerian King Lists record the priestly reign of Enmeduranki in Sippar.... Enmeduranki [was] a prince in Sippar, Beloved of Anu, Enlil and Ea. Shamash in the Bright Temple appointed him. Shamash and Adad [took him] to the assembly [of the gods]. . . They showed him how to observe oil on water, a secret of Anu, Enlil and Ea. They gave him the Divine Tablet, the kibdu secret of Heaven and Earth . . .