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Chapter 1 & 2

chapter 3

The Eyes Have It

"The Better To See You With  My  Dear"

                                         B.B. Wolf          

They've been giving me the evil eye for some time now, these gypsum rock statues carved by Sumerians some five thousand years ago.

I sit transfixed in their presence, like a cat trapped at bay.  Their hauntingly compelling gaze mesmerizes, as if some hidden force is still alive within the stone.  They are solemnly spiritual and eerily estranged from human emotion.   Their silent, unflinching vigil records every move we make, every action, right or wrong.  Do they then report to a higher force the follies of man? 

They were found carefully buried in the floor of the Temple of Abu, in a land that was sacred for millennia.  Why they were laid to rest in the sanctuary floor is unknown.

The tallest of the statues is 30" high, with eyes like black saucers shimmering in the moonlight. 

The eyes have always been portals to the soul, a direct path to the mind and emotions of man.  The Sumerians may have been capitalizing on that fact by giving their icons surreal eyes with pupils made of lapis lazuli or black limestone. 

The Sumerians may have been trying to depict all-seeing, all-knowing deities.  Some people have speculated that the statues are prayer statuettes offering up prayers for the supplicants.  Perhaps the sculptors of Sumer were honoring otherworldly humanoids that brought them the knowledge to build their great city-states, dikes and irrigation systems.

Information on the Sumerians is sketchy at best.  They seem to have flourished on a crescent of fertile land between the Tigris and Euphrates Rivers.   Their origin is unknown.  Their language bears no likeness to any other on our planet.

What survives of their works tells us it must have been a monumental time to be alive.  Only the Pyramids of Egypt rivaled their great Ziggurats.

So well-organized were their construction efforts that they challenged not only the laws of physics, but they directly confronted the Holy Laws set down for man.   A biblical account of one of their escapades leaves us no doubt that they were master organizers and builders, for they attempted to reach the stars with their Tower of Babel.