Oannes

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

This article does not cite any references or sources. (August 2006)
Please help improve this article by adding citations to reliable sources. Unverifiable material may be challenged and removed.

This article may require cleanup to meet Wikipedia's quality standards.
Please improve this article if you can. (July 2007)

Oannes was the name given by the Babylonian writer Berossus in the 3rd century BC to a mythical being who taught mankind wisdom.

Berossus describes Oannes as having the body of a fish but underneath the figure of a man. He is described as dwelling in the Persian Gulf, and rising out of the waters in the daytime and furnishing mankind instruction in writing, the arts and the various sciences.

Once thought to be based on the ancient Babylonian god Ea, it is now known that Oannes is in fact based on Uan (Adapa) - the first of the seven antediluvian sages or Abgallu (in Sumerian Ab=water, Gal=Great, Lu=man), who were sent by Ea to deliver the arts of civilization to mankind in ancient Sumerian mythology, at Eridu, the oldest city of Sumer.

Stephanie Dalley in her translation of Myths from Mesopotamia (Oxford World's Classics 1989) places Oannes as Greek formation of Uan and relates the god the name Adapa.

Some scholars suggest the Abgallu were seafarers aboard a ship from the Indus River Valley/Mohenjo Daro civilization^{[citation needed]} comparable in age to ancient Sumer and has some identified parallels to the Sumerian knowledge base (like Base-6 mathematics, irrigation systems/water management engineering and mud-brick cities). Traders often organized trading ports in distant places to easily find both markets with goods accumulated and a safe place to resupply/refit their ships (similarly to the Vikings' development of Dublin and Moscow, the Conquistadors in the Americas, Portuguese Macao, Dutch New Amsterdam, British Hong Kong, Spanish Manila). An interesting theory on the fish appearance would be some sort of chain mail or sewn discs (wood, metal, bone, seashell?) worn as armor in most cultures.