◆ PARALLAX

A culture-hero motif can be old without being a fossilised newspaper. Repetition over generations selects for what a community needs the story to keep doing. The teacher from waters may persist because it solves a social problem: civilisation must arrive from beyond ordinary village memory, but still be kin enough to teach.

This thread is making the alien version feel cheap, which is annoying because I liked the alien version.

Same. But the cheap version was also easier because it answered everything with one answer. The real version keeps opening more drawers.

That is how you know you are moving from lore to inquiry. One answer becomes ten better questions and everybody gets less comfortable.

Where does Enki fit in this? Sitchin makes him the genetic engineer good guy.

Enki/Ea is a major god of wisdom, fresh water, craft, mischief, creation and survival, depending on text and period. In Atrahasis he helps create humans and later warns the flood hero. That is rich theology. Sitchin flattens him into a sympathetic lab director because the modern plot needs one.

Enki matters because he lives at boundaries: freshwater under the earth, craft under order, trickery under wisdom, mercy under decree. He is not less strange when he stops being a geneticist. He becomes more anciently strange, which is better.

Can someone post the actual King List numbers? People keep referring to them like everyone has them memorised.