>>510425039
the dating method is still not reliable, carbon dating isnt as precise as you think
>>510425056
Ea, Enlil, Ninurta and all ancient deities, were the planets, they were the names by which the planets were called, and, yes, with but few exceptions, and shorn of embellishments, every reference to these deities were references to the planets they not only symbolized, but which they actually stood for.
as I have already show in a previous post, the earliest known sign for deity in Sumerian, which is the earliest written language that we know of, is strictly that of a star.
In fact, the very determinative for "god," called "dingir", in Sumerian cuneiform features a star.
In the most archaic period the determinative dingir was associated with astral deities only.
And yet, when one remembers the vast number of deities believed in by any one ancient nation that ancient texts enumerate, the mind begins to boggle.
In the cuneiform tablets discovered at Ebla alone, there are something like five hundred different deities mentioned.
But even this pales to insignificance when compared to a list of Sumerian deities which includes more than five thousand names.
How can all these deities be made to account for the planets, which are only five in number, that are visible to the naked eye?
This is due to various factors.
For one thing, seeing that each planet was imbued with different attributes, each one of these attributes was often encumbered with an additional descriptive name.
For another, besides the planets themselves, planetary phenomena were also deified independently of whichever planet produced the phenomena.
But mainly the complexity is due to the fact that the planets were named independently by different peoples who then amalgamated into ever bigger congregations, into tribes, races, civilizations, and finally nations.
In the end, the same planets became known by a multitude of names, the same that now bewilder us.