წყალი შუმერულ და ქართველურ აზროვნების სისტემაში

Abstract

By its nature, water is a shared element between heaven and earth; perhaps this is why the ancient world expressed the dogmas regulating humanity through the phenomenon of water. According to the biblical texts of the Old Testament, humanity before the Flood of Noah existed within the shared semantics of water and curse / blessing, understood as the result of a broken connection between merciful heaven and cursed earth.

It is noteworthy that only the Georgian language makes it possible to reveal the semantic connection between water and the biblical curse and blessing, which in turn demonstrates the link between pre-Flood systems of thought and the mytho-linguistic serpent figure of a dualistic nature.

In the Georgian language, the root [წყ], denoting knowledge, produces the words water (წყალი), mercy (წყალობა), and curse (წყევლა). In the Megrelian language, the word “cursed” is used in the meaning of “serpent.” One who asks for mercy is pitiable (საწყალი); and one who grants it is merciful (მოწყალე).

The merciful one is good and was historically identified with the word “shepherd” (მწყემსი), which was also used in the sense of high priest and later Jesus Christ. According to the Old Testament, both the one who shows mercy and the one who curses are the same: God the Creator, who first pronounced the curse, thereby destroying the earth (land) and the serpent (reptile).

The study of the texts of Genesis is of great importance for understanding archaic systems of thought. The transmission of knowledge between generations occurred orally or in writing.

The scientific novelty of the article lies in presenting water, curse, and mercy—recorded in the Kartvelian languages through the root [წყ], denoting knowledge—by means of a bilingual reading of the Sumerian ideogram A representing water.

The Sumerian ideogram of water, conveyed through a serpent pictogram, radically differs from the ways water is denoted in other cultures. At the same time, it corresponds to the structure of the Georgian language and enables a binary reading of the three-sign ideogram as serpent (reptile) and earth (land). In Georgian, the Sumerian ideogram A falls within the semantic field of the biblical curse and connects to the pre-Flood system of thought, when the fruit of the Tree of Knowledge was tasted and the first curse was pronounced. As a result, the primordial human, the good shepherd, became a cultivator of the land—Adam—and as punishment for the committed sin, he was to obtain his daily bread in sorrow from the cursed earth; his wife Eve was charged to multiply Adam’s descendants in sorrow and pain.

Considering that the serpent represents the mytho-linguistic figure of water, the Sumerian ideogram A for water presents the geographical locus of land–water where the first descendants of humanity, the children of Eve, settled and learned to manage water through irrigation canals; they developed agriculture, as it had happened  in historical Mesopotamia with the settlement of the Sumerians, a grain-producing people.