de from clay mixed with the blood of a sacrificed god (We-ila), man would be a mixture of the divine and human. We-ila's identity and nature remain obscure, and perhaps his name is a deliberate distortion of the word for man, awilum. Enki opened his mouthAnd addressed the great gods,"On the first, seventh, and fifteenth day of the monthI will make a purifying bath.Let one god be slaughteredSo that all the gods may be cleansed in a dipping.Let Nintu mix clay,That god and manMay be thoroughly mixed in the clay". These instructions were then carried out, as is related in an almost word-for-word repetition of the instructions. Purifying baths for the god to be sacrificed took place on the 1st, 7th, and 15th days of the lunar month. Though they were not exactly chronological weeks, these quarters of the moon are relatively close in length. The god's execution and the Creation of man apparently followed directly after the purifying bath on the 15th day of the month. This places man's creation at the end of one lunar quarter or ''week.'' Similarly the biblical creation of man took place on the 6th day of a 7-day week. Sabattu appears to have been the day in which We-ila was killed and his blood mixed with clay. This was the great initiating point in man's creation, though more steps in this process remained to be accomplished. The clay/blood mixture ensured that man would be a combination of the divine and human. In a sense, therefore, man was created on sabattu. In Genesis man was created on the day before abbat, but this difference is much less important than the over-arching connection between sabattu/abbat and the creation of man. It is unlikely that such a specific linkage occurred in both accounts by chance. Both accounts can be traced to the same basic conception, which was known to both cultures.Therefore the idea of the link between Sabbath and the Creation of man can now be found in an extra-biblical source from the first half of the...
