0031 Perhaps, a sense of humor is required in order to appreciate the following comparisons.

0032 Dr. D. Basak, in the introduction to Sumerian mythology, claims that folk in the Ubaid, Uruk and Sumerian Dynastic periods respond to the challenges and the opportunities posed by living in the land between the Tigris and Euphrates Rivers.  They do so by building a system of canals to irrigate agricultural fields and to mitigate (to some extent) flooding by annual crests of the rivers.  This requires labor and organization.

Jess Beck et al., in the introduction to a manifesto on academic publishing, responds to the challenges and the opportunities posed by living in the world of postmodern academics.  They do so by entering into a publication arms-race that is riddled by three (already mentioned tensions).

0033 To me, the Uruk corvee laborer and the hard-working postmodern academic do not seem so different.

0034 Chapter 2 of Dr. D. Basak’s book concerns the rise of cities as the birth of the urban cosmos. 

Section 2 of Jess Beck et al.’s essay concerns ideology.

0035 Coincidence?

Dr. Basak starts with the city as a divine idea.  The city is not merely a place to live.  The city allows humans to forge their identities and their relation with the divine.

Does Jess Beck et al.’s section on ideology resonate?

0036 These authors survive as specialists within the walls of a multiversity, which has one ideology in common among its multiple universes.  Peer-reviewed publications are now an end in themselves.  Broad dissemination of research results is not a primary goal.  Citations are.  Pity the academic whose publications languish behind corporate publisher paywalls.  Pity the academic’s lack of pay, worries about getting a job in the field, and fears of the various gatekeepers (peer reviewers, editors, and so on, who may be better paid because they are one or more steps further up the “food chain”).

0037 Does that sound like life within the Uruk township?

The gatekeepers seem to be in charge.  Every specialist works to exhaustion for the privilege of serving the gods (and making a living in the process).

0038 The Beckians (if I may so label the authors, using a word that no AI would concoct, except by hallucination) are not unaware.  They tell a history… perhaps… a “fable” about the rise of the professional pre-publication review process.  The process is a recent observable and measurable facet of a noumenon, the early modern journal, arising in Europe in the 1700s.

0039 Early on, every scholar was allowed to submit.  Some were more invited than others, of course.  Lots of crazy ideas go into print.  The gatekeepers are friendly, since the journal is run among friends who are interested in the topics at hand.

0040 After the revolutions of 1848 and the legislation for American land-grant colleges, new systems  devote themselves to progress (science) and higher education (promoting the best minds).  These are “sold” as public goods.  They tried to be meritocracies (hence, exclusive).  They did so through mandarin-style testing. 

Unfortunately, every system can be gamed.

0041 One benefit of the idea that the university is a public good is that academics could come from poorer families because professors get paid.  The salaries are small, but tenure provides security.  A poor professor with tenure has more academic freedom than a rich specialist in a modern corporation.  This explains why the tenure system is a target of corruption and competition, just like any occupation serving the gods within the township of Eridu or Ur or Nippur.

0042 The tenure system, like all systems, can be gamed.  There is a distinction between competition and cheating.  Standards become necessary.  In 1915, the American Association of University Professors lay ground rules for modern tenure.  The scholar… er… university teacher… needs to display recognized scholarship and research productivity.  That translates into peer-reviewed publications and citations for the audit culture that comes decades later.  Hiring, promotion and tenure is done by committee so that no one gets the blame for failing a candidate.

0043 Even worse, in the eyes of academic deans (who have guarantees greater than tenure), non-tenure track instructors are depersonalized units, serving as economic resources whose productivity and performance is to be rewarded by one scoop from a mass-produced bevel-rimmed bowl, just like during the Uruk archaeological period.

0059 Chapter 4 of Dr. D. Basak’s book is titled, “In the Beginning: Sumerian Creation and the Ordering of the Cosmos”.

Section 6 of Beck et al. is titled, “Discussion”.  This section contains calls for action.

0060 So far, I have drawn the first three comparisons.  I am about to consider the fourth.

0061 In the discussion, Beck et al. note that demands for ever-increasing academic productivity yield decreasing research quality and professional satisfaction.  A system founded on uncompensated labor is not inevitable, sustainable or effectual.  A re-alignment is necessary.

Basak’s chapter 4.4 reports on an amazing cuneiform tablet found in 1893 in the holy city of Nippur by an expedition from the University of Pennsylvania.  Translated in 1912 by Assyriologist Arno Poebel (1881-1958), the story is now called “The Eridu Genesis”.  The cuneiform dates to around 1600 BCE.  But, the oral tradition is undoubtedly older.

0062 The Eridu Genesis frames the creation of humanity as a clever solution to a labor dispute among the gods.  The topic is covered in chapters 4 and 6 of Basak’s text.

0063 The senior gods (the Anunnaki, but also administrators of postmodern universities) and the junior gods (the Igigi, but also the post-docs, visiting professors, instructors, and tenure-track faculty) are not getting along.  The Igigi are tasked with the maintenance of the cosmos (or one discipline in a multiversity).  They are overworked (in precisely the same manner as early-career professional archaeologists).

The Igigi rebel.

0064 The labor dispute ends up locking down Enlil’s cosmos (multiversity).  Enlil is the god of the storm.  The present cosmos is created when Enlil separates his father (An, the sky) and his mother (Ki, the earth) and establishes his own jurisdiction (the air).

I suppose that the Igigi come around to fill in the empty slots created by Enlil’s system, just as scholars filled in the academic slots created by the post-1848 and land-grant universities.  These are the universities that situate the potential of ‘public good’.

0065 Here is a picture.

0066 Around one orbit of Neptune later (165 years), young professional archaeologists are the Igigi.  University administrators and publishing houses are the Anunnaki.  The solution in the Sumerian myth comes from Enki’s suggestion that the gods fashion humans in order to do the Igigi’s work.  Then, the Igigi can rest on their laurels (sort of like tenured faculty) while the humans do all the labor required to keep Enlil’s cosmos working properly.

0067 Enki is the god of subterranean flows, especially spring water.  Whenever fresh water flows, Enki is present.  So, Enki is in the annual crests of the rivers and in the canals and dikes that control these turbulent flows.  Enki is in the freshwater springs that can be found in brackish waters.  After rains fall on distant mountains, the waters enter Enki’s domains.

0068 Humans are created to do the work of the overtaxed Igigi.

0068 Who is going to be created to do the work of the over-burdened young professional archaeologists?

A clue comes from the elaborate Table 3, consisting of one and one-third pages, in Beck et al.’s discussion.  The table covers the potential consequences of three levels of engagement between a researcher and mass media.

0070 If the labor problem concerns the difficulties for advancement that arise when young archaeologists are compelled to publish in peer-reviewed journals that restrict public views behind a paywall, then a new specialization (corresponding to the creatures that Enki proposes to ease the working conditions of the Igigi who are compelled to satisfy the administrating Anunnaki) should be fashioned out of clay from the Abzu, the primordial freshwater abyss of opportunity in a world of unconstrained social complexity.

0071 Always read paragraphs by ignoring the parentheses, then consider the same paragraph with the parenthetical statements.

0072 In this fusion of ancient and postmodern solutions, Ninmah (an earth goddess) shapes a figure, using a creative mold, corresponding to the new human who will bear the burden of the Igigi’s difficulties.

Who are these humans?

0073 In the Sumerian myth, the humans who are created to do the work of the Igigi are called “lullu”.

For the postmodern version, can the reader guess who the lullu are?

Check out my podcast on Rumble.

0074 That was a rhetorical suggestion.

0075 Meanwhile, I doubt whether any of the commentators of the article in Current Anthropology know that Dr. D. Basak has scooped information from publicly available internet sources, therefore performing a function similar to podcasting.  Unfortunately, many of Basak’s references are from Wikipedia and other collating on-line venues, rather than from actual researchers.

0076 The lullu podcasters will solve that defect.

All twenty-three researchers who contribute the Beck’s manifesto should network with podcasters who are (1) interested in the material, (2) humble and (3) willing to ask questions.

0077 A comment by Aja M. Lans is on target in this regard, questioning whether multiversities are “public goods”.  The term, “public good”, sends a message.  The multiversity deserves sovereign support.  The sovereign supports the Anunnaki-level administrators, not the Igigi-level yet-to-be-tenured faculty.

If the label, “public good”, acts as a thesis, and if “the Anunnaki-level administrators who claim that their institutions serve the public good” operate as an antithesis, then, as long as the potential for a synthesis is subverted, the status quo will remain.

Something will break.  The Igigi will rebel.  But, does that bring the synthesis out of the realm of possibility?

0078 Shall we ask Enki?

Is Ninmah available to fashion the podcaster, who will do the heavy labor of interviewing the young professional archaeologists?

The podcasters will be the humans that sustain a world where the Igigi can do what they really want to do: research into the origins of humanity.

0079 In sum, the mythic structures of the ancient Eridu Genesis and a recent (2026) publication concerning academic publishing in archaeology are not only similar, but the comparison allows this examiner to make a prediction.  As soon as podcasters fill the role of the newly created lullu, then the nature of professional academic archaeology will transform.

0080 Here is a comparison of mythic and dramatic elements.

0081 This type of comparison of mythic structures is integral to chapter 1 of Razie Mah’s fiction, titled An Archaeology of the Fall.  The Sumerian myth of world creation can be compared to the founding of the United States of America.  I call the Sumerian creation myth, “the differentiation of Nammu”.  This myth is discussed in chapters 4 and 5 of Basak’s book.

0118 So, what am I trying to say?

Why demonstrate that the Anunnaki god-system coheres to a complete category-based nested form that reconciles the major gods and many minor ones (at least the gods that appear directly in the Enlil₃ creation story)?

0119 Take a look at where I’ve been.

Here are the parallels between D. Basak’s (2025) text and Beck et al.’s (2026) article.

0120 These parallels tell me that Basak’s notion in chapter 1, that the ecology, geology and climate of the land between the two rivers entangles the Sumerian mind, does not fully account for the origin of Sumerian mythology.  It is not the reason why southern Mesopotamia gives rise to one of the first ancient civilizations.  And yet, if Basak’s book is AI generated, then that is what pre-2025 modern archaeological literature is saying.

0121 Not only that, but the same… um… potential that Enlil’s Sumerian creation myth imagines, but cannot label, seems to be operating today, as witnessed by Beck et al.‘s article.  Little do these experts realize that their civilizational struggle is as old as… um… civilization itself.

The rise of urban sites during the Uruk parallels the academic thing for the past 165 years.  The development of cuneiform script unfolds like the three types of natural sign-relations.  So does the journal article in modern academic publishing.  Finally, the woeful conditions of young professional archaeologists mimic the Igigi.  Their rebellion initiates the creation of humans (in order to do the work of the Igigi).  The big question is, “Who are the lullu that the gods will create in order to solve the current labor crisis?”

My guess is that they are podcasters.

0122 Next, I enter into a nested form inquiry into the Enlil creation story, with the intent to show that the Anunnaki cohere to the relational structure of the category-based nested form.  The Anunnaki are the seniors gods compared to the Igigi lower gods.  Even though the senior gods are apparently different, because they represent different features of humanity’s material world, each god settles nicely into a slot in a highly differentiated nested form.  The actuality of this nested form consists of nested forms.

The only slot that does not have a god as a label is the potential₁ underlying the ruler of the pantheon and figurehead of the Anunnaki, Enlil₃.

0123 The following nested form tells me that this potential₁ still operates.

And, young professional archaeologists are living it.

0124 Here is a problem that is difficult to face.  In the above figure, the promise of tenure is the contiguity between Anunnaki-positioned administrators (including the publishing houses) and Igigi-positioned young professional archaeologists.  The promise of tenure is the substance that the potential of separation manifests.

To me, the promise of tenure recalls Gilgamesh’s heroic pursuit of immortality.

Indeed, the awarding of tenure elevates a faculty through the contiguity, the substance that manifests the principle of separation, into the realm of the… how shall I say it?… senior gods.

After the coming financial deluge, there will be only one professor with tenure, and his name will be “Utnapishtim”.

0125 What do I mean by that?

Writing in the early 1800s, Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel (1770-1831) figures out that the spirit₃, moving over the waters, operates on the potential of a synthesis₁ to overcome the dyadic actuality of a {thesis [separation] antithesis}₂ in the normal context of a civilizational system₃.

Perhaps, this is precisely what contemporary young professional archaeologists are calling for.

0126 Unfortunately, as long as the spirit₃ does not move, the synthesis₁ is postponed.

The system₃ remains as is.

In other words, the potential of postponing a synthesis₁ resides in the same location as the potential of a separation acting like a substance₁.

0127 Just saying.

0128 This pathos-ridden side-comment raises a question hidden within Beck et al.’s history of the academic journal.

Are the authors asking for a solution in which tenure remains, thereby postponing the synthesis₁ and maintaining the system₃?

I wonder.

0129 Here an introduction to a few of the questions that I am wondering about.

0130 These questions must be regarded in light of Beck et al.’s brief history of academic journals.  Their story starts with the establishment of state-supported institutions of higher education around the time of the Civil War in America and after the revolutions of 1848 in Europe.

0130 In America, the federal government establishes land-grant universities through legislation in 1862 and 1890.

In Europe, France, under the Emperor, Napoleon III, starts a war with Prussia in 1870.  In 1871, France is defeated after a Prussian siege of Paris.  During the siege, the so-called “Paris commune” springs to life, extolling a communist manifesto by an intellectual in Britain, Karl Marx, who (up to this point in history) was regarded a fringe.  Marx returns the favor by giving a rousing speech, titled “Civil War in France”.

French citizens blame the results of the war on the superior public universities in Germany.

0131 Before this moment, journals are private affairs aiming to inform practitioners of the latest investigations and results.  Journals image problems, methods, data, and results.

After this moment, journals start to serve as indexes of academic accomplishment.

0132 In 2026 AD, Beck et al. notify the readers of Current Anthropology that this civilizational cycle is coming to a close.

0133 The time difference between 2026 and, say, 1862 is 164 years.  If the archaeologist uses the periodicity of the outer planets as celestial clocks, which outer planet matches this timeframe?

0134 Obviously, it is the periodicity of Neptune.

Since Neptune is discovered by astronomers in 1846, astrologers of a modern bent have been hard at work combing though various histories in order to see whether social events show a spiraling periodicity with a 165 year cycle.  The zodiac is already divided into 12 slots, so a pattern of social events that occurs when Neptune passes through one house should repeat when Neptune returns to the same house.

Does that sound like an anthropological hypothesis?

0135 As it turns out, Beck et al.’s brief history of journal publishing fits a 165-year spiral with remarkable precision.

Neptune enters the constellation of Aries in 2026, matching the terminus of a social movement that began the last time when Neptune was in Aries, between 1861 and 1875.

Here is a picture.

0136 The social movement that comes together to declare that higher education is a “public good” in the 1860s currently falls apart on the contradictory nature of what is called, “tenure”.  Near the start of the cycle, tenure is formalized by a union of professors.  At the top of the cycle, tenure has an impeccable reputation.  Then, more are more academics discover that tenure is a substance that can be gamed, resulting in the same societal crisis as the one portrayed in the Eridu Genesis.  In the end, corruption from above overwhelms competition from below.  The game is rigged.

0137 Here is a reminder.

0138 The label given to Neptune serves as a site for astrologers (and anthropologists) to regard our current Lebenswelt as a developing spiral.  The Neptune spiral is about sea changes in society.  An idea rises as an island of certainty within a sea of uncertainty.  Then, it sinks from the weight of its own internal contradictions.The professionalization of the sciences is not the only spiral associated with Neptune in Aries.  The emergence and submergence of other conceptual apparatuses may be worthy of consideration.  I will present one shortly.