The novel is one of the first to explore ideas of artificial intelligence, as influenced by Darwin's recently published On the Origin of Species (1859) and the machines developed out of the Industrial Revolution (late 18th to early 19th centuries). Specifically, it concerns itself, in the three-chapter "Book of the Machines", with the potentially dangerous ideas of machine consciousness and self-replicating machines."
Nimrod, AR. wonder why pike settled there? some kind of ark ? https://www.gilberthouse.org/wp-content/uploads/2014/10/Nimrod_and_Scottish_Rite.pdf
Lagash, located northwest of the junction of the Tigris and Euphrates rivers, was one of the oldest cities
of the Ancient Near East and played an important role in the history of Mesopotamia. It was the center
of one of the first verifiable empires in history, conquering all of Sumer around 2500 B.C. Interestingly,
Lagash filled a power vacuum left by the decline of Uruk, which the Bible informs us was the “beginning
of [Nimrod’s] kingdom.”
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The religious center of Lagash was a temple called the Eninnu devoted to the god Ningirsu, or Ninurta
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(Nin Ur, or “God of War”). Ninurta remained popular in the cosmology of Sumer, Akkad, Babylon,
and Assyria for millennia; two Assyrian kings were named TukultiNinurta, and Ashurnasirpal II built a
temple to Ninurta in his new capital city of Calah around 880 B.C. Several hundred years later, during
the NeoBabylonian and early Persian empires, the character of Ninurta was apparently fused with that
of the war god Nergal.
Why is this significant? First, scholars draw clear parallels between the god Ninurta/Ningirsu and the
shadowy figure named Nimrod (derived from the Hebrew marad, “to rebel” ). And second,
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Ningirsu was often represented as, or accompanied by, a lionheaded (and singleheaded) eagle called
Imdugud or Anzû.
Apparently it is this icon thhat the Scottish Rite connects its symbol of ultimate achievement