Journeys to the Mythical Past

by Zecharia Sitchin

  That Msgr. Balducci’s analytical approach—of building his conclusions upon a foundation of earlier Church theological opinions—was a traditional Catholic methodology, became evident as my group arrived in Rome and we went to the Vatican—with the group to the various publicly accessible parts, and I additionally to the hallowed Vatican Library for a private meeting with its director.

  Rome has always evoked in me a feeling that there is more to the city’s roots that links it to the ancient lands—more, and earlier, than the known chapters of the Punic Wars with the Phoenicians of Carthage (second century B.C.), the conquest of the Near East and Egypt in the first century B.C., and the subsequent fateful events in Judea and Jerusalem that lie at the core of Christianity.

  Names, numbers, and tales associated with Rome and Roman history nagged at my sense of historical connections: According to the Roman historian Virgil, Rome’s first settlers were refugees from Troy—i.e., people from Asia Minor. Twelve of their kings ruled there for three centuries. The last of those kings, afraid of the twins Romulus and Remos (sons born to a daughter of a murdered king) ordered the infants thrown into the river to die—a tale that echoes the Sumerian story of Sargon of Akkad and the biblical story of Pharaoh and Moses. When they grew up (suckled by a she-wolf ), Romulus killed Remos (the tale of Cain and Abel) and, guided by a divine omen, ploughed a furrow around the Palatine Hill and founded there the settlement that was named after him, “Rome”—a city built on seven hills. Both seven and twelve were key numbers in Sumer and in the Bible.

  And then there is the Vatican itself, with its links to the twelve Apostles; with St. Peter’s basilica built, like the earlier temple of Solomon in Jerusalem, as an equinoctial temple facing precisely east (fig. 82a, b); with an Egyptian obelisk in the center of St. Peter’s round plaza which is marked off to indicate the twelve houses of the Zodiac. The links to the ancient past, on the other side of the Mediterranean Sea, are all over the place.

  Historians speak of the societal organization in the ancient Near East as that of “city-states.” Nowadays, the Vatican is that kind of entity: It is a state within a state (Italy) and a city within a city (Rome), surrounded by its own defensive wall (fig. 83), a status arranged by a treaty signed in 1929. People are unaware of that as the tour buses unload them in St. Peter’s Plaza and they flock, unhindered, to St. Peter’s basilica. But come to the entrance that leads to the Apostolic Palace (as I and my wife did to reach the Library), and you go through Passport Control exactly as when you reach an international border . . .

  Figure 82

  The Vatican Museums, public entry to which is from a side street, consist of a series of galleries housed in various sections of buildings that also serve as papal palaces—residences and administrative offices; fig. 84 lists the main collections and shows their locations.

  The sheer size, variety, and profusion of exhibits in the museums require at least several days to be fully seen, appreciated, and understood. We had to skip a good deal, and only went to the Egyptian Museum which also includes some Mesopotamian objects, spent time in the Etruscan Museum—the mysterious pre-Roman Italians whose writing emulates the ancient Hebrew alphabet, and—passing through the Pinacoteca, a gallery of paintings and tapestries from the eleventh to the nineteenth centuries—made our way to the unique Sistine Chapel.

  Figure 83

  Figure 84

  The Sistine Chapel, built between 1475 and 1481 and part of the Apostolic Palace, originally served as the papal prayer chapel and is where the Sacred College of Cardinals are sequestered to deliberate and elect a new Pope. From the very beginning, it was built and decorated to evoke Jerusalem and the Old Testament. Rectangular in shape, the chapel measures 40.93 meters long and 13.41 meters wide (about 135 by 44 feet)—duplicating, it has been claimed, the exact measurements of Solomon’s Temple in Jerusalem. The walls and ceiling of the chapel are covered with religious-theme frescoes painted by the leading late fifteenth and early sixteenth centuries Renaissance painters. While the wall frescoes are devoted to scenes from the life of Moses and Jesus, most famous are those on the arched ceiling by Michelangelo that depict scenes from the biblical book of Genesis.

  We were in luck, for this famous chapel was closed for a long time for the renovation of its world-renowned frescoes, and was reopened to public entry by Pope John Paul II in time for the Millennium Year 2000, just months before our Expedition to Italy. We could thus go in, and view the famed paintings in their restored original colors.

  The most famous, most copied, and most insightful frescoes are Michelangelo’s scenes from Genesis—including the majestic Creation of Adam (plate 30). Painted by him so as to be located precisely above the altar, it depicts the Creator—God—in a wholly anthropomorphic shape, outstretching his right hand in order to impart to the already existing Earthling (which is what “Adam” literally means in Hebrew) the divine element that differentiates Homo sapiens from other creatures (including earlier hominids).

  This is a most profound understanding of the tale in Genesis of the Creation of Man by the Elohim—a term usually translated “God” but which is most definitely plural—who decided to fashion the Adam “in our image and after our likeness” (as Genesis 1:26 states). Amazingly, it is an understanding of the biblical tale that is in accord with the Sumerian creation texts about the genetic engineering by the Anunnaki that advanced Man from an existing primitive hominid to the intelligent Homo sapiens.

  In those texts, as elaborated in my books The 12th Planet and Genesis Revisited, the genetic feat was attained by Enki, assisted by the goddess Ninharsag and his son Ningishzidda, whose Sumerian name literally meant “Lord/god of the Tree of Life.” I have therefore found it highly significant that the adjoining scene painted on the ceiling by Michelangelo, The Expulsion from the Garden of Eden fresco (the story of Eve and the Serpent), depicts the Serpent as an anthropomorphic being emerging out of an entwined Tree of Knowing (fig. 85).

  These depictions are interpretations of the biblical tale that go way beyond the mere understanding that the Bible’s Hebrew term Nachash (translated “serpent”) can also mean “a Diviner” and “He who unveils secrets”—epithets of Enki, who in a second genetic manipulation gave the sterile hybrids Adam and Eve “Knowing”—the biblical term for the ability to procreate. His Egyptian name, Ptah, was unmistakenly written by a hieroglyph that depicts Entwined Serpents—the double-helix DNA as we have seen earlier in the Turin museum (see fig. 76).

  All of this echoes not “Bible belt” dogma but the ancient Sumerian sources!

  Unlike the paintings in the Pinacoteca, which can be shifted and hung either here or there or altogether removed, these frescoes (murals painted directly on wet plaster) are permanent depictions. There is no way that the Popes of that time would have allowed depictions that do not conform to Church theology, so they represented the official tenets of the Vatican in regard to these themes. That the profound insights expressed in these frescoes reach all the way back to the sources—the Sumerian sources—of the Hebrew Bible is truly mind-boggling; it can also explain why Msgr. Balducci relied in his statements on a cardinal’s words from the fifteenth century—the very time of the Sistine Chapel’s paintings.

  Figure 85

  There are, I have found out in my Vatican Encounters, other timing “coincidences” that boggle the mind.

  It was because of the amazing “Sumerian insights” in the Sistine Chapel (which I have visited twice before) that I asked my Italian publisher to use his personal contacts to get me into the Vatican Library. It was part of my effort—naive as it was—to get a glimpse, any glimpse possible, of what has been persistently rumored to have been vast secret treasures in the Vatican—not just treasures in the gold-silver-jewelry sense, but a wealth of artifacts and documents of archaeological, historical, and even pre-historical value.

  For two millennia, Roman generals and emperors, Church emissaries, powerful patrons paying homage, and generations of pilgrims have brough
t to the Vatican precious works of art, rare artifacts, and book and manuscript collections from all over the world—including the ancient lands. Some were gifts, some were booty—as often as not taken from the sacred sites and temples of other peoples, such as the sacred candelabra and other ritual objects from the Temple in Jerusalem (which are depicted on the Arch of Titus, fig. 86).

  Where are all these relics and priceless documents? While some are on view in the Vatican’s public and private areas, where are the rest of them? The Vatican Library and Museums are part of the answer; but the bulk have ended up stored in the cellars and underground chambers and corridors below the Vatican’s buildings; and some of those objects and documents—so the rumors persistently go—attest the most explosive secrets . . .

  Figure 86

  Could they include secrets concerning the Extraterrestrials of whom Msgr. Balducci—and the earlier authorities he had quoted—have spoken, and the Anunnaki and their planet of whom I have written?

  The Vatican Apostolic Library was established in 1448 by Pope Nicholas V when he combined earlier papal collections of Greek, Latin, and Hebrew codices with his own collection of manuscripts, including old ones from the Church library in the rival Constantinople; it was a reach backward to some of the most ancient sources of religion and beliefs . . . In time, other collections were added by varied means, and nowadays the Library holds some 80,000 manuscripts (handwritten books) and over a million printed books, in addition to hundreds of papyri and parchment scrolls.

  The Library is housed in a wing of the group of buildings that also house the Vatican Museums and the Sistine Chapel, but is reached from inside the Vatican (after Passport Control). My meeting there was with Dr. Ambrogio Piazzoni, a lay Director of the institution. He invited me and my wife to his office, and gave us a general explanation of the library and how it functions. You come highly recommended, he said, so we will gladly issue to you a Research Permit to come and work here anytime you wish.

  I thanked him and asked to see some of the stuff they keep, and he led me to see the stacks, with their rows of shelves laden with books and documents; there were also closed boxes piled up. How old are the oldest you have? I asked. Fourth century or so, he answered. A.D.? I asked to make it clear; Yes, of course, he said. That is from the official beginning of Roman Christianity, I said—the Emperor Constantine, the Council of Nicaea; but I heard that you also have gospels and manuscripts from the beginning of Christianity? Ah, Yes, he answered—but they are not included in the catalogue, so they are not available to outside researchers . . .

  What about Hebrew manuscripts—I understand that some were in the very first collection, I asked. Yes, he answered, we in fact collaborate with the Hebrew University in Jerusalem in studying and publishing some of them. When I was in Prague, I said, I was amazed to see books from the Middle Ages in Hebrew, some handwritten, some printed, dealing with astronomy; do you have any here? We’ll have to check the astronomy section, he answered—we have quite a collection, including the actual oldest log records of the Vatican Observatory. Could the original Hebrew manuscripts you have be ones dealing with astronomy? I asked. He wasn’t sure.

  We then talked about another kind of document from antiquity—tablets, inscribed objects, depictions. As an example of my interests, I told him of the Pontifical Biblical Institute in Jerusalem and the good cooperation I received from the Jesuit priests there in my search for the artifacts from the site in Jordan connected to the prophet Elijah. When the Church is involved, where do all such finds end up? I asked. He explained that they come under the jurisdiction of the museum’s people in the archaeological department. I am awaiting word when I could also meet with them, I said. Well, maybe they will show you some things from behind the scenes, he said with a smile.

  That other meeting did not take place, and I saw no point in going again to the Vatican Library, with no chance of seeing what is deliberately kept unseen. But before leaving Rome, I went back to the Sistine Chapel and stared again at its frescoes, studying them slowly and carefully; the answer, I felt, has to be there. The walls were covered with paintings devoted to Moses and Jesus—the one who received the Ten Commandments from God, the other who Christians believe was taken to Heaven and will return; angels hovered everywhere. The ceiling told the Genesis stories of Creation, showing God in a heavenly cloud extending His hand to Adam.

  There seemed to be a powerful message to the cardinals as they assemble to elect a new Pope: God and His angels are Extraterrestrials.

  My conversation with the Vatican Library director reminded me that there is yet another mystery there—the Vatican Observatory.

  That the Vatican has had an astronomical observatory is no secret; that it operates a sophisticated array of telescopes in the United States—in Tucson, Arizona—is a little-known fact, but not a secret. The fact that the observatory has been operated by Jesuits—priests of the same order that runs the archaeologically oriented Pontifical Biblical Institute in Jerusalem—has only deepened the aura of mystery and my curiosity.

  The Observatory’s founding is attributed to Pope Gregory XIII (1572–1585) who ordered an observation tower to be erected. Called the Tower of the Winds and located next to the Vatican Library, the still-standing tower has in its center a marble plate surrounded by the twelve signs of the Zodiac. A ceiling hole in the south lets the Sun’s rays strike a meridian line on the floor; learned Jesuit priests assembled by the Pope, by charting the Sun’s movements within the zodiacal circle, calculated how far the then in use Julian calendar—so called because it was introduced in Roman times by Julius Caesar—strayed from the astronomical reality. The result was the wiping of ten days off October 1582 and the introduction of a new (and current) Gregorian Calendar. Jesuit priests have been in charge of the Observatory ever since.

  In 1780 the then head of the Vatican Library converted the upper part of the tower to an observatory, equipped it with the best instruments of the time, and appointed the priest Filippo Luigi Gilil, a scientist versed in archaeology and Hebrew, to be its director. It was he who replicated the meridian line and the zodiacal circle on a greater scale in St. Peter’s Square, using the Egyptian obelisk there for a gnomon’s shadow.

  In the 1930s the Observatory moved to its present official site, Castel Gandolfo, the Pope’s summer residence in the mountains southeast of Rome. In 1993, the Vatican erected its main telescopes on Mount Graham in Arizona, in collaboration with the University of Arizona in Tucson. It is equipped with the most sophisticated telescopic equipment. And the question that has intrigued me has been this: Why would the Vatican have its own astronomical observatory? What need does the Church have to observe the heavens?

  An answer of sorts was provided at an international gathering of astronomers and astrophysicists at the Vatican in May 2000, held as part of the Holy Year 2000 celebrations. Welcoming the scientists in St. Peter’s Basilica, Pope John Paul II offered his views on Religion and Science by stating that scientific research “is a genuine way to arrive at the source of all truth revealed to us in the Scriptures.”

  Press reports were more informative: “For five days 250 astrophysicists will discuss the birth and growth of “islands of stars” of which the visible universe seems to be populated; parallel to the official theme, informal discussions range from the Big Bang to extraterrestrial civilizations.” But a leading Vatican astronomer was even more specific, as press headlines reported: “EXTRATERRESTRIALS EXIST AND THEY ARE OUR BROTHERS” (fig. 87).

  This sounded very much like Msgr. Balducci speaking . . . But the headline-grabbing statement, it was reported, was made by Father José Funes, a Jesuit priest with a degree in astrophysics and one of the luminaries of the Vatican Observatory. I managed to locate him at the Observatory’s address in Arizona, told him briefly that “central to my writings has been a conclusion that a planet called Nibiru by the Sumerians is a post-Plutonian planet belonging to our Solar system,” and asked for information about the work and purposes o
f the Observatory.

  Figure 87

  Father Funes, by then on his way to Argentina for a year, was quite courteous, and we exchanged several letters; but the only information I received from him was the official printed “Annual Report 2000” of the Observatory. There was nothing in it that directly related to the bombshell statements at the international conference, in so far as actual telescopic observations were reported; but the Jesuit staff ’s researches pertaining to “The Evolution of Life,” and to “Cosmic Destiny and Human Destiny” sounded intriguing. In a listing of public writings and lectures by the Observatory’s Director, Father George V. Coyne, the focus of its efforts was made clear: “The evolution of Intelligent Life on Earth and possibly elsewhere.”

  That, coupled with Father Funes’ headline declaration, suggest that Msgr. Balducci’s statements stemmed from a wide-based approach in the Vatican under Pope John Paul II. But all that still left unanswered the specific question:

  What exactly is the Observatory looking for on behalf of the Vatican?

  10

  STARGAZERS AND SKYMAPS

  Long before the Vatican had an observatory manned by Jesuit priests, the Sumerians had theirs—ziggurats manned by astronomer priests (fig. 88); and long before Copernicus (defying the Vatican!) had determined in the sixteenth century A.D. that Earth is a member of a planetary system with the Sun in its center, the Sumerians had known it to be so. They even depicted it so 4,500 years ago.

  The Sumerians, whose civilization blossomed out in Mesopotamia some 6,000 years ago, are credited with a host of “firsts” that have remained essential to an advanced society. The wheel, the brick, high-rise buildings, the kiln, mathematics, astronomy, law codes, contracts (including for marriage and divorce), kingship, religion, writing—these are just a few of the more than one hundred Firsts on the list. Their cuneiform script (fig. 89) remained in use almost to the time of Jesus; and what they described in words was often depicted pictorially on cylinder seals (fig. 90). Cut from stones and measuring on the average about an inch in height, the engraved cylinders served as precursors of the modern roller printing press: the artist engraved in the stone the desired depiction in reverse, as a negative, which left a positive image when rolled on wet clay. They are called cylinder seals because that was their prime purpose: To serve as a king’s or VIP’s personal seal, with which to stamp clay documents or clay containers.