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There Were Giants Upon the Earth

Page 8

by Zechariah Sitchin


  One cannot fail to note that WB-444 does not mention the hero of the Deluge, Ziusudra, among the eight kings it names. Embracing the cities and reigns from the start in Eridu to the deluvial finale in Shuruppak, its list ends with Ubar-Tutu and not with Ziusudra; but as tablet XI of the Epic of Gilgamesh clearly stated, the hero of the Deluge, Utnapishtim/Ziusudra, was the last ruler of Shuruppak, and he was the son and successor of Ubar-Tutu.

  Various discoveries of other complete or fragmented similar tablets (such as UCBC 9-1819, Ni-8195, Baghdad 63095) leave no doubt that a canonized text, from which copies and copies of copies were made, did exist in regard to the pre-Diluvial Cities of the Gods and their rulers; and in the course of such copying, errors and omissions took place. One such little-known tablet is kept in a private collection in the Karpeles Manuscript Library Museum in Santa Barbara, California. It too names 8 kings in 5 cities, but its different reign lengths add up to "10 great Sars + 1 Sar + 600 x 5," which equals only 222,600 years.

  The glaring omissions of Ziusudra are corrected in another tablet (British Museum K-11624). Called by some scholars The Dynastic Chronicle, it lists 9 kings in the first five cities, again with somewhat different Sar numbers—Alulim 10 (= 36,000), Alalgar 3 (= 10,800) instead of 28,800, and so on—but correctly ending with two kings in Shuruppak: Ubartutu with 8 Sars (= 28,800 years) and Ziusudra with 18

  Sars (= 64,800 years). This tablet adds after the total of "5 cities, 9 kings, 98 Sars" (= 352,800 years) a brief explanations for the Deluge: "Enlil took a dislike to mankind; the clamor they made kept him sleepless" ...

  The tablet that gives the most accurate list of ten rulers, matching the Berossus list, is the Ashmolean Museum's tablet WB-62; its Sar units for the pre-Diluvial list parallel the Saros units of Berossus, though with different individual reign periods. It differs from WB-444 in listing not five but six cities, adding the city of Larsa (and with it two rulers) to the pre-Diluvial list—resulting in the full ten rulers, and ending correctly with Ziusudra at Deluge time. A comparison of WB-62 with the Greek fragments of Berossus (converting Sars/Saros to numbers of years) points strongly to this version as his principal source:

  WB-62 Berossus

  Alulim

  67,200

  Aloros

  36,000

  Alalgar

  72,000

  Alaparos

  10,800

  [En]kidunu

  72,000

  Amelon

  46,800

  [... ]alimma

  21,600

  Ammenon

  43,200

  Dumuzi

  28,800

  Megalaros

  64,800

  Enmenluanna

  21,600

  Daonos

  36,000

  Ensipzianna

  36,000

  Euedorachos

  64,800

  Enmeduranna

  72,000

  Amempsinos

  36,000

  Sukurlam (?)

  28,800

  Ardates

  (or Obartes)

  28.800

  Ziusudra

  36,000

  Xisuthros

  64,800

  Ten rulers

  456,000

  Ten kings

  120 Shars = 432,000

  Which of the various tablets that we have reviewed is the most accurate? The one that ends in Shuruppak and includes Ziusudra and his father/predecessor is plausibly the most reliable; with them, the list has ten pre-Diluvial rulers in six Cities of the Gods. The Bible too lists ten pre-Diluvial Patriarchs; though all were descendants of Adam through his grandson Enosh (Hebrew for 'Human') and not considered gods, the fact that they numbered ten and that the hero of the Deluge, Noah, was—like Ziusudra—the tenth, adds support to the Ten Rulers count as the correct one.

  Despite the varying individual reign lengths, the various tablets unanimously agree that those successive rulers reigned from when "kingship was brought down from heaven" until "the Deluge swept thereover." Assuming that Berossus had reported the most reliable version, we also end up with his total of 120 Sars (= 432,000 years) as the correct combined total of the pre-Diluvial reigns—the time that had passed from when "kingship was brought down from heaven" until the Deluge. Thus, if we could determine when the Deluge had occurred, we would obtain the date when the Anunnaki had arrived on Earth.

  That the number 120 appears in the biblical preamble to the tale of the Deluge (Genesis 6:3) might thus be more than a coincidence. The usual explanation, that it represents a limit on human longevity set by God at the time of the Deluge, is a dubious explanation in view of the fact that the Bible itself reports right thereafter that Shem, the eldest son of Noah, lived after the Deluge to the age of 600 years, his son Arpakhshad to 438, then Shelach to 433 years, and so on in descending longevities to 205 years for Terah, the father of Abraham; and Abraham himself lived to age 175. Moreover, a careful reading of the Hebrew shows that Genesis 6:3 states "and his years were one hundred and twenty." "Were" (not "will be"); and "his" can be understood as referring to the deity's count (in Sar years!) of his own presence on Earth from Arrival to Deluge. In earthly years, that would be 432,000 (120 x 3,600)—a statement matching the ten-kings/120-Sars of Berossus and the Sumerian King List.

  Such a recollection of a pre-Diluvial 'Era of the gods' can explain the fact that the number 432,000 has been associated with divine duration in varied cultures, well beyond the boundaries of Mesopotamia. It forms, for example, the core of Hindu traditions about the Ages ('Yugas') of Earth, Mankind, and the gods: A Caturyuga ('Great Yuga') of 4,320,000 years was divided into four Yugas whose diminishing lengths were expressions of 432,000 years—the Golden 'Fourfold

  Age' (432,000 x 4), the Threefold Age of Knowledge (432,000 x 3), the Twofold Age of Sacrifice (432,000 x 2), and finally our present era, the Age of Discord (432,000 x 1). According to the Egyptian priest Manetho, the "duration of the world" was 2,160,000 years; that equals five eras of 432,000, or 500 Sar years (3,600 x 500 = 2,160,000).

  The 'Day of the Lord Brahma' of 4,320,000,000 years equaled 1,000 Great Yugas—reminding one of the biblical statement (Psalms 90:4) that in the eyes of God a thousand years are as just one day. In Hamlet's Mill (1977), Professors Giorgio de Santillana and Hertha von Dechend cite additional instances of 432,000 serving as "the point where myth and science join."

  * * *

  Modern scientific discoveries that have been presented in detail in Genesis Revisited and Divine Encounters have led me to conclude that the great Flood was a huge tidal wave caused by the slippage of the ice sheet off Antarctica. The elimination of that 'ice box', I have suggested, caused the abrupt end of the last Ice Age circa 13,000 years ago.

  (The continent of Antarctica was discovered only in A.D. 1820; yet it was already shown on the A.D. 1513 map of the Turkish admiral Piri Re'is. As described in Divine Encounters, the slippage also explains the puzzle of other pre-discovery mapas mundi, such as the 1531 Orontius i Finaeus map [Fig. 43] that shows Antarctica [box on the right] as though seen from the air and ice free [box on the left]; the contours of the Antarctican continent under the ice cover were determined by radar and other modern means only in 1958.)

  The abrupt end of the last Ice Age has been the subject of numerous studies, including an intensive investigation during the 1958 International Geophysical Year. The studies confirmed both the abruptness and timing—about 13,000 years ago—of the Ice Age's ending in Antarctica, but left unexplained the reason for the phenomenon. Additional recent studies support those conclusions: A study of ancient temperatures {Nature, 26 February 2009) determined that while warming at the end of the last Ice Age was relatively gradual in Greenland

  Figure 43

  (north Atlantic), it was "rapid and abrupt" in Antarctica (south Atlantic) about 13,000 years ago. Another study, of ancient sea levels (published in Science, 6 February 2009), confirming that Antarctica's ice sheet collapsed abruptly, concluded that
due to the topography of the continent and its surrounding sea beds, the tidal wave was at least three times higher than hitherto calculated, reaching its maximal impact some 2,000 miles away. A diagram accompanying the article shows the area of maximal tidal impact stretching from the Persian Gulf to the Mediterranean Sea

  and northeast therefrom—the very Lands of the Bible, all the way to Mount Ararat.

  A Deluge date circa 13,000 years ago—at about 10950 B.C.—also dovetails with statements in cuneiform texts that the Deluge occurred in the Age of the Lion; that zodiacal Age indeed began circa 11000 B.C.

  Adding 432,000 + 13,000, we can thus confidently say that "Kingship was brought down [to Earth] from the heavens" some 445,000years ago.

  It was then that astronauts from another planet, whom the Sumerians called Anunnaki, arrived on Earth. They were the biblical

  Anakim—the Nefilim of Genesis 6.

  * * *

  The various lists of pre-Diluvial rulers unanimously agree that Eridu was the first city on Earth. The name, E.ri.du, literally meant 'House in the Faraway Built'; it is a word that has taken root in many languages throughout the ages to denote Earth itself: Earth is called Erde in German (from Erda in Old High German), Jordh in Icelandic, ford in Danish, Airtha in Gothic, Erthe in Middle English. It was called Ereds in Aramaic, Ertz in Kurdish—and, to this day, Eretz in Hebrew.

  It is also important to remember that the various lists of reigns in the initial Cities of the Gods are lists of their successive "chief officers" i and not the names of the gods to whom those cities were granted as 'cult centers'. All the lists agree that Alulim and Alalgar were the first rulers in the first city, Eridu; but as is clearly stated in tablet CBS-10673, Eridu was forever granted to Nudimmud—an epithet of Ea/Enki that meant 'He Who Fashions Artifacts'; it remained his 'cult center' forever, no matter who was the Chief Administrator ("king") there. (Likewise, Sippar forever remained the 'cult center' of the god Utu, better known by his Akkadian name Shamash; Shuruppak was always linked to the Sud—'Medic'—Ninharsag; and so on.

  Various texts link the establishment of Eridu to the arrival of the Anunnaki on Earth, when 'Kingship' was brought down from heaven.

  Just as NASA's first astronauts splashed down in the ocean in their

  command modules before landing facilities for spacecraft were developed, so did the first group of Anunnaki who came to Earth. They splashed down in the "Lower Sea" (the Persian Gulf), and—dressed in wetsuits, resembling 'Fish-men' (see Fig. 23)—they waded ashore to establish a Home-away-from-home—Eridu—at the edge of the marshlands—a delta formed by the twinlike Tigris and Euphrates Rivers as they flow into the Gulf.

  That first group numbered fifty. Their leader, all the texts agree, was E.A—"Whose abode is water', the prototype Aquarius. 'Oannes' had arrived on Earth.

  Several Sumerian texts deal with and describe that First Arrival. One, titled by scholars The Myth of Enki and the Earth, Enki and the World Order, or Enki and the Land's Order, contains an actual autobiographical account by Ea/Enki. The long text (restored from tablets and fragments scattered between two museums) includes the following first-person statements by him:

  I am the leader of the Anunnaki.

  Engendered by fecund seed,

  the Firstborn son of divine An,

  the 'Big Brother' of all the gods.

  When I approached from heaven,

  bountiful rains poured down from the sky.

  When I approached Earth, there was high tide.

  When I approached its green meadows,

  heaps and mounds were piled up at my command.

  One of the first tasks was to establish a command post, a headquarters house; it was built at the edge of reed-growing marshes:

  I built my abode in a clean place,

  I called it by a good name,

  its good fortune to portend.

  Its shade stretches over the Snake Marsh,

  its [ ... ] has a 'beard' (?) that reaches the [ . .. ]

  Some of the oldest cylinder seals, illustrating Sumer's earliest times, depict reed huts of the kind that the Anunnaki could have erected from the readily available reeds at the edge of the marshes; they all depict inexplicable antenna-like devices protruding from the roofs of those reed huts (Fig. 44).

  His outpost needed to be built on an artificial mound, raised higher than the level of the river and marsh waters; Enki assigned the task to one of his lieutenants named Enkimdu:

  After he had cast his eye on that spot,

  Enki raised it above the Euphrates . . .

  Enkimdu, the one of ditch and dyke,

  Enki placed in charge of ditch and dyke.

  Enki, the text continues, then gathered his lieutenants at his command post. They included "The weapons-carrying [...]," the "Chief- pilots," the "Chief of supplies," the "Lady of grinding and milling," and "the [... ] who purifies the water." Besides shelter, nourishment had to be found, and the marshes offered an ample fresh supply; "The carp-fish wave their tails among the reeds, the birds chirp to me from their . . .", Enki wrote. Subsequent sections of the text, written in the third person, record Enki's orders to his lieutenants:

  In the marshland

  he marked out a place of carp and fish.

  Enbilulu, Inspector of Canals,

  he placed in charge of the marshlands.

  He marked out a canebreak,

  Figure 44

  in it he placed [ . . . ]-reeds and green reeds,

  and marked out the cane thicket.

  He issued an order to [ . . . ],

  him who set up nets so no fish escape,

  whose trap no [ . . . ] escapes,

  whose snare no bird escapes,

  [...], the son of a god who loves fish,

  Enki placed in charge of fish and birds.

  The location of those activities is indicated by several references to the two rivers Tigris and Euphrates where they come close to each other, close enough for Enki to make the two meet and cause their "pure waters to eat together."

  Several additional sections of the text deal with water-related activities following the arrival. Enki himself is credited with waterworks affecting the two rivers, and other lieutenants are named for water- related tasks: "He filled the Tigris with sparkling water ... In order to make the Tigris and Euphrates eat together . . . Enki, lord of the deep waters, placed Enbilulu, the Inspector of Canals, in charge thereof." But breaks in the tablets or use of undeciphered terminology leave the nature of some water-related operations uncertain; these include a sea- water assignment to a female lieutenant whose epithet-name, Nin.Sirara (= 'Lady of Bright Metal'), suggests duties linked to precious metals.

  Other unexpected references to metals—specifically, to gold—are also made in a section dealing with Enki's post-arrival waterborne inspection of his watery wonderland. He toured the surroundings in a rowboat whose commander held a "rod for [detecting? measuring?] gold" in his hand; his epithet-name, Nim.gir.sig, meant "Chief Determinator of Luster." Depictions on early cylinder seals (Fig. 45) show Enki in a reed boat, navigated among the reeds, with a lieutenant-god holding a rodlike device. The boat is equipped at both ends with poles to which are attached circular devices, akin to those placed atop the reed huts.

  What do all these tidbits of information mean?

  It behooves us to ask at this point a key question regarding the

  Anunnaki's coming to Earth: Was it accidental—were they traveling in a spacecraft and, due to a mishap, looked for some solid ground to land on in an emergency, and found the speck of firm ground called 'Earth'? Were they, perhaps, explorers roaming space for pleasure or research, who saw (as Enki described) a watery, verdant place and stopped by to take a look?

  In such circumstances, the visit to our planet would have been a one-time event. But the overwhelming ancient evidence indicates that the "visit" lasted an incredibly long time, that it entailed permanent settlements, that the Anunnaki kept coming and going, and that even
when a calamity—the Deluge—destroyed all, they stayed on and started all over. This is a pattern of a planned colonization—for a purpose.

  Enki and his crew of fifty had come to Earth, I have suggested, for the purpose of obtaining gold.

  That purpose emerges, and the tidbits of information begin to make sense, if treated as dots to be connected to what followed. The plan was to extract the gold from the waters of the Persian Gulf. But when this did not work, a change to deep mining had to be undertaken. In that second phase of the Anunnaki's activities on Earth, other gods arrived; leading them was En.lil (= 'Lord of the Command') for whom a new city of the gods, Nippur, was established; its heart was a command and communications hub where orbit-controlling "Tablets of Destinies" spun and hummed in the Dur.an.ki, the 'Bond Heaven-Earth' Holy of Holies.

  While Enlil took charge of the E.din with its settlements—each with distinct functions—Enki's tasks shifted to a new location called Ab.zu; it is a term commonly translated 'The Deep', but which literally read means 'Place of shining metal'.

  In The 12th Planet I have suggested that the meaning of this combination of two syllables, that in Sumerian could be read in reverse Zu.ab without changing its connotation, has been retained in Hebrew as Za.ah = 'Gold Ab.zu/Zu.ab thus meant the place from whose depths the shining metal—gold—was obtained; the "depth' connotation indicated that the gold was obtained by mining. The Abzu, according to all relevant Sumerian texts, was located in a distant region called A.ra.li (= 'The place of the shining lodes by the waters') in the "Lower World"; it is a geographic term that applied—in varied texts, including some dealing with the Deluge—to southern Africa. Arali, I wrote, was in southeastern Africa—a gold-mining region to this day.

 

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