Thus reinforced, Marduk—"filled with a blazing flame," able to shoot lightnings as arrows, possessing a magnetic field to "ensnare Tiamat as in a net"—"Toward the raging Tiamat set his face." Tiamat,
Figure 48
meanwhile, is orbiting in a direction toward the oncoming Nibiru/ Marduk; the Celestial Battle, the collision, was about to occur:
Tiamat and Marduk, the wisest of gods,
advanced against each other.
They pressed on in single combat,
they approached for battle.
The four winds he stationed
that nothing of her could escape:
The South Wind, the North Wind,
the East Wind, the West Wind.
Close to his side he held the net,
gift of his grandfather Anu.
He brought forth the Evil Wind, the Whirlwind
and the Hurricane to trouble Tiamat's insides.
All seven of them rose up behind him.
In front of him he set the lightning,
with a blazing flame he filled his body,
With a fearsome halo his head was turbaned,
he was wrapped with awesome terror as with a cloak.
As the two hurtling planets neared each other, Marduk went on the attack:
The Lord spread out his net to ensnare her;
The Evil Wind, the rearmost, he let loose in her face.
When Tiamat opened her mouth to devour it,
he drove in the Evil Wind, that she close not her lips.
Tiamat, according to this step-by-step account of the battle, was first struck with one of Marduk's seven satellites where her 'mouth' was. Then Marduk's other moons served as weapons:
The raging Winds then charged her belly;
Her belly was distended, her mouth was opened wide.
He shot through it an arrow, it tore her belly.
It cut through her insides, fracturing her midst.
Having thus subdued her, he extinguished her life.
So, according to Sumerian cosmogony as retained in Enuma elish, in this first encounter between Marduk and Tiamat, the two planets did not collide: It was the "winds"—satellites—of Marduk that struck Tiamat, "fracturing her midst" and "extinguishing her life." We illustrate that first encounter in Fig. 49.
While the final blow to the gashed Tiamat is yet to be delivered in a subsequent encounter, in this first round Marduk and his Winds deal with Tiamat's "host" of orbiting satellites. The smaller ones, "shattered, trembling with fear, turned their backs about to save their lives . . . tightly encircled, they could not escape." The phrase "turned their
backs about"—thrust in the direction of the advancing Marduk—they become the otherwise inexplicable retrograde orbiting comets.
Kingu, their leader, "rendered lifeless," is bound and held captive; he is deprived of the "Tablet of Destinies" that was about to make it a planet in its own right. Snatching it, Marduk "took away from him the Tablet of Destinies, not rightfully his," and transferred the orbital capability to himself. Devoid of an atmosphere, Kingu is turned into a Dug.ga.e, a Sumerian term that can best be translated as "Lifeless Circler"—doomed forever to keep circling Earth.
Now enabled to go into orbit, Marduk circles back to revisit Anshar and Ea/Nudimmud and reports his victory to them. As he completes his first solar orbit, he is coming back to the site of the Celestial Battle: Marduk "turned back to Tiamat, whom he had subdued." This time, Marduk himself collides with the wounded Tiamat, cleaving her apart:
The Lord paused to view her lifeless body.
To cleave the monster he then artfully planned.
Then, as a mussel, he split her into two parts.
The fate of the two parts is of crucial importance; every word in the ancient text is significant, for it is here that we are witnessing the Anunnaki's sophisticated understanding of how Earth, the Moon, and the Asteroid Belt came to be:
The Lord trod on Tiamat's hinder part.
With his weapon her skull he cut loose;
The arteries of her blood he severed,
and caused the North Wind to bear it
to places that have been unknown.
The [other] half of her
as a screen for the skies he set up.
He bent Tiamat's tail,
as a bracelet the Great Band to form;
Locking the pieces together,
as watchmen he stationed them.
In The 12th Planet I have suggested that the severed upper half ("skull") of Tiamat, thrust off to another place in the Solar System, became the planet Earth in a new orbital path; that Kingu, doomed to become a "Lifeless Circler," was carried with it to become Earth's Moon; and that the hinder part of Tiamat, smashed to bits and pieces, became the Asteroid Belt (the "Great Band" or "Hammered Bracelet")—Fig. 50. That the shattered smaller moons of Tiamat became the puzzling retrograde comets that "turned back" and assumed Marduk's retrograde orbit is reinforced by the statement that 'Marduk' "tied them to his tail"— pulling them in his own retrograde orbital direction.
This understanding of the Creation tale, reaffirmed repeatedly in various Sumerian texts, also offers the only plausible explanation for the biblical verses in Genesis dealing with the event—and the origin of life on Earth:
• In the first encounter, satellite/moons of 'Marduk' strike and disable Tiamat
• In the second decisive encounter, 'Marduk' itself "treads upon"— strikes and comes in contact with—Tiamat, splitting her in two; it is thus that the "seed of life" present on Marduk is transferred to and shared with the future Earth. Keeping Tiamat's waters, it is a future watery planet
• The upper half ("skull") of Tiamat is thrust off to a new orbital location to become the Earth, now seeded with DNA from Marduk
• The thrust half (the future Earth) carries with it the lifeless Kingu to become its Moon
• The bottom part is smashed to bits and pieces; tied together as a bracelet, it becomes the Asteroid Belt
• Where the Celestial Battle had taken place, where Tiamat had once orbited, is termed Shamamu in Akkadian, and Shamay'im in Hebrew—terms that are translated as'Heaven but which stem from Ma'yim, "waters"—the place where the watery Tiamat used to be.
In the Mesopotamian texts, the affirmation of this sequence was repeatedly expressed by the following statement:
After Heaven had been separated from Earth,
After Earth had been moved away from Heaven
* * *
Having reshaped the heavens, created Earth, and fashioned the Hammered Bracelet, Marduk "crossed the heavens and surveyed the regions . . . his Great Abode he measured." Liking what he saw, the Mesopotamian text states, "He (Marduk) founded the station of Nibiru."
Celestially, by making our Solar System his abode, Marduk' has become Planet Nibiru. A tenth planet, a twelfth member of the Solar System (Sun, Moon, and ten planets) has been added—exactly as is depicted on a cylinder seal from 2500 B.C. (cataloged VA-243 in the
Vorderasiatisches Museum in Berlin, Fig. 51, with enlarged sketch added). The similarity to the order of planetary formation per Enuma elish (depicted in Fig. 46), speaks for itself.
The new planet's orbit stretched from "the Apsu's region to the abode of Ea"—from an "abode" (Perigee) near the Sun to an "abode" (Apogee) well beyond Neptune (Fig. 52). With this great elliptical orbit,
Figure 51
Marduk's celestial "destiny" became supreme—just as he had been promised.
This orbit, the epic states, is what gave the new member of our Solar System its name, for Nibiru means 'Crossing':
Planet Nibiru:
The crossroads of Heaven and Earth he shall occupy.
Above and below [the gods] shall not go across;
They must await him.
Planet Nibiru:
Planet which is brilliant in the heavens.
He holds the central position;
To him the gods shall pay homage.
Planet Ni
biru:
It is he who without tiring
the midst of Tiamat keeps crossing.
Let 'Crossing be his name!
Called Shar ( = 'The King's'), this orbit equated mathematically 3,600, suggesting that this was the orbital period of Marduk/ Nibiru—3,600 Earth-years. As it returns annually (one orbit being one year for Nibiru!) to its perigee, where Tiamat had been, Nibiru intersects the ecliptic; it is its Crossing Point; and whenever Mankind had witnessed ahat occurrence, Nibiru was depicted as a radiating planet symbolized by the sign of the Cross (Fig. 53).
Geological, geophysical, and biological evidence gathered on Earth, on the Moon, and from asteroids and meteorites, has convinced modern scientists that a cataclysm, a "catastrophic collision event" affecting our part of the Solar System, had occurred circa 3.9 billion years ago—about 600,000 years after the formation of the Solar System. The "event," I have suggested, was the Celestial Battle between 'Marduk' and Tiamat.
* * *
Figure 53
Enuma elish filled up four tablets with the Tale of Creation thus far; the Hebrew Bible did it in eight verses and two Divine Days.
In the familiar King James translation, we learn (verses 1-5) that when the creation of Heaven and Earth began, the Earth "was without form and void" and "the Deep" was in darkness. Then "the Spirit of * God moved upon the waters"; and God commanded "Let there be light, and there was light." And having "divided the light from the darkness," • God "called the light Day and the darkness Night"; and "it was evening and it was morning, Day One."
One would be less hard put to discern in those words their Mesopotamian origin if the actual Hebrew text is followed. There, the darkness was not "upon the face of the Deep" but upon Tehom (Hebrew for Tiamat)-, it is Ru'ah {wind, not "spirit"), Marduk's satellite—that moved against Tehom/Tizmzt, as his lightning, not mere "light," struck her.
Verses 6-8—the events of Day Two—translations use the term "Firmament" (to describe the Asteroid Belt) where the Hebrew says Raki'a (.Rakish in the Babylonian text), which literally means 'Hammered Bracelet'. Located "in the midst of the waters" to separate the "waters above" from the "waters below," it is the Sham-Mayim (= 'Place of the waters') that is translated 'Heaven'.
Choosing to skip the polytheistic sections about the multiple gods' genealogy, rivalries, and discussions, the editor-author of Genesis just restated the scientific fact of an Earth cleaved off Tiamat as a result of a celestial collision. The ancient view was that the Hammered Bracelet/ Asteroid Belt served as a "Firmament" or a "Heaven" separating celestial regions; the Hebrew term for that region, the Shama'yim, and its meaning, "Heaven," were obviously borrowed directly from the opening verse of Enuma elish: "elish, la nabu shamamu"—"in the Above, Heaven had not been named." Indeed, the whole biblical notion of a celestial 'Above' and a celestial 'Below' stemmed from the two opening verses of Enuma elish: The 'Above' from the first verse just quoted, and the 'Below' from the second verse: Shaplitu, ammatum shuma la zakrat— "Below firm Earth had not been called."
Such a celestial division to an "Above" the Firmament/Heaven and to a "Below" it seem baffling at first glance; but they become pertinent and clear when we illustrate the statement about Nibiru's attaining the Crossing "in the midst" of where Tiamat had been:
Nibiru
Mercury Venus Earth Moon Mars > < Jupiter Saturn Uranus Neptune Pluto
Asteroid Belt
Passing at its perigee between Mars and Jupiter, Nibiru indeed makes the Crossing in the midpoint between all the other planets of the Solar System (Moon included). As the Bible's terminology explains, the Shama'yim (literally, 'Place of the Waters' but translated "Heaven")— the place of the "Firmament" (Raki'a, Rakish). The place where Nibiru "crosses" indeed divides the planetary system into an "Above" and a "Below"—into the Solar System's Outer Planets in the "Above" and the Inner Planets in the "Below" nearer the Sun.
What Enuma elish and the Bible say is confirmed by modern astronomy that refers to the "below" group as the 'Terrestrial Planets' and the "above" group as the "Outer Planets"—separated by the Asteroid Belt.
That basic tenet of ancient cosmology and astronomy is even confirmed by a depiction on a Sumerian cylinder seal, now on view in the Bible Lands Museum in Jerusalem, Israel, that graphically expresses this celestial division (Fig. 54). It uses the straw used in beer drinking as the dividing Asteroid Belt; to its left side the "Below" planets (starting with Venus as the eighth planet, then Earth and its crescent Moon, and Mars nearest the Belt); and on the other side, it shows the "Above" Jupiter and Saturn with its rings.
* * *
As Tablet V begins, the continuing Enuma elish text then ascribes to Marduk the establishment of "the precincts of night and day" by assigning Night to the Moon, Daytime to the Sun, and credits him with all the Sumerian astronomical achievements: It was he who instituted a luni-solar calendar, fixed the Zenith, divided the heavens into three zones, and grouped the stars in twelve zodiacal constellation, giving them their "images."
We find this segment repeated, almost verbatim, in Genesis 1:14-19, where God is credited with "dividing the day from the night," making the Sun and the Moon responsible "for seasons, days, and years," and t "forming the constellations and also their signs."
With all celestial matters taken care of, divine attention shifted
Figure 54
to Earth itself, to making it habitable. In the Mesopotamian text, we reached Tablet V, a complete and almost intact tablet (some 22 lines are still missing) was found only in the late 1950s at an unlikely Turkish site called Sultantepe. From it one learns that after Marduk had given the Sun and the Moon their appointed tasks etc., he turned his attention and creative energy to making Earth—the former upper part of Tiamat—a viable place:
Taking the spittle of Tiamat
Marduk created [...];
He formed the clouds, filled them with [water],
raising the winds for bringing rain and cold.
Putting Tiamat's head into position,
he formed thereon the mountains.
He caused the Euphrates and Tigris
to flow from her eyes.
Stopping her nostrils, he [. . . ].
In her udder he formed the lofty mountains,
[Therein] he drilled the springs,
for wells to carry away the [waters].
Clearly, having just been cleaved off from Tiamat, Earth is in need of reworking and reshaping by its creator to become a habitable planet „with mountains, rivers, flowing waters, etc. (the "spittle," I suggest, refers to volcanically ejected lava).
Returning to the Bible, we find that Genesis too reports that having completed the celestial arrangements, divine attention turned to Earth. Verses 9-10 describe the steps taken to make it habitable:
And God said:
Let the waters under the heaven
be gathered together unto one place,
and let the dry land appear;
and it was so.
And God called the dry land 'Earth',
and called the gathered together waters 'Seas'.
This biblical account is in full accord with modern findings that all of Earth's dry land began as one super-continent (^Pangaea) that emerged when all the Earth's waters were gathered into one vast'Pan- ocean'. Pangaea in time broke up and its parts drifted off away from each other, becoming several continents (Fig. 55). This modern 'Continental Drift' theory is fundamental to all Earth sciences, and to find it clearly stated in the Bible (and probably in the missing lines of Tablet V) is quite remarkable.
The Hebrew and the Babylonian texts provide here a logical and
Figure 55
scientifically accurate process: The wounded segment of the watery Tiamat begins to assume a planetary shape; the waters collect in the cavitous part (of which the Pacific Ocean is the largest and deepest), revealing dry land; the continents appear, mountains are pushed up; volcanoes spout lava and gases, giving rise to an atmosphere; clouds a
nd rains come; rivers begin to flow. Earth is ready for Life.
"Thus," states Enuma elish in Tablet V, line 65, "he (Marduk) created Heaven and Earth."
"Thus," states the Bible in Genesis 2, verse 1, "were completed the Heavens and the Earth and all of their host."
By treating Enuma elish as a sophisticated cosmogony and not as an allegorical tale of a struggle between good (the Lord/Marduk) and evil (the Monster/Tiamat), we have obtained a coherent explanation for many puzzles in our Solar System and explain the incredibly fast appearance of life on Earth—and the comparability between the Anunnaki and the Daughters of Man. The Bible, I suggest, has done the same.
There Were Giants Upon the Earth Page 10
