There Were Giants Upon the Earth

by Zechariah Sitchin

  A detail in the makeup of Anu's royal court offers a clue to events i on Nibiru: It is the listing of three "Commanders in charge of the Mu rocketships" and two "Commanders of the Weapons." Come to think of itT it means that five military men made up almost half the ministerial cabinet of eleven (we exclude the seven scribes). This is tantamount to a military government. There is an obvious stress on weaponry: Two of the five generals deal just with weaponry. When it comes to the palace proper, it was protected by two awesome weapons systems, overseen by two royal princes.

  Protected from what? Protected from whom?

  At the risk of preempting a chapter yet to follow, we can mention already here that in 2024 B.C. the Anunnaki then on Earth resorted to the use of nuclear weapons in their continuing clan clashes. Several ancient texts (which we shall quote) state that seven nuclear devices were used; and it is clear that they were brought over to Earth from Nibiru. Whether or not the Sbarur and Shargaz that protected Anu's palace were such weapons, it is evident that nuclear weapons were part of the Nibiruan military arsenal. Were they ever used on Nibiru? Why not, if they were used on a distant planet called Earth, on which at their peak just 900 Nibiruans (600 Anunnaki, 300 Igigi) were stationed? So much more was at stake on Nibiru itself!

  From viewing our Solar System as a once-created/forever-frozen assemblage of planets orbiting a central nuclear cauldron (the Sun), space- age astronomers now realize that the planets and even their moons are alive with natural phenomena—have their own inner nuclear cores, create and emanate heat, sustain volcanic activity, have atmospheres, have changing climates; some display frozen surfaces, some display Earth-like features; many have water, some only chemical-filled lakes; some seem bone dead, some reveal complex compounds that could be associated with Life. Seasons have even been detected on 'Exoplanets' orbiting other distant star-suns—planets whose mere notion of their possible existence was the domain of science-fiction until a few years ago.

  Our neighbor Mars, considered just decades ago a lifeless planet since its birth, is now known (thanks to unmanned space exploration since the 1970s) to have had a proper atmosphere (still sufficient to have occasional dust storms), flowing water, rivers, and vast seas and lakes— with a frozen lake, water ice, and even muddy soil to this very day (Fig. 59, sample scientific reports). It is noteworthy that in The 12th Planet (1976) we had already provided evidence that a habitable Mars served the Anunnaki as a way station for the interplanetary spacecraft from and to Nibiru; it was there that the Igigi were stationed, their task to operate smaller shuttlecraft between Earth and Mars.

  On Earth, the Igigi landed their shuttlecraft on a vast platform with launch tower called 'The Landing Place', built of colossal stone blocks; we have identified it in The Stairway to Heaven as the site known as Baalbek in the Lebanon mountains. The vast stone platform still exists; so do the remains of the launch tower—built of immense stone blocks

  Figure 59

  that range from 600 to 900 tons each. At the norhwestern corner of the platform, the tower was reinforced with three gigantic stone blocks weighing more than 1,100 tons each (!); known as the Trilithon (Fig. 60), local lore attributes them to "the giants."

  Our own planet, Earth, has undergone a violent beginning, the gathering of oceans and seas, the rise and shifting of continents ("firm

  Figure 60

  land"), volcanic eruptions and tidal waves (remember the Deluge?), Ice Ages and warm intervals (alias Climate Change), and atmospheric problems due to too much of this (e.g., carbon emissions) or too little of that (such as loss of protective ozone). It is only logical to assume that planet Nibiru underwent similar natural events.

  Some who have read The 12th Planet and accepted its conclusions regarding Nibiru still wondered how the Anunna could survive on a planet whose orbit takes it far away from the Sun; wouldn't they, and all life, freeze to death right off? My answer has been that we and life on Earth face the same issue even though Earth is at a presumed "livable distance" from the Sun; all we have to do is leave Earth's surface a little bit, and we'll freeze to death. Earth, like other planets, has a nuclear core that produces heat—it gets warmer and warmer as miners tunnel deeper down. But our very thick rocky mantle makes us dependent on heat coming from the Sun. What protects us is Earth's atmosphere: Acting as a greenhouse, it keeps in the warmth we get from the Sun.

  In the case of Nibiru, it is again the atmosphere that offers protection; but there, the need is mostly to keep in the heat coming from the planet's core and prevent it from dissipating out into space. For it is only for part of its 'year' (one orbit around the Sun) that Nibiru's elliptical orbit (see Fig. 52) provides a warm 'summer'; during its much longer 'winter', the planet depends on its inner-core heat to keep its life going.

  As all planets, Nibiru too must have undergone natural climate and atmospheric changes; when its inhabitants became capable of manned space flight and attained nuclear technology, the use of nuclear weapons made atmospheric problems worse. It was then, I suggested in The 12th Planet, that Nibiru's scientists came up with the idea of creating a shield of gold particles to mend and protect their planet's damaged atmosphere. But gold was a rare metal on Nibiru, and its use or misuse for the planet's salvation only added to the simmering conflicts.

  It was against such a background of circumstances and events that Anu seized the throne from Alalu; and Alalu, escaping for his life in a rocketship, sought haven on a distant and uninhabited strange planet. The Nibiruans called the distant planet Ki; the ancient Hittite text made clear that "down to the dark-hued Earth Alalu went." His chance discovery that its waters contained gold served as a trump card for demanding reinstatement to Kingship. In The Lost Book of Enki I have suggested that Alalu agreed to let Ea come to verify the discovery because was Ea was his son-in-law, having espoused—for state reasons— Alalu's daughter Damkina. In the post-overthrow circumstances of mistrust and animosity, Ea/Enki—a son of Anu, son-in-law of Alalu—was perhaps the only one trusted by both sides to lead Mission Earth. And so it was that Ea and his crew of fifty came to Earth to retrieve and send back to Nibiru the invaluable metal—a mission and an arrival described by Ea in his autobiography.

  From then on, the main stage for the subsequent astounding events was Planet Earth.

  * * *

  As great a scientist as Ea was, he could not extract from the waters of what we now call the Persian Gulf more gold than it contained— minute quantities requiring the processing of huge volumes of water. A great scientist that he was, Ea traced the gold to its nearest prime source—the gold lodes deep in the rocks of the Abzu. If Nibiru must have the gold—as it surely did—the Anunnaki had to switch to a mining operation and establish Arali, the Land of Mines.

  The changed nature of Mission Earth required more personnel, new equipment, settlements on two continents, new transportation and communication facilities; it all required a different type of leader—one less of a scientist and more with organizational, discipline, and command experience. The one chosen for the task was En.lil (= 'Lord of the Command'), the Crown Prince. Subsquent events showed him to be a strict disciplinarian, a 'by-the-book' commander.

  While Enki's coming to Earth is documented in his inscribed autobiography, Enlil's journey is recorded in another kind of document. It is an unusual circular tablet, a disc made of an unusual kind of clay. Found in the ruins of Nineveh (sketch, Fig. 61) its present keeper, the British Museum in London, displays it just as a sample of ancient writing—an incredible act of missing the point, for the artifact provides a unique depiction of the heavens in which the route of Enlilfrom his planet to Earth is described both graphically and in words!

  It is divided into eight segments; the information regarding Enlil's journey is found in a segment that fortunately is mostly undamaged. At the segment's margins stars and constellations are named, indicating that the celestial space is out there. The writings on the sides (in translation, Fig. 62) suggest landing instructions. In the segment's cen
ter a route is drawn connecting the pictograph for "moutainous planet" to a segment of the skies familiar from Sumerian astronomy as Earth's location. The route's course takes a turn between two planets whose Sumerian names stand for Jupiter and Mars. And the statement (in Akkadian) under the route line clearly says: "The god Enlil went by the planets." There are seven of them—accurately counted, since for anyone coming into our Solar System from its outer range, Pluto would be the first planet

  Figure 61

  Figure 62

  encountered, Neptune and Uranus second and third, Saturn and Jupiter fourth and fifth, Mars the sixth, and Earth the seventh.

  * * *

  The change in duties and command structure was, at best, not an easy undertaking. It was doubly difficult to diminish Ea's prerogatives by sending to Earth his rival for the crown—Enlil. The bickering and mistrust between the half-brothers is reflected on the one hand by Enki's cry that he the firstborn, "fecund seed," is now reduced in status; and by Enlil, in a text recording his complaint that Ea is withold- ing from him the Me—an enigmatic term usually translated 'Divine Formulas'—some kind of 'memory chips' essential for every aspect of the mission. Matters got so bad that Anu himself journeyed to Earth and offered his two sons to settle the issue of succession by drawing lots. We know that, and we know essentially what ensued, from the Atra-Hasis Epic:

  The gods clasped hands together,

  cast lots and then divided:

  Anu, their father, was the king;

  Enlil, the Warrior, was the Commander.

  Anu went up [back] to Heaven,

  the Earth [he left] to his underlings.

  The seas, enclosed as with a loop,

  To Enki the prince were given.

  After Anu had gone up to Heaven,

  Enki to the Abzu went down.

  The text's subsequent fourteen lines, that certainly dealt with Enlil's domain and tasks, are too damaged to be fully read and translated. But the legible portions of other lines indicate that while Ea—renamed Enki (= 'Lord [of] Earth') as a solace—was assigned to the Abzu to oversee the mining operation, Enlil took charge of the Edin, whose two rivers, the Euphrates and Tigris, are clearly mentioned. We know from other texts that Enlil increased the number of Anunnaki settlements there from Ea's sole Eridu to the famed five Cities of the Gods, and then added three more—Larsa, Nippur, and Lagash.

  Nippur (Akkadian from the Sumerian Ni.ibru = 'The Splendid

  Place of Crossing') served as Enlil's Mission Control Center. The Anunnaki built there the E.kur (= 'House which is like a mountain'), a temple-tower whose "head was raised" heavenward; its innermost chamber, equipped with 'Tablets of Destinies' and humming with other instruments emitting a bluish light, served as the Dur.an.ki— the 'Bond Heaven-Earth'. Having been forced to provide Enlil with the essential Me, Enki (his autobiography states) "filled the Ekur, abode of Enlil, with possessions"; and the "boats of Meluhha, transporting gold and silver, brought them to Nippur for Enlil."

  When the eight settlements are pinpointed on a map, a purposeful layout emerges (Fig. 63). Nippur was physically at the center; the others, located in concentric distances, formed a flight corridor; leading to

  Sippar (the Spaceport-city), it was anchored on the peaks of Mount Ararat (highest topographical feature in the Near East). Medical facilities were at Shuruppak. Bad-Tibira was the metallurgical center where ores from the Abzu were processed; from Sippar, the ingots were regularly transported in small shipments to Mars—for Mars, with its lesser gravitational pull, served as a space base from which the Anunnaki shipped larger and heavier gold loads to Nibiru.

  Arriving in groups of fifty, the Anunna were divided into two groups. Six hundred, henceforth known as the Anunnaki (= 'Those who from Heaven to Earth came'), were based and served on Earth; their assignments included mine work in the Abzu and the tasks in the Edin. Another three hundred, desigated Igugi (= 'Those Who Observe and See') operated the shuttlecraft between Earth and Mars—and their main base was on Mars.

  The setup is depicted on a 4,500-year-old cylinder seal, now kept at the Hermitage Museum in St. Petersburg, Russia (Fig. 64). It shows an Anunnaki 'Eagleman' (astronaut) on Earth (symbolized by seven dots and the Moon's crescent) greeting a mask-wearing Igigi 'Fishman' on Mars (the six-pointed planet symbol); a circular spacecraft with extended panels is shown in the skies between them.

  As Mission Earth was in full swing, Nibiru was saved; but on Earth itself, trouble was brewing.

  Figure 64

  THE TALE OF THE EVIL ZU

  A Sumerian text known as The Myth of Zu is a source of information about Enlil's Duranki as well as about the Igigi and the weapons of the Anunnaki. It deals with an attempted coup against Enlil by an Igigi leader named Zu. (A recent discovery of the text's tablets suggests that his epithet was An.zu = 'Knower of Heaven'.)

  Based on Mars where they had to wear spacesuits with breathing masks (see Fig. 64), and confined on Earth to the 'Landing Place' in the cedar mountain, "the Igigi, one and all, were upset"—they were complaining and restive. Their leader, Zu, was invited to Enlil's headquarters to talk things over. Trusted enough to freely pass through the guarded entrance, the "evil Zu to remove the Enlilship"—to seize the command— "conceived in his heart: To take the divine Tablet of Destinies, to rule the decrees of all the gods ... to command all the Igigi."

  And so, one day when Enlil was bathing, "Zu seized the Tablet of Destinies in his hands, took away the Enlilship," and flew away with it to the hideaway in the mountains. The removal of the Tablet of Destinies caused a flash of "blinding brightness" and brought the Duranki to a standstill:

  Suspended were the Divine Formulas;

  The sanctuary's radiance was taken off;

  Stillness spread all over; silence prevailed.

  "Enlil was speechless. The gods of the land gathered at the news." Alarmed by the gravity of the usurpation, Anu sought a volunteer among the gods to challenge Zu and retrieve the Tablet of Destinies; but all who tried failed, for the Tablet's mysterious powers warded off all projectiles shot at Zu. Finally, Ninurta, Enlil's firstborn, using his "seven-cyclones weapon" (see illustration), created a dust storm that forced Zu to take flight "like a bird." Ninurta pursued him in his skyship, and an aerial battle ensued. Shouting "wing to wing!" Ninurta shot a Til.lum (= 'Missile') at Zu's "pinions," causing Zu to crash to the ground. He was captured by Ninurta, tried, and sentenced to death. The Tablet of Destinies was reinstalled in the Duranki.

  Echoing the Sumerian Tale of Zu, the lores of other peoples also relate divine aerial duels. The Egyptian hieroglyphic text The Contending of Horus and Seth' describes the defeat of Seth by Horus in an aerial battle over the Sinai peninsula. In Greek tales of the gods, the fierce battles between Zeus and the monstrous Typhon ended when Zeus, in his Winged Chariot, shot a thunderbolt at the magical aerial contraption of his adversary. Aerial battles between gods flying in "cloud-borne chariots" and using missiles are also described in the Hindu Sanskrit texts.

  VIII

  A Serf Made to Order

  The unrest among the Igigi that led to the Zu Incident was only a prelude to other troubles involving them—troubles inherent in long-term interplanetary missions; and the absence of female companionship turned out to be one of the major issues.

  The problem was less acute in the case of the Earth-stationed Anunnaki, for there were females among them from the very first landing party (some of whom are mentioned by name and tasks in Enki's autobiography). Additionally, a group of female nurses, led by a daughter of Anu, were sent to Earth (Fig. 65). Her name was Ninmah (= 'Mighty Lady'); her task on Earth was that of Sud (= 'One who gives succor'): She served as the Anunnaki's Chief Medical Officer and was * destined to play a major role in many of the subsequent events.

  But trouble brewed also among the Earth-based Anunnaki, especially

  I

  Figure 65

  among those assigned to mining duties. The Atra-Hasis Epic in fact tells the stor
y of a mutiny of the Anunnaki who refused to go on working in the gold mines and the ensuing chain of unintended consequences. The epic's ancient title echoed its opening words Inuma ilu awilurn ('When the gods, like men'):

  When the gods, like men,

  bore the work and suffered the toil—

  The toil of the gods was great,

  the work was heavy, distress was much.

  The irony in the title is that the gods toiled as though they were men because there were yet no men on Earth. The Epic's tale is in fact the tale of the Creation of Man to take over the gods' toil. Indeed, the very Akkadian term Awilu means 'Workman'—a toiler—rather than simply 'Man' as is usually translated. The feat that changed everything was an accomplishment of Enki and Ninmah; but as far as Enlil was concerned, it was not a tale with a happy ending.