The 12th Planet

by Zacharia Sitchin

  saw the daughters of man, that they were good; and they took them for wives, of all which they chose.

  The implications of these verses, and the parallels to the Sumerian tales of gods and their sons and grandsons, and of semidivine offspring resulting from cohabitation between gods and mortals, mount further as we continue to read the biblical verses:

  The Nefilim were upon the Earth, in those days and thereafter too, when the sons of the gods cohabited with the daughters of the Adam, and they bore children unto them. They were the mighty ones of Eternity - The People of the shem.

  The above is not a traditional translation. For a long time, the expression "The Nefilim were upon the Earth" has been translated as "There were giants upon the earth"; but recent translators, recognizing the error, have simply resorted to leaving the Hebrew term Nefilim intact in the translation. The verse "The people of the shem," as one could expect, has been taken to mean "the people who have a name," and, thus, "the people of renown." But as we have already established, the term shem must be taken in its original meaning - a rocket, a rocket ship.

  What, then, does the term Nefilim mean? Stemming from the Semitic root NFL ("to be cast down"), it means exactly what it says: It means those who were cast down upon Earth!

  Contemporary theologians and biblical scholars have tended to avoid the troublesome verses, either by explaining them away allegorically or simply by ignoring them altogether. But Jewish writings of the time of the Second Temple did recognize in these verses the echoes of ancient traditions of "fallen angels." Some of the early scholarly works even mentioned the names of these divine beings "who fell from Heaven and were on Earth in those days": Sham-Hazzai ("shem's lookout"), Uzza ("mighty") and Uzi-El ("God's might").

  Malbim, a noted Jewish biblical commentator of the nineteenth century, recognized these ancient roots and explained that "in ancient times the rulers of countries were the sons of the deities who arrived upon the Earth from the Heavens, and ruled the Earth, and married wives from among the daughters of Man; and their offspring included heroes and mighty ones, princes and sovereigns." These stories, Malbim said, were of the pagan gods, "sons of the deities, who in earliest times fell down from the Heavens upon the Earth . . . that is why they called themselves 'Nefilim,' i.e. Those Who Fell Down."

  Irrespective of the theological implications, the literal and original meaning of the verses cannot be escaped: The sons of the gods who came to Earth from the heavens were the Nefilim.

  And the Nefilim were the People of the Shem - the People of the Rocket Ships. Henceforward, we shall call them by their biblical name.

  THE SUGGESTION that Earth was visited by intelligent beings from elsewhere postulates the existence of another celestial body upon which intelligent beings established a civilization more advanced than ours.

  "Speculation regarding the possibility of Earth visitation by intelligent beings from elsewhere has centered, in the past, on such planets as Mars or Venus as their place of origin. However, now that it is virtually certain that these two planetary neighbors of Earth have neither intelligent life nor an advanced civilization upon them, those who believe in such Earth visitations look to other galaxies and to distant stars as the home of such extraterrestrial astronauts.

  The advantage of such suggestions is that while they cannot be proved, they cannot be disproved, either. The disadvantage is that these suggested "homes" are fantastically distant from Earth, requiring years upon years of travel at the speed of light. The authors of such suggestions therefore postulate one-way trips to Earth: a team of astronauts on a no-return mission, or perhaps on a spaceship lost and out of control, crash-landing upon Earth. This is definitely not the Sumerian notion of the Heavenly Abode of the Gods.

  The Sumerians accepted the existence of such a "Heavenly Abode," a "pure place," a "primeval abode." While Enlil, Enki, and Ninhursag went to Earth and made their home upon it, their father Anu remained in the Heavenly Abode as its ruler. Not only occasional references in various texts but also detailed "god lists" actually named twenty-one divine couples of the dynasty that preceded Anu on the throne of the "pure place."

  Anu himself reigned over a court of great splendor and extent. As Gilgamesh reported (and the Book of Ezekiel confirmed), it was a place with an artificial garden sculpted wholly of semiprecious stones. There Anu resided with his official consort Antu and six concubines, eighty offspring (of which fourteen were by Antu), one Prime Minister, three Commanders in charge of the Mil's (rocket ships), two Commanders of the Weapons, two Great Masters of Written Knowledge, one Minister of the Purse, two Chief Justices, two "who with sound impress," and two Chief Scribes, with five Assistant Scribes.

  Mesopotamian texts refer frequently to the magnificence of the abode of Anu and the gods and weapons that guarded its

  gateway. The tale of Adapa reports that the god Enki, having provided Adapa with a shem,

  Made him take the road to Heaven,

  and to Heaven he went up.

  When he had ascended to Heaven,

  he approached the Gate of Anu.

  Tammuz and Gizzida were standing guard

  at the Gate of Anu.

  Guarded by the divine weapons SHAR.UR ("royal hunter") and SHAR.GAZ ("royal killer"), the throne room of Anu was the place

  of the Assembly of the Gods. On such occasions a strict protocol governed the order of entering and seating:

  Enlil enters the throne room of Ami,

  seats himself at the place of the right tiara,

  on the right of Anu.

  Ea enters [the throne room of Anu],

  seats himself at the place of the sacred tiara,

  on the left of Anu.

  The Gods of Heaven and Earth of the ancient Near East not only originated in the heavens but could also return to the Heavenly Abode. Anu occasionally came down to Earth on state visits; Ishtar went up to Anu at least twice. Enlil's center in Nippur was equipped as a "bond heaven-earth." Shamash was in charge of the Eagles and the launching place of the rocket ships. Gilgamesh went up to the Place of Eternity and returned to Uruk; Adapa, too, made the trip and came back to tell about it; so did the biblical king of Tyre.

  A number of Mesopotamian texts deal with the Apkallu, an Akkadian term stemming from the Sumerian AB.GAL ("great one who

  leads," or "master who points the way"). A study by Gustav Guterbock (Die Historische Tradition und Ihre Literarische

  Gestaltung bei Babylonier and Hethiten) ascertained that these were the "bird-men" depicted as the "Eagles" that we have

  already shown. The texts that spoke of their feats said of one that he "brought down Inanna from Heaven, to the E-Anna temple

  made her descend." This and other references indicate that these Apkallu were the pilots of the spaceships of the Nefilim.

  Two-way travel was not only possible but actually contemplated to begin with, for we are told that, having decided to establish in

  Sumer the Gateway of the Gods (Babili), the leader of the gods explained:

  When to the Primeval Source

  for assembly you shall ascend,

  There shall be a restplace for the night

  to receive you all.

  When from the Heavens

  for assembly you shall descend,

  There shall be a restplace for the night

  to receive you all.

  Realizing that such two-way travel between Earth and the Heavenly Abode was both contemplated and practiced, the people of Sumer did not exile their gods to distant galaxies. The Abode of the Gods, their legacy discloses, was within our own solar system.

  We have seen Shamash in his official uniform as Commander of the Eagles. On each of his wrists he wears a watchlike object held in place by metal clasps. Other depictions of the Eagles reveal that all the important ones wore such objects. Whether they were merely decorative or served a useful purpose, we do not know. But all scholars are agreed that the objects represented rosettes - a circular cluster of "petals" ra
diating from a central point.

  The rosette was the most common decorative temple symbol throughout the ancient lands, prevalent in Mesopotamia, western Asia, Anatolia, Cyprus, CreteA and Greece. It is the accepted view that the rosette as a temple symbol was an outgrowth or stylization of a celestial phenomenon - a sun encircled by its satellites. That the ancient astronauts wore this symbol on their wrists adds credence to this view.

  An Assyrian depiction of the Gateway of Ami in the Heavenly Abode confirms ancient familiarity with a celestial system such as our Sun and its planets. The gateway is flanked by two Eagles - indicating that their services are needed to reach the Heavenly Abode. The Winged Globe - the supreme divine emblem - marks the gateway. It is flanked by the celestial symbols of the number seven and the crescent, representing (we believe) Ami flanked by Enlil and Enki.

  Where are the celestial bodies represented by these symbols? Where is the Heavenly Abode? The ancient artist answers with yet another depiction, that of a large celestial deity extending its rays to eleven smaller celestial bodies encircling it. It is a representation of a Sun, orbited by eleven planets.

  That this was not an isolated representation can be shown by reproducing other depictions on cylinder seals, like this one from the Berlin Museum of the Ancient Near East.

  When the central god or celestial body in the Berlin seal is enlarged, we can see that it depicts a large, ray-emitting star surrounded by eleven heavenly bodies-planets. These, in turn, rest on a chain of twenty-four smaller globes. Is it only a coincidence that the number of all the "moons," or satellites, of the planets in our solar system (astronomers exclude those of ten miles 01 less in diameter) is also exactly twenty-four?

  Now there is, of course, a catch to claiming that these depictions - of a Sun and eleven planets - represent our solar system, for

  our scholars tell us that the planetary system of which Earth is a part comprises the Sun, Earth and Moon, Mercury, Venus, Mars, Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus, Neptune, and Pluto. This adds up to the Sun and only ten planets (when the Moon is counted as one).

  But that is not what the Sumerians said. They claimed that our system was made up of the Sun and eleven planets (counting the Moon), and held steadfastly to the opinion that, in addition to the planets known to us today, there has been a twelfth member of the solar system - the home planet of the Nefilim. We shall call it the Twelfth Planet.

  Before we check the accuracy of the Sumerian information, let us review the history of our own knowledge of Earth and the heavens around it.

  We know today that beyond the giant planets Jupiter and Saturn - at distances insignificant in terms of the universe, but immense in human terms - two more major planets (Uranus and Neptune) and a third, small one (Pluto) belong to our solar system. But such knowledge is quite recent. Uranus was discovered, through the use of improved telescopes, in 1781. After observing it for some fifty years, some astronomers reached the conclusion that its orbit revealed the influence of yet another planet. Guided by such mathematical calculations, the missing planet - named Neptune - was pinpointed by astronomers in 1846. Then, by the end of the nineteenth century, it became evident that Neptune itself was being subjected to unknown gravitational pull. Was there yet another planet in our solar system? The puzzle was solved in 1930 with the observation and location of Pluto.

  Up to 1780, then, and for centuries before that, people believed there were seven members of our solar system: Sun, Moon, Mercury, Venus, Mars, Jupiter, Saturn. Earth was not counted as a planet because it was believed that these other celestial bodies circled Earth - the most important celestial body created by God, with God's most important creation, Man, upon it. Our textbooks generally credit Nicolaus Copernicus with the discovery that Earth is only one of several planets in a heliocentric (Sun-centered) system. Fearing the wrath of the Christian church for challenging Earth's central position, Copernicus published his study (De revolutionibus orbium coelestium) only when on his deathbed, in 1543.

  Spurred to reexamine centuries-old astronomical concepts primarily by the navigational needs of the Age of Discovery, and by the findings by Columbus (1492), Magellan (1520), and others that Earth was not flat but spherical, Copernicus depended on mathematical calculations and searched for the answers in ancient writings. One of the few churchmen. who supported Copernicus, Cardinal Schonberg, wrote to him in 1536: "I have learned that you know not only the groundwork of the ancient mathematical doctrines, but that you have created a new theory . . . according to which the Earth is in motion and it is the Sun which occupies the fundamental and therefore the cardinal position."

  The concepts then held were based on Greek and Roman traditions that Earth, which was flat, was "vaulted over" by the distant heavens, in which the stars were fixed. Against the star-studded heavens the planets (from the Greek word for "wanderer") moved around Earth. There were thus seven celestial bodies, from which the seven days of the week and their names originated: the Sun (Sunday), Moon (Monday), Mars (mardi), Mercury (mercredi), Jupiter (jeudi), Venus (vendredi), Saturn (Saturday).

  These astronomical notions stemmed from the works and codifications of Ptolemy, an astronomer in the city of Alexandria, Egypt, in the second century A.D. His definite findings were that the Sun, Moon, and five planets moved in circles around Earth. Ptolemaic astronomy predominated for more than 1,300 years - until Copernicus put the Sun in the center. While some have called Copernicus the "Father of Modern Astronomy," others view him more as a researcher and reconstructor of earlier ideas. The fact is that he pored over the writings of Greek astronomers who preceded Ptolemy, such as Hipparchus and Aristarchus of Samos. The latter suggested in the third century B.C. that the motions of the heavenly bodies could better be explained if the Sun - and not Earth - were assumed to be in the center. In fact, 2,000 years before Copernicus, Greek astronomers listed the planets in their correct order from the Sun, acknowledging thereby that the Sun, not Earth, was the solar system's focal point.

  The heliocentric concept was only rediscovered by Copernicus; and the interesting fact is that astronomers knew more in 500 B.C. than in A.D. 500 and 1500.

  Indeed, scholars are now hard put to explain why first the later Greeks and then the Romans assumed that Earth was flat, rising above a layer of murky waters below which there lay Hades or "Hell," when some of the evidence left by Greek astronomers from earlier times indicates that they knew otherwise.

  Hipparchus, who lived in Asia Minor in the second century B.C., discussed "the displacement of the sostitial and equinoctial sign," the phenomenon now called precession of the equinoxes. But the phenomenon can be explained only in terms of a "spherical astronomy," whereby Earth is surrounded by the other celestial bodies as a sphere within a spherical universe. Did Hipparchus, then, know that Earth was a globe, and did he make his calculations in terms of a spherical astronomy? Equally important is yet another question. The phenomenon of the precession could be observed by

  relating the arrival of spring to the Sun's position (as seen from Earth) in a given zodiacal constellation. But the shift from one zodiacal house to another requires 2,160 years. Hipparchus certainly could not have lived long enough to make that astronomical observation. Where, then, did he obtain his information?

  Eudoxus of Cnidus, another Greek mathematician and astronomer who lived in Asia Minor two centuries before Hipparchus, designed a celestial sphere, a copy of which was set up in Rome as a statue of Atlas supporting the world. The designs on the sphere represent the zodiacal constellations. But if Eudoxus conceived the heavens as a sphere, where in relation to the heavens was Earth? Did he think that the celestial globe rested on a flat Earth - a most awkward arrangement - or did he know of a spherical Earth, enveloped by a celestial sphere?

  The works of Eudoxus, lost in their originals, have come down to us thanks to the poems of Aratus, who in the third century B.C. "translated" the facts put forth by the astronomer into poetic language. In this poem (which must have been familiar to St. Paul, who quo
ted from it) the constellations are described in great detail, "drawn all around"; and their grouping and naming is ascribed to a very remote prior age. "Some men of yore a nomenclature thought of and devised, and appropriate forms found." Who were the "men of yore" to whom Eudoxus attributed the designation of the constellations? Based on certain clues in the poem, modern astronomers believe that the Greek verses describe the heavens as they were observed in Mesopotamia circa 2200 B.C.

  The fact that both Hipparchus and Eudoxus lived in Asia Minor raises the probability that they drew their knowledge from Hittite sources. Perhaps they even visited the Hittite capital and viewed the divine procession carved on the rocks there; for among the marching gods two bull-men hold up a globe - a sight that might well have inspired Eudoxus to sculpt Atlas and the celestial sphere.

  Were the earlier Greek astronomers, living in Asia Minor, better informed than their successors because they could draw on Mesopotamian sources?

  Hipparchus, in fact, confirmed in his writings that his studies were based on knowledge accumulated and verified over many millennia. He named as his mentors "Babylonian astronomers of Erech, Borsippa, and Babylon." Geminus of Rhodes named the "Chaldeans" (the ancient Babylonians) as the discoverers of the exact motions of the Moon. The historian Diodorus Siculus, writing in the first century B.C., confirmed the exactness of Mesopotamian " astronomy; he stated that "the Chaldeans named the planets ... in the center of their system was the Sun, the greatest light, of which the planets were 'offspring,' reflecting the Sun's position and shine."

  The acknowledged source of Greek astronomical knowledge was, then, Chaldea; invariably, those earlier Chaldeans possessed greater and more accurate knowledge than the peoples that followed them. For generations, throughout the ancient world, the name "Chaldean" was synonymous with "stargazers," astronomers.