The 12th Planet

by Zacharia Sitchin

  cavity (the Pacific Ocean's bed) exists on the opposite side. The constant reference to the "waters" of Tiamat is also illuminating. She was called the Watery Monster, and it stands to reason that Earth, as part of Tiamat, was equally endowed with these waters. Indeed, some modern scholars describe Earth as "Planet Ocean" - for it is the only one of the solar system's known planets that is blessed with such life-giving waters.

  New as these cosmologic theories may sound, they were accepted fact to the prophets and sages whose words fill the Old

  Testament. The prophet Isaiah recalled "the primeval days" when the might of the Lord "carved the Haughty One, made spin the

  watery monster, dried up the waters of Tehom-Raba." Calling the Lord Yahweh "my primeval king," the Psalmist rendered in a

  few verses the cosmogony of the epic of Creation. "By thy might, the waters thou didst disperse; the leader of the watery

  monsters thou didst break up." Job recalled how this celestial Lord also smote "the assistants of the Haughty One"; and with

  impressive astronomical sophistication exalted the Lord who:

  The hammered canopy stretched out in the place of Tehom,

  The Earth suspended in the void. ...

  His powers the waters did arrest,

  His energy the Haughty One did cleave;

  His Wind the Hammered Bracelet measured out; His hand the twisting dragon did extinguish.

  Biblical scholars now recognize that the Hebrew Tehom ("watery deep") stems from Tiamat; that Tehom-Raba means "great Tiamat," and that the biblical understanding of primeval events is based upon the Sumerian cosmologic epics. It should also be clear that first and foremost among these parallels are the opening verses of the Book of Genesis, describing how the Wind of the Lord hovered over the waters of Tehom, and how the lightning of the Lord (Marduk in the Babylonian version) lit the darkness of space as it hit and split Tiamat, creating Earth and the Rakia (literally, "the hammered bracelet"). This celestial band (hitherto translated as "firmament") is called "the Heaven."

  The Book of Genesis (1:8) explicitly states that it is this "hammered out bracelet" that the Lord had named "heaven" (shamaim). The Akkadian texts also called this celestial zone "the hammered bracelet" (rakkis), and describe how Marduk stretched out Tiamat's lower part until he brought it end to end, fastened into a permanent great circle. The Sumerian sources leave no doubt that the specific "heaven," as distinct from the general concept of heavens and space, was the asteroid belt. Our Earth and the asteroid belt are the "Heaven and Earth" of both Mesopotamian and biblical references, created when Tiamat was dismembered by the celestial Lord.

  After Marduk's North Wind had pushed Earth to its new celestial location, Earth obtained its own orbit around the Sun (resulting in our seasons) and received its axial spin (giving us day and night). The Mesopotamian texts claim that one of Marduk's tasks after he created Earth was, indeed, to have "allotted [to Earth] the days of the Sun and established the precincts of day and night." The biblical concepts are identical: And God said:

  "Let there be Lights in the hammered Heaven, to divide between the Day and the Night; and let them be celestial signs and for Seasons and for Days and for Years."

  Modem scholars believe that after Earth became a planet it was a hot ball of belching volcanoes, filling the skies with mists and clouds. As temperatures began to cool, the vapors turned to water, separating the face of Earth into dry land and oceans. The fifth tablet of Enuma Elish, though badly mutilated, imparts exactly the same scientific information. Describing the gushing lava as Tiamat's "spittle," the Creation epic correctly places this phenomenon before the formation of the atmosphere, the oceans of Earth, and the continents. After the "cloud waters were gathered," the oceans began to form, and the "foundations" of Earth - its continents - were raised. As "the making of cold" - a cooling off - took place, rain and mist appeared. Meanwhile, the "spittle" continued to pour forth, "laying in layers," shaping Earth's topography. Once again, the biblical parallel is clear: And God said:

  "Let the waters under the skies be gathered together, unto one place, and let dry land appear." And it was so.

  Earth, with oceans, continents, and an atmosphere, was now ready for the formation of mountains, rivers, springs, valleys.

  Attributing all Creation to the Lord Marduk, Enuma Elish continued the narration:

  Putting Tiamat's head [Earth] into position,

  He raised the mountains thereon.

  He opened springs, the torrents to draw off.

  Through her eyes he released the Tigris and Euphrates.

  From her teats he formed the lofty mountains,

  Drilled springs for wells, the water to carry off.

  In perfect accord with modern findings, both the Book of Genesis and Enuma Elish and other related Mesopotamian texts place the beginning of life upon Earth in the waters, followed by the "living creatures that swarm" and "fowl that fly." Not until then did "living creatures after their kind: cattle and creeping things and beasts" appear upon Earth, culminating with the appearance of Man - the final act of Creation.

  As part of the new celestial order upon Earth, Marduk "made the divine Moon appear . . . designated him to mark the night, define the days every month."

  Who was this celestial god? The text calls him SHESH.KI ("celestial god who protects Earth"). There is no mention earlier in the epic of a planet by this name; yet there he is, "within her heavenly pressure [gravitational field]." And who is meant by "her": Tiamat or Earth?

  The roles of, and references to, Tiamat and Earth appear to be interchangeable. Earth is Tiamat reincarnated. The Moon is called Earth's "protector"; that is exactly what Tiamat called Kingu, her chief satellite.

  The Creation epic specifically excludes Kingu from the "host" of Tiamat that were shattered and scattered and put into reverse motion around the Sun as comets. After Marduk completed his own first orbit and returned to the scene of the battle, he decreed Kingu's separate fate:

  And Kingu, who had become chief among them, He made shrink;

  As god DUG.GA.E he counted him. He took from him the Tablet of Destinies, Not rightfully his.

  Marduk, then, did not destroy Kingu. He punished him by taking away his independent orbit, which Tiamat had granted him as he grew in size. Shrunk to a smaller size, Kingu remained a "god" - a planetary member of our solar system. Without an orbit he could only become a satellite again. As Tiamat's upper part was thrown into a new orbit (as the new planet Earth), we suggest, Kingu was pulled along. Our Moon, we suggest, is Kingu, Tiamat's former satellite.

  Transformed into a celestial duggae, Kingu had been stripped of his "vital" elements - atmosphere, waters, radioactive matter; he shrank in size and became "a mass of lifeless clay." These Sumerian terms fittingly describe our lifeless Moon, its recently discovered history, and the fate that befell this satellite that started out as KIN.GU ("great emissary") and ended up as DUG.GA.E ("pot of lead").

  L. W. King (The Seven Tablets of Creation) reported the existence of three fragments of an astronomical-mythological tablet that presented another version of Marduk's battle with Tiamat, which included verses that dealt with the manner in which Marduk dispatched Kingu. "Kingu, her spouse, with a weapon not of war he cut away . . . the Tablets of Destiny from Kingu he took in his hand." A further attempt, by B. Landesberger (in 1923, in the Archiv fur Keilschriftforschung), to edit and fully translate the text, demonstrated the interchangeability of the names Kingu/Ensu/Moon.

  Such texts not only confirm our conclusion that Tiamat's main satellite became our Moon; they also explain NASA's findings regarding a huge collision "when celestial bodies the size of large cities came crashing into the Moon." Both the NASA findings and the text discovered by L. W. King describe the Moon as the "planet that was laid waste."

  Cylinder seals have been found that depict the celestial battle, showing Marduk fighting a fierce female deity. One such depiction shows Marduk shooting his lightning at Tiamat, with Kingu, clea
rly identified as the Moon, trying to protect Tiamat, his creator.

  This pictorial evidence that Earth's Moon and Kingu were the same satellite is further enhanced by the etymological fact that the name of the god SIN, in later times associated with the Moon, derived from SU.EN ("lord of wasteland"). Having disposed of Tiamat and Kingu, Marduk once again "crossed the heavens and surveyed the regions." This time his attention was focused on "the dwelling of Nudimmud" (Neptune), to fix a final "destiny" for Gaga, the erstwhile satellite of Anshar/Saturn who was made an "emissary" to the other planets.

  The epic informs us that as one of his final acts in the heavens, Marduk assigned this celestial god" "to a hidden place," a hitherto unknown orbit facing "the deep" (outer space), and entrusted to him the "counsellorship of the Watery Deep." In line with his new position, the planet was renamed US.MI ("one who shows the way"), the outermost planet, our Pluto. According to the Creation epic, Marduk had at one point boasted, "The ways of the celestial gods I will artfully alter . . . into two groups shall they be divided."

  Indeed he did. He eliminated from the heavens the Sun's first partner-in-Creation, Tiamat. He brought Earth into being, thrusting it into a new orbit nearer the Sun. He hammered a "bracelet" in the heavens - the asteroid belt that does separate the group of inner planets from the group of outer planets. He turned most of Tiamat's satellites into comets; her chief satellite, Kingu, he put into orbit around Earth to become the Moon. And he shifted a satellite of Saturn, Gaga, to become the planet Pluto, imparting to it some of Marduk's own orbital characteristics (such as a different orbital plane).

  The puzzles of our solar system - the oceanic cavities upon Earth, the devastation upon the Moon, the reverse orbits of the comets, the enigmatic phenomena of Pluto - • all are perfectly answered by the Mesopotamia!! Creation epic, as deciphered by us.

  Having thus "constructed the stations" for the planets, Marduk took for himself "Station Nibiru," and "crossed the heavens and surveyed" the new solar system. It was now made up of twelve celestial bodies, with twelve Great Gods as their counterparts. KINGSHIP OF HEAVEN

  STUDIES OF THE "EPIC OF CREATION" and parallel texts (for example, S. Langdon's The Babylonian Epic of Creation) show that sometime after 2000 B.C., Marduk, son of Enki, was the successful winner of a contest with Ninurta, son of Enlil, for supremacy among the gods. The Babylonians then revised the original Sumerian "Epic of Creation," expunged from it all references to Ninurta and most references to Enlil, and renamed the invading planet Marduk.

  The actual elevation of Marduk to the status of "King of the Gods" upon Earth was thus accompanied by assigning to him, as his celestial counterpart, the planet of the Nefilim, the Twelfth Planet. As "Lord of the Celestial Gods [the planets]" Marduk was thus also "King of the Heavens."

  Some scholars at first believed that "Marduk" was either the North Star or some other bright star seen in the Mesopotamian skies at the time of the spring equinox because the celestial Marduk was described as a "bright heavenly body." But Albert Schott (Marduk und sein Stern) and others have shown conclusively that all the ancient astronomical texts spoke of Marduk as a member of the solar system.

  Since other epithets described Marduk as the "Great Heavenly Body" and the "One Who Illumines," the theory was advanced that Marduk was a Babylonian Sun God, parallel to the Egyptian god Ra, whom the scholars also considered a Sun God. Texts describing Marduk as he "who scans the heights of the distant heavens . . . wearing a halo whose brilliance is awe-inspiring" appeared to support this theoiy. But the same text continued to say that "he

  surveys the lands like Shamash [the Sun]." If Marduk was in some respects akin to the Sun, he could not, of course, be the Sun. If Marduk was not the Sun, which one of the planets was he? The ancient astronomical texts failed to fit any one planet. Basing their theories on certain epithets (such as Son of the Sun), some scholars pointed at Saturn. The description of Marduk as a reddish planet made Mars, too, a candidate. But the texts placed Marduk in markas shame ("in the center of Heaven"), and this convinced most scholars that the proper identification should be Jupiter, which is located in the center of the line of planets: Jupiter Mercury Venus Earth Mars Saturn Uranus Neptune Pluto

  This theory suffers from a contradiction. The same scholars who put it forward were the ones who held the view that the Chaldeans were unaware of the planets beyond Saturn. These scholars list Earth as a planet, while contending that the Chaldeans thought of Earth as a flat center of the planetary system. And they omit the Moon, which the Mesopotamians most definitely counted among the "celestial gods." The equating-of the Twelfth Planet with Jupiter simply does not work out. The "Epic of Creation" clearly states that Marduk was an invader from outside the solar system, passing by the outer planets (including Saturn and Jupiter) before colliding with Tiamat. The Sumerians called the planet NIBIRU, the "planet of crossing," and the Babylonian version of the epic retained the following astronomical information: Planet NIBIRU:

  The Crossroads of Heaven and Earth he shall occupy.

  Above and below, they shall not go across; They must await him. Planet NIBIRU:

  Planet which is brilliant in the heavens. He holds the central position; To him they shall pay homage. Planet NIBIRU: It is he who without tiring The midst of Tiamat keeps crossing. Let "CROSSING" be his name - The one who occupies the midst.

  These lines provide the additional and conclusive information that in dividing the other planets into two equal groups, the Twelfth Planet in "the midst of Tiamat keeps crossing": Its orbit takes it again and again to the site of the celestial battle, where Tiamat used to be.

  We find that astronomical texts that dealt in a highly sophisticated manner with the planetary periods, as well as lists of planets in their celestial order, also suggested that Marduk appeared somewhere between Jupiter and Mars. Since the Sumerians did know of all the planets, the appearance of the Twelfth Planet in "the central position" confirms our conclusions: Marduk

  Mercury Venus Moon Earth Mars Jupiter Saturn Uranus Neptune Pluto

  If Marduk's orbit takes it to where Tiamat once was, relatively near us (between Mars and Jupiter), why have we not yet seen this planet, which is supposedly large and bright?

  The Mesopotamian texts spoke of Marduk as reaching unknown regions of the skies and the far reaches of the universe. "He

  scans the hidden knowledge ... he sees all the quarters of the universe." He was described as the "monitor" of all the planets,

  one whose orbit enables him to encircle all the others. "He keeps hold on their bands [orbits]," makes a "hoop" around them. His

  orbit was "loftier" and "grander" than that of any other planet. It thus occurred to Franz Kugler (Sternkunde und Sterndienst in

  Babylon) that Marduk was a fast-moving celestial body, orbiting in a great elliptical path just like a comet.

  Such an elliptical path, focused on the Sun as a center of gravity, has an apogee - the point farthest from the Sun, where the

  return flight begins - and a perigee - the point nearest the Sun, where the return to outer space begins. We find that two such

  "bases" are indeed associated with Marduk in the Mesopotamian texts. The Sumerian texts described the planet as going from

  AN.UR ("Heaven's base") to E.NUN ("lordly abode"). The Creation epic said of Marduk:

  He crossed the Heaven and surveyed the regions. . . .

  The structure of the Deep the Lord then measured.

  E-Shara he established as his outstanding abode;

  E-Shara as a great abode in the Heaven he established.

  One "abode" was thus "outstanding" - far in the deep regions of space. The other was established in the "Heaven," within the asteroid belt, between Mars and Jupiter.

  Following the teachings of their Sumerian forefather, Abraham of Ur, the ancient Hebrews also associated their supreme deity with the supreme planet. Like the Mesopotamian texts, many books of the Old Testament describe the "Lord" as having his abode in the "heights of
Heaven," where he "beheld the foremost planets as they were arisen"; a celestial Lord who, unseen, "in the heavens moves about in a circle." The Book of Job, having described the celestial collision, contains these significant verses telling us where the lordly planet had gone:

  Upon the Deep he marked out an orbit; Where light and darkness [merge] Is his farthest limit.

  No less explicitly, the Psalms outlined the planet's majestic course:

  The Heavens bespeak the glory of the Lord;

  The Hammered Bracelet proclaims his handiwork. . . .

  He comes forth as a groom from the canopy;

  Like an athlete he rejoices to run the course.

  From the end of heavens he emanates,

  And his circuit is to their end.

  Recognized as a great traveler in the heavens, soaring to immense heights at its apogee and then "coming down, bowing unto the Heaven" at its perigee, the planet was depicted as a Winged Globe.

  Wherever archaeologists uncovered the remains of Near Eastern peoples, the symbol of the Winged Globe was conspicuous, dominating temples and palaces, carved on rocks, etched on cylinder seals, painted on walls. It accompanied kings and priests, stood above their thrones, "hovered" above them in battle scenes, was etched into their chariots. Clay, metal, stone, and wood objects were adorned with the symbol. The rulers of Sumer and Akkad, Babylon and Assyria, Elam and Urartu, Mari and Nuzi, Mitanni and Canaan - all revered the symbol. Hittite kings, Egyptian pharaohs, Persian shar's - all proclaimed the symbol (and what it stood for) supreme. It remained so for millennia.

  Central to the religious beliefs and astronomy of the ancient world was the conviction that the Twelfth Planet, the "Planet of the Gods," remained within the solar system and that its grand orbit returned it periodically to Earth's vicinity. The pictographic sign for the Twelfth Planet, the "Planet of Crossing," was a cross. This

  cuneiform sign, also meant "Ami" and "divine," evolved in the Semitic languages to the letter tav, which meant "the sign." Indeed, all the peoples of the ancient world considered the periodic nearing of the Twelfth Planet as a sign of upheavals, great changes, and new eras. The Mesopotamian texts spoke of the planet's periodic appearance as an anticipated, predictable, and observable event: