The 12th Planet

by Zacharia Sitchin

  The great planet:;

  At his appearance, dark red.:

  The Heaven he divides in half and stands as Nibiru.

  Many of the texts dealing with the planet's arrival were omen texts prophesying the effect the event would have upon Earth and

  Mankind. R. Campbell Thompson (Reports of the Magicians and Astronomers of Nineveh and Babylon) reproduced several

  such texts, which trace the progress of the planet as it "ringed the station of Jupiter" and arrived at the point of crossing, Nibiru:

  When from the station of Jupiter

  the Planet passes towards the west,

  there will be a time of dwelling in security.

  Kindly peace will descend on the land.

  When from the station of Jupiter

  the Planet increases in brilliancec

  and in the Zodiac of Cancer will become Nibiru, ;

  Akkad will overflow with plenty,

  the king of Akkad will grow powerful.

  When Nibiru culminates. . . .

  The lands will dwell securely,

  Hostile kings will be at peace,

  The gods will receive prayers and hear supplications.

  The nearing planet, however, was expected to cause rains and flooding, as its strong gravitational effects have been known to do:

  When the Planet of the Throne of Heaven

  will grow brighter,

  there will be floods and rains.

  When Nibiru attains its perigee,

  the gods will give peace;

  troubles will be cleared up, complications will be unravelled. Rains and floods will come.

  Like the Mesopotamian savants, the Hebrew prophets considered the time of the planet's approaching Earth and becoming visible to Mankind as ushering in a new era. The similarities between the Mesopotamian omens of peace and prosperity that would accompany the Planet of the Throne of Heaven, and the biblical prophesies of the peace and justice that would settle upon Earth after the Day of the Lord, can best be expressed in the words of Isaiah:

  And it shall come to pass at the End of Days: . . . the Lord shall judge among the nations and shall rebuke many peoples. They shall beat their swords into ploughshares and their spears into pruning hooks; nation shall not lift up sword against nation. In contrast with the blessings of the new era following the Day of the Lord, the day itself was described by the Old Testament as a time of rains, inundations, and earthquakes. If we think of the biblical passages as referring, like their Mesopotamian counterparts, to the passage in Earth's vicinity of a large planet with a strong gravitational pull, the words of Isaiah can be plainly understood:

  Like the noise of a multitude in the mountains,

  a tumultuous noise like of a great many people,

  of kingdoms of nations gathered together;

  it is the Lord of Hosts,

  commanding a Host to battle.

  From a far away land they come,

  from the end-point of the Heaven

  do the Lord and his Weapons of wrath

  come to destroy the whole Earth. . . .

  Therefore will I agitate the Heaven

  and Earth shall be shaken out of its place

  when the Lord of Hosts shall be crossing,

  the day of his burning wrath.

  While on Earth "mountains shall melt . . . valleys shall be cleft," Earth's axial spin would also be affected. The prophet Amos

  explicitly predicted:

  It shall come to pass on that Day,

  sayeth the Lord God,

  that I will cause the Sun to go down at noon and I will darken the Earth in the midst of daytime.

  Announcing, "Behold, the Day of the Lord is come!" the prophet Zechariah informed the people that this phenomenon of an

  arrest in Earth's spin around its own axis would last only one day:

  And it shall come to pass on that Day

  there shall be no light - uncommonly shall it freeze.

  And there shall be one day, known to the Lord,

  which shall be neither day nor night,

  when at eve-time there shall be light.

  On the Day of the Lord, the prophet Joel said, "the Sun and Moon shall be darkened, the stars shall withdraw their radiance"; "the Sun shall be turned into darkness, and the Moon shall be as red blood."

  Mesopotamian texts exalted the planet's radiance and suggested that it could be seen even at daytime: "visible at sunrise, disappearing from view at sunset." A cylinder seal, found at Nippur, depicts a group of plowmen looking up with awe as the

  Twelfth Planet (depicted with its cross symbol) is visible in the skies. The ancient peoples not only expected the periodic arrival of the Twelfth Planet but also charted its advancing course.

  Various biblical passages - especially in Isaiah, Amos, and Job - relate the movement of the celestial Lord to various

  constellations. "Alone he stretches out the heavens and treads upon the highest Deep; he arrives at the Great Hoar, Orion and

  Sirius, and the constellations of the south." Or, "He smiles his face upon Taurus and Aries; from Taurus to Sagittarius he shall

  go." These verses describe a planet that not only spans the highest heavens but also comes in from the south and moves in a

  clockwise direction - just as we have deduced from the Mesopotamian data. Quite explicitly, the prophet Habakkuk stated: "The

  Lord from the south shall come . . . his glory shall fill the Earth . . . and Venus shall be as light, its rays of the Lord given."

  Among the many Mesopotamian texts that dealt with the subject, one is quite clear:

  Planet of the god Marduk:

  Upon its appearance: Mercury.

  Rising thirty degrees of the celestial arc: Jupiter.

  When standing in the place of the celestial battle:

  Nibiru.

  As the accompanying schematic chart illustrates, the above texts do not simply call the Twelfth Planet by different names (as scholars have assumed). They deal ml her with the movements of the planet and the three crucial points at which its appearance can be observed and charted from Earth.

  The first opportunity to observe the Twelfth Planet as its orbit brings it back to Earth's vicinity, then, was when il aligned with Mercury (point A) - by our calculations, at an angle of 30 degrees to the imaginary celestial axis of Sun - Earth - perigee. Coming closer to Earth and thus appearing to "rise" farther in Earth's skies (another 30 degrees, to be exact), the planet crossed the orbit of Jupiter ul point B. Finally, arriving at the place where the celestial I tattle had taken place, the perigee, or the Place of the Crossing, the planet is Nibiru, point C. Drawing an imaginary axis between Sun, Earth and the perigee of Marduk's orbit, observers on Earth first saw Marduk aligned with Mercury, at a 30° angle (point A). Progressing another 30°, Marduk crossed the orbital path of Jupiter at point B.

  Then, at its perigee (point C) Marduk reached The Crossing: back at the site of the Celestial Battle, it was closest to Earth, and began its orbit back to distant space.

  The anticipation of the Day of the Lord in the ancient Mesopotamian and Hebrew wrings (which were echoed in the New Testament's expectations of the coming of the Kingship of Heaven) was thus based on the actual experiences of Earth's people: their witnessing the periodic return of the Planet of Kingship to Earth's vicinity.

  The planet's periodic appearance and disappearance from Earth's view confirms the assumption of its permanence in solar orbit. In this it acts like many comets. Some of the known comets - like Halley's comet, which nears Earth every seventy-five years - disappeared from view for such long times that astronomers were hard-pressed to realize that they were seeing the same comet. Other comets have been seen only once in human memory, and are assumed to have orbital periods running into thousands of years. The comet Kohoutek, for example, first discovered in March 1973, came within 75,000,000 miles of Earth in January 1974, and disappeared behind the Sun soon thereafter. Astronomers calculate it will reappear anyw
here from 7,500 to 75,000 years in the future.

  Human familiarity with the Twelfth Planet's periodic appearances and disappearances from view suggests that its orbital period is shorter than that calculated for Kohoutek. If so, why are our astronomers not aware of the existence of this planet? The fact is that even an orbit half as long as the lower figure for Kohoutek would take the Twelfth Planet about six times farther away from us than Pluto - a distance at which such a planet would not be visible from Earth, since it would barely (if at all) reflect the Sun's light toward Earth. In fact, the known planets beyond Saturn were first discovered not visually but mathematically. The orbits of known planets, astronomers found, were apparently being affected by other celestial bodies.

  This may also be the way in which astronomers will "discover" the Twelfth Planet. There has already been speculation that a "Planet X" exists, which, though unseen, may be "sensed" through its effects on the orbits of certain comets. In 1972, Joseph L. Brady of the Lawrence Liver-more Laboratory of the University of California discovered that discrepancies in the orbit of Halley's comet could be caused by a planet the size of Jupiter orbiting the Sun every 1,800 years. At its estimated distance of 6,000,000,-000 miles, its presence could be detected only mathematically.

  While such an orbital period cannot be ruled out, the Mesopotamian and biblical sources present strong evidence that the orbital period of the Twelfth Planet is 3,600 years. The number 3,600 was written in Sumerian as a large circle. The epithet for the planet - shar ("supreme ruler") also meant "a perfect circle," a "completed cycle." It also meant the number 3,600. And the identity of the three terms - planet/orbit/3,600 - could not be a mere coincidence.

  Berossus, the Babylonian priest-astronomer-scholar, spoke of ten rulers who reigned upon Earth before the Deluge. Summarizing the writings of Berossus, Alexander Polyhistor wrote: "In the second book was the history of the ten kings of the Chaldeans, and the periods of each reign, which consisted collectively of an hundred and twenty shar's, or four hundred and thirty-two thousand years; reaching to the time of the Deluge."

  Abydenus, a disciple of Aristotle, also quoted Berossus in terms of ten pre-Diluvial rulers whose total reign numbered 120 shar's. He made clear that these rulers and their cities were located in ancient Mesopotamia: It is said that the first king of the land was Alorus. . . . He reigned ten skat's. Now, a shar is esteemed to be three thousand six hundred years. ...

  After him Alaprus reigned three shar's; to him succeeded Amillarus from the city of panti-Biblon, who reigned thirteen shar's. ... After him Ammenon reigned twelve shar's; he was of the city of panti-Biblon. Then Megalurus of the same place, eighteen shar's.

  Then Daos, the Shepherd, governed for the space of ten shar's. ...

  There were afterwards other Rulers, and the last of all Sisithrus; so that in the whole, the number amounted to ten kings, and the term of their reigns to an hundred and twenty shar's.

  Apollodorus of Athens also reported on the prehistorical disclosures of Berossus in similar terms: Ten rulers reigned a total of 120 shar's (432,000 years), and the reign of each one of them was also measured in the 3,600-year shar units. With the advent of Sumerology, the "olden texts" to which Berossus referred were found and deciphered; these were Sumerian king lists, which apparently laid down tradition of ten pre-Diluvial rulers who ruled Earth from the time when "Kingship was lowered from Heaven" until the "Deluge swept over the Earth."

  One Sumerian king list, known as text W-B/144, records the divine reigns in five settled places or "cities." In the first city, Eridu,

  there were two rulers. The text prefixes both names with the title-syllable "A," meaning "progenitor."

  When kingship was lowered from Heaven,

  kingship was first in Eridu.

  In Eridu,

  A.LU.LIM became king; he ruled 28,800 years. A.LAL.GAR ruled 36,000 years. Two kings ruled it 64,800 years.

  Kingship then transferred to other seats of government, where the rulers were called en, or "lord" (and in one instance by the divine title dingir). I drop Eridu;

  its kingship was carried to Bad-Tibira. In Bad-Tibira,

  EN.MEN.LU.AN.NA ruled 43,200 years; ' EN.MEN.GAL.AN.NA ruled 28,800 years. Divine DU.MU.ZI, Shepherd, ruled 36,000 years. Three kings ruled it for 108,000 years.

  The list then names the cities that followed, Larak and Sippar, and their divine rulers; and last, the city of Shuruppak, where a human of divine parentage was king. The striking fact about the fantastic lengths of these rules is that, without exception, they are multiples of 3,600.

  Another Sumerian text (W-B/62) added Larsa and its two divine rulers to the king list, and the reign periods it gives are also perfect multiples of the 3,600-year shar. With the aid of other texts, the conclusion is that there were indeed ten rulers in Sumer before the Deluge; each rule lasted so many shar's; and altogether their reign lasted 120 shar's - as reported by Berossus. The conclusion that suggests itself is that these shar's of rulership were related to the orbital period shar (3,600 years) of the planet "Shar," the "Planet of Kingship"; that Alulim reigned during eight orbits of the Twelfth Planet, Alalgar during ten orbits, and so on.

  If these pre-Diluvial rulers were, as we suggest, Nefilim who came to Earth from the Twelfth Planet, then it should not be surprising that their periods of "reign" on Earth should be related to the orbital period of the Twelfth Planet. The periods of such tenure or Kingship would last from the time of a landing to the time of a takeoff; as one commander arrived from the Twelfth Planet, the other's time came up. Since the landings and takeoffs must have been related to the Twelfth Planet's approach to Earth, the command tenures could only have been measured in these orbital periods, of shar's.

  One may ask, of course, whether any one of the Nefilim, having landed on Earth, could remain in command here for the purported 28,800 or 36,000 years. No wonder scholars speak of the length of these reigns as "legendary." But what is a year? Our "year" is simply the time it takes Earth to complete one orbit around the Sun. Because life developed on Earth when it was already orbiting the Sun, life on Earth is patterned by this length of orbit. (Even a more minor orbit time, like that of the Moon, or the day-night cycle is powerful enough to affect almost all life on Earth.) We live so many years because our biological clocks are geared to so many Earth orbits around the Sun.

  There can be little doubt that life on another planet would be "timed" to the cycles of that planet. If the trajectory of the Twelfth Planet around the Sun were so extended that one orbit was completed in the same time it takes Earth to complete 100 orbits, then one year of the Nefilim would equal 100 of our years. If their orbit took 1,000 times longer than ours, then 1,000 Earth years would equal only one Nefilim year.

  And what if, as we believe, their orbit around the sun lasted 3,600 Earth years? Then 3,600 of our years would amount to only one year in their calendar, and also only one year in their lifetime. The tenures of Kingship reported by the Sumerians and Berossus would thus be neither "legendary" nor fantastic: They would have lasted five or eight or ten Nefilim years. We have noted, in earlier chapters, that Mankind's march to civilization - through the intervention of the Nefilim - passed through three stages, which were separated by periods of 3,600 years: the Mesolithic period (circa 11,000 B.C.), the pottery phase (circa 7400 B.C.), and the sudden Sumerian civilization (circa 3800 B.C.). It is not unlikely, then, that the Nefilim periodically reviewed (and resolved to continue) Mankind's progress, since they could meet in assembly each time the Twelfth Planet neared Earth. Many scholars (for example, Heinrich Zimmern in The Babylonian and Hebrew Genesis) have pointed out that the Old Testament also carried traditions of pre-Diluvial chieftains, or forefathers, and that the line from Adam to Noah (the hero of the Deluge) listen ten such rulers. Putting the situation prior to the Deluge in perspective, the Book of Genesis (Chapter 6) described the divine disenchantment with Mankind. "And it repented the Lord that he had made Man on Earth . . . and the Lord said: I will destroy Man wh
om I had created." And the Lord said:

  My spirit shall not shield Man forever;

  having erred, he is but flesh.

  And his days were one hundred and twenty years.

  Generations of scholars have read the verse "And his days shall be a hundred and twenty years" as God's granting a life span of 120 years to Man. But this just does not make sense. If the text dealt with God's intent to destroy Mankind, why would he in the same breath offer Man long life? And we find that no sooner had the Deluge subsided than Noah lived far longer than the supposed limit of 120 years, as did his descendants Shem (600), Arpakhshad (438), Shelah (433), and so on. In seeking to apply the span of 120 years to Man, the scholars ignore the fact that the biblical language employs not the future tense - "His days shall be" - but the past tense - "And his days were one hundred and twenty years." The obvious question, then, is: Whose time span is referred to here?

  Our conclusion is that the count of 120 years was meant to apply to the Deity.

  Setting a momentous event in its proper time perspective is a common feature of the Sumerian and Babylonian epic texts. The "Epic of Creation" opens with the words Enuma elish ("when on high"). The story of the encounter of the god Enlil and the goddess Ninlil is placed at the time "when man had not yet been created," and so on.

  The language and purpose of Chapter 6 of Genesis were geared to the same purpose - to put the momentous events of the

  great Flood in their proper time perspective. The very first word of the very first verse of Chapter 6 is when:

  When the Earthlings

  began to increase in number

  upon the face of the Earth,

  and daughters were born unto them.

  This, the narrative continues, was the time when

  The sons of the gods saw the daughters of the Earthling that they were compatible; and they took unto themselves wives of