The 12th Planet

by Zacharia Sitchin

  was a predictable event, it was an unavoidable one, a natural calamity in which the gods played not an active but a passive role. We will also show that the secret the gods swore to was a conspiracy against Mankind - to withhold from the Earthlings the information they had regarding the coming avalanche of water so that, while the Nefilim saved themselves, Mankind should perish.

  Much of our greatly increased knowledge of the Deluge and the events preceding it comes from the text "When the gods as men." In it the hero of the Deluge is called Atra-Hasis. In the Deluge segment of the "Epic of Gilgamesh," Enki called Utnapishtim "the exceedingly wise" - which in Akkadian is atra-hasis.

  Scholars theorized that the texts in which Atra-Hasis is the hero might be parts of an earlier, Sumerian Deluge story. In time, enough Babylonian, Assyrian, Canaanite, and even original Sumerian tablets were discovered to enable a major reassembly of the Atra-Hasis epic, a masterful work credited primarily to W. G. Lambert and A. R. Millard (Atra-Hasis: The Babylonian Story of the Flood).

  After describing the hard work of the Anunnaki, their mutiny, and the ensuing creation of the Primitive Worker, the epic relates

  how Man (as we also know from the biblical version) began to procreate and multiply. In time, Mankind began to upset Enlil.

  The land extended, the people multiplied;

  In the land like wild bulls they lay.

  The god got disturbed by their conjugations;

  The god Enlil heard their pronouncements,

  and said the great gods:

  "Oppressive have become the pronouncements of Mankind; Their conjugations deprive me of sleep."

  Enlil - once again cast as the prosecutor of Mankind - then ordered a punishment. We would expect to read now of the coming Deluge. But not so. Surprisingly, Enlil did not even mention a Deluge or any similar watery ordeal. Instead, he called for the decimation of Mankind through pestilence and sicknesses.

  The Akkadian and Assyrian versions of the epic speak of "aches, dizziness, chills, fever" as well as "disease, sickness, plague, and pestilence" afflicting Mankind and its livestock following Enlil's call for punishment. But Enlil's scheme did not work. The "one who was exceedingly wise" - Atra-Hasis - happened to be especially close to the god Enki. Telling his own story in some of the versions, he says, "I am Atra-Hasis; I lived in the temple of Ea my lord." With "his mind alert to his Lord Enki," Atra-Hasis appealed to him to undo his brother Enlil's plan:

  "Ea, O Lord, Mankind groans; the anger of the gods consumes the land. Yet it is thou who hast created us! Let there cease the aches, the dizziness, the chills, the fever!"

  Until more pieces of the broken-off tablets are found, we shall not know what Enki's advice was. He said of something, ". . . let there appear in the land." Whatever it was, it worked. Soon thereafter, Enlil complained bitterly to the gods that "the people have not diminished; they are more numerous than before!"

  He then proceeded to outline the extermination of Mankind through starvation. "Let supplies be cut off from the people; in their bellies, let fruit and vegetables be wanting!" The famine was to be achieved through natural forces, by a lack of rain and failing irrigation.

  Let the rains of the rain god be withheld from above; Below, let the waters not rise from their sources. Let the wind blow and parch the ground; Let the clouds thicken, but hold back the downpour.

  Even the sources of seafood were to disappear: Enki was ordered to "draw the bolt, bar the sea," and "guard" its food away from the people.

  Soon the drought began to spread devastation.

  From above, the heat was not. . . .

  Below, the waters did not rise from their sources.

  The womb of the earth did not bear;

  Vegetation did not sprout. . . .

  The black fields turned white;

  The broad plain was choked with salt.

  The resulting famine caused havoc among the people. Conditions got worse as time went on. The Mesopotamian texts speak of

  six increasingly devastating sha-at-tam's - a term that some translate as "years," but which literally means "passings," and, as

  the Assyrian version makes clear, "a year of Anu":

  For one sha-at-tam they ate the earth's grass.

  For the second sha-at-tam they suffered the vengeance.

  The third sha-at-tam came;

  their features were altered by hunger,

  their faces were encrusted . . .

  they were living on the verge of death.

  When the fourth sha-at-tam arrived,

  their faces appeared green;

  they walked hunched in the streets;

  their broad [shoulders?] became narrow.•

  By the fifth "passing," human life began to deteriorate. Mothers barred their doors to their own starving daughters. Daughters spied on their mothers to see whether they had hidden any food. By the sixth "passing," cannibalism was rampant.

  When the sixth sha-at-tam arrived they prepared the daughter for a meal; the child they prepared for food. . . . One house devoured the other.

  The texts report the persistent intercession by Atra-Hasis with his god Enki. "In the house of his god ... he set foot; . . . every day he wept, bringing oblations in the morning ... he called by the name of his god," seeking Enki's help to avert the famine. Enki, however, must have felt bound by the decision of the other deities, for at first he did not respond. Quite possibly, he even hid from his faithful worshiper by leaving the temple and sailing into his beloved marshlands. "When the people were living on the edge of death," Atra-Hasis "placed his bed facing the river." But there was no response.

  The sight of a starving, disintegrating Mankind, of parents eating their own children, finally brought about the unavoidable: another confrontation between Enki and Enlil. In the seventh "passing," when the remaining men and women were "like ghosts of the dead," they received a message from Enki. "Make a loud noise in the land," he said. Send out heralds to command all the people: "Do not revere your gods, do not pray to your goddesses." There was to be total disobedience! Under the cover of such turmoil, Enki planned more concrete action. The texts, quite fragmented at this point, disclose that he convened a secret assembly of "elders" in his temple. "They entered . . . they took counsel in the House of Enki." First Enki exonerated himself, telling them how he had opposed the acts of the other gods. Then he outlined a plan of action; it somehow involved his command of the seas and the Lower World.

  We can glean the clandestine details of the plan from the fragmentary verses: "In the night . . . after he . . ." someone had to be "by the bank of the river" at a certain time, perhaps to await the return of Enki from the Lower World. From there Enki "brought the water warriors" - perhaps also some of the Earthlings who were Primitive Workers in the mines. At the appointed time, commands were shouted: "Go! . . . the order . . ."

  In spite of missing lines, we can gather what had happened from the reaction of Enlil. "He was filled with anger." He summoned

  the Assembly of the Gods and sent his sergeant at arms to fetch Enki. Then he stood up and accused his brother of breaking

  the surveillance-and-containment plans:

  All of us, Great Anunnaki,

  reached together a decision. ...

  I commanded that in the Bird of Heaven

  Adad should guard the upper regions;

  that Sin and Nergal should guard

  the Earth's middle regions;

  that the bolt, the bar of the sea,

  you [Enki] should guard with your rockets.

  But you let loose provisions for the people!

  Enlil accused his brother of breaking the "bolt to the sea." But Enki denied that it had happened with his consent:

  The bolt, the bar of the sea,

  I did guard with my rockets.

  [But] when . . . escaped from me . . .

  a myriad of fish ... it disappeared;

  they broke off the bolt. . .

  they had killed the guards of the sea.r />
  He claimed that he had caught the culprits and punished them, but Enlil was not satisfied. He demanded that Enki "stop feeding

  his people," that he no longer "supply corn rations on which the people thrive." The reaction of Enki was astounding: The god got fed up with the sitting; in the Assembly of the Gods, laughter overcame him.

  We can imagine the pandemonium. Enlil was furious. There were heated exchanges with Enki and shouting. "There is slander in his hand!" When the Assembly was finally called to order, Enlil took the floor again. He reminded his colleagues and subordinates that it had been a unanimous decision. He reviewed the events that led to the fashioning of the Primitive Worker and recalled the many times that Enki "broke the rule."

  But, he said, there was still a chance to doom Mankind. A "killing flood" was in the offing. The approaching catastrophe had to

  be kept a secret from the people. He called on the Assembly to swear themselves to secrecy and, most important, to "bind

  prince Enki by an oath."

  Enlil opened his mouth to speak

  and addressed the Assembly of all the gods:

  "Come, all of us, and take an oath

  regarding the Killing Flood!"

  Anu swore first;

  Enlil swore; his sons swore with him. WHEN THE GODS FLED FBOM EARTH

  At first, Enki refused to take the oath. "Why will you bind me with an oath?" he asked. "Am I to raise my hands against my own humans?" But he was finally forced to take the oath. One of the texts specifically states: "Anu, Enlil, Enki, and Ninhursag, the gods of Heaven and Earth, had taken the oath." The die was cast.

  What was the oath he was bound by? As Enki chose to interpret it, he swore not to reveal the secret of the coming Deluge to the people; but could he not tell it to a wall? Calling Atra-Hasis to the temple, he made him stay behind a screen. Then Enki pretended to speak not to his devout Earthling but to the wall. "Reed screen," he said, Pay attention to my instructions. On all the habitations, over the cities, a storm will sweep.

  The destruction of Mankind's seed it will be. . . .

  This is the final ruling,

  the word of the Assembly of the gods,

  the word spoken by Anu, Enlil and Ninhursag.

  (This subterfuge explains Enki's later contention, when the survival of Noah/Utnapishtim was discovered, that he had not broken his oath - that the "exceedingly wise" [atra-hasis] Earthling had found out the secret of the Deluge all by himself, by correctly interpreting the signs.) Pertinent seal depictions show an attendant holding the screen while Ea - as the Serpent God - reveals the secret to Atra-Hasis.

  Enki's advice to his faithful servant was to build a water-borne vessel; but when the latter said, "I have never built a boat. . . draw for me a design on the ground that I may see," Enki provided him with precise instructions regarding the boat, its measurements, and its construction. Steeped in Bible stories, we imagine this "ark" as a very large boat, with decks and superstructures. But the biblical term - teba - stems from the root "sunken," and it must be concluded that Enki instructed his Noah to construct a sub­mersible boat - a submarine.

  The Akkadian text quotes Enki as calling for a boat "roofed over and below," hermetically sealed with "tough pitch." There were to be no decks, no openings, "so that the sun shall not see inside." It was to be a boat "like an Apsu boat," a sulili; it is the very term used nowadays in Hebrew (soleleth) to denote a submarine.

  "Let the boat," Enki said, "be a MA.GUR.GUR" - "a boat that can turn and tumble." Indeed, only such a boat could have survived an overpowering avalanche of waters.

  The Atra-Hasis version, like the others, reiterates that although the calamity was only seven days away, the people were unaware of its approach. Atra-Hasis used the excuse that the "Apsu vessel" was being built so that he could leave for Enki's abode and perhaps thereby avert Enlil's anger. This was readily accepted, for things were really bad. Noah's father had hoped that his birth signaled the end of a long time of suffering. The people's problem was a drought - the absence of rain, the shortage of water. Who in his right mind would have thought that they were about to perish in an avalanche of water? Yet if the humans could not read the signs, the Nefilim could. To them, the Deluge was not a sudden event; though it was unavoidable, they detected its coming. Their scheme to destroy Mankind rested not on an active but on a passive role by the gods. They did not cause the Deluge; they simply connived to withhold from the Earthlings the fact of its coming. Aware, however, of the impending calamity, and of its global impact, the Nefilim took steps to save their own skins. With Earth about to be engulfed by water, they could go in only one direction for protection: skyward. When the storm that preceded the Deluge began to blow, the Nefilim took to their shuttlecraft, and remained in Earth orbit until the waters began to subside. The day of the Deluge, we will show, was the day the gods fled from Earth.

  The sign for which Utnapishtim had to .watch, upon which he was to join all other in the ark and seal it, was this:

  When Shamash,

  who orders a trembling at dusk,

  will shower down a rain of eruptions -

  board thou the ship,

  batten up the entrance!

  Shamash, as we know, was in charge of the spaceport at Sippar. There is no doubt in our mind that Enki instructed Utnapishtim to watch for the first sign of space launchings at Sippar. Shuruppak, where Utnapishtim lived, was only 18 beru (some 180 kilometers, or 112 miles) south of Sippar. Since the launchings were to take place at dusk, there would be no problem in seeing the "rain of eruptions" that the rising rocket ships would "shower down."

  Though the Nefilim were prepared for the Deluge, its coming was a frightening experience: "The noise of the Deluge ... set the gods trembling." But when the moment to leave Earth arrived, the gods, "shrinking back, ascended to the heavens of Ami." The Assyrian version of Atra-Hasis speaks of the gods using rukub ilani ("chariot of the gods") to escape from Earth. "The Anunnaki lifted up," their rocketships, like torches, "setting the land ablaze with their glare."

  Orbiting Earth, the Nefilim saw a scene of destruction that affected them deeply. The Gilgamesh texts tell us that, as the storm

  grew in intensity, not only "could no one see his fellow," but "neither could the people be recognized from the heavens."

  Crammed into their spacecraft, the gods strained to see what was happening on the planet from which they had just blasted off.

  The gods cowered like dogs,

  crouched against the outer wall.

  Ishtar cried out like a woman in travail:

  "The olden days are alas turned to clay." . . .

  The Anunnaki gods weep with her.

  The gods, all humbled, sit and weep;

  their lips drawn tight. . . one and all.

  The Atra-Hasis texts echo the same theme. The gods, fleeing, were watching the destruction at the same time. But the situation

  within their own vessels was not very encouraging, either. Apparently, they were divided among several spaceships; Tablet III of

  the Atra-Hasis epic describes the conditions on board one where some of the Anunnaki shared accommodations with the

  Mother Goddess.

  The Anunnaki, great gods,

  were sitting in thirst, in hunger. . . .

  Ninti wept and spent her emotion;

  she wept and eased her feelings.

  The gods wept with her for the land.

  She was overcome with grief,

  she thirsted for beer.

  Where she sat, the gods sat weeping;

  crouching like sheep at a trough.

  Their lips were feverish of thirst,

  they were suffering cramp from hunger.

  The Mother Goddess herself, Ninhursag, was shocked by the utter devastation. She bewailed what she was seeing:

  The Goddess saw and she wept . . .

  her lips were covered with feverishness. . . .

  "My creatures have become like flies -

&nb
sp; they filled the rivers like dragonflies,

  their fatherhood was taken by the rolling sea."

  Could she, indeed, save her own life while Mankind, which she helped create, was dying? Could she really leave the Earth, she asked aloud -

  "Shall I ascend up to Heaven, to reside in the House of Offerings, where Anu, the Lord, had ordered to go?"

  The orders to the Nefilim became clear: Abandon Earth, "ascend up to Heaven." It was a time when the Twelfth Planet was nearest Earth, within the asteroid belt ("Heaven"), as evidenced by the fact that Anu was able to attend personally the crucial conferences shortly before the Deluge.

  Enlil and Ninurta - accompanied perhaps by the elite of the Anunnaki, those who had manned Nippur - were in one spacecraft, planning, no doubt, to rejoin the main spaceship. But the other gods were not so determined. Forced to abandon Earth, they suddenly realized how attached they had become to it and its inhabitants. In one craft, Ninhursag and her group of Anunnaki debated the merits of the orders given by Anu. In another, Ishtar cried out: "The olden days, alas, are turned into clay"; the Anunnaki who were in her craft "wept with her."

  Enki was obviously in yet another spacecraft, or else he would have disclosed to the others that he had managed to save the seed of Mankind. No doubt he had other reasons to feel less gloomy, for the evidence suggests that he had also planned the encounter at Ararat.

  The ancient versions appear to imply that the ark was simply carried to the region of Ararat by the torrential waves; and a "south-storm" would indeed drive the boat northward. But the Mesopotamian texts reiterate that Atra-Hasis/Utnapishtim took along with him a "Boatman" named Puzur-Amurri ("westerner who knows the secrets"). To him the Mesopotamian Noah "handed over the structure, together with its contents," as soon as the storm started. Why was an experienced navigator needed, unless it was to bring the ark to a specific destination?