But this really solves nothing. In fact, it makes the problem of the abnormally lengthy reigns and life spans even more intractable, for if one were to multiply the total length of the reigns of the antediluvian kings, 241,200 years, by the length of a “shar,” 3600 years, one would obtain the figure of 868,300,000 years, roughly one fifth the supposed age of the earth!
Moreover, this “solution” does not really place the events referred to in the Kings List in synch with any date for the cosmic catastrophe advanced by Van Flandern’s Exploded Planet Hypothesis. One is left with dates — 241,200 years ago or 868,300,000 years ago — hovering in mid-air with no connection otherwise to any historical or scientific events, such as the dates of Van Flandern’s Multiple Exploded Planet Hypothesis, which, it will be recalled, posited two major explosions at 65,000,000 and 3,200,000 years ago. And Boulay’s method of “resolution” places any historical basis for the Kings List far beyond the normal reckoning of the Deluge as being ca. 10,500 B.C.
It is the connection to the similarly long life spans of the Old Testament patriarchs that may in fact provide a resolution of the dilemma, for the book of Genesis indicates the existence of yet another unit of time, a unit of 120 years, which we may call a “Flood Year” for convenience. It should also be noted that while 120 years is not a standard unit of significance in the Sumerian sexagesimal numerical system, it is nonetheless a unit easily harmonized with it.
If one takes the ante- and post-diluvian ages of the kings from the Kings List, and multiplies it by this new number, 120 years, some very interesting results begin to appear. The post-diluvian total reign of kings, 28,876 years, multiplied by this “Flood Year”, yields a date of 3,455,120 years ago, roughly the same time as Van Flandern’s second major exploding planet event of 3,200,000 years ago. And if one takes the antediluvian figure of 241,200 years from the Kings List and does the same thing, one obtains a date of 28,944,000 years ago, which is very roughly one half of Van Flandern’s date for the earliest exploding planet event of 65,000,000 years ago.386
These results suggest that the connection between the biblical and Sumerian traditions is not only more than coincidental, but viewed in this way, also suggest that the Sumerian Kings List is somehow tied to at least one, and possibly both, of the celestial events of Van Flandern’s Multiple Exploded Planet Hypothesis. But let us note which event: the 3,200,000 years ago event, the one that Van Flandern originally favored as the “main explosion.”
This is significant, for now there is a connection between an ancient textual tradition and the celestial catastrophes of Van Flandern’s Hypothesis. There are two hidden implications of this connection. First, it would imply that there was a major flood event on earth ca. 3,200,000 years ago, with attendant meteoric bombardment and so on. Given that Van Flandern’s 3,200,000 years date is for the explosion of a smaller, moon-sized planet, evidence of this event on earth should be found, though it will not be of the major nature as that of the major event at 65,000,000 years ago. Secondly, the connection between the two also strongly suggests that this event was an observed event and, if one takes this new speculative interpretation of the Kings List at face value, an observed event that is clearly tied to human history and civilization. This implies both an antiquity to mankind and an antiquity of civilization predating standard academic theory and the archaeological evidences supporting it. The archaeological evidence for our interpretation will be discussed later. In any case, the Kings List establishes an important connection between an ancient textual tradition and Van Flandern’s hypothesis.
The Kings List, viewed in this way, also suggests one other thing highly important for our discussion: it not only suggests a connection between the antediluvian kings and Van Flandern’s second “minor” event, but also suggests something far older, a connection to an even older time, and perhaps to even older, and much more catastrophic events.
In any case, one may draw some basic conclusions from this chapter concerning the timing and connections of the events:
1. There was a “primordial revolt” soon after the initial creation of the “primeval mound” from the primeval “waters;”
2. This revolt may pre-date the 65,000,000 years event of Dr. Van Flandern, or may be synonymous with it;
3. A subsequent second event occurred ca. 3,200,000 years ago, which may also be the event alluded to in the ancient texts describing the war; this benchmark event was found to be roughly corroborated by the Sumerian Kings List;
4. A strong textual tradition exists which connects this conflict to serpents and to Mars.
And now, as they say, the plot is about to thicken...
8.
THE STORY OF THE STONES: A LITTLE MORE WHY
“The Hero had conquered the Mountains. As he moved across the desert... ”
The Exploits of Ninurta
A. The Technological Motivation
From the Judeo-Christian traditions of the Fall of Lucifer, to the Hindu epics with their legends of titanic wars of the gods and wanton slaughter, to the Sumerians, Babylonians, Assyrians, Egyptians, and Greeks of antiquity, to the Aztecs, Toltecs, and other indigenous nations of North and South America, and to the Teutonic tribes of northern Europe and Scandinavia, almost every culture in the world has a tradition of the warfare, and in many cases of the revolt, of the gods. The struggles and battles are epic in their scale, cosmic in the degree of their slaughter, and titanic in their scale of destruction. The weapons with which they were fought are so far-fetched — or advanced — that they were literally described in almost magical science fiction terms: the “thunderbolts” or “arrows” or “darts” of the gods; they were “the divine weapons.”
Many of these stories contain common elements, however, that in spite of the supposed isolation of these cultures from one another, appear to indicate a shared source or sources for their legends. And one of the strangest common elements to many of these legends concerns the theft or usurpation of some object or objects of power belonging to one god or set of gods, by another god or set of gods. And quite often, these objects of power are “magic stones,” or “power crystals.”
Thus, we come to one of the strangest motifs in the already strange hypothesis of a real, but very ancient, interplanetary war: What was the motivation for this cataclysmic cosmic warfare? What were these objects? And most importantly, what happened to them and to the “gods” and/or “people” that wielded them? As will be seen, one motivation of the war in many traditions is for the control of these technologies of power.
1. A Glance at the Breadth of the Theme
The breadth of the tradition of ancient “stones” or “crystals” of power is impressive, and before looking at the tradition that devotes the most detailed attention to it — the Sumerian — a glance at the wider context is in order.
From Mesoamerica, the Mayan Popol Vuh recounts the giving of a “power-crystal,” called the “Giron-Gagal,” to Balaam-Qitze by “’the Great father’ of Patulan-Pa-Civan, the Mayas’ version of Atlantis.”387 According to Atlantologist Frank Joseph, the Giron-Gagal was a “symbol of power and majesty to make the peoples fear and respect the Quiches.” 388 No explanation is given as to how mere crystal could do this, but the clear implication is that it was a component in a technological or ritual-cultural matrix, or both.
In Australia, aboriginal peoples have a tradition of a sunken “Land of Mystery” with a similar “power stone,” in this case a large “crystal cone” that had a “ ‘serpent’ winding up its length from bottom to top.”389
Even the Slavs have their own version of the “power stone” tradition. Their “Alatuir” was not only a “magic stone” but “the source of ultimate power” that resided at the very center of “Bouyan, a sunken island kingdom from which the ancestors of the Slavic peoples migrated to the European continent from the Western Ocean.”390
And one must not forget to mention the Slavic tradition of “magic stones” without recalling the curious association of R
ussian mystic and painter Nicholas Roerich with the so-called “Chintimani” Stone. From the Sanskrit for “magical stone from another world,” many researchers have interpreted this, following the catastrophist paradigm, to be a clear allusion to its being a meteorite. But Atlantologist Frank Joseph reports that there is “an exceptionally clear quartz crystal” now in the Moscow Museum that is the Chintimani Stone.
As if that were not enough, this curious tradition is known in China and Japan as well, where the stone is known as the “Jewel- That-Grants-All-Desires.” It was believed to have once ”belonged to the Makara, a dragon- or dolphin-god, living in a palace at the bottom of the sea, underscoring its Atlantean provenance.“391
Taken together, these disparate traditions would seem to underscore the idea of “magic stones” or “crystals of power” having once been components in a technology of power and hegemony.
2. The Sumerian Tradition
But no tradition underscores the role of “power stones” and their role in the War of the Pantheon and the Revolt of the Gods more than does the Sumerian.392 Two legends are crucial in the exposition of this tradition: the Legend of Nergal and Ereshkigal, and The Myth of Zu or as he is sometimes known, The Myth of Anzu.
a. Nergal, the Storming of the Underworld, and the “Tablet of Wisdom ”
According to Assyriologist Stephanie Dalley, the earliest of the two versions of The Legend of Nergal and Ereshkigal was found in what at first glance appears to be a most unlikely place for the tablets of a Sumerian epic to be found: Tell el-Amarna in Egypt, and dates from the fifteenth or fourteenth centuries B.C!393 In my last book on the Giza Death Star hypothesis, I speculated on the possible though seemingly implausible link of the Babylonian god of Mars, war, revolt, and the underworld, Nergal, to the complex at Giza, and to the Martian ruins at Cydonia.394 The Legend of Nergal and Ereshkigal in its Tell el-Amarna version, while not directly supporting this very speculative connection, certainly does not contradict it.
In any case, the standard Babylonian version The Legend of Nergal and Ereshkigal recounts in a very few short lines Nergal’s storming of “the Seven Gates of the Underworld,” the names of the gates, and his oddly “biblical” six-day long lovemaking with the “legitimate” goddess of the underworld, Ereshkigal.395
But curiously, the Egyptian Tell el-Amarna version of the legend contains a twist toward the very end of the text, which suggests a motivation behind Nergal’s storming of the Seven Gates of the Underworld. Addressing the would-be usurper, the Queen of the Underworld, Ereshkigal, offers him an unusual deal:
“You can be my husband, and I can be your wife. I will let you seize
Kingship over the wide Earth! I will put the Tablet
Of wisdom in your hand! You can be master,
I can be mistress.” 396
The implications are immediately obvious, for Nergal’s whole storming of the Underworld, following the older Amarna version of the text, would appear to be motivated by nothing less than a desire for global domination by means of some technology or symbol of authority represented by the “tablet of wisdom,” an object that appears to be intimately connected to “Kingship over the wide Earth.”
b. The Myth of (An)Zu: The Tablet of Destinies and the Causus Belli
A much more detailed and suggestive glimpse into the technological motivation for the War in the Pantheon is provided by the Myth of (An)Zu. Indeed, in this legend one gains a glimpse into the characters of the main players, their motivations, and suggestions of the incredible technologies and science with which the war was waged.
Here again the text comes in two versions. According to Sumerologist Stephanie Dalley once again, the “Old Babylonian” version consists of “a small portion of the tale” dating from “the early second millennium.”397 The Standard Babylonian version, “dating to the first millennium BC” was discovered on tablets of three or four columns, most of which were “found on the Late Assyrian sites of Ninevah, Tarbisu and Sultantepe,” although there is a tablet of unknown provenance from this textual tradition of the legend in a museum collection in the United States.398
As Dalley notes, the whole story of the Legend “centres around possession of the Tablet of Destinies.”399 The text is even more curious however, for the odd resemblance it paints of the gods Ninurta and Nergal:
The opening lines of the epic introduce the theme in the first person, representing the singer or poet, and are very closely comparable to the opening lines of Erra and Ishum. Nergal and Ninurta are quite close in some aspects of their characters, and in Erra and Ishum the defeat of Anzu with a net and the conquest of asakku-demons are attributed to Nergal/Erra. The fight of Ninurta to defeat the asakku-demons is known from the mainly Sumerian epic story of cosmic warfare called Lugal-e, and a companion story An-gim.400
The similarities between epics of the themes and characters of the two gods suggests the possibility that Ninurta and Nergal might be one and the same individual. As outlandish as that might seem at first glance, Dalley herself notes that one line of the Erra and Ishum epic actually “assimilates Nergal with Ninurta,” 401 so apparently someone in ancient times noticed the similarity as well.
In any case, the legend makes a number of important observations both about Ninurta, the technological motivations for the war, and the technological means by which it was fought. Ninurta is called “the powerful god, Ellil’s son, Ekur’s child, leader of the Annunaki, focus of Eninnu.”402 Note the clear connection between Ninurta and the Annunaki, the beings equivalent with the “Nephilim” who fell from heaven and interbred with human beings. Here Ninurta is clearly called their “leader,” and this makes another connection or association with the god Nergal likely, since the leader of these Nephilim in the apochryphal Book of Enoch is, like Nergal, clearly associated with an armed revolt. 403
(1) “Ekur’s Child:” Ninurta and Nergal: Identification or Association?
The other reference — “Ekur’s child” — is equally if not much more important, for the word “ekur” not only means mountains, but also signifies the artificial “mountains” of the pyramids and ziggurats. In other words, Ninurta is clearly associated with pyramids, and if one recalls our “mountains ≈ planets ≈ pyramids” equation, then Ninurta is simultaneously a “child”, i.e., one “intimately associated with” a planet, and with pyramids.
This would seem to make his possible identification or association with Nergal even stronger, for as I presented in my book The Giza Death Star Destroyed, Nergal is a god of war and rebellion, is associated with a specific planet, Mars, and may be associated not only with Egypt, but with pyramids, the pyramids at Giza.404 And as leader of the Annunaki, Ninurta — if one adopt the biblical viewpoint for a moment — is also clearly associated with the whole attempt to create a “hybrid” or “chimeric” race, part human and part “god.”
However, even if one rejects this highly speculative identification of Ninurta with Nergal, and only views it as a strong and highly suggestive association, it is an important association, for Nergal is a personage of some importance, a regular Sumerian “jet-setter” who manages to turn up under various names almost everywhere in the ancient world’s various pantheons. Moreover, he is associated with some truly catastrophic activity.
On the “activity” side of things, it is Nergal along with other gods in the “Sumerian” pantheon, one of them notably being Ninurta, who wields one of the gods’ favorite “divine weapons”: the “abubu” or “flood weapon.”405 But Nergal also gets around. Under the name “Erra” he is the “god of war, hunting, and plague,” and, notes Dalley, the etymology for Erra as “scorched earth” is “probably incorrect,” though she does not state why.406 Yet another of his names translates into “lord who prowls by night,”407 a reference curiously reminiscent of biblical descriptions of Lucifer.408 Elsewhere Nergal was called “Erragal” and “Erakal” which were most likely the pronounced forms of Nergal according to Dalley, who adds the comment that the name was pro
bably pronounced “Herakles in Greek.”409 Under his Sumerian name Gibil, Nergal is also the god of fire.410 These characteristics of Nergal will, as we see, bear strong resemblance to those of Ninurta as we examine the text, making it clear that Nergal is at least “partly assimilated” with Ninurta. 411
(2) Ninurta and Nimrod: the Tower of Babel Moment
But enough about Nergal. Who is Ninurta?
Dalley makes one very significant and highly suggestive comment in the glossary to her book Myths from Mesopotamia under the entry for Ninurta, which she notes was “probably pronounced Nimrod”! 412 Nimrod was, of course, the “mighty hunter” and empire-builder mentioned in the list of Noah’s descendents in the tenth chapter of the biblical book of Genesis. In this context, it is interesting that in the eleventh chapter the Tower of Babel incident is recounted. In other words, the context of the biblical accounts of Nimrod and the Tower of Babel suggests a connection between the two. And the connection may be more than contextual.
To see how, it is worth quoting what I said about the event in my book The Giza Death Star Destroyed:
There is another event that bears mentioning with regard to the decline of the paleoancient Very High Civilization and its presumably unified physics and sophisticated technology: the Tower of Babel. The Old Testament affords a significant clue into the event that transformed the unified and paleoancient Very High Civilization into a multitude of squabbling and declined legacy cultures that resulted from it. The story is recounted in Genesis 11:1-9:
The Cosmic War: Interplanetary Warfare, Modern Physics and Ancient Texts Page 22