If we now take a second look at an enlargement of the solar system depicted on cylinder seal VA/243, we shall see that the "dots" encircling the star are actually globes whose sizes and order conform to that of the solar system depicted in Fig. 100. The small Mercury is followed by a larger Venus. Earth, the same size as Venus, is accompanied by the small Moon. Continuing in a counterclockwise direction, Mars is shown correctly as smaller than Earth but larger than the Moon or Mercury. (Fig. 101)
The ancient depiction then shows a planet unknown to us—considerably larger than Earth, yet smaller than Jupiter and Saturn, which clearly follow it. Farther on, another pair perfectly matches our Uranus and Neptune. Finally, the smallish Pluto is also there, but not where we now place it (after Neptune); instead, it appears between Saturn and Uranus.
Treating the Moon as a proper celestial body, the Sumerian depiction fully accounts for all of our known planets, places them in the correct order (with the exception of Pluto), and shows them by size.
The 4,500-year-old depiction, however, also insists that there was—or has been—another major planet between Mars and Jupiter. It is, as we shall show, the Twelfth Planet, the planet of the Nefilim.
If this Sumerian celestial map had been discovered and studied two centuries ago, astronomers would have deemed the Sumerians totally uninformed, foolishly imagining more planets beyond Saturn. Now, however, we know that Uranus and Neptune and Pluto are really there. Did the Sumerians imagine the other discrepancies, or were they properly informed by the Nefilim that the Moon was a member of the solar system in its own right, Pluto was located near Saturn, and there was a Twelfth Planet between Mars and Jupiter?
The long-held theory that the Moon was nothing more than "a frozen golf ball" was not discarded until the successful conclusion of several U.S. Apollo Moon missions. The best guesses were that the Moon was a chunk of matter that had separated from Earth when Earth was still molten and plastic. Were it not for the impact of millions of meteorites, which left craters on the face of the Moon, it would have been a faceless, lifeless, history-less piece of matter that solidified and forever follows Earth.
Observations made by unmanned satellites, however, began to bring such long-held beliefs into question. It was determined that the chemical and mineral makeup of the Moon was sufficiently different from that of Earth to challenge the "breakaway" theory. The experiments conducted on the Moon by the American astronauts and the study and analysis of the soil and rock samples they brought back have established beyond doubt that the Moon, though presently barren, was once a "living planet." Like Earth it is layered, which means that it solidified from its own original molten stage. Like Earth it generated heat, but whereas Earth's heat comes from its radioactive materials, "cooked" inside Earth under tremendous pressure, the Moon's heat comes, apparently, from layers of radioactive materials lying very near the surface. These materials, however, are too heavy to have floated up. What, then, deposited them near the Moon's surface?
The Moon's gravity field appears to be erratic, as though huge chunks of heavy matter (such as iron) had not evenly sunk to its core but were scattered about. By what process or force, we might ask? There is evidence that the ancient rocks of the Moon were magnetized. There is also evidence that the magnetic fields were changed or reversed. Was it by some unknown internal process, or by an undetermined outside influence?
The Apollo 16 astronauts found on the Moon rocks (called breccias) that result from the shattering of solid rock and its rewelding together by extreme and sudden heat. When and how were these rocks shattered, then re-fused? Other surface materials on the Moon are rich in rare radioactive potassium and phosphorous, materials that on Earth are deep down inside.
Fig. 99
Fig. 100
Fig. 101
Putting such findings together, scientists are now certain that the Moon and Earth, formed of roughly the same elements at about the same time, evolved as separate celestial bodies. In the opinion of the scientists of the U.S. National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA), the Moon evolved "normally" for its first 500 million years. Then, they said (as reported in The New York Times),
The most cataclysmic period came 4 billion years ago, when celestial bodies the size of large cities and small countries came crashing into the Moon and formed its huge basins and towering mountains.
The huge amounts of radioactive materials left by the collisions began heating the rock beneath the surface, melting massive amounts of it and forcing seas of lava through cracks in the surface.
Apollo 15 found a rockslide in the crater Tsiolovsky six times greater than any rockslide on Earth. Apollo 16 discovered that the collision that created the Sea of Nectar deposited debris as much as 1,000 miles away.
Apollo 17 landed near a scarp eight times higher than any on Earth, meaning it was formed by a moonquake eight times more violent than any earthquake in history.
The convulsions following that cosmic event continued for some 800 million years, so that the Moon's makeup and surface finally took on their frozen shape some 3.2 billion years ago.
The Sumerians, then, were right to depict the Moon as a celestial body in its own right. And, as we shall soon see, they also left us a text that explains and describes the cosmic catastrophe to which the NASA experts refer.
The planet Pluto has been called "the enigma." While the orbits around the Sun of the other planets deviate only somewhat from a perfect circle, the deviation ("eccentricity") of Pluto is such that it has the most extended and elliptical orbit around the Sun. While the other planets orbit the Sun more or less within the same plane, Pluto is out of kilter by a whopping seventeen degrees. Because of these two unusual features of its orbit, Pluto is the only planet that cuts across the orbit of another planet, Neptune.
In size, Pluto is indeed in the "satellite" class: Its diameter, 3,600 miles, is not much greater than that of Triton, a satellite of Neptune, or Titan, one of the ten satellites of Saturn. Because of its unusual characteristics, it has been suggested that this "misfit" might have started its celestial life as a satellite that somehow escaped its master and went into orbit around the Sun on its own.
This, as we shall soon see, is indeed what happened—according to the Sumerian texts.
And now we reach the climax of our search for answers to primeval celestial events: the existence of the Twelfth Planet. Astonishing as it may sound, our astronomers have been looking for evidence that indeed such a planet once existed between Mars and Jupiter.
Toward the end of the eighteenth century, even before Neptune had been discovered, several astronomers demonstrated that "the planets were placed at certain distances from the Sun according to some definite law." The suggestion, which came to be known as Bode's Law, convinced astronomers that a planet ought to revolve in a place where hitherto no planet had been known to exist—that is, between the orbits of Mars and Jupiter.
Spurred by these mathematical calculations, astronomers began to scan the skies in the indicated zone for the "missing planet." On the first day of the nineteenth century, the Italian astronomer Giuseppe Piazzi discovered at the exact indicated distance a very small planet (485 miles across), which he named Ceres. By 1804 the number of asteroids ("small planets") found there rose to four; to date, nearly 3,000 asteroids have been counted orbiting the Sun in what is now called the asteroid belt. Beyond any doubt, this is the debris of a planet that had shattered to pieces. Russian astronomers have named it Phayton ("chariot").
While astronomers are certain that such a planet existed, they are unable to explain its disappearance. Did the planet self-explode? But then its pieces would have flown off in all directions and not stayed in a single belt. If a collision shattered the missing planet, where is the celestial body responsible for the collision? Did it also shorter? But the debris circling the Sun, when added up, is insufficient to account for even one whole planet, to say nothing of two. Also, if the asteroids comprise the debris of two planets, they should have
retained the axial revolution of two planets. But all the asteroids have a single axial rotation, indicating they come from a single celestial body. How then was the missing planet shattered, and what shattered it?
The answers to these puzzles have been handed down to us from antiquity.
•
About a century ago the decipherment of the texts found in Mesopotamia unexpectedly grew into a realization that there—in Mesopotamia—texts existed that not only paralleled but also preceded portions of the Holy Scriptures. Die Keilschriften lind das aite Testament by Eberhard Schrader in 1872 started an avalanche of books, articles, lectures, and debates that lasted half a century. Was there a link, at some early time, between Babylon and the Bible? The headlines provocatively affirmed, or denounced: BABEL UND BIBEL.
Among the texts uncovered by Henry Layard in the ruins of the library of Ashurbanipal in Nineveh, there was one that told a tale of Creation not unlike the one in the Book of Genesis. The broken tablets, first pieced together and published by George Smith in 1876 (The Chaldean Genesis), conclusively established that there indeed existed an Akkadian text, written in the Old Babylonian dialect, that related how a certain deity created Heaven and Earth and all upon Earth, including Man.
A vast literature now exists that compares the Mesopotamian text with the biblical narrative. The Babylonian deity's work was done, if not in six "days," then over the span of six tablets. Parallel to the biblical God's seventh day of rest and enjoyment of his handiwork, the Mesopotamian epic devotes a seventh tablet to the exaltation of the Babylonian deity and his achievements. Appropriately, L. W. King named his authoritative text on the subject The Seven Tablets of Creation.
Now called "The Creation Epic," the text was known in antiquity by its opening words, Enuma Elish ("When in the heights"). The biblical tale of Creation begins with the creation of Heaven and Earth; the Mesopotamian tale is a true cosmogony, dealing with prior events and taking us to the beginning of time:
Enuma elish fa nabu shamamu
When in the heights Heaven had not been named
Shaplitu ammatum shuma fa zakrat
And below, firm ground [Earth] had not been called
It was then, the epic tells us, that two primeval celestial bodies gave birth to a series of celestial "gods." As the number of celestial beings increased, they made great noise and commotion, disturbing the Primeval Father. His faithful messenger urged him to take strong measures to discipline the young gods, but they ganged up on him and robbed him of his creative powers. The Primeval Mother sought to take revenge. The god who led the revolt against the Primeval Father had a new suggestion: Let his young son be invited to join the Assembly of the Gods and be given supremacy so that he might go to fight singlehanded the "monster" their mother turned out to be.
Granted supremacy, the young god—Marduk, according to the Babylonian version—proceeded to face the monster, and, after a fierce battle, vanquished her and split her in two. Of one part of her he made Heaven, and of the other, Earth.
He then proclaimed a fixed order in the heavens, assigning to each celestial god a permanent position. On Earth he produced the mountains and seas and rivers, established the seasons and vegetation, and created Man. In duplication of the Heavenly Abode, Babylon and its towering temple were built on Earth. Gods and mortals were given assignments, commandments, and rituals to be followed. The gods then proclaimed Marduk the supreme deity, and bestowed on him the "fifty names"—the prerogatives and numerical rank of the Enlilship.
As more tablets and fragments were found and translated, it became evident that the text was not a simple literary work: It was the most hallowed historical-religious epic of Babylon, read as part of the New Year rituals. Intended to propagate the supremacy of Marduk, the Babylonian version made him the hero of the tale of Creation. This, however, was not always so. There is enough evidence to show that the Babylonian version of the epic was a masterful religious-political forgery of earlier Sumerian versions, in which Anu, Enlil, and Ninurta were the heroes.
No matter, however, what the actors in this celestial and divine drama were called, the tale is certainly as ancient as Sumerian civilization. Most scholars see it as a philosophic work—the earliest version of the eternal struggle between good and evil—or as an allegorical tale of nature's winter and summer, sunrise and sunset, death and resurrection.
But why not take the epic at face value, as nothing more nor less than the statement of cosmologic facts as known to the Sumerians, as told them by the Nefilim? Using such a bold and novel approach, we find that the "Epic of Creation" perfectly explains the events that probably took place in our solar system.
The stage on which the celestial drama of Enuma Elish unfolds is the primeval universe. The celestial actors are the ones who create as well as the ones being created. Act I:
When in the heights Heaven had not been named,
And below, Earth had not been called;
Naught, but primordial APSU, their Begetter,
MUMMU, and TIAMAT—she who bore them all;
Their waters were mingled together.
No reed had yet formed, no marshland had appeared.
None of the gods had yet been brought into being,
None bore a name, their destinies were undetermined;
Then it was that gods were formed in their midst.
With a few strokes of the reed stylus upon the first clay tablet—in nine short lines—the ancient poet-chronicler manages to seat us in front row center, and boldly and dramatically raise the curtain on the most majestic show ever: the Creation of our solar system.
In the expanse of space, the "gods"—the planets—are yet to appear, to be named, to have their "destinies"—their orbits—fixed. Only three bodies exist: "primordial AP.SU" ("one who exists from the beginning"); MUM.MU ("one who was born"); and TIAMAT ("maiden of life"). The "waters" of Apsu and Tiamat were mingled, and the text makes it clear that it does not mean the waters in which reeds grow, but rather the primordial waters, the basic life-giving elements of the universe.
Apsu, then, is the Sun, "one who exists from the beginning."
Nearest him is Mummu. The epic's narrative makes clear later on that Mummu was the trusted aide and emissary of Apsu: a good description of Mercury, the small planet rapidly running around his giant master. Indeed, this was the concept the ancient Greeks and Romans had of the god-planet Mercury: the fast messenger of the gods.
Farther away was Tiamat. She was the "monster" that Marduk later shattered—the "missing planet." But in primordial times she was the very first Virgin Mother of the first Divine Trinity. The space between her and Apsu was not void; it was filled with the primordial elements of Apsu and Tiamat. These "waters" "commingled," and a pair of celestial gods-planets-were formed in the space between Apsu and Tiamat.
Their waters were mingled together....
Gods were formed in their midst:
God LAHMU and god LAHAMU were brought forth;
By name they were called.
Etymologically, the names of these two planets stem from the root LHM ("to make war"). The ancients bequeathed to us the tradition that Mars was the God of War and Venus the Goddess of both Love and War. LAHMU and LAHAMU are indeed male and female names, respectively; and the identity of the two gods of the epic and the planets Mars and Venus is thus affirmed both etymologically and mythologically. It is also affirmed astronomically: As the "missing planet," Tiamat was located beyond Mars. Mars and Venus are indeed located in the space between the Sun (Apsu) and "Tiamat." We can illustrate this by following the Sumerian celestial map. (Figs. 102, 103)
The process of the formation of the solar system then went on. Lahmu and Lahamu—Mars and Venus-were brought forth, but even
Before they had grown in age
And in stature to an appointed size—
God ANSHAR and god KISHAR were formed,
Surpassing them [in size].
As lengthened the days and multiplied the years,
Then Anshar's first-born, Anu,
As his equal and in his image begot NUDIMMUD.
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