The 12th Planet

by Zecharia Sitchin

  Supreme, Supreme, Anointed;

  Lord whose shining crown with terror is laden.

  Supreme planet: a seat he has set up

  Facing the confined orbit of the red planet [Mars].

  Daily within the Lion he is afire;

  His light his bright kingships on the lands pronounces.

  We can now also understand an enigmatic verse in the New Year's rituals, stating that it was "the constellation Lion that measured the waters of the deep." These statements place the time of the Deluge within a definite framework, for though astronomers nowadays cannot precisely ascertain where the Sumerians set the beginning of a zodiacal house, the following timetable for the ages is considered accurate.

  60 B.C. to A.D. 2100—Age of Pisces

  2220 B.C. to 60 B.C.—Age of Aries

  4380 B.C. to 2220 B.C.—Age of Taurus

  6540 B.C. to 4380 B.C.—Age of Gemini

  8700 B.C. to 6540 B.C.—Age of Cancer

  10,860 B.C. to 8700 B.C.—Age of the Lion

  If the Deluge occurred in the Age of the Lion, or sometime between 10,860 B.C. and 8700 B.C., then the date of the Deluge falls well within our timetable: According to modern science, the last ice age ended abruptly in the southern hemisphere some twelve to thirteen thousand years ago, and in the northern hemisphere one or two thousand years later.

  The zodiacal phenomenon of precession offers even more comprehensive corroboration of our conclusions. We concluded earlier that the Nefilim landed on Earth 432,000 years (120 shar's) before the Deluge, in the Age of Pisces. In terms of the precessional cycle, 432,000 years comprise sixteen full cycles, or Great Years, and more than halfway through another Great Year, into the "age" of the constellation of the Lion.

  We can now reconstruct the complete timetable for the events embraced by our findings.

  Years Ago EVENT

  445,000 The Nefilim, led by Enki, arrive on Earth from the Twelfth Planet. Eridu—Earth Station I—is established in southern Mesopotamia.

  430,000 The great ice sheets begin to recede. A hospitable climate in the Near East.

  415,000 Enki moves inland, establishes Larsa.

  400,000 The great interglacial period spreads globally. Enlil arrives on Earth, establishes Nippur as Mission Control Center.

  Enki establishes sea routes to southern Africa, organizes gold-mining operations.

  360,000 The Nefilim establish Bad-Tibira as their metallurgical center for smelting and refining.

  Sippar, the spaceport, and other cities of the gods are built.

  300,000 The Anunnaki mutiny. Man—the "Primitive Worker"—is fashioned by Enki and Ninhursag.

  250,000 "Early Homo sapiens" multiply, spread to other continents.

  200,000 Life on Earth regresses during new glacial period.

  100,000 Climate warms again.

  The sons of the gods take the daughters of Man as wives.

  77,000 Ubartutu/Lamech, a human of divine parentage, assumes the reign in Shuruppak under the patronage of Ninhursag.

  75,000 The "accursation of Earth"—a new ice age—begins. Regressive types of Man roam Earth.

  49,000 The reign of Ziusudra ("Noah"), a "faithful servant" of Enki, begins.

  38,000 The harsh climatic period of the "seven passings" begins to decimate Mankind. Europe's Neanderthal Man disappears; only Cro-Magnon Man (based in the Near East) survives. Enlil, disenchanted with Mankind, seeks its demise.

  13,000 The Nefilim, aware of the impending tidal wave that will be triggered by the nearing Twelfth Planet, vow to let Mankind perish.

  The Deluge sweeps over Earth, abruptly ending the ice age.

  15

  •

  KINGSHIP ON EARTH

  The Deluge, a traumatic experience for Mankind, was no less so for the "gods"—the Nefilim.

  In the words of the Sumerian king lists, "the Deluge had swept over," and an effort of 120 shar's was wiped away overnight. The south African mines, the cities in Mesopotamia, the control center at Nippur, the spaceport at Sippar—all lay buried under water and mud. Hovering in their shuttlecraft above devastated Earth, the Nefilim impatiently awaited the abatement of the waters so that they could set foot again on solid ground.

  How were they going to survive henceforth on Earth when their cities and facilities were gone, and even their manpower—Mankind—was totally destroyed?

  When the frightened, exhausted, and hungry groups of Nefilim finally landed on the peaks of the "Mount of Salvation," they were clearly relieved to discover that Man and beast alike had not perished completely. Even Enlil, at first enraged to discover that his aims had been partly frustrated, soon changed his mind.

  The deity's decision was a practical one. Faced with their own dire conditions, the Nefilim cast aside their inhibitions about Man, rolled up their sleeves, and lost no time in imparting to Man the arts of growing crops and cattle. Since survival, no doubt, depended on the speed with which agriculture and animal domestication could be developed to sustain the Nefilim and a rapidly multiplying Mankind, the Nefilim applied their advanced scientific knowledge to the task.

  •

  Unaware of the information that could be culled from the biblical and Sumerian texts, many scientists who have studied the origins of agriculture have arrived at the conclusion that its "discovery" by Mankind some 13,000 years ago was related to the neothermal ("newly warm") climate that followed the end of the last ice age. Long before modern scholars, however, the Bible also related the beginnings of agriculture to the aftermath of the Deluge.

  "Sowing and Harvesting" were described in Genesis as divine gifts granted to Noah and his offspring as part of the post-Diluvial covenant between the Deity and Mankind:

  For as long as the Earth's days shall be,

  There shall not cease

  Sowing and Harvesting,

  Cold and Warmth,

  Summer and Winter,

  Day and Night.

  Having been granted the knowledge of agriculture, "Noah as a Husbandman was first, and he planted a vineyard": He became the first post-Diluvial farmer engaged in the deliberate, complicated task of planting.

  The Sumerian texts, too, ascribed to the gods the granting to Mankind of both agriculture and the domestication of animals.

  Tracing the beginnings of agriculture, modern scholars have found that it appeared first in the Near East, but not in the fertile and easily cultivated plains and valleys. Rather, agriculture began in the mountains skirting the low-lying plains in a semicircle. Why would farmers avoid the plains and limit their sowing and reaping to the more difficult mountainous terrain?

  The only plausible answer is that the low-lying lands were, at the time when agriculture began, uninhabitable; 13,000 years ago the low-lying areas were not yet dry enough following the Deluge. Millennia passed before the plains and valleys had dried sufficiently to permit the people to come down from the mountains surrounding Mesopotamia and to settle the low-lying plains. This, indeed, is what the Book of Genesis tells us: Many generations after the Deluge, people arriving "from the East"—from the mountainous areas east of Mesopotamia—"found a plain in the land of Shin'ar [Sumer], and settled there."

  The Sumerian texts state that Enlil first spread cereals "in the hill country"—in the mountains, not in the plains—and that he made cultivation possible in the mountains by keeping the floodwaters away. "He barred the mountains as with a door." The name of this mountainous land east of Sumer, E.LAM, meant "house where vegetation germinated." Later, two of Enlil's helpers, the gods Ninazu and Ninmada, extended the cultivation of cereals to the low-lying plains so that, eventually, "Sumer, the land that knew not grain, came to know grain."

  Scholars, who have now established that agriculture began with the domestication of wild emmer as a source of wheat and barley, are unable to explain how the earliest grains (like those found at the Shanidar cave) were already uniform and highly specialized. Thousands of generations of genetic selection are needed by nature to acqui
re even a modest degree of sophistication. Yet the period, time, or location in which such a gradual and very prolonged process might have taken place on Earth are nowhere to be found. There is no explanation for this botanogenetic miracle, unless the process was not one of natural selection but of artificial manipulation.

  Spelt, a hard-grained type of wheat, poses an even greater mystery. It is the product of "an unusual mixture of botanic genes," neither a development from one genetic source nor a mutation of one source. It is definitely the result of mixing the genes of several plants. The whole notion that Man, in a few thousand years, changed animals through domestication, is also questionable.

  Modern scholars have no answers to these puzzles, nor to the general question of why the mountainous semicircle in the ancient Near East became a continuous source of new varieties of cereals, plants, trees, fruits, vegetables, and domesticated animals.

  The Sumerians knew the answer. The seeds, they said, were a gift sent to Earth by Anu from his Celestial Abode. Wheat, barley, and hemp were lowered to Earth from the Twelfth Planet. Agriculture and the domestication of animals were gifts given to Mankind by Enlil and Enki, respectively.

  Not only the presence of the Nefilim but also the periodic arrivals of the Twelfth Planet in Earth's vicinity seem to lie behind the three crucial phases of Man's post-Diluvial civilization: agriculture, circa 11,000 B.C., the Neolithic culture, circa 7500 B.C., and the sudden civilization of 3800 B.C. took place at intervals of 3,600 years.

  It appears that the Nefilim, passing knowledge to Man in measured doses, did so in intervals matching the periodic returns of the Twelfth Planet to Earth's vicinity. It was as though some on-site inspection, some face-to-face consultation possible only during the "window" period that allowed landings and takeoffs between Earth and the Twelfth Planet, had to take place among the "gods" before another "go ahead" could be given.

  The "Epic of Etana" provides a glimpse of the deliberations that took place. In the days that followed the Deluge, it says:

  The great Anunnaki who decree the fate

  sat exchanging their counsels regarding the land.

  They who created the four regions,

  who set up the settlements, who oversaw the land,

  were too lofty for Mankind.

  The Nefilim, we are told, reached the conclusion that they needed an intermediary between themselves and the masses of humans. They were, they decided, to be gods—elu in Akkadian, meaning "lofty ones." As a bridge between themselves as lords and Mankind, they introduced "Kingship" on Earth: appointing a human ruler who would assure Mankind's service to the gods and channel the teachings and laws of the gods to the people.

  A text dealing with the subject describes the situation before either tiara or crown had been placed on a human head, or scepter handed down; all these symbols of Kingship—plus the shepherd's crook, the symbol of righteousness and justice—"lay deposited before Anu in Heaven." After the gods had reached their decision, however, "Kingship descended from Heaven" to Earth.

  Both Sumerian and Akkadian texts state that the Nefilim retained the "lordship" over the lands, and had Mankind first rebuild the pre-Diluvial cities exactly where they had originally been and as they had been planned: "Let the bricks of all the cities be laid on the dedicated places, let all the [bricks] rest on holy places." Eridu, then, was first to be rebuilt.

  The Nefilim then helped the people plan and build the first royal city, and they blessed it. "May the city be the nest, the place where Mankind shall repose. May the King be a Shepherd."

  The first royal city of Man, the Sumerian texts tell us, was Kish. "When Kingship was lowered again from Heaven, the Kingship was in Kish." The Sumerian king lists, unfortunately, are mutilated just where the name of the very first human king was inscribed. We do know, however, that he started a long line of dynasties whose royal abode changed from Kish to Uruk, Ur, Awan, Hamazi, Aksak, Akkad, and then to Ashur and Babylon and more recent capitals.

  The biblical "Table of Nations" likewise listed Nimrud—the patriarch of the kingdoms at Uruk, Akkad, Babylon, and Assyria—as descended from Kish. It records the spread of Mankind, its lands and Kingships, as an outgrowth of the division of Mankind into three branches following the Deluge. Descended from and named after the three sons of Noah, these were the peoples and lands of Shem, who inhabited Mesopotamia and the Near Eastern lands; Ham, who inhabited Africa and parts of Arabia; and Japheth, the Indo-Europeans in Asia Minor, Iran, India, and Europe.

  These three broad groupings were undoubtedly three of the "regions" whose settlement was discussed by the great Anunnaki. Each of the three was assigned to one of the leading deities. One of these was, of course, Sumer itself, the region of the Semitic peoples, the place where Man's first great civilization arose.

  The other two also became sites of flourishing civilizations. Circa 3200 B.C.—about half a millennium after the blooming of the Sumerian civilization—statehood, Kingship, and civilization made their first appearance in the Nile valley, leading in time to the great civilization of Egypt.

  Nothing was known until some fifty years ago about the first major Indo-European civilization. But by now it is well established that an advanced civilization, encompassing large cities, a developed agriculture, a flourishing trade, existed in the Indus valley in ancient times. It came into being, scholars believe, some 1,000 years after the Sumerian civilization began. (Fig. 161)

  Fig. 161

  Ancient texts as well as archaeological evidence attest to the close cultural and economic links between these two river-valley civilizations and the older Sumerian one. Moreover, both direct and circumstantial evidence has convinced most scholars that the civilizations of the Nile and Indus not only were linked to, but were actually offspring of, the earlier civilization of Mesopotamia.

  The most imposing monuments of Egypt, the pyramids, have been found to be, under a stone "skin," simulations of the Mesopotamian ziggurats; and there is reason to believe that the ingenious architect who designed the plans for the great pyramids and supervised their construction was a Sumerian venerated as a god. (Fig. 162)

  The ancient Egyptian name for their land was the "Raised Land," and their prehistoric memory was that "a very great god who came forth in the earliest times" found their land lying under water and mud. He undertook great works of reclamation, literally raising Egypt from under the waters. The "legend" neatly describes the low-lying valley of the Nile River in the aftermath of the Deluge; this olden god, it can be shown, was none other than Enki, the chief engineer of the Nefilim.

  Though relatively little is known as yet regarding the Indus valley civilization, we do know that they, too, venerated the number twelve as the supreme divine number; that they depicted their gods as human-looking beings wearing horned headdresses; and that they revered the symbol of the cross—the sign of the Twelfth Planet. (Figs. 163, 164)

  If these two civilizations were of Sumerian origin, why are their written languages different? The scientific answer is that the languages are not different. This was recognized as early as 1852, when the Reverend Charles Foster (The One Primeval Language) ably demonstrated that all the ancient languages then deciphered, including early Chinese and other Far Eastern languages, stemmed from one primeval source—thereafter shown to be Sumerian.

  Similar pictographs had not only similar meanings, which could be a logical coincidence, but also the same multiple meanings and even the same phonetic sounds—which suggests a common origin. More recently, scholars have shown that the very first Egyptian inscriptions employed a language that was indicative of a prior written development; the only place where a written language had a prior development was Sumer.

  So we have a single written language that for some reason was differentiated into three tongues: Mesopotamian, Egyptian/Hamitic, and Indo-European. Such a differentiation could have occurred by itself over time, distance, and geographical separation. Yet the Sumerian texts claim that it occurred as the result of a deliberate
decision of the gods, once again initiated by Enlil. Sumerian stories on the subject are paralleled by the well-known biblical story of the Tower of Babel, in which we are told "that the whole Earth was of one language and of the same words." But after the people settled in Sumer, learned the art of brickmaking, built cities, and raised high towers (ziggurats), they planned to make for themselves a shem and a tower to launch it. Therefore "did the Lord mingle the Earth's tongue."

  Fig. 162

  Fig. 163

  Fig. 164

  The deliberate raising of Egypt from under the muddy waters, the linguistic evidence, and the Sumerian and biblical texts support our conclusion that the two satellite civilizations did not develop by chance. On the contrary, they were planned and brought about by the deliberate decision of the Nefilim.