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Chapter One
THE FIRST ENCOUNTERS
"....Divine Encounters are the ultimate human experience perhaps
because they were also the very first human experience; for when God
created Man, Man met God at the very moment of being created.
"....No one after Adam and Eve could attain the experience of being
the first humans on Earth, with the attendant first Divine
Encounters. But what has ensued in the Garden of Eden has endured as
part of human yearning unto our own days.
"....The chain of events leading to the Expulsion from Paradise
raises a lasting question: How did Adam and Eve hear God - how does
God communicate with humans at such, or any Divine Encounters? Can
the humans see the divine speaker, or just hear the message? And how
is the message conveyed - face-to-face? Telepathically? In a
holographic vision? Through the medium of dreams?
"We shall examine the ancient evidence for the answers. But as far
as the events in the Garden of Eden are concerned, the biblical text
suggests a physical divine presence....
And they heard the sound of the Lord God
walking in the garden in the cool of the day;
And Adam and his wife hid themselves
from the presence of the Lord God
amongst the trees of the garden.
"God is physically present in the Garden of Eden.... can they see
the deity? The biblical narration is silent on the issue; it makes
clear however, that God can see them - or, in this instance, was
expecting to see them but could not because they were hiding. So God
used his voice to reach them....
"....A trialogue ensues.... it suggests that the Adam could talk
from the very beginning.... The Lord God then declares the
punishment [for eating of the forbidden fruit]....
"....By this time the encounter is clearly face-to-face, for now the
Lord God not only makes skin-coats for Adam and his wife, but also
clothes them with the coats.... the biblical passage cannot be
treated as only symbolical. It clearly lets us know that in the
beginning, when the Adam was in the Garden of Eden, humans
encountered their Creator face-to-face.
"Now, unexpectedly, God gets worried. Speaking again to unnamed
colleagues, Yahweh Elohim expresses his concern that "now that the
Adam has become as one of us, to know good and evil, what if he
shall put forth his hand and also take of the Tree of Life, and eat,
and live forever?"
"....The decision to create The Adam stems from a suggestion to
fashion him "in the image and after the likeness" of the divine
creators. The resulting being, the handiwork of the Elohim, is
brought forth "in the image of Elohim." And now, having eaten the
fruit of Knowing, Man has become godlike in one more crucial
respect. Looking at it from the view point of the deity, "The Adam
has become as one of us" except for Immortality. And so the other
unnamed colleagues of Yahweh concur in the decision to expel Adam
and Eve from the Garden of Eden, placing Cherubim with a "revolving
flaming sword" to block the humans’ way back if they ever tried.
"Thus did Man’s very creator decree Man’s mortality. But Man
undaunted, has searched for immortality ever since through the
medium of Divine Encounters.
"Is this yearning for Encounters based on a recollection of real
happenings, or an illusionary search based on mere myths? How much
of the biblical tale is fact, how much fiction?
"....The veracity of the Hebrew Bible (Old Testament) - be it its
tales of Creation, of the Deluge and Noah’s Ark, of the Patriarchs,
of the Exodus - has come into doubting criticism in the nineteenth
century. Much of that skepticism and disbelief has been muted and
countered by archaeological discoveries and increasingly validated
the biblical record and data in an ever-receding order - from the
near past to the earlier times, carrying the corroboration farther
and farther back through historical times to prehistorical ones....
"....The archaeologists’ spades not only verified the existence of
Shine’ar/Sumer. The finds also brought to light ancient texts from
Mesopotamia that paralleled the biblical tales of Creation and the
Deluge....
"....History, as the great scholar Samuel N. Kramer has so
excellently expounded in his 1959 book of that title,
Begins at Sumer.
"It all began, we learn from the various texts, a very long time
ago, with the splashing down in the waters of the Persian Gulf or
the Arabian Sea of a group of fifty ANUNNAKI - a term literally
meaning "Those Who from Heaven to Earth Came...." Other settlements
followed in pursuit of the visitors’ mission: Obtaining gold by
distilling the water of the Persian Gulf - gold needed urgently back
on the home planet of the Anunnaki so that their dwindling
atmosphere could be protected by a shield of suspended gold
particles....
"....The evidence presented and analyzed by us in books I - V of
The Earth Chronicles series and the companion book Genesis Revisited, indicated a vast elliptical orbit for Nibiru that
lasts 3,600 Earth-years, a period called SAR in Sumerian....
"....Therein , in the
Sars, lies the secret to the apparent
immortality of the ancient "gods...." The orbit of
Nibiru lasts
3,600 Earth-years; but for those who live on Nibiru, that amounts to
only one of their years.... in the eyes of the Earthlings (for that,
literally, is what Adam - "He of Earth" - meant in Hebrew), the life
cycles of the Anunnaki were such that, in human terms, they were
immortal for all practical purposes.
"....Man, The Adam, was not yet on Earth when the Anunnaki arrived.
For forty Sars the Anunnaki who were sent to the Abzu toiled mining
the gold; but then they mutinied.
"....Enki, the scientist, had a solution.
Let us create a Primitive
Worker, he said, that will take over the backbreaking toil. The
other leaders of the Anunnaki present wondered: How can it be done,
how can an Adamu be created? To which Enki gave this answer:
The creature whose name you uttered
it exists!
"He found the "creature" -
a hominid, the product of evolution on
Earth - in southeast Africa, "above the Abzu." All that we need to
do to make it an intelligent worker, Enki added, was to:
Bind upon it the image of the gods.
"The assembled
gods - the Anunnaki leaders - agreed
enthusiastically....
"....In Chapter 1 of Genesis the discussions that led to this
decision is summed up in one verse: "And Elohim said, Let us make
the Adam in our image, after our likeness."
Mr. Sitchin goes through the process that was used to create the
worker, which readers may find in his previous books.
"....In ancient Egypt, where the
gods were called Neteru
("Guardians") and identified by the hieroglyphic symbol of a
mining
axe, the act of creating the first Man out of clay was attributed to
the ram-headed god Khnemu ("He who joins"), of who the texts said
that he was "the maker of men . . . the father who was in the
beginning." Egyptian artists too, as the Sumerians before them,
depicted pictorially the moment of the First Encounter; it showed Khnemu
holding up the newly created being, assisted by his son
Thoth
(the god of science and medicine).
"....But, like any hybrid.... (The Adam, male and female) the "Mixed
Ones" could not procreate. The biblical tale of how the new being
acquired "Knowing," the ability to procreate in the biblical
terminology covers with an allegorical veneer the second act of
genetic engineering. The principal actor in the dramatic development
is neither Yahweh-Elohim nor the created Adam and Eve but the
Serpent, the instigator of the crucial biological change....
"....Indeed, the frequent Sumerian symbol for
Enki was that of a
serpent.... As we shall show later on, Enki’s use of genetic
engineering in the Garden of Eden also led to the double helix motif
in Tree of Life depictions....
"....As we trace these double and
triple meanings of Enki’s epithets
(Serpent-copper-healing-genetics), it behooves to recall the
biblical tale of the plague that befell the Israelites during their
wanderings in the Sinai wilderness: it stopped after Moses had made
a "copper serpent" and held it up to summon divine help.
"It is nothing short of mind-boggling to realize that
this second
Divine Encounter, when Humankind was given the ability to procreate,
was also captured for us by ancient "photographers" - artists who
carved the scene in reverse on the small stone cylinders, images
that were seen in positive after the seal was rolled in wet clay.
Mr. Sitchin also mentions depictions of
Enki with his symbolic
epithets.
"....All these texts and depictions, augmenting the biblical
narrative, have thus combined to paint a detailed picture, a course
of events with identifiable principal participants, in the saga of
Divine Encounters. Nevertheless, scholars by and large persist in
lumping all such evidence as "mythology." To them the tale of events
in the Garden of Eden is just a myth, an imaginary allegory taking
place in a nonexistent place.
"An interesting light is shed on the "Geography of Creation" (to
coin a term) and, consequently on the initial Divine Encounters, by
the Book of Jubilees. Composed in Jerusalem during the time of the
Second Temple, it was known in those centuries as
The Testament of Moses, because it began by answering the question,
How could Humanity know about those early events that even preceded
the creation of Humankind? The answer was that it was all revealed
to Moses on Mount Sinai, when an Angel of the divine Presence
dictated it to Moses by the Lord’s command. The name Book of
Jubilees, applied to the work by its Greek translators, stems from
the chronological structure of the book, which is based on a count
of the years by "jubilees" whose years are called "days" and
"weeks."
"....The Book of Jubilees, using the enigmatic count of "days,"
states that Adam was brought by the angels into the Garden of Eden
only "after Adam had completed forty days in the land where he had
been created"; and "his wife they brought in on the eightieth day."
Adam and Eve, in other words, were brought into being elsewhere.
"The Book of Jubilees, dealing with the expulsion from Eden later
on, provides another morsel of valuable information. It informs us
that "Adam and his wife went forth from the Garden of Eden, and they
dwelt in the Land of Nativity, the land of their creation." In other
words from the Edin they went back to the Abzu, in southeastern
Africa. Only there, in the second Jubilee, did Adam "know" his wife
Eve and "in the third week in the second jubilee she gave birth to
Cain, and in the fourth she gave birth to Abel, and in the fifth she
gave birth to a daughter, Awan." (The Bible states that Adam and Eve
had thereafter other sons and daughters; noncanonical books say they
numbered sixty-three in all).
"Such a sequence of events, that places the start of Humankind’s
proliferation from a single primordial mother in the Mesopotamian
Eden but back in the Abzu, in southeastern Africa, is now fully
corroborated by scientific discoveries that have led to the "Out of
Africa" theories regarding the origin and spread on Humankind. Not
only finds of fossil remains of the earliest hominids, but also
genetic evidence of the final line of Homo sapiens, confirms
southeast Africa as the place where Humankind originated.
Mr. Sitchin gives at this point a thorough explanation of the
plausible location of Eden, which the reader may view on previous
books as well; then he continues:
"Confirmation of southern Mesopotamia, ancient Sumer as
the E.DIN,
the original biblical Eden does more than create a geographic
congruency between the Sumerian texts and the biblical narrative. It
also identifies the group with whom Humankind had Divine Encounters.
The E.DIN was the abode ("E") of the DIN ("The Righteous/Divine
Ones"). Their full title was DIN.GIR, meaning "The Righteous Ones of
the Rocketships," and was written pictrographically as a two stage
rocket whose command module could separate for landing. As the
script evolved from pictographic to the wedgelike cuneiform the
pictograph was changed by a star symbol meaning "Heavenly Ones";
later on, in Assyria and Babylon, the symbol was simplified to
crossed wedges and its reading in the Akkadian language, changed to
Ilu - "The Lofty Ones."
"The
Mesopotamian Creation texts provide not just the answer to the
puzzle of who were the several deities involved in the creation of
The Adam, causing the Bible to employ the plural Elohim ("The Divine
Ones") in a monotheistic version of the events and to retain the
"us" in "
Let us make Man in our image and after our likeness"; they
also provide the background for this achievement.
"The evidence leaves little room for doubting that
the Elohim of
Genesis were the Sumerian DIN.GIR. It was to them that the feat of
creating The Adam was attributed, and it was their diverse (and
often antagonistic) leaders - Enki, Enlil, Ninmah - who were the
"us" whom the first Homo sapiens first encountered.
"The expulsion from the Garden of Eden brought to an end the first
chapter in this relationship. Losing Paradise but gaining knowledge
and the ability to procreate, Humankind was henceforth destined to
be bonded with Earth -
In the sweat of thy brow
shalt thou eat bread,
until your return to the earth,
for from it was thou taken.
For thou art earthdust
and unto earthdust thou shalt return.
"But that is not how Humankind saw its destiny. Being created in the
image, after the likeness, and with the genes of Dingir/Elohim, it
saw itself part of the heavens - the other planets, the stars, the
universe. It strives to join them in their celestial abode, to gain
their immortality. To do so, the ancient texts tell us, Man has
continued to seek Divine Encounters without weapon-bearing Cherubim
blocking the way.
Return
Chapter Two
WHEN PARADISE
WAS LOST
"....The Expulsion was only the start of a new phase in that
relationship that can be characterized as hide-and-seek, in which
direct encounters become rare and visions or dreams become divine
devices.
"The beginning of this post-Paradise relationship was far from
auspicious; it was, in fact, a most tragic one. Unintentionally it
brought about the emergence of new humans, Homo sapiens sapiens. And
as it turned out, both the tragedy and its unexpected consequence
planted the seeds of divine disillusionment with Humankind.
Mr. Sitchin relates here the
incident of Abel-Cain, the sons of Adam
and Eve, according to the Book of Genesis; he then continues:
"What was this "mark of Cain"? The Bible does not say, and countless
guesses are just that - guesses. Our own guess (in the
Lost Realms)
was that the mark might have been a genetic change, such as
depriving the line of Cain of facial hair - a mark that would be
immediately obvious to whoever shall find them. Since this is a mark
of recognition of Amerindians, we have suggested that since Cain
"went away from the presence of Yahweh and resided in the
Land of
Nod, East of Eden," his wanderings took him and his offspring
farther into Asia and the Far East, in time crossing the Pacific to
settle in Mesoamerica....
"....Whatever the destination of
Cain or the nature of the mark
were, it is clear that this final act in the Cain-Abel drama
required a direct Divine Encounter, a close contact between the
deity and Cain so that the "mark" could be emplaced.
"....To find answers regarding those early times, we have to fish
for information in the extra-biblical books, of which the Book of
Jubilees is one. Called by scholars Pseudepigrapha of the Old
Testament, they include the
Book of Adam and Eve that survived in
several translated versions ranging from Armenian and Slavonic to Syriac, Arabic, and Ethiopic (but not the original Hebrew).
"....Since the death of Adam was the first natural passing of a
mortal, Eve and Seth knew not what to do. They took the dying Adam
and carried him to the "region of Paradise," and there sat at the
Gates of Paradise until Adam’s soul departed from his body. They sat
bewildered, mourning and crying. Then the Sun and Moon and the stars
darkened "the heavens opened" and Eve saw celestial visions. Raising
her eyes she saw "coming from the heavens a chariot of light, born
by four bright eagles. And she heard the Lord instruct the angels
Michael and Uriel to bring linen clothes and shroud Adam as well as
Abel (who has not yet been buried); so were Adam and Abel
consecrated for burial, then the two of them were carried by the
angels [messengers] and buried, "according to the commandment of
God, in the place where the Lord obtained the soildust" for the
creation of Adam.
"There is a wealth of pertinent information in this tale....
"....In the case of prophetic dreams (of which more later) such a
throwback in time would only serve to reinforce the fact that such
dreams have been indeed deemed an undisputed channel between the
deities and humans throughout recorded history.
"....The existence of pictorial depictions from that far back, in
prehistory [preceding the Deluge] [(that had occurred, by our
calculations, some 13,000 years ago)] is no secret. What is
virtually a secret is the fact, that besides animals, and some human
figures, those drawings and paintings also depicted what we nowadays
call UFOs.
"We refer to what is known as Cave Art, the many drawings found in
caves in Europe where Cro-Magnon Man made his home. Such
"decorated-caves" as scholars call them have been found especially
in the southwest of France and the north of Spain.... they created
astoundingly beautiful works of art. Occasionally depicting humans
as hunters, and sometimes their hunting weapons.... the depictions
by and large are those of Ice Age animals: bison, reindeer, ibexes,
horses, oxen, cows, felines, and here and there also fish and birds.
There is no doubt that the anonymous artists painted what they had
actually seen. Timewise they span millennia from about 30,000 to
13,000 years ago.
 "....The inclination to view the
Cave Art as religious art also
stems from the plastic finds. These consist mainly of "Venus"
figurines - statuettes of females known as the Willendorf Venus
(image
right) whose date is approximately 23000 B.C. Since the artists could also
render the female shape perfectly naturally.... it is believed that
the ones with exaggerated reproductive parts were intended to
symbolize or seek - "pray for" - fertility; so that while the
natural ones represented "Eves," the exaggerated ones ("Venuses")
expressed veneration of a goddess.
"....Merlin Stone, [among others on the book] in his book
When God
Was a Woman considered the phenomenon "dawn of a Stone Age Garden of
Eden" and linked the worship of a Mother Goddess to the later
goddesses of the Sumerian pantheon. One of the nicknames of Ninmah,
who had assisted Enki in the creation of Man, was Mammi; there is no
doubt that it was the origin of the word for "mother" in almost all
languages. That she was revered already some 30,000 years ago is no
wonder - for the Anunnaki had been on Earth for far longer, with Ninmah/Mammi among them.
"The question is, though, how did Stone Age Man, more specifically
Cro-Magnon Man, know of the existence of these "gods"?
"Here, we believe, come into play another type of drawings found in
those Stone Age caves. If they are mentioned at all (which is
rarely), they are referred to as "markings." But these were not
scratches or incoherent lines. These "markings" depict well-defined
shapes - shapes of objects that, nowadays are referred as UFOs . . .
"....Since all the other depictions in the decorated caves are of
animals, etc., actually seen and most accurately rendered by the
cave artists, there is no reason to assume that in the case of the
"markings" they depicted objects that were abstract imaginings. If
the depictions are of flying objects, then the artists must have
actually seen them.
"Thanks to those artists and their handiwork, we can rest assure
that when Adam and Eve - in pre-Diluvial times - claimed to have
seen "celestial chariots," they were recording fact, not fiction.
"....We have already examined such sources in respect to the
creation of the Adam and of Eve and the Garden of Eden. Let us now
examine the Cain-Abel tragedy. Why did the too feel obliged to offer
the first fruits or yearlings to Yahweh, why did he pay heed only to
the offering of Abel, the shepherd, and why did the Lord then rush
to appease Cain by promising him that he, Cain would rule over Able?
"This answers lie in a realization that, as in the tale of creation,
the biblical version compresses more than one Sumerian deity into a
single, monotheistic one.
"Sumerian texts include two that deal with disputes and conflicts
between farming and shepherding. They both hold the key to an
understanding of what had happened by going back to a time before of
domestication of either grains or cattle, a "time when grains had
not yet been brought forth, had not yet vegetated . . . when a lamb
had not yet been dropped, there was no she-goat." But the
"black-headed people" had already been fashioned and placed in
the Edin, so
the Anunnaki decided to give to
NAM.LU.GAL.LU - "Civilized
Mankind" - the knowledge of and tools for "the tilling of the land"
and the "keeping of sheep"; not however, for the sake of Mankind but
" for the sake of the gods," to assure their satiation.
"The task of bringing forth the two forms of domestication fell to
Enki and Enlil....
"....After an initial idyllic period,
Lahar and Anshan ("grains" and
"woolly cattle") began to quarrel. A text named by scholars
The Myth
of Cattle and Grain reveals that in spite of the effort to separate
the two by "establishing a house," a settled way of life, for Anshan
(the farmer) and putting up sheepfolds in the grasing lands for
Lahar (the shepherd) and in spite of the abundant crops and
bountiful sheepfolds, the two began to quarrel. The quarrel began as
the two offered these abundances to the "storehouse of the gods." At
first each just extolled his own achievements and belittled those of
the other. But the argument became so volatile, that both Enlil and
Enki had to intervene. According to the Sumerian text, they declared
Anshan - the farmer - the more surpassing.
"More explicit in its choice between the two food producers and two
ways of life is a text known as
The Dispute Between Emesh and Enten,
in which the two come to Enlil for a decision as to who of them is
the more important. Emesh is the one who "made wide stalls and
sheepfolds"; Enten, who dug canals to water the lands, asserts that
he is the "farmer of the gods." Bringing their offerings to Enlil,
each seeks to be granted primacy. Enten boasts how he made "farm
touch farm," his irrigation canals "brought water in abundance," how
he "made grain increase in the furrows" and he "heaped high in the
granaries." Emesh points out that he "made the ewe give birth to the
lamb, the goat to give birth to the kid, cow and calf to multiply,
fat and milk to increase," and also how he obtained eggs from nests
made for the birds and caught fish from the sea.
"But Enlil rejects the pleas of
Emesh, even repriminds him: "How
could you compare yourself to your brother Enten!" he tells him, for
it is Enten "who is in charge of the life-producing waters of all
the lands." And water spells life, growth, abundance.
"....It is noteworthy that in the above quoted lines
Enlil calls
Emesh a brother of Enten - the same relationship as that between
Cain and Abel. This and other similarities between the Sumerian and
biblical tales indicate that the former were the inspiration for the
latter. The preference of the farmer over the shepherd by Enlil can
be traced to the fact that he was the one to introduce farming while
Enki accounted for the domestication of livestock.
"....All in all, there can be little doubt that the
Cain-Abel
rivalry reflected a rivalry between the two divine brothers. It
flared up from time to time....
"....A question rarely asked is, where did Cain obtained the very
notion of killing? In the Garden of Eden Adam and Eve were
vegetarians, eating only fruits of the trees. No animal was
slaughtered by them. Away from the Garden there were only four
humans, none of who has yet died (and certainly not as result of
foul play). In such circumstances, what made Cain "come upon his
brother Abel and kill him"?
"The answer, it seems, lies not among men but
among the gods. Just
as the rivalry between the human brothers reflected a rivalry
between the divine brothers, so did the killing of one human by
another emulated the killing of one "god" by another. Not of
Enki by
Enlil or vice versa - their rivalry never reached such vehemence -
but still the killing of one leader of the Anunnaki by another.
"The tale is well documented in Sumerian literature. Scholars call
it
The Myth of Zu.... [Ninurta, the foremost of
Enlil carried out
the sentence].
"....Sumerian texts, the origin of and inspiration for the tales of
Genesis, not only fill the bare-bones biblical versions with
details, they also provide the background for understanding the
events. One more aspect of the human experience this far can be
explained by the divine encounters. The sins of Adam/Eve and of Cain
are punished by nothing more severe than Expulsion. That too appears
to be an application of an Anunnaki form of punishment to the
created humans. It was once meted to Enlil himself, who "date-raped"
a young Anunnaki nurse (who in the end became his wife).
"By combining the biblical and Sumerian data, we are now in a
position to put the record of Mankind’s beginnings in a time frame
supported by modern science.
"....A point that is usually ignored, but which we find highly
significant, is that all through the narratives concerning Man’s
creation, the Garden of Eden episode, and - most intriguing - in the
story of the birth of Cain and Abel, the Bible refers to the humans
as THE Adam, a generic term defining a certain species. Only in
chapter 5 of Genesis, that begins with the words "This is the book
of the genealogies of Adam," does the Bible drop the "the." It is
only then that it starts to deal with a specific forefather of the
human generations; but significantly, this listings omits Cain and
Able, and proceeds from the person called Adam straight onto his son
Seth, the father of Enosh. And it is only for Seth’s son Enosh that
the Hebrew term meaning "human being" is employed; for that is what
Enosh meant: "He who is human." To this day the Hebrew word for
"Humankind" is Enoshut, "that which is like, that which stems from,
Enosh."
"....whom the Bible considers the real progenitor of Humankind as it
came to be in the ancient Near East.
"....It is in respect to Enosh that the Bible states (Genesis 4:26)
that it was in his time that Humankind "began to call upon the name
of Yahweh." It must have been an important development, a new phase
in Humankind’s history, for the Book of Jubilees states in almost
identical words that it was Enosh "who began to call on the name of
the Lord on Earth." Man had discovered God!
"Who was this new human, "Enosh-man," from a scientific point of
view?
 "....Was he [Enosh] the progenitor of what we call
Neanderthal Man,
the first true Homo sapiens? Or was he already the ancestor of
Cro-Magnon Man, the first true Homo sapiens sapiens that still walks
the Earth as the current human beings? Cro-Magnon Man (so named
after the site in France where his skeletal remains were found)
appeared in Europe some 35,000 years ago, replacing there the
Neanderthal Man (so named after the discovery site in Germany) who
can be traced there to 100,000 years ago.... caves in Israel reveal
Neanderthals were migrating through the Near East at least some
115,000 years ago, and Cro-Magnons had dwelt in the area already
92,000 years ago. Where do The Adam and Eve, the first created
humans, and Adam and Eve, the progenitors of Seth and Enosh, fit
into all that? What light do the
Sumerian King Lists and the Bible
shed on the issue, and how does it all correlate to modern
scientific discoveries?
"....The genetic markers for Homo sapiens, first studied through the
Mitochondrial DNA that is passed by the female alone, and then
through studies of Nuclear DNA that is inherited from both
parents.... indicate that we all stem from a single "Eve" that lived
in southeast Africa between 200,000 to 250,000 years ago. Studies
released in May 1995 of the Y chromosome indicate a single "Adam"
ancestor some 270,000 years ago.
"The Sumerian data, we have concluded, places
the creation of The
Adam at about 290,000 years ago - well within the time scales for
the two progenitors that modern science now suggests. How long the
stay at the Garden of Eden, the attainment of the ability to
procreate, the expulsion back to southeast Africa, and the Cain-Abel
birth had taken place, the ancient texts do not state. Fifty
thousand years? Whatever the exact time lapse, it seems evident that
the "Eve" who was back in southeast Africa, bearing offspring to the
Adam, fits well chronologically with the current scientific data.
"With those early humans gone from the stage, the time came for the
specific Adam and his line to appear.
Mr. Sitchin includes in his book an interesting calculation of time
from Adam (the specific individual) to the Deluge.
"Moreover, as we have shown earlier in this chapter,
THE Adam and
the person Adam were not one and the same. First there was the
interlude in the Garden of Eden, then the Expulsion. How long that
interlude lasted, the Bible does not say.
"....The solution offered here by us leads to astounding results. It
places the Adam-Seth-Enosh line right in the time slot when
Neanderthals and then Cro-Magnons passed through the Lands of the
Bible as they spread toward Asia and Europe. It means that the
individual (not the generic) Adam was the biblical Man whom we term
Neanderthal, and that Enosh, whose name meant "Human" was the
biblical term for what we call Cro-Magnon - the first Homo sapiens
sapiens, indeed the forefather of Enoshut, today’s humanity.
"It was then, the Bible asserts, that humanity "began to call upon
the name of Yahweh." Man was ready for renewed Divine Encounters;
and some that then occurred were truly astounding
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Chapter Three
THE THREE WHO
TO HEAVEN ASCENDED
"....All three require accepting as truthful the Sumerian assertion
that there have been a developed civilization before the Deluge, one
that was wiped out and buried under millions of tons of mud by the
avalanche of water that engulfed Mesopotamia. This Sumerian
assertion was not doubted by later generations.... The Bible too,
describes an advanced civilization with cities, crafts, and arts in
respect of the line of Cain. Though no such details are provided in
respect to the line of Seth, the very tale of Noah and the
construction of the ark implies a state of affairs where people
could already build seagoing vessels.
"That such civilization expressed itself in urban centers in
Mesopotamia (the core of such advances) but in only magnificent
artistry among the European branch of Cro-Magnons is quite possible.
As a matter of fact, some of the images painted or drawn by the cave
artists depict inexplicable structures or objects. They become
meaningful if one accepts the possibility that Cro-Magnons had seen
(or perhaps even travelled by) masted seagoing vessels - a
possibility that could explain how Man crossed the two oceans 20,000
or even 30,000 years ago to reach America from the Old World.
"....The first one is the tale recounted in what scholars call
The Legend of Adapa. An intriguing aspect of the tale is that, prior
to the heavenly ascent, Adapa was involved in an involuntary sea
crossing to an unknown land because his boat was blown off course -
an episode that is perhaps reflected in the recollections of early
Americans and in the Cro-Magnons cave depictions.
"Adapa, according to the ancient text, was a
protégé of Enki.
Allowed to live in Enki’s city Eridu (the very first settlement of
the Anunnaki on Earth), "daily he attended the sanctuary of Eridu."
Choosing him to become "as a model of men," Enki (in this text
called by his initial epithet-name, E.A) "gave him wisdom, but did
not give him eternal life." It is not just the similarity between
the names Adapa and Adam, but also this statement, that led various
scholars to see in the ancient tale of Adapa the forerunner (or
inspiration for) the tale of Adam and Eve in the Garden of Eden, who
were allowed to eat of the Tree of Knowing but not of the Tree of
Life....
"....One day "at the holy quay, the Quay of the New Moon" (the
Moon
was then the celestial body associated with Ea/Enki) "he boarded the
sailboat," perhaps intending to just sail to catch fish. But then
calamity struck....
".... a major storm, "the South Wind, began to blow. It apparently
unexpectedly changed direction, and instead of blowing from the sea
toward land it blew toward the open ocean. For seven days the storm
blew, carrying Adapa to an unknown distant region. There, stranded,
"at the place where is the home of the fishes, he took up a
residence." We are not told how long he was stranded at that
southern location, not how he was finally rescued.
"....In his heavenly abode, according to the tale,
Anu wondered why
the South Wind "has not blown toward the land for seven days." His
vizier Ilabrat answered him that it was because "Adapa, offspring of
Ea, had broken the wing of the South Wind." Perplexed, Anu ("rising
from his throne") said, "Let them fetch him hither!"
""At that, Ea, he who knows what pertains to Heaven," took charge of
the preparations for the celestial journey. He made Adapa wear his
hair unkempt, and clothed him in mourning garb." He then gave
Adapa
the following advice:
You are about to go before Anu, the king;
The road to heaven you will be taking.
When you approach the gate of Anu
the gods Dumuzi and Gizzida
at the gate of Anu will be standing.
When they see you, they will ask you:
"Man, on account of whom do you look thus,
for whom so you wear mourning garb?"
"To this question,
Ea instructed Adapa, you must give the following
answer: "Two gods have vanished from our land, that is why I am
thus." When they question you who the two gods were, Ea continued,
you must say, "Dumuzi and Gizzida they are." And, since the two gods
whose names you tell as being the vanished gods for whom you mourn
will be the very same two who guard the gate of Anu, Ea explained,
"They will glance at each other, and laugh a lot, and will speak to
Anu a good word about you."
As you stand before Anu
they will offer you bread;
it is Death, do not eat!
They will offer you water;
it is Death, do not drink!
They will offer you a garment;
put it on.
They will offer you oil;
anoint yourself with it!
"You must not neglect these instructions,"
Ea cautioned Adapa; "to
that which I have spoken, hold fast!"
"Soon thereafter the emissary of Anu arrived. Anu, he said, gave the
following instructions: "Adapa, he who broke the South Wind’s wing -
bring him to me!" And so speaking,
He made Adapa take the way to heaven,
and to heaven he ascended
And it happened as Enki said it would....
"....Evidently
Anu had such suspicions right then and there, for
having heard Adapa’s tale he was puzzled, and asked:
Why did Ea to an unworthy human
disclose the way of heaven
and the plans of Earth -
rendering him distinguished,
making a Shem for him?
"And, continuing such rhetorical questions,
Anu asked: "As for us,
what shall we do about him?"
"....Adapa’s peculiar behavior amazed Anu. "Anu looked at him, and
laughed at him." "Come now, Adapa," Anu said, "why did you not eat,
why did you not drink?" To which Adapa responded, "Ea, my master,
commanded me, ’you shall not eat, you shall not drink.’"
"When Anu heard this, wrath filled his heart." He dispatched an
emissary, "one who knows the thoughts of the great Anunnaki," to
discuss the matter with the lord Ea. The emissary.... repeated the
events in Heaven word for word. The tablet then becomes too damaged
and illegible, so that we do not know Ea’s explanations for his odd
instructions (that were, obviously, intended to sustain his decision
to give Adapa knowledge but not immortality).
"No matter how the discussion ended,
Anu decided to send Adapa back
to Earth, and since Adapa used the oil to anoint himself,
Anu
decreed that back in Eridu, Adapa’s destiny will be to start a line
of priests who will be adept at curing diseases. On the way back,
Adapa, from the horizon of heaven
to the zenith of heaven cast a glance;
and he saw its awesomeness.
"The interesting question, what was the transportation by which
Adapa had made the round-trip, seeing in the process the awesome
expanse of the heavens, is answered by the ancient text only
indirectly, when Anu wonders out loud why did Ea "make a Shem" for Adapa. This Akkadian word is usually translated "name." But as we
have elaborated in
The 12th Planet, the term (MU in Sumerian)
obtained this meaning from the shape of the stones erected to
"commemorate the name " of a king - a shape that emulated the
pointed skychambers of the Anunnaki. What Anu wondered, then, was,
Why did Ea provide a skyrocket for Adapa?
"Mesopotamian depictions show "Eaglemen" -
Anunnaki astronauts in
their dress uniforms - flanking and saluting a rocketlike Shem.
Another depiction shows two such "Eaglemen" guarding the gateway of
Anu (illustrating perhaps the gods Dumuzi and Gizzida of the Adapa
tale). The gate’s lintel is decorated with the emblem of the winged
Disc, the celestial symbol of Nibiru, which establishes where the
gate was....
"....Tablets that cataloged literary works kept on shelves of
the
library of Ashurbanipal in Nineveh mention, in their undamaged
portions, at least two "books" relating to Adapa’s knowledge....
"....One other book (i.e. a set of tablets) by Adapa that was listed
on the shelves of the library of Nineveh was titled "Celestialship
which to the Sage of Anu, Adapa [was given]." The Legend of Adapa
texts repeatedly refer to the fact that Adapa was shown "the ways of
heaven," enabling him to travel from Earth to the heavenly abode of
Anu. The implication that Adapa was shown a celestial route map
ought to be taken as based on fact, for - incredibly - at least one
such route map has been found. It is depicted on a clay disc,
undoubtedly a copy of an earlier artifact, that was also discovered
in the ruins of the royal library of Nineveh and that is now kept in
the British Museum in London. Divided into eight segments, it
depicted (as evident from the undamaged portions), precise geometric
shapes (some, such as an ellipse, unknown from other ancient
artifacts), arrows, and accompanying notations in Akkadian that
referred to various planets, stars, and constellations. Of
particular interest is an almost-intact segment whose notations....
of space flight instructions identify it as the Route of Enlil from
a mountainous planet (Nibiru) to Earth. Beyond Earth’s skies (the
"Way of Enlil") lie four celestial bodies (which other texts
identify as Sun, Moon, Mercury, and Venus). In between, the flight
passes by seven planets.
"....Significant, too, though in other respects, is the fact that
the route passes between the planets named in Sumerian DIL.GAN
(Jupiter) and APIN (Mars). Mesopotamian astronomical texts referred
to Mars as the planet "where the right course is set," when a turn
is made as the drawing on the segment indicates. In
Genesis
Revisited we have presented considerable ancient and modern evidence
in support of a conclusion that an ancient space base had existed on
Mars.
"The missing text or the damaged portions of Adapa Legend might have
shed light on a puzzling aspect of the tale: If Ea foresaw all that
would happen at the heavenly abode, what was the purpose of scheming
to send Adapa aloft if, in the end, he was to be deprived of Eternal
Life?
"Tales from post-Diluvial times (such as that of
Gilgamesh) indicate
that offspring of human and a god (or goddess) deemed themselves
worthy of Immortality, and went to great lengths to join the gods to
attain that. Was Adapa such a "demigod," and did he nag Ea to endow
him with Immortality? The reference to Adapa as "offspring of Ea" is
translated by some literally as "son of Ea," born to Enki by a human
female. This would explain Ea’s scheme to pretend that Adapa’s wish
is being granted, while in fact he maneuvered for the opposite
result.
"In Sumerian times the "Sages of Eridu" were a class unto
themselves, ancient savants of blessed memory. Their names and
specialties were listed and recorded with great respect and
reverence in countless texts.
"According to those sources, the
sages of Eridu were seven in
number.... The Assyrian text calls [Enoch] Utu-Abzu; Professor
Borger concluded that he was the Assyrian "Enoch," because according
to the biblical record, it was the seventh pre-Diluvial Patriarch,
whom the Bible calls Enoch, who was taken by God to the heavenly
abode.
"...."Enoch walked with the Elohim," and was taken aloft
by Elohim." The Hebrew term, as we have shown, stood for DIN.GIR
["The Righteous Ones of the Rocketships"] in the Sumerian sources of
Genesis. Thus it was the Anunnaki with whom Enoch "walked" and by
whom he was taken aloft. This gloss, as well as scientific data that
could come only from the Sumerian sexagesimal system of mathematics
and the Sumerian calendar that had originated in Nippur, are clues
to the ancient sources of compositions thanks to which we know much
more about Enoch than the laconic biblical sentence.
".... According to the Book of Jubilees,
Enoch spent his time by
"writing down the condemnations and judgments of the world," on
account of which "God brought the waters of the Flood upon all the
land of Eden."
"Even greater detail is provided by the
Pseudepigraphic Book of
Enoch, in which the tale of Enoch is not part of the patriarchal
tale but the principal object of a major work....
"....The Hebrew original of the
Book of Enoch is lost, but had
surely existed because fragments thereof, mixed in with an Aramaic
dialect (Aramaic having become by then the language of common daily
usage), have been found among the Dead Sea Scrolls. Widely quoted
and translated into Greek and Latin, it was considered as holy
scripture by nearly all the writers of the New Testament. With all
that, the composition has survived mainly owing to much later
translations into Ethiopic (known as "1Enoch") and Slavonic ("2
Enoch," sometimes called
The Book of the Secrets of Enoch).
"The Book of Enoch describes in detail not one but two celestial
journeys....
"....The Bible states that Enoch "walked with the Elohim" well
before he was taken aloft; the Book of Enoch enlarges on that
pre-ascend period. It describes Enoch as a scribe with prophetic
powers....
Mr. Sitchin describes
Enoch’s ascents in several paragraphs, it is
astounding, the encounter with other celestial beings, his visions
and his realities, his return to Earth and his final ascent:
"The second and final ascent of Enoch to Heaven, the scribe of the
Book of Enoch stated at the book’s conclusion, took place exactly on
the day and hour he was born, at age 365. [Mr. Sitchin explains at
length the significance of this number as well].
"Was this
tale of Enoch’s heavenly ascent(s) the equivalent of, or
inspired by, the Sumerian tale of Adapa?
"Certain details that are included in both tales point in that
direction. Two angels, paralleling the gods Dumuzi and Gizzida in
the Adapa legend, bring the Earthling "before the face of the Lord."
The visitor’s garments are changed from earthly ones to divine ones.
He is anointed. And finally, he is given great knowledge that he
writes down in "books." In both instances, the visitor writes what
is being dictated to him. These details appear within a framework
that without doubt establishes the Sumerian origins of the Enoch
"legend."
"We have already pointed out that by ascribing Enoch’s Divine
Encounters to the "Elohim," the biblical narrative divulged its
Sumerian source. [Numerology and Planet system are again explained
in the book].
"....(It is noteworthy that in Jewish medieval mysticism known as
the Kaballah, the abode of God the Almighty is in the tenth Sefira,
a "brilliance" or heavenly place, a Tenth Heaven. The Sefirot
(plural) were usually depicted as concentric circles, often
superimposed on the figure of Kadmon ("The Ancient One") the center
of which is called Yesod ("Foundation"), the tenth
Ketter ("Crown"
of God the Most High). Beyond it stretches the Ein Soff - infinity,
infinite space.)
"These are all definite links to the Sumerian sources. But whether
it was the tale of Adapa that is reflected in the Enoch record is
uncertain, for one can find more similarities between Enoch and a
second pre-Diluvial Sumerian individual, EN.ME.DUR.ANNA ("Master of
the Divine Tablets of the Heavenly Bond"), also known as
EN.ME.DUR.AN.KI ("Master of the Divine Tablets of the Bond
Heaven-Earth").
"....Enmeduranki was taken by two divine chaperons heavenward, to be
taught a variety of sciences. Whereas in the case of Adapa the
possibility (mentioned above) that he was a seventh (sage) is not
absolute (some Mesopotamian sources list him as the first of Eridu’s
seven sages), the seventh position of Enmeduranki is certain; hence
the scholarly opinion that it was he who was the Sumerian equivalent
of the biblical Enoch. He came from Sippar, where in pre-Diluvial
times the Spaceport of the Anunnaki was located, with
Utu ("Shamash"
in later times), a grandson of Enlil, as its commander.
"....The text detailing the ascent and training of
Enmeduranki was
pieced together from fragments of tablets, mostly from the royal
library in Nineveh, then collated and published in an edited version
by W.G. Lambert ("Enmeduranki and Related Material" in the Journal
of Cuneiform Studies). The basic source is the record of
pre-Diluvial events inscribed on clay tablets by a Babylonian king
in support of his claim to the throne because he was a "distant
scion of kingship, seed preserved from before the Flood, offspring
of Enmeduranki who ruled in Sippar....:
Enmeduranki was a prince in sippar,
beloved of Anu, Enlil and Ea.
Shamash in the Bright Temple
appointed him as priest.
Shamash and Adad [took him]
to the assembly [of the gods].
"....Having been taught the "secrets of Heaven and Earth,"
specifically including medicine and mathematics, Enmeduranki was
returned to Sippar, with instructions to reveal to the populace his
Divine Encounter and to make the knowledge available to Humankind by
passing the secrets from one priestly generation to another, father
to son....
"....According to this rendition of the heavenly ascent of
Enmeduranki, his abode was in Sippar (the post-Diluvial "cult
center" of Shamash), and it is there that he used the Divine Tablets
to teach secret knowledge to his successor priests. This detail
forges a link with the events of the Deluge, because according to
Mesopotamian sources as also reported by Berossus.... the tablets
containing the knowledge revealed to Mankind by the Anunnaki before
the Deluge were buried for safekeeping in Sippar.
"In fact,
the two tales - of the Sumerian Enmeduranki and of the
biblical Enoch - contain even stronger links than that one to the
Deluge. For, as we shall examine the story-behind-the-story, we
shall come upon a sequence of events whose principal motivation was
Divine Sex and whose culmination was a deliberate plan to eradicate
Mankind.
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