Chapter Four
THE NEFILIM: SEX AND DEMIGODS

"....hidden behind the tale of the Deluge is an episode of Divine Encounters of a totally new kind - an episode without which the Deluge tale itself would lose its biblical rational.

"The biblical tale of the Deluge, the great Flood, begins in chapter 6 of Genesis with eight enigmatic verses.... The fifth verse is supposed to offer both explanation and justification: "And Yahweh saw that the wickedness of Man was great on the Earth, and that every imagination of his heart’s thoughts was evil." Therefore (verse six) "Yahweh repented that He had made Man upon the Earth, and it grieved Him at His heart."

"....pointing the accusing finger at humanity, only increases the puzzle of the chapter’s first four verses, whose subject is not at all humanity but the deities themselves, and whose focus is the intermarriage between "the sons of God" and "the daughters of the Adam."

"And if one wonders, What has all that got to do with the excuse for the Deluge as a punishment of Mankind, the answer can be given in one word: SEX . . . Not human sex, but Divine Sex. Divine encounters for the purpose of sexual intercourse.

"The opening verses of the Deluge tale in the Bible, echoing ancient sins and calamitous purgatory, have been a preacher’s delight: That was a time that set an example, the time when "there were giants upon the Earth, in those days and also after that, when the sons of God came in unto the daughters of men and they bare children to them...."

"....Properly translated, this is how the Bible describes the circumstances that preceded and led to the Deluge:

And it came to pass,
When the Earthlings began to increase in
number upon the face of the Earth,
and daughters were born unto them,
that the sons of the Elohim
saw the daughters of the Earthlings,
that they were compatible.
And they took unto themselves
wives of whichever they chose.

The Nefilim were upon the Earth
in those days, and thereafter too,
when the sons of the Elohim
cohabited with the daughters of the Adam
and they bore children to them.

"The biblical term Nefilim, the sons of the Elohim who were then upon the Earth, parallels the Sumerian Anunnaki ("Those Who From Heaven to Earth Came"); the Bible itself (Numbers 13:33) explains that by pointing out that the Nefilim were "sons of Anak" (Hebrew rendering of Anunnaki). The time preceding the Deluge was thus a time when the young Anunnaki males began to have sex with young human females; and being compatible, had children by them - offspring part mortal and part "divine": demigods.

"....Although the Bible itself does not say when the intermarriage began, except to state that it "came to pass when the Earthlings began to increase in number" and to spread upon the Earth, the Pseudepigraphic books reveal that the sexual involvement of young gods with human females became a major issue in the time of Enoch - well before the Deluge (since Enoch was the seventh Patriarch of the ten pre-Diluvial ones.) According to the Book of Jubilees one of the matters regarding which Enoch had "testified" concerned "angels of the Lord that had descended to Earth and who had begun to unite themselves, and thus be defiled, with the daughters of men, those who had begun to unite themselves, and thus be defiled, with the daughters of men...."

"....The Book of Enoch throws more light on what had happened:

And it came to pass when the children of men
had multiplied, that in those days were born
unto them beautiful and comely daughters.
And the angels, the Children of Heaven,
saw and lusted after them,
and said to one another:
"Come, let us choose wives from among the
children of men, and beget us children."

"According to this source, this was not a development resulting from individual acts, from a young Anunnaki here and another one there getting overcome by lust. There is a hint that the sexual urge was augmented by a desire to have offspring; and that the choosing of human wives was a deliberate decision by a group of Anunnaki acting in concert. Indeed, as we peruse the text further, we read that after the idea had germinated.

Semjaza, who was their leader, said unto them:

"I fear yee will not agree to do this deed, and I
alone shall have to pay the penalty for a great sin."
And they all answered and said:
"Let us all swear an oath, and all
bind ourselves by mutual imprecations, not to
abandon this plan but to do this thing."

"So they all gathered together and bound themselves by an oath "to do this thing" although it was a violation of "the law of their ordinance." The scheming angels, we learn as we read on, descended upon Mount Hermon ("Mount of Oath"), at the southern end of the mountains of Lebanon. "Their number was two hundred, those who in the day of Jared came down upon the summit of Mount Hermon." The two hundred divided themselves into subgroups of ten; the Book of Enoch provides the names of the group leaders, "The chiefs of Ten." The whole affair was thus a well organized effort by sex-deprived and childless "sons of the Elohim" to remedy the situation.

"....Was such a "do what you have to do while I look away?" ploy behind the oath-taking ceremony atop Mount Hermon? Was at least one principal leader, an elder of the Anunnaki (Enki?) who looked away, while another (perhaps Enlil?) was so upset?

"A little know Sumerian text may have a bearing on the question. Regarded as a "mythical tablet" by E. Chiera (in Sumerian Religious Texts), it tells the story of a young god named Martu who complained about his spouseless life, and we learn from it intermarriage with human females was both common and not a sin - providing it was done by permission and not without the young woman’s consent:

In my city I have friends,
they have taken wives.
I have companions,
they have taken wives.
In my city, unlike my friends,
I have not taken a wife;
I have no wife,
I have no children.

"....The above-quoted complaint by Martu was addressed to his mother, an unnamed goddess. She wanted to know whether the maiden whom he desired "appreciated his gaze." When it was so determined, the gods gave Martu the needed permission. The rest of the text describes how the other young gods prepared a marriage feast, and how the residents of Nin-ab were summoned by the beat of a copper drum to witness the ceremony.

"If we read the available texts as versions of the same pre-historic record, we can envision the predicament of the young Anunnaki males and the unwelcome solution. There were six hundred Anunnaki who had come to Earth and another three hundred who operated the shuttlecraft, spacecraft, and other facilities such as a space station. Females were few among them.

"....An insight into the sexual habits on Nibiru itself can be gleaned from the records, in various God Lists that the Sumerian and subsequent nations had kept, concerning Anu himself. He had fourteen sons and daughters from his official spouse Antu; but in addition he had six concubines....

"....All these instances (Mr. Sitchin also gives reports about Enlil and Enki, their official and non official spouses) serve to illustrate the dire shortage of females among the Anunnaki who had come to Earth. After the Deluge, as the Sumerian God Lists attest, with second and third generations of Anunnaki around, a better male-female balance was attained. But the shortage of females was obviously acute in the long pre-Diluvian times.

"....The planetary intermarriage required strict permission. With the behavioral code of the Anunnaki viewing rape as a serious offence (even Enlil, the supreme commander, was sentenced to exile when he date-raped the young nurse; he was forgiven after he married her), the new form of Divine Encounters was regulated and required permission which, we learn from the Sumerian text was given only if the human female "appreciated the gaze" of the young god.

"So two hundred of the young ones took matter into their own hands, swore an oath to do it all together and face the results as a group, and swooped down among the Daughters of Men to pick out wives. The outcome - totally unanticipated when the Adam was created - was a new breed of people: Demigods.

"....The new kind of Divine Encounters, resulting in a new (though limited) breed of humans, created problems not only for the leadership of the Anunnaki, but also for Mankind. The Bible recognizes the sexual intercourse between Anunnaki and humans as the most significant aspect of the events preceding and leading to the Deluge, doing so by the enigmatic prefacing of the tale of the flood with the verses that record the intermarriage phenomenon.

"....The very first reported instance concerns the very hero of the Deluge and his family - Noah and his parents. The report also raises the question whether the hero of the Deluge (called Ziusudra in the Sumerian texts and Utnapishtim in the Akkadian version) was in fact a demigod.

"Scholars believe that among the sources for the Book of Enoch there was a lost text that had been called the Book of Noah.... fragments of such Book of Noah were found among the Dead Sea scrolls in caves in the Qumran area, not far from Jericho.

"....According to the relevant sections of the book, when Bath-Enosh, the wife of Lamech, gave birth to Noah, the baby boy was so unusual that he aroused tormenting suspicions in the mind of Lamech....

"....In other words, Lamech suspected that his wife’s pregnancy was induced not by him but by one of the "sons of the God of Heaven," one of the "Watchers"!

"....The pseudepigraphical sources conclude the tale with the reassurances about Noah’s parentage and the explanation that his unusual features and intelligence were just signs of the forthcoming role as the saviour of the human seed. As for us, we must remain wondering, since according to the Sumerian sources of the tale the hero of the Deluge was, in all probability, a demigod.

"....What was the truth about Noah’s parentage? Was he a demigod as Lamech had suspected, or his own seed as the offended Bath-Enosh had reassured him? The Bible says of Noah (to follow the common translation) that he was "a just man, perfect in his generation; and Noah walked with God." A more literal translation would be " a righteous man, of perfect genealogy, who walked with the Elohim." The last qualification is identical to that employed by the Bible to describe Enoch’s divine contacts; and one must wonder whether there is more than meets the eye in the innocuous biblical statement.

"Be it as it may, it is certain that by breaking their own taboos the young Anunnaki/Nefilim launched a chain of events which was full of ironies. They took the daughters of Man as wives because they were genetically compatible; but it was as a consequence of having been so reengineered and perfected, that Mankind was doomed to be terminated . . . It was not the human females who lusted after the young Anunnaki, but the other way around; ironically, it was Mankind that had to bear the brunt of punishment, for "Yahweh had repented that He had made The Adam upon the Earth," and resolved "to wipe The Adam, whom I had created, off the face of the Earth."

"....But if a new kind of Divine Encounter - the sexual one - had led to the near-demise of Mankind, it was yet another kind of Divine Encounter - a whispered one - that led to its salvation

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Chapter Five
THE DELUGE

"....The Bible introduces Noah, the hero of the Deluge tale who was singled out to be saved with his family as "a righteous man, of perfect genealogy, with the Elohim did Noah walk." The Mesopotamian texts paint a more comprehensive picture of the man, suggesting that he was the offspring of a demigod and possibly (as Lamech had suspected) a demigod himself. It fills out the details of what "walking with the Elohim" had really entailed. Among the many details that the Mesopotamian texts provide, the role played by dreams as an important form of Divine Encounter becomes evident. And there is a vivid, first person report of a Divine Encounter unique in all the annals of the ancient Near East - the blessing of humans by the deity by the physical touching of the forehead.

"In the biblical version it is the same deity who resolves to wipe Mankind off the face of the Earth and, contradictorily, acts to prevent the demise of Mankind by devising a way to save the hero of the tale and his family. In the Sumerian original text and its subsequent Mesopotamian recensions, more than one deity is involved; and as in other instances, Enlil and Enki emerge as the chief protagonists: the stricter Enlil, upset by the intermarriages with the daughters of Man, calling for putting an end to Mankind; but the lenient Enki, deeming Mankind as his "Created Ones," schemes to save it through a chosen family.

"The Deluge, furthermore, was not a universal calamity brought about by an angry god, but a natural calamity seized by an upset Enlil to attain the desired goal. It was preceded by a long period of a worsening climate, increasing cold, reduced precipitation, and failing crops - conditions that we have identified in The 12^th Planet.... With their IGI.GI ("Those who Observe and See") orbiting the Earth and with a scientific station at the tip of Africa, the Anunnaki were well aware of the danger. And as the next orbital proximity of Nibiru was due, they well realized that the heightened gravitational pull on this passage could well trigger the calamity.

"....Enlil forbade the other gods from helping Mankind; it is evident from the details in the Epic of Atra-hasis that his intention was to have Mankind perish by starvation....

"....In spite of all the suffering, Mankind was still around. The people’s outcry - "bellowing" in Enlil’s words - only increased his annoyance.... And so he made the other leaders swear that what is about to happen - the avalanche of water - would be kept a secret from the Earthlings, so that they would perish....

"....That the Anunnaki themselves were preparing to abandon Earth in their shuttlecraft was another part of the secret that the gods swore to keep from Mankind. But as all the other took the oath, Enki resisted....

"....It was after that fatal oath-taking ceremony that Atra-hasis, staying day and night at the temple, received the following message in a dream

The gods commanded total destruction.
Enlil imposed an evil deed on the humans.

"...."Atra-hasis opened his mouth and addressed his god: ’Teach me the meaning of the dream, so that I may understand its meaning.’"

"But how could Enki be more explicit without breaking his oath?.... He did swear not to reveal "the secret" to Mankind; but could he not tell the secret to a wall?

....And so, one day, Atra-hasis heard his god’s voice without seeing him. This was no communications by means of a dream, at night, it was daytime; and yet, the encounter was totally different.

"The experience was traumatic. We read in the Assyrian recension that the baffled Atra-hasis "bowed and prostrated himself, then stood up, opened his mouth, and said:

Enki, lord-god -
I heard your entry,
I noticed steps like your footsteps!

"....still not seeing his god, Atra-hasis heard the deity’s voice coming from behind the reed wall in the temple; his lord-god was giving instructions to the wall:

Wall, listen to me!
Reed wall, observe my words!
Discard your house, build a boat!
Spurn property, save life!

"Instructions for the boat then followed....

"....The construction of the boat, obviously, could not have been hidden from the other people.... for that, Atra-hasis was instructed (from behind the reed wall) to explain to the others that he was building the boat in order to leave the city.... as a worshipper of Enki, he could no longer stay in a place controlled by Enlil.

"....The embarkation of pairs of animals has been a favorite subject.... It has also been one of the eyebrow raisers of the tale, deemed a virtual impossibility and thus more of an allegorical way to explain how animal life continued even after the Deluge....

"....It is therefore noteworthy that the Deluge recension in the Epic of Gilgamesh offers a totally different detail regarding the preservation of animal life: It was not the living animals that were taken aboard - it was their seed that was preserved!

Reed hut, reed hut! Wall, wall!
Reed hut, hearken! Wall, reflect!
Man of Shuruppack, son of Ubar-Tutu:
Abandon your house, build a ship!
Give up possessions, seek thou life!
Forswear good, the life keep!
Aboard the ship take thou
the seed of all living things.

"....The term for "seed" in the Old Babylonian and Assyrian recensions is the Akkadian word zeru (Zera in Hebrew) which stands for that from which living things sprout and grow. That these recensions stem from Sumerian originals has been clearly established; indeed, in some of the Akkadian versions the technical term for "seed" has been retained by its original Sumerian NUMUN, which was used to signify that by which a man had offspring.

"Taking on board "the seed of living beings" rather than the animals themselves not only reduced the space requirements to manageable proportions. It also implies the application of sophisticated biotechnology to preserve varied species - a technique being developed nowadays by learning the genetic secrets of DNA. This was feasible since Enki was involved; for he was the master of genetic engineering, symbolized in this capacity by the Entwined Serpents that emulated the double-helixed DNA.

"The assigning by the Sumerian/Mesopotamian texts of the role of Mankind’s savior to Enki makes much sense. He was the creator of The Adam and of Homo sapiens, was understandable.... As chief scientist of the Anunnaki he could select, obtain, and provide "the seed of all living beings.... He was also best suited for the role of the designer of Noah’s ark....

"....Built so that two-thirds of its great size would be below the waterline, it was given considerable stability.... Of the many suggestions for the shape of Noah’s ark, the one by Paul Haupt ("The Ship of the Babilonian Noah" in Beitrage zur Assyriologie) appears to us the most plausible. It also bears a striking resemblance to a modern submarine, with a conning tower whose hatch is closed tight when diving.

"No wonder, perhaps, that this specially designed vessel was described in the Babylonian and Assyrian recensions as a tzulili - a term which even nowadays (in modern Hebrew, Tzolelet) denotes a submersible boat, a submarine. The Sumerian term for Ziusudra’s boat was MA.GUR.GUR, meaning "a boat that can turn and tumble."

"....The Hebrew term in Genesis for the complete boat was Teba, which denotes something closed on all sides, a "box" rather than the commonly translated "ark." Stemming from the Akkadian Tebitu, it is considered by some scholars to signify a "goods vessel," a cargo ship. But the term with a hard "T," means "to sink." The boat was thus a "sinkable" boat, hermetically sealed, so that even if submerged under the tidal wave of the Deluge, it could survive the watery ordeal and resurface.

"Noah’s ark and its construction are key components of the Deluge tale, for without such a boat Mankind would have perished as Enlil had wished. The tale of the boat has a bearing on another aspect of the pre-Diluvial era; for it re-states familiarity with and use of boats in those early times - aspects already mentioned in the Adapa tale. All this corroborates the existence of pre-Diluvial shipping, and thus the incredible Cro-Magnon depictions of boats in their Cave Art.

"When the construction of the boat was completed and its outfitting and its loading done as Enki had directed, Atra-hasis brought his family into the boat.... some close friends.... In the Akkadian version, Utnapishtim "made all the craftsmen go on board...." from the Mesopotamian texts we also learn that the group also included an expert navigator, Puzur-Amurri by name, whom Enki provided....

"....A few important facts emerge from these details. They indicate that the master of the Salvation Plan was aware not only of the very existence of the Mount (the boatman’s instruction were to navigate, after the tidal wave subsided, to Mount Nitzir -"Mount of Salvation"- the twin-peaked Mount Ararat) so far away from southern Mesopotamia, but also that these twin peaks would be the first to emerge from the tidal wave, being the highest peaks in the whole of western Asia (17,000 and 12,900 feet high). This would have been a well-known fact to any one of the Anunnaki leaders, for when they established their pre-Diluvial Spaceport in Sippar, they anchored the Landing corridor on the twin peaks of Ararat.

"The master of the Salvation Plan, furthermore, was also aware of the general direction in which the avalanche of water will carry the boat; for unless the tidal wave were to come from the south and carry the boat northward, no navigator could redirect the boat (with no oars and no sail)....

"....the biblical and earlier Mesopotamian texts make clear that - the catastrophe began with a rush of wind from the south followed by a watery wave from the south. The source of the waters were the "fountains of the Great Deep" - a term that referred to the great and deep oceanic waters beyond Africa. The avalanche of water "submerged the dams of the dry land" - the coastal continental barriers. As the ice over Antarctica slipped into the Indian Ocean it caused an immense tidal wave. Gushing forth across the ocean northward, the wall of water overwhelmed the continental coastline of Arabia and rushed up the Persian Gulf. Then it reached the funnel of The Land Between the Rivers, engulfing all the lands.

"....One result of the catastrophe was that Antarctica, for the first time in so many thousand of years, was freed of its ice cover. Its true continental features - coasts, bays, even rivers - were available to be seen, if there had been anyone at the time to see them. Amazingly (but not to our surprise), such a "someone" was there!

"We know that because of the existence of maps showing an ice-free Antarctica.

Mr. Sitchin presents several maps in his book including the one of the Turkish Admiral Piri-Re’is.

"Indeed, the slippage of Antarctica’s ice cover and its effects on the Earth are mentioned in a major text known as the Erra Epos.

"....As the Deluge overwhelmed the lands and destroyed all upon them, the Anunnaki themselves were airborne, orbiting the Earth in their spacecraft. From the skies they could see the havoc and destruction.... But all, except Enki, were not aware that a family of humans, saved from the calamity, was also headed that way . . . (the Anunnaki’s destination was also Mount Ararat, after the water would subside).

"The unexpected encounter was full of surprising aspects; their bearing the human search for Immortality lingered for ten thousand years, and beyond. They also left a permanent human yearning to see the Face of God.

"....The rapprochement between the angry god and the remnant of Humankind is again described in greater detail and some variation in the Mesopotamian sources. The sequence of events (as in the biblical version), is retained...

"....As Utnapishtim recalled it when he told "the secret of the gods" to Gilgamesh, after he had come out of the boat, he "offered a sacrifice and poured out a libation on the mountaintop, set up seven and seven cult vessels, heaped upon their pot-stands cane, cedarwood and myrtle." The gods, emerging from their spacecraft as they too landed on the mountain, "smelled the sweet savor, crowded like flies about the sacrificer."

"....Joining the gathering, Ea/Enki admitted what he had done. But, he made sure to point out, he did not violate his oath to secrecy.... All he did was to "let Atra-hasis see a dream," and this clever human "perceived the secret of the gods" by himself....

"....Whatever the motives, Enlil did have a change of heart.

"....The Bible simply states that after Yahweh had repented, Elohim blessed Noah and his sons." From Mesopotamian sources we learn what the blessing had entailed. It was an unheard-of ceremony, a unique Divine Encounter in which the deity had physically taken the chosen humans by the hand and, standing between them, physically touched their forehead to convey a divine attribute. There, on Mount Ararat, in full view of the other Anunnaki, Enlil bestowed immortality upon Utnapishtim and his wife....

"....And, "thus they took me and made me reside in the Far Away, at the mouth of the waters," Utnapishtim told Gilgamesh.

"The amazing part of this tale is that Utnapishtim was relating it to Gilgamesh some ten thousand years after the Deluge!

"....The real extraordinary aspect is that the wife of Utnapishtim was also able to live that long as a result of the blessing and the sacred place of residence to which the couple were transported.

"Indeed, it was such famed longevity of the Blessed Couple that had led Gilgamesh - a king of the city of Erech, circa 2900 B.C - to search for the hero of the Deluge....

"As a final act of the Deluge drama, according to the Bible, Elohim assured the saved humans that such a calamity shall never occur again, and as a sign, "I placed my bow in the cloud as a token of the covenant between me and the Earth." Though this particular detail does not show up in the extant Mesopotamian versions, the deity who had covenanted with the people was indeed sometimes shown as in this (appears on Mr. Sitchin’s book) Mesopotamian depiction, as a bow-holding god in the clouds.

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Chapter Six
THE GATES OF HEAVEN

"....To those that were already mentioned, another "first" that has endured almost without a break has been Kingship. As all others, this "first" too was granted to the Sumerians by the Anunnaki. In the word of the Sumerian King Lists, "after the Flood had swept over the Earth, when Kingship was lowered from Heaven, Kingship was in Kish." It was, perhaps, because of this - because - "Kingship was lowered from Heaven" - that kings have deemed it a right to be taken aloft, to ascend unto the Gates of Heaven.

"....The Mesopotamian texts relate that, faced with the reality of a devastated planet, Enlil accepted the fact of Mankind’s survival and bestowed his blessings upon the remnants. Realizing that henceforth the Anunnaki themselves could not continue their stay and functioning on Earth without human help. Enlil joined Enki in providing Mankind with the advancement that we call the progress from Paleolithic (Old Stone Age) to Mesolithic and Neolithic (Middle and New Stone Ages) to the sudden Sumerian civilization - in each instance at 3,600-years intervals - that marked the introduction of animal and plant domestication and the switchover from stone to clay and pottery to copper tools and utensils, then to a full-fledged civilization.

"As the Mesopotamian texts make clear, the institution of Kingship as an aspect of such high-level civilizations with their hierarchies was created by the Anunnaki to form a partition between themselves and the surging masses of humanity.

"....We read in the texts that the decision to create Kingship came only after great turmoil and warfare among the Anunnaki themselves - conflicts that we have termed Pyramid Wars in our book The Wars of Gods and Men. These bitter conflicts were halted by a peace treaty that divided the ancient settled world into four regions....

"....When finally, after the decisions regarding the four regions and the granting of civilizations and Kingship to Mankind were reached, "the scepter of Kingship was brought down from Heaven."

"....The Sumerian "first" in Kingship is further evidenced by the biblical use of the term "Mighty Man" to describe the first king, for this is a literal rendering of the Sumerian word for king, LU.GAL - "Great/Mighty Man."

"There have been many attempts to identify "Nimrod." Since according to Sumerian "myths" it was Ninurta, the Foremost Son of Enlil, who was given the task of instituting "Enlilship" in Kish, Nimrod might have been the Hebrew name for Ninurta. If it is a man’s name no one knows what it was in Sumerian because the clay tablet is damaged there....

"....The list of names and lengths of reign is deviated from only once, in respect to the thirteenth king. Of him the King Lists state:

Etana, a shepherd,
he who ascended to heaven,
who consolidated all countries,
became king and ruled for 1,560 years.

"This historical notation is not an idle one; for there does exist a long epic tale, the Epic of Etana, that describes his Divine Encounters in his efforts to reach the Gate of Heaven.

".... clearly a beloved king known for a major benevolent achievement (the "consolidation of all countries"), who was deprived of a son and natural successor because of his wife’s malady; and the only remedy was the Plant of Birth, which could be obtained only in the Heavens. The story thus leads to Etana’s dramatic attempts to reach the Gates of Heaven, borne aloft on the wings of an eagle (a part of the tale that was depicted on cylinder seals from the twenty-fourth century B.C.). The other story line deals with the Eagle, its friendship at first and then quarrel with a Serpent, resulting in the Eagle’s imprisonment in a pit from which it is saved by Etana in a mutually beneficial deal: Etana rescues the Eagle and repairs its wings in exchange for the Eagle’s acting as a spaceship that takes Etana to distant heavens.

"Several Sumerian texts convey historical data in the form of an allegorical disputation (some of which we had already mentioned), and scholars are uncertain where in the Eagle-Serpent segment allegory ends and a historical record begins. The fact that in both segments it is Utu/Shamash, the commander of the Spaceport, who is the deity that controls the fate of the Eagle and who arranges for Etana to meet the Eagle, suggests a factual space-related event. Moreover, in what scholars call The Historical Introduction to the interwoven episodes, the narrative sets the stage for the related events as a time of conflict and clashes in which the IGI.GI ("Those Who Observe and See") - the corps of astronauts who remained in Earth orbit and manned the shuttlecraft (as distinct from the Anunnaki who had come down to Earth) - "barred the gates" and "patrolled the city" against opponents whose identity is lost in the damaged tablets. All of this spells actuality, a record of facts.

"The unusual presence of the Igigi in a city on land, the fact that Utu/Shamash was commander of the Spaceport (by then in the Fourth Region), and the designation of the pilot-cum-spacecraft of Etana as an Eagle, suggest that the conflict echoed in the Etana tale had to do with space flight. Could it be an attempt to create an alternative space center, one not controlled by Utu/Shamash? Could the Eagleman who was involved in the failed attempt, or the intended spacecraft, be banished to languish in a pit - an underground silo? A depiction of a rocketship in an underground silo (showing the command module above ground - click image right) has been found in the tomb of Hui, an Egyptian governor of the Sinai in Pharaonic times, indicating that an "Eagle" in a "pit" was recognized in antiquity as a rocketship in its silo.

"....Nowadays we call such a structure a launch tower, and its "head" that can reach the heavens is called a rocketship . . .

"We have arrived, in the biblical narrative and chronologically, at the incident of the Tower of Babel - the unauthorized construction of a space facility. So, "Yahweh came down to see the city and the tower that the Children of Adam were building."

"....The Bible identifies the place where the attempt to scale the heavens had taken place as Babylon, explaining its Hebrew name Babel as derived from the root "to confuse." In fact the original Mesopotamian name, Bab-ili, meant "Gateway of the Gods" a place intended by Marduk, the Firstborn son of Enki, to serve as an alternative launch site, free of Enlilite control....

"....Such correspondences between the Sumerian and biblical chronologies shed light on the identity of the divine beings who, like Yahweh in the biblical version, had come down to see what was happening in Babylon, and to whom Yahweh had expressed his concerns. They were the Igigi, who came down to Earth, occupied the city, barred its seven gates against the opposing forces, and patrolled the place until order was restored under a new chosen king capable of "consolidating the lands." That new ruler was Etana....

"....And Etana, having "consolidated the land" turned his mind to the need for a male hair.

"....Thereafter, "his wife said to Etana: the god showed me a dream. Like Etana my husband, I have had a dream." In the dream she saw a man. He held a plant in his hand; it was a shammu sha aladi, a Plant of Birth. He kept pouring cold water on it so that it might "become established in this house." He brought the plant to his city and into his house. From the plant there blossomed a flower, the plant withered away....

"....Where was this plant, Etana asked his wife. But, she said, in her dream "I could not see where it was growing....." Etana went in search of it. He crossed rivers and mountain streams, he rode to and fro. But he could not find the plant. Frustrated, Etana sought divine guidance. "Everyday Etana prayed repeatedly to Shamash...."

"....The texts do not state where Etana had thus appealed to Utu/Shamash, the commander of the Spaceport. But apparently it was not a face-to-face encounter, for we read next that "Shamash made his voice heard and spoke to Etana." And this was what the divine voice said:

Go along the roads, cross the mountains.
Find a pit and look carefully at what
is inside it.
An Eagle is abandoned down there.
He will obtain for you the Plant of Birth.

Etana found the Eagle, abandoned in the pit, and they made a deal.... But this first attempt failed, and the Eagle did not find the Plant of Birth.

Mr. Sitchin continues relating another dream Etana had, after which the Eagle also had a dream:

"....My friend," he said to Etana, "that same god to me too showed a dream":

We were going through the entrance
of the gates of Anu, Enlil and Ea;
we bowed down together, you and I.
We were going through the entrance
of the gates of Sin, Shamash, Adad and Ishtar;
We bowed down together, you and I.

"....the Eagle was describing a reverse journey - from the center of the Solar System where the Sun (Shamash), the Moon (Sin), Mercury (Adad), and Venus (Ishtar) are clustered, toward the outer planets and the outermost one, Anu’s domain of Nibiru!....

"....What follows in the ancient text is a description of space flight, as realistic as any reported by modern astronauts....

See, my friend, how the land appears!
Peer at the sea at the sites of the Mountain House:
The land has indeed become a mere hill,
the wide sea is just a tub!

My friend,
Cast a glance at how the Earth appears!
The land has turned into a furrow . . .
The wide sea is just like a bread-basket . . .

"After they had journeyed another beru, the land was seen no larger than a gardener’s ditch. And after that, as they continued to ascend, the Earth was totally out of sight. Recording the experience, Etana said thus:

As I glanced around,
the land had disappeared;
and upon the wide sea
mine eyes could not feast.

"They were so far out in space that the Earth had disappeared from view!

"Seized with fright, Etana called out to the Eagle to turn back. It was a dangerous descent, for the Eagle "plunged down" to Earth.... With Ishtar’s intervention, the Eagle and his passenger landed in a forest.

"....In the second region of civilization, that of the Nile River, Kingship began circa 3100 B.C. - human Kingship, that is, for Egyptian traditions held that long before that Egypt was ruled by gods and demigods.

"According to the Egyptian priest Manetho, who had written down the history of Egypt when Alexander’s Greeks arrived in times immemorial "Gods of Heaven" came to Earth from the Celestial Disc.... "a very great god who had come to Earth in the earliest times" raised the land from under the waters by ingenious damming, dyking, and land reclamation works. His name was Ptah, "The Developer" and he was a great scientist who had earlier had a hand in the creation of Man.

"....The Egyptian term for "gods" was NTR - "Guardian, Watcher" and the belief was that they had come to Egypt from Ta-ur, the "foreign/Far Land." In our previous writings we have identified that land as Sumer (more correctly Shumer, "Land of the Guardians") Egypt’s gods as the Anunnaki, Ptah as Ea/Enki (whose Sumerian nickname, NUDIMMUD, meant "The Artful Creator") and Ra as his Firstborn son Marduk.

Asar, a great grandchild of Marduk:

"....Asar, ("The All-Seeing") whom the Greeks called Osiris.... To keep the peace, Egypt was divided between Osiris (who was given Lower Egypt in the north) and Seth (Osiris’ brother) who was assigned Upper Egypt in the south. But Seth deemed himself entitled to all of Egypt, and never accepted the division. Using subterfuge, he managed to seize Osiris, cut up his body into fourteen pieces, and dispersed the pieces all over Egypt. But Isis (Osiris’ sister) managed to retrieve the pieces (all except for the phallus) and put together the mutilated body, thereby resurrecting the dead Osiris to life in the Other World.

"....And thus was born the belief that the king of Egypt, the Pharaoh, if "put together" (mummified) like Osiris after death, could journey to join the gods in their abode, enter the secret Gates of Heaven, encounter there the great god Ra, and if allow to enter, enjoy an eternal Afterlife.

"The journey to this ultimate Divine Encounter was a simulated one, but to simulate one has to emulate a real, actual precedent - a journey that the gods themselves, and specifically so the resurrected Osiris, had actually taken from the shores of the Nile to Neter-Khert, "The Gods’ Mountainland," where an Ascender would take them aloft the Duat, a magical "Abode for rising to the stars."

"....The Duat was conceived as an enclosed Circle of the Gods, at the headpoint of which the sky (represented by the goddess Nut) opened so that the Imperishable Star (represented by the Celestial Disc) could be reached....

Mr. Sitchin explains in detail the Pharaoh’s journey. The same appears in Book Two "The Stairway to Heaven."

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