The 12th Planet

Abydenus, a disciple of Aristotle, also quoted Berossus in terms of ten pre-Diluvial rulers whose total reign numbered 120 shar's. He made clear that these rulers and their cities were located in ancient Mesopotamia: It is said that the first king of the land was Alorus. . . . He reigned ten skat's. Now, a shar is esteemed to be three thousand six hundred years. ...

After him Alaprus reigned three shar's; to him succeeded Amillarus from the city of panti-Biblon, who reigned thirteen shar's. ... After him Ammenon reigned twelve shar's; he was of the city of panti-Biblon. Then Megalurus of the same place, eighteen shar's.

Then Daos, the Shepherd, governed for the space of ten shar's. ...

There were afterwards other Rulers, and the last of all Sisithrus; so that in the whole, the number amounted to ten kings, and the term of their reigns to an hundred and twenty shar's.

Apollodorus of Athens also reported on the prehistorical disclosures of Berossus in similar terms: Ten rulers reigned a total of 120 shar's (432,000 years), and the reign of each one of them was also measured in the 3,600-year shar units. With the advent of Sumerology, the "olden texts" to which Berossus referred were found and deciphered; these were Sumerian king lists, which apparently laid down tradition of ten pre-Diluvial rulers who ruled Earth from the time when "Kingship was lowered from Heaven" until the "Deluge swept over the Earth."

One Sumerian king list, known as text W-B/144, records the divine reigns in five settled places or "cities." In the first city, Eridu,

there were two rulers. The text prefixes both names with the title-syllable "A," meaning "progenitor."

When kingship was lowered from Heaven,

kingship was first in Eridu.

In Eridu,

A.LU.LIM became king; he ruled 28,800 years. A.LAL.GAR ruled 36,000 years. Two kings ruled it 64,800 years.

Kingship then transferred to other seats of government, where the rulers were called en, or "lord" (and in one instance by the divine title dingir). I drop Eridu;

its kingship was carried to Bad-Tibira. In Bad-Tibira,

EN.MEN.LU.AN.NA ruled 43,200 years; ' EN.MEN.GAL.AN.NA ruled 28,800 years. Divine DU.MU.ZI, Shepherd, ruled 36,000 years. Three kings ruled it for 108,000 years.

The list then names the cities that followed, Larak and Sippar, and their divine rulers; and last, the city of Shuruppak, where a human of divine parentage was king. The striking fact about the fantastic lengths of these rules is that, without exception, they are multiples of 3,600.

Another Sumerian text (W-B/62) added Larsa and its two divine rulers to the king list, and the reign periods it gives are also perfect multiples of the 3,600-year shar. With the aid of other texts, the conclusion is that there were indeed ten rulers in Sumer before the Deluge; each rule lasted so many shar's; and altogether their reign lasted 120 shar's - as reported by Berossus. The conclusion that suggests itself is that these shar's of rulership were related to the orbital period shar (3,600 years) of the planet "Shar," the "Planet of Kingship"; that Alulim reigned during eight orbits of the Twelfth Planet, Alalgar during ten orbits, and so on.

If these pre-Diluvial rulers were, as we suggest, Nefilim who came to Earth from the Twelfth Planet, then it should not be surprising that their periods of "reign" on Earth should be related to the orbital period of the Twelfth Planet. The periods of such tenure or Kingship would last from the time of a landing to the time of a takeoff; as one commander arrived from the Twelfth Planet, the other's time came up. Since the landings and takeoffs must have been related to the Twelfth Planet's approach to Earth, the command tenures could only have been measured in these orbital periods, of shar's.

One may ask, of course, whether any one of the Nefilim, having landed on Earth, could remain in command here for the purported 28,800 or 36,000 years. No wonder scholars speak of the length of these reigns as "legendary." But what is a year? Our "year" is simply the time it takes Earth to complete one orbit around the Sun. Because life developed on Earth when it was already orbiting the Sun, life on Earth is patterned by this length of orbit. (Even a more minor orbit time, like that of the Moon, or the day-night cycle is powerful enough to affect almost all life on Earth.) We live so many years because our biological clocks are geared to so many Earth orbits around the Sun.

There can be little doubt that life on another planet would be "timed" to the cycles of that planet. If the trajectory of the Twelfth Planet around the Sun were so extended that one orbit was completed in the same time it takes Earth to complete 100 orbits, then one year of the Nefilim would equal 100 of our years. If their orbit took 1,000 times longer than ours, then 1,000 Earth years would equal only one Nefilim year.

And what if, as we believe, their orbit around the sun lasted 3,600 Earth years? Then 3,600 of our years would amount to only one year in their calendar, and also only one year in their lifetime. The tenures of Kingship reported by the Sumerians and Berossus would thus be neither "legendary" nor fantastic: They would have lasted five or eight or ten Nefilim years. We have noted, in earlier chapters, that Mankind's march to civilization - through the intervention of the Nefilim - passed through three stages, which were separated by periods of 3,600 years: the Mesolithic period (circa 11,000 B.C.), the pottery phase (circa 7400 B.C.), and the sudden Sumerian civilization (circa 3800 B.C.). It is not unlikely, then, that the Nefilim periodically reviewed (and resolved to continue) Mankind's progress, since they could meet in assembly each time the Twelfth Planet neared Earth. Many scholars (for example, Heinrich Zimmern in The Babylonian and Hebrew Genesis) have pointed out that the Old Testament also carried traditions of pre-Diluvial chieftains, or forefathers, and that the line from Adam to Noah (the hero of the Deluge) listen ten such rulers. Putting the situation prior to the Deluge in perspective, the Book of Genesis (Chapter 6) described the divine disenchantment with Mankind. "And it repented the Lord that he had made Man on Earth . . . and the Lord said: I will destroy Man whom I had created." And the Lord said:

My spirit shall not shield Man forever;

having erred, he is but flesh.

And his days were one hundred and twenty years.

Generations of scholars have read the verse "And his days shall be a hundred and twenty years" as God's granting a life span of 120 years to Man. But this just does not make sense. If the text dealt with God's intent to destroy Mankind, why would he in the same breath offer Man long life? And we find that no sooner had the Deluge subsided than Noah lived far longer than the supposed limit of 120 years, as did his descendants Shem (600), Arpakhshad (438), Shelah (433), and so on. In seeking to apply the span of 120 years to Man, the scholars ignore the fact that the biblical language employs not the future tense - "His days shall be" - but the past tense - "And his days were one hundred and twenty years." The obvious question, then, is: Whose time span is referred to here?

Our conclusion is that the count of 120 years was meant to apply to the Deity.

Setting a momentous event in its proper time perspective is a common feature of the Sumerian and Babylonian epic texts. The "Epic of Creation" opens with the words Enuma elish ("when on high"). The story of the encounter of the god Enlil and the goddess Ninlil is placed at the time "when man had not yet been created," and so on.

The language and purpose of Chapter 6 of Genesis were geared to the same purpose - to put the momentous events of the

great Flood in their proper time perspective. The very first word of the very first verse of Chapter 6 is when:

When the Earthlings

began to increase in number

upon the face of the Earth,

and daughters were born unto them.

This, the narrative continues, was the time when

The sons of the gods saw the daughters of the Earthling that they were compatible; and they took unto themselves wives of

whichever they chose.

It was the time when

The Nefilim were upon the land

in those days, and thereafter too;

when the sons of the gods

cohabited with the Earthling's daughters

and they conceived.

They were the Mighty Ones who are of Olam, the People of the Shem.

It was then, in those days, at that time that Man was about to be wiped off the face of the Earth by the Flood. When exactly was that?

Verse 3 tells us unequivocally: when his, the Deity's count, was 120 years. One hundred twenty "years," not of Man and not of Earth, but as counted by the mighty ones, the "People of the Rockets," the Nefilim. And their year was the shar - 3,600 Earth years.

This interpretation not only clarifies the perplexing verses of Genesis 6, it also shows how the verses match the Sumerian information: 120 shar's, 432,000 Earth years, had passed between the Nefilim's first landing on Earth and the Deluge. Based on our estimates of when the Deluge occurred, we place the first landing of the Nefilim on Earth circa 450,000 years ago. Before we turn to the ancient records regarding the voyages of the Nefilim to Earth and their settlement on Earth, two basic questions need to be answered: Could beings obviously not much different from us evolve on another planet? Could such beings have had the capability, half a million years ago, for interplanetary travel?

The first question touches upon a more fundamental question: Is there life as we know it anywhere besides the planet Earth? Scientists now know that there are innumerable galaxies like ours, containing countless stars like our Sun, with astronomical numbers of planets providing every imaginable combination of temperature and atmosphere and chemicals, offering billions of chances for Life.

They have also found that our own interplanetary space is not void. For example, there are water molecules in space, the remnants of what are believed to have been clouds of ice crystals that apparently envelop stars in their early stages of development. This discovery lends support to persistent Mesopotamian references to the waters of the Sun, which mingled with the waters of Tiamat.

The basic molecules of living matter have also been found "floating" in interplanetary space, and the belief that life can exist only within certain atmospheres or temperature ranges has also been shattered. Furthermore, the notion that the only source of energy and heat available to living organisms is the Sun's emissions has been discarded. Thus, the spacecraft Pioneer 10 discovered that Jupiter, though much farther away from the Sun than Earth, was so hot that it must have its own sources of energy and heat.

A planet with an abundance of radioactive elements in its depths would not only generate its own heat; it would also experience substantial volcanic activity. Such volcanic activity provides an atmosphere. If the planet is large enough to exert a strong gravitational pull, it will keep its atmosphere almost indefinitely. Such an atmosphere, in turn, creates a hothouse effect: it shields the planet from the cold of outer space, and keeps the planet's own heat from dissipating into space - much as clothing keeps us warm by not letting the body's heat dissipate. With this in mind, the ancient texts' descriptions of the Twelfth Planet as "clothed with a halo" assume more than poetic significance. It was always referred to as a radiant planet - "most radiant of the gods he is" - and depictions of it showed it as a ray-emitting body. The Twelfth Planet could generate its own heat and retain the heat because of its atmospheric mantle.

Scientists have also come to the unexpected conclusion that not only could life have evolved upon the outer planets (Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus, Neptune) but it probably did evolve there. These planets are made up of the lighter elements of the solar system, have a composition more akin to that of the universe in general, and offer a profusion of hydrogen, helium, methane, ammonia, and probably neon and water vapor in their atmospheres - all the elements required for the production of organic molecules.

For life as we know it to develop, water is essential. The Mesopotamian texts left no doubt that the Twelfth Planet was a watery planet. In the "Epic of Creation," the planet's list of fifty names included a group exalting its watery aspects. Based on the epithet A.SAR ("watery king"), "who established water levels," the names described the planet as A.SAR.U ('lofty, bright watery king"), A.SAR. U.LU.DU ("lofty, bright watery king whose deep is plentiful"), and so on.

The Sumerians had no doubt that the Twelfth Planet was a verdant planet of We; indeed, they called it NAM.TIL.LA.KU, "the god who maintains life." He was also "bestower of cultivation," "creator of grain and herbs who causes vegetation to sprout . . . who opened the wells, apportioning waters of abundance" - the "irrigator of Heaven and Earth."

Life, scientists have concluded, evolved not upon the terrestrial planets, with their heavy chemical components, but in the outer fringes of the solar system. From these fringes of the solar system, the Twelfth Planet came into our midst, a reddish, glowing

planet, generating and radiating its own heat, providing from its own atmosphere the ingredients needed for the chemistry of life. If a puzzle exists, it is the appearance of life on Earth. Earth was formed some 4,500,000,000 years ago, and scientists believe that the simpler forms of life were already present on Earth within a few hundred million years thereafter. This is simply much too soon for comfort. There are also several indications that the oldest and simplest forms of life, more than 3,000,000,000 years old, had molecules of a biological, not a nonbiological, origin. Stated differently, this means that the life that was on Earth so soon after Earth was born was itself a descendant of some previous life form, and not the result of the combination of lifeless chemicals and gases.

What all this suggests to the baffled scientists is that life, which could not easily evolve on Earth, did not, in fact, evolve on Earth. Writing in the scientific magazine Icarus (September 1973), Nobel Prize winner Francis Crick and Dr. Leslie Orgel advanced the theory that "life on Earth may have sprung from tiny organisms from a distant planet." They launched their studies out of the known uneasiness among scientists over current theories of the origins of life on Earth. Why is there only one genetic code for all terrestrial life? If life started in a primeval "soup," as most biologists believe, organisms with a variety of genetic codes should have developed. Also, why does the element molybdenum play a key role in enzymatic reactions that are essential to life, when molybdenum is a very rare element? Why are elements that are more abundant on Earth, such as chromium or nickel, so unimportant in biochemical reactions?

The bizarre theory offered by Crick and Orgel was not only that all life on Earth may have sprung from an organism from another planet but that such "seeding" was deliberate - that intelligent beings from another planet launched the "seed of life" from their planet to Earth in a spaceship, for the express purpose of starting the life chain on Earth.

Without benefit of the data provided by this book, these two eminent scientists came close to the real fact. There was no premeditated "seeding"; instead, there was a celestial collision. A life-bearing planet, the Twelfth Planet and its satellites, collided with Tiamat and split it in two, "creating" Earth of its half.

During that collision the life-bearing soil and air of the Twelfth Planet "seeded" Earth, giving it the biological and complex early forms of life for whose early appearance there is no other explanation.

If life on the Twelfth Planet started even 1 percent sooner than on Earth, then it began there some 45,000,000 years earlier. Even by this minute margin, beings as developed as Man would already have been living upon the Twelfth Planet when the first small mammals had just begun to appear on Earth.

Given this earlier start for life on the Twelfth Planet, it was possible for its people to be capable of space travel a mere 500,000 years ago.

LANDING ON PLANET EARTH

WE HAVE SET FOOT only on the Moon, and have probed only the planets closest to us with unmanned craft. Beyond our

relatively close neighbors, both interplanetary and outer space are still outside the reach of even small

scanning craft. But the Nefilim's own planet, with its vast orbit, has served as a traveling observatory, taking them

through the orbits of all the outer planets and enabling them to observe at first hand most of the solar system.

No wonder, then, that when they landed on Earth, a good deal of the knowledge they brought with them concerned astronomy

and celestial mathematics. The Nefilim, "Gods of Heaven" upon Earth, taught Man to look up unto the heavens - just as Yahweh

urged Abraham to do.

No wonder, too, that even the earliest and crudest sculptures and drawings bore celestial symbols of constellations and planets; and that when the gods were to be represented or invoked, their celestial symbols were used as a graphic shorthand. By invoking the celestial ("divine") symbols, Man was no longer alone; the symbols connected Earthlings with the Nefilim, Earth with Heaven, Mankind with the universe.

Some of the symbols, we believe, also convey information that could be related only to space travel to Earth. Ancient sources provide a profusion of texts and lists I dealing with the celestial bodies and their associations with the various deities. The ancient habit of assigning I several epithet names to both the celestial bodies and the I deities has made identification difficult. Even in the case of established identifications, such as Venus/Ishtar, the picture is confused by the changes in the pantheon. Thus, in earlier times Venus was associated with Ninhursag.

Somewhat greater clarity has been obtained by scholars, such as E. D. Van Buren (Symbols of the Gods in Mesopotamian Art), who assembled and sorted out the more than eighty symbols - of gods and celestial bodies - that can be found on cylinder seals, sculptures, stelae, reliefs, murals, and (in great detail and clarity) on boundary stones (kudurru in Akkadian). When the classification of the symbols is made, it becomes evident that apart from standing for some of the better-known southern or northern constellations (such as the Sea Serpent for the constellation Hydra), they represented either the twelve constellations of the zodiac (for example, the Crab for Scorpio), or the twelve Gods of Heaven and Earth, or the twelve members of the solar system. The kudurru set up by Melishipak, king of Susa, shows the twelve symbols of the zodiac and the symbols of the twelve astral gods.

A stela erected by the Assyrian king Esarhaddon shows the ruler holding the Cup of Life while facing the twelve chief Gods of Heaven and Earth. We see four gods atop animals, of whom Ishtar on the lion and Adad holding the forked lightning can definitely be identified. Four other gods are represented by the tools of their special attributes, as the war-god Ninurta by his lion-headed mace. The remaining four gods are shown as celestial bodies - the Sun (Shamash), the Winged Globe (the Twelfth Planet, the abode of Anu), the Moon's crescent, and a symbol consisting of seven dots.

Although in later times the god Sin was associated with the Moon, identified by the crescent, ample evidence shows that in "olden times" the crescent was the symbol of an elderly and bearded deity, one of Sumer's true "olden gods." Often shown surrounded by streams of water, this god was undoubtedly Ea. The crescent was also associated with the science of measuring and calculating, of which Ea was the divine master. It was appropriate that the God of the Seas and Oceans, Ea, be assigned as his celestial counterpart the Moon, which causes the ocean's tides. What was the meaning of the symbol of the seven dots?

Many clues leave no doubt that it was the celestial symbol of Enlil. The depiction of the Gateway of Anu (the Winged Globe) flanked by Ea and Enlil, represents them by the crescent and the seven-dot symbol. Some of the clearest depictions of the celestial symbols that were meticulously copied by Sir Henry Rawlinson (The Cuneiform Inscriptions of Western Asia) assign the most prominent position to a group of three symbols, standing for Anu flanked by his two sons; these show that the symbol for Enlil could be either the seven dots or a seven-pointed "star." The essential element in Enlil's celestial representation was the number seven (the daughter, Ninhursag, was sometimes included, represented by the umbilical cutter). Scholars have been unable to understand a statement by Gudea, king of Lagash, that "the celestial 7 is 50." Attempts at arithmetic solutions - some formula whereby the number seven would go into fifty - failed to reveal the meaning of the statement. However, we see a simple answer: Gudea stated that the celestial body that is "seven" stands for the god that is "fifty." The god Enlil, whose rank number was fifty, had as his celestial counterpart the planet that was seventh.

Which planet was the planet of Enlil? We recall the texts that speak of the early times when the gods first came to Earth, when Anu stayed on the Twelfth Planet, and his two sons who had gone down to Earth drew lots. Ea was given the "rulership over the Deep," and to Enlil "the Earth was given for his dominion." And the answer to the puzzle bursts out in all its significance: The planet of Enlil was Earth. Earth - to the Nefilim - was the seventh planet.

In February 1971, the United States launched an unmanned spacecraft on the longest mission to date. For twenty-one months it traveled, past Mars and the asteroid belt, to a precisely scheduled rendezvous with Jupiter. Then, as anticipated by NASA scientists, the immense gravitational pull of Jupiter "grabbed" the spacecraft and hurled it into outer space. Speculating that Pioneer 10 might someday be attracted by the gravitational pull of another "solar system" and crash-land on some planet elsewhere in the universe, the Pioneer 10 scientists attached to it an engraved aluminum plaque bearing the accompanying "message."

The message employs a pictographic language - signs and symbols not too different from those used in the very first pictographic writing of Sumer. It attempts to tell whoever might find the plaque that Mankind is male and

female, of a size related to the size and shape of the spacecraft. It depicts the two basic chemical elements of our world, and our location relative to a certain interstellar source of radio emissions. And it depicts our solar system as a Sun and nine planets, telling the finder: "The craft that you have found comes from the third planet of this Sun."

Our astronomy is geared to the notion that Earth is the third planet - which, indeed, it is if one begins the count from the center 6f our system, the Sun.

But to someone nearing our solar system from the outside, the first planet to be encountered would be Pluto, the second Neptune, the third Uranus - not Earth. Fourth would be Saturn; fifth, Jupiter; sixth, Mars. And Earth would be seventh.

No one but the Nefilim, traveling to Earth past Pluto, Neptune, Uranus, Saturn, Jupiter, and Mars, could have considered Earth "the seventh." Even if, for the sake of argument, one assumed that the inhabitants of ancient Mesopotamia, rather than travelers from space, had the knowledge or wisdom to count Earth's position not from the central Sun but from the solar system's edge, then it would follow that the ancient peoples knew of the existence of Pluto and Neptune and Uranus. Since they could not have known of these outermost planets on their own, the information must, we conclude, have been imparted to them by the Nefilim. Whichever assumption is adopted as a starting point, the conclusion is the same: Only the Nefilim could have known that there are planets beyond Saturn, as a consequence of which Earth - counting from the outside - is the seventh. Earth is not the only planet whose numerical position in the solar system was represented symbolically. Ample evidence shows that Venus was depicted as an eight-pointed star: Venus is the eighth planet, following Earth, when counted from the outside. The eight-pointed star also stood for the goddess Ishtar, whose planet was Venus.

Many cylinder seals and other graphic relics depict Mars as the sixth planet. A cylinder seal shows the god associated with Mars (originally Nergal, then Nabu), seated on a throne under a six-pointed "star" as his symbol. Other symbols on the seal show the Sun, much in the same manner we would depict it today; the Moon; and the cross, symbol of the "Planet of Crossing," the Twelfth Planet.

In Assyrian times, the "celestial count" of a god's planet was often indicated by the appropriate number of star symbols placed alongside the god's throne. Thus, a plaque depicting the god Ninurta placed four star symbols at his throne. His planet Saturn is indeed the fourth planet, as counted by the Nefilim. Similar depictions have been found for most of the other planets. The central religious event of ancient Mesopotamia, the twelve-day New Year Festival, was replete with symbolism that had to do with the orbit of the Twelfth Planet, the makeup of the solar system, and the journey of the Nefilim to Earth. The best- documented of these "affirmations of the faith" were the Babylonian New Year rituals; but evidence shows that the Babylonians only copied traditions going back to the beginning of Sumerian civilization.

In Babylon, the festival followed a very strict and detailed ritual; each portion, act, and prayer had a traditional reason and a specific meaning. The ceremonies started on the first day of Nisan - then the first month of the year - coinciding with the spring equinox. For eleven days, the other gods with a celestial status joined Marduk in a prescribed order. On the twelfth day, each of the other gods departed to his own abode, and Marduk was left alone in his splendor. The parallel to the appearance of Marduk within the planetary system, his "visit" with the eleven other members of the solar system, and the separation on the twelfth day - leaving the Twelfth God to go on as King of the Gods, but in isolation from them - is obvious. The ceremonies of the New Year Festival paralleled the course of the Twelfth Planet. The first four days, matching Marduk's passage by the first four planets (Pluto, Neptune, Uranus, and Saturn), were days of preparation. At the end of the fourth day, the rituals called for marking the appearance of the planet Iku (Jupiter) within sight of Marduk. The celestial Marduk was nearing the place of the celestial battle; symbolically, the high priest began reciting the "Epic of Creation" - the tale of that celestial battle. The night passed without sleep. When the tale of the celestial battle had been recited, and as the fifth day was breaking, the rituals called for the twelvefold proclamation of Marduk as "The Lord," affirming that in the aftermath of the celestial battle there were now twelve members of the solar system. The recitations then named the twelve members of the solar system and the twelve constellations of the zodiac.

Sometime during the fifth day, the god Nabu - Marduk's son and heir - arrived by boat from his cult center, Borsippa. But he entered Babylon's temple compound only on the sixth day, for by then Nabu was a member of the Babylonian pantheon of twelve and the planet assigned to him was Mars - the sixth planet.

The Book of Genesis informs us that in six days "the Heaven and the Earth and all their host" were completed. The Babylonian rituals commemorating the celestial events that resulted in the creation of the asteroid belt and Earth were also completed in the first six days of Nisan.

On the seventh day, the festival turned its attention to Earth. Though details of the rituals on the seventh day are scarce, H. Frankfort (Kingship and the Gods) believes that they involved an enactment by the gods, led by Nabu, of the liberation of Marduk from his imprisonment in the "Mountains of Lower Earth." Since texts have been found that detail epic struggles between Marduk and other claimants to the rulership of Earth, we can surmise that the events of the seventh day were a reenactment of Marduk's struggle for supremacy on Earth (the "Seventh"), his initial defeats, and his final victory and usurpation of the powers.

On the eighth day of the New Year Festival in Babylon, Marduk, victorious on Earth, as the forged Enuma Elish had made him in the heavens, received the supreme powers. Having bestowed them on Marduk, the gods, assisted by the king and populace, then embarked, on the ninth day, on a ritual procession that took Marduk from his house within the city's sacred precinct to the "House of Akitu," somewhere outside the city. Marduk and the visiting eleven gods stayed there through the eleventh day; on the twelfth day, the gods dispersed to their various abodes, and the festival was over.

Of the many aspects of the Babylonian festival that reveal its earlier, Sumerian origins, one of the most significant was that which pertained to the House of Akitu. Several studies, such as The Babylonian Akitu Festival by S. A. Pallis, have established that this house was featured in religious ceremonies in Sumer as early as the third millennium B.C. The essence of the ceremony was a holy / procession that saw the reigning god leave his abode or/ temple and go, via several stations, to a place well out JOT town. A special ship, a "Divine Boat," was used for the purpose. Then the god, successful in whatever his mission was at the A.KI.TI House, returned to the city's quay by the same Divine Boat, and retraced his course back to the temple amid feasting and rejoicing by the king and populace.

The Sumerian term A.KI.TI (from which the Babylonian akttu derived) literally meant "build on Earth life." This, coupled with the various aspects of the mysterious journey, leads us to conclude that the procession symbolized the hazardous but successful voyage of the Nefilim from their abode to the seventh planet, Earth.

Excavations conducted over some twenty years on the site of ancient Babylon, brilliantly correlated with Babylonian ritual texts, enabled teams of scholars led by F. Wetzel and F. H. Weissbach (Das Hauptheiligtum des Marduks in Babylon) to reconstruct the holy precinct of Marduk, the architectural features of his ziggurat, and the Processional Way, portions of which were reerected at the Museum of the Ancient Near East, in East Berlin.

The symbolic names of the seven stations and the epithet of Marduk at each station were given in both Akkadian and Sumerian - attesting both to the antiquity and to the Sumerian origins of the procession and its symbolism.

The first station of Marduk, at which his epithet was "Ruler of the Heavens," was named "House of Holiness" in Akkadian and "House of Bright Waters" in Sumerian. The god's epithet at the second station is illegible; the station itself was named "Where the Field Separates." The partly mutilated name of the third station began with the words "Location facing the planet . . ."; and the god's epithet there changed to "Lord of Poured-Out Fire."

The fourth station was called "Holy Place of Destinies," and Marduk was called "Lord of the Storm of the Waters of An and Ki." The fifth station appeared less turbulent. It was named "The Roadway," and Marduk assumed the title "Where the Shepherd's Word Appears." Smoother sailing was also indicated at the sixth station, called "The Traveler's Ship," where Marduk's epithet changed to "God of the Marked-Out Gateway."

The seventh station was the Bit Akitu ("house of building life on Earth"). There, Marduk took the title "God of the House of Resting."

It is our contention that the seven stations in the procession of Marduk represented the space trip of the Nefilim from their planet to Earth; that the first "station," the "House of Bright Waters," represented the passage by Pluto; the second ("Where the Field Separates") was Neptune; the third, Uranus; the fourth - a place of celestial storms - Saturn. The fifth, where "The Roadway" became clear, "where the shepherd's word appears," was Jupiter. The sixth, where the journey switched to "The Traveler's Ship," was Mars,

And the seventh station was Earth - the end of the journey, where Marduk provided the "House of Resting" (the god's "house of building life on Earth"). How did the "Aeronautics and Space Administration" of the Nefilim view the solar system in terms of the space flight to Earth?

Logically - and in fact - they viewed the system in two parts. The one zone of concern was the zone of flight, which embraced the space occupied by the seven planets extending from Pluto to Earth. The second group, beyond the zone of navigation, was made up of four celestial bodies - the Moon, Venus, Mercury, and the Sun. In astronomy and divine genealogy, the two groups were considered separate.

Genealogically, Sin (as the Moon) was the head of the group of the "Four." Shamash (as the Sun) was his son, and Ishtar (Venus), his daughter. Adad, as Mercury, was the Uncle, Sin's brother, who always kept company with his nephew Shamash and (especially) with his niece Ishtar.

The "Seven," on the other hand, were lumped together in texts dealing with the affairs of both gods and men, and with celestial events. They were "the seven who judge," "seven emissaries of Anu, their king," and it was after them that the number seven was consecrated. There were "seven olden cities"; cities had seven gates; gates had seven bolts; / blessings called for seven years of plenty; curses, for famines and plagues lasting seven years; divine weddings were celebrated by "seven days of lovemaking"; and so on and on.

During solemn ceremonies like those that accompanied the rare visits to Earth by Anu and his consort, the deities representing the Seven Planets were assigned certain positions and ceremonial robes, while the Four were treated as a separate group. For example, ancient rules of protocol stated: "The deities Adad, Sin, Shamash, and Ishtar shall be seated in the court until daybreak."

In the skies, each group was supposed to stay in its own celestial zone, and the Sumerians assumed that there was a "celestial bar" keeping the two groups apart.

"An important astral-mythological text," according to A. Jeremias (The Old Testament in the Light of the Ancient Near East), deals with some remarkable celestial event, when the Seven "stormed in upon the Celestial Bar." In this upheaval, which apparently was an unusual alignment of the Seven Planets, "they made allies of the hero Shamash [the Sun] and of the valiant Adad [Mercury]" - meaning, perhaps, that all exerted a gravitational pull in a single direction. "At the same time, Ishtar, seeking a glorious dwelling place with Anu, strove to become Queen of Heaven" - Venus was somehow shifting its location to a more "glorious dwelling place." The greatest effect was on Sin (the Moon). "The seven who fear not the laws . . . the Light-giver Sin had violently besieged." According to this text, the appearance of the Twelfth Planet saved the darkened Moon and made it "shine forth in the heavens" once again.

The Four were located in a celestial zone the Sumerians termed GIR.HE.A ("celestial waters where rockets are confused"), MU.HE ("confusion of spacecraft"), or UL.HE ("band of confusion"). These puzzling terms make sense once we realize that the Nefilim considered the heavens of the solar system in terms of their space travel. Only recently, the engineers of Comsat (Communications Satellite Corporation) discovered that the Sun and Moon "trick" satellites and "shut them off." Earth satellites could be "confused" by showers of particles from solar flares or by changes in the Moon's reflection of infrared rays. The Nefilim, too, were aware that rocket ships or spacecraft entered a "zone of confusion" once they passed Earth and neared Venus, Mercury, and the Sun.

Separated from the Four by an assumed celestial bar, the Seven were in a celestial zone for which the Sumerians used the term UB. The ub consisted of seven parts called (in Akkadian) giparu ("night residences"). There is little doubt that this was the origin of Near Eastern beliefs in the "Seven heavens."

The seven "orbs" or "spheres" of the ub comprised the Akkadian kishshatu ("the entirety"). The term's origin was the Sumerian

SHU, which also implied "that part which was the most important," the Supreme. The Seven Planets

were therefore sometimes called "the Seven Shiny Ones SHU.NU" - the Seven who "in the Supreme Part rest."

The Seven were treated in greater technical detail than the Four. Sumerian, Babylonian, and Assyrian celestial lists described

them with various epithets and listed them in their correct order. Most scholars, assuming that the ancient texts could not

possibly have dealt with planets beyond Saturn, have found it difficult to identify correctly the planets described in the texts. But

our own findings make identification and understanding of the names' meanings relatively easy.

First to be encountered by the Nefilim approaching the solar system was Pluto. The Mesopotamian lists name this planet SHU.PA ("supervisor of the SHU"), the planet that guards the approach to the Supreme Part of the solar system. As we shall see, the Nefilim could land on Earth only if their spaceship were launched from the Twelfth Planet well before reaching Earth's vicinity, They could thus have crossed the orbit of Pluto not only as inhabitants of the Twelfth Planet but also as astronauts in a moving spaceship. An astronomical text said that the planet Shupa was the one where "the deity Enlil fixed the destiny for the Land" - where the god, in charge of a spacecraft, set the right course for the planet Earth and the Land of Sumer. Next to Shupa was IRU ("loop"). At Neptune, the spacecraft of the Nefilim probably commenced its wide curve or "loop" toward its final target Another list named the planet HUM.Ba, which connotes "swampland vegetation." When we probe Neptune someday, will we discover that its persistent association with waters is due to the watery swamps the Nefilim saw upon it? Uranus was called Kakkab Shanamma ("planet which is the double"). Uranus is truly the twin of Neptune in size and appearance. A Sumerian list calls it EN.TI.MASH. SIG ("planet of bright greenish life"). Is Uranus, too, a planet on which swampy vegetation abounded?

Beyond Uranus looms Saturn, a giant planet (nearly ten times Earth's size) distinguished by its rings, which extend more than twice as far out as the planet's diameter. Armed with a tremendous gravitational pull and the mysterious rings, Saturn must have posed many dangers to the Nefilim and their spacecraft. This may well explain why they called the fourth planet TAR.GALLU ("the great destroyer"). The planet was also called KAK.SI.DI ("weapon of righteousness") and SI.MUTU ("he who for justice kills"-). Throughout the ancient Near East, the planet represented the punisher of the unjust. Were these names expressions of fear or references to actual space accidents?

The Akitu rituals, we have seen, made reference to "storms of the waters" between An and Ki on the fourth day - when the spacecraft was between Anshar (Saturn) and Kishar (Jupiter).

A very early Sumerian text, assumed since its first publication in 1912 to be "an ancient magical text," very possibly records the loss of a spaceship and its fifty occupants. It relates how Marduk, arriving at Eridu, rushed to his father Ea with some terrible news:

"It has been created like a weapon;

It has charged forward like death . . .

The Anunnaki who are fifty,

it has smitten. ...

The flying, birdlike SHU.SAR

it has smitten on the breast."

The text does not identify "it," whatever destroyed the SHU.SAR (the flying "supreme chaser") and its fifty astronauts. But fear of celestial danger was evident only in regard to Saturn.

The Nefilim must have passed by Saturn and come in view of Jupiter with a great sense of relief. They called the fifth planet Barbaru ("bright one"), as well as SAG.ME.GAR ("great one, where the space suits are fastened"). Another name for Jupiter, SIB.ZI.AN.NA ("true guide in the heavens"), also described its probable role in the journey to Earth: It was the signal for curving into the difficult passage between Jupiter and Mars, and the entry into the dangerous zone of the asteroid belt. From the epithets, it would seem that it was at this point that the Nefilim put on their me's, their spacesuits.

Mars, appropriately, was called UTU.KA.GAB.A ("light established at the gate of the waters"), reminding us of the Sumerian and biblical descriptions of the asteroid belt as the celestial "bracelet" separating the "upper waters" from the "lower waters" of the solar system. More precisely, Mars was referred to as Shelibbu ("one near the center" of the solar system). An unusual drawing on a cylinder seal suggests that, passing Mars, an incoming spacecraft of the Nefilim established constant communication with "Mission Control" on Earth.

The central object in this ancient drawing simulates the, symbol of the Twelfth Planet, the Winged Globe. Yet it x looks different: It is more mechanical, more manufactured than natural. Its "wings" look almost exactly like the solar panels with which American spacecraft are provided to convert the Sun's energy to electricity. The two antennas cannot be mistaken. The circular craft, with its crownlike top and extended wings and antennas, is located in the heavens, between Mars (the six- pointed star) and Earth and its Moon. On Earth, a deity extends his hand in greeting to an astronaut still out in the heavens, near Mars. The astronaut is shown wearing a helmet with a visor and a breastplate. The lower part of his suit is like that of a "fish- man" - a requirement, perhaps, in case of an emergency splashdown in the ocean. In one hand he holds an instrument; the other hand reciprocates the greeting from Earth.

And then, cruising on, there was Earth, the seventh planet. In the lists of the "Seven Celestial Gods" it was called SHU.GI ("right resting place of SHU"). It also meant the "land at the conclusion of SHU," of the Supreme Part of the solar system - the destination of the long space journey.

While in the ancient Near East the sound gi was sometimes transformed into the more familiar ki ("Earth," "dry land"), the pronunciation and syllable gi have endured into our own times in their original meaning, exactly as the Nefilim meant it to be: geo-graphy, geo-metry, geo-logy.

In the earliest form of pictographic writing, the sign SHU.GI also meant shibu ("the seventh"). And the astronomical texts explained:

Shar shadi il Enlil ana kakkab SHU.GI ikabbi

"Lord of Mountains, deity Enlil, with planet Shugi is identical."

Paralleling the seven stations of Marduk's journey, the planets' names also bespeak a space flight. The land at the journey's end was the seventh planet, Earth.

We may never know whether, countless years from now, someone on another planet will find and understand the message drawn on the plaque attached to Pioneer 10. Likewise, one would think it futile to expect to find on Earth such a plaque in reverse - a plaque conveying to Earthlings information regarding the location and the route from the Twelfth Planet. Yet such extraordinary evidence does exist.

The evidence is a clay tablet found in the ruins of the Royal Library in Nineveh. Like many of the other tablets, it is undoubtedly an Assyrian copy of an earlier Sumerian tablet. Unlike others, it is a circular disc; and though some cuneiform signs on it are excellently preserved, the few scholars who took on the task of deciphering the tablet ended by calling it "the most puzzling Mesopotamian document."

In 1912, L. W. King, then curator of Assyrian and Babylonian antiquities in the British Museum, made a meticulous copy of the disc, which is divided into eight segments.

The undamaged portions bear geometric shapes unseen on any other ancient artifact, designed and drawn with considerable precision. They include arrows, triangles, intersecting lines, and even an ellipse - a geometric-mathematical curve previously assumed to have been unknown in ancient times.

The unusual and puzzling clay plaque was first brought to the attention of the scientific community in a report submitted to the British Royal Astronomical Society on January 9, 1880. R. H. M. Bosanquet and A. H. Sayce, in one of the earliest discourses on "The Babylonian Astronomy," referred to it as a planisphere (the reproduction of a spherical surface as a flat map). They announced that some of the cuneiform signs on it "suggest measurements appear to bear some technical meaning." The many names of celestial bodies appearing in the eight segments of the plaque clearly established its astronomical character. Bosanquet and Sayce were especially intrigued by the seven "dots" in one segment. They said these might represent the phases of the Moon, were it not for the fact that the dots appeared to run along a line naming the "star of stars" DIL.GAN and a celestial body called APIN.

"There can be no doubt that this enigmatical figure is susceptible of a simple explanation," they said. But their own effort to provide such an explanation did not go beyond reading correctly the phonetic values of the cuneiform signs and the conclusion that the disc was a celestial planisphere.

When the Royal Astronomical Society published a sketch of the planisphere, J. Oppert and P. Jensen improved the reading of some star or planet names. Dr. Fritz Hommel, writing in a German magazine in 1891 ("Die Astronomic iler Alten Chaldaer"), drew attention to the fact that each one of the eight segments of the planisphere formed an angle of 45 degrees, from which he concluded that a total sweep of the skies - all 360 degrees of the heavens - was represented. He suggested that the focal point marked some location "in the Babylonian skies."

There the matter rested until Ernst F. Weidner, first in un article published in 1912 (Babyloniaca: "Zur Baby-lonischen Astronomic") and then in his major textbook Handbuch der Babylonischen Astronomie (1915), thoroughly analyzed the tablet, only to conclude that it did not make sense.

His bafflement was caused by the fact that while the geometric shapes and the names of stars or planets written within the

various segments were legible or intelligible (even if their meaning or purpose was unclear), the inscriptions along the lines

(running at 45-degree angles to each other) just did not make sense. They were, invariably, a series of repeated syllables in the

tablet's Assyrian language. They ran, for example, thus:

lu bur di lu bur di lu bur di

bat bat bat kash kash kash kash alu alu alu alu

Weidner concluded that the plaque was both astronomical and astrological, used as a magical tablet for exorcism, like several other texts consisting of repeated syllables. With this, he laid to rest any further interest in the unique tablet. But the tablet's inscriptions assume a completely different aspect if we try to read them not as Assyrian word-signs, but as Sumerian word-syllables; for there can hardly be any doubt that the tablet represents an Assyrian copy of an earlier Sumerian original. When we look at one of the segments (which we can number I), its meaningless syllables

na nanana ana ananu (along the descending line) aha sha sha sha sha sha (along the circumference) sham sham bur bur Kur (along the horizontal line)

literally spring to meaningfulness if we enter the Sumerian meaning of these word-syllables.

What unfolds here is a route map, marking the way by which the god Enlil "went by the planets," accompanied by some operating instructions. The line inclined at 45 degrees appears to indicate the line of a spaceship's descent from a point which is "high high high high," through "vapor clouds" and a lower zone that is vaporless, toward the horizon point, where the skies and the ground meet.

In the skies near the horizontal line, the instructions to the astronauts make sense: They are told to "set set set" their instruments for the final approach; then, as they near the ground, "rockets rockets" are fired to slow the craft, which apparently should be raised ("piled up") before reaching the landing point because it has to pass over high or rugged terrain ("mountain mountain").

The information provided in this segment clearly pertains to a space voyage by Enlil himself. In this first segment we are given a precise geometric sketch of two triangles connected by a line that turns at an angle. The line represents a route, for the inscription clearly states that the sketch shows how the "deity Enlil went by the planets."

The starting point is the triangle on the left, representing the farther reaches of the solar system; the target area is on the right, where all the segments converge toward the landing point.

The triangle on the left, drawn with its base open, is akin to a known sign in Near Eastern pictographic writing; its meaning can be read as "the ruler's domain, the mountainous land." The triangle on the right is identified by the inscription shu-ut il Enlil ("Way of god Enlil"); the term, as we know, denotes Earths northern skies.

The angled line, then, connects what we believe to have been the Twelfth Planet - "the ruler's domain, the mountainous land" - with Earth's skies. The route passes between two celestial bodies - Dilgan and Apin.

Some scholars have maintained that these were names of distant stars or parts of constellations. If modern manned and unmanned spacecraft navigate by obtaining a "fix" on predetermined bright stars, a similar navigational technique for the Nefilim cannot be ruled out. Yet the notion that the two names stand for such faraway stars somehow does not agree with the meaning of their names: DIL.GAN meant, literally, "the first station"; and APIN, "where the right course is set." The meanings of the names indicate way stations, points passed by. We tend to agree with such authorities as Thompson, Epping, and Strassmaier, who identified Apin as the planet Mars. If so, the meaning of the sketch becomes clear: The route between the Planet of Kingship and the skies above Earth passed between Jupiter ("the first station") and Mars ("where the right course is set").

This terminology, by which the descriptive names of the planets were related to their role in the space voyage of (he Nefilim, conforms with the names and epithets in the lists of the Seven Shu Planets. As if to confirm our conclusions, the inscription stating that this was the route of Enlil appears below a row of seven dots - the Seven Planets that stretch from Pluto to Earth. Not surprisingly, the remaining four celestial bodies, those in the "zone of confusion," are shown separately, beyond Earth's northern skies and the celestial band.

Evidence that this is a space map and flight manual shows up in all the other undamaged segments, too. Continuing in a counterclockwise direction, the legible portion of the next segment bears the inscription: "take take take cast cast cast cast complete complete." The third segment, where a portion of the unusual elliptical shape is seen, the legible inscriptions include "kakkab SIB.ZI.AN.NA . . . envoy of AN.NA . . . deity ISH.TAR," and the intriguing sentence: "Deity NI.NI supervisor of descent." In the fourth segment, which contains what appear to be directions on how to establish one's destination according to a certain group of stars, the descending line is specifically identified as the skyline: The word sky is repeated eleven times under the line. Does this segment represent a flight phase nearer Earth, nearer the landing spot? This might indeed be the import of the legend over the horizontal line: "hills hills hills hills top top top top city city city city." The inscription in the center says: "kakkab MASH.TAB.BA [Gemini] whose encounter is fixed: kakkab SIB.ZI.AN.NA [Jupiter] provides knowledge." If, as appears to be the case, the segments are arranged in an approach sequence, then one can almost share the excitement of the Nefilim as they approached Earth's spaceport. The next segment, again identifying the descending line as "sky sky sky," also announces:

our light our light our light change change change change observe path and high ground ... flat land . . . The horizontal line contains, for the first time, figures: rocket rocket

rocket rise glide 40 40 40 40 40 20 22 22

The upper line of the next segment no longer states: "sky sky"; instead, it calls for "channel channel 100 100 100 100 100 100 100." A pattern is discernible in this largely damaged segment. Along one of the lines the inscription says: "Ashshur," which can mean "He who sees" or "seeing."

The seventh segment is too damaged to add to our examination; the few discernible syllables mean "distant distant . . . sight sight," and the instructional words are "press down." The eighth and final segment, however, is almost complete. Directional lines, arrows, and inscriptions mark a path between two planets. Instructions to "pile up mountain mountain," show four sets of crosses, inscribed twice "fuel water grain" and twice "vapor water grain."

Was this a segment dealing with preparations for the flight toward Earth, or one dealing with stocking up for the return flight to

rejoin the Twelfth Planet? The latter may have been the case, for the line with the sharp arrow pointing toward the landing site

on Earth has at its other end another "arrow" pointing in the opposite direction, and bearing the legend "Return."

When Ea arranged for Anu's emissary to "make Adapa take the road to Heaven" and Anu discovered the ruse, lie demanded to

know:

Why did Ea, to a worthless human the plan of Heaven-Earth disclose - rendering him distinguished, making a Shem for him?

In the planisphere we have just deciphered, we indeed ice such a route map, a "plan of Heaven-Earth." In sign language and in words, the Nefilim have sketched for us the route from their planet to ours.

Otherwise inexplicable texts dealing with celestial distances also make sense if we read them in terms of space travel from the Twelfth Planet. One such text, found in the ruins of Nippur and believed to be some 4,000 years old, is now kept at the Hilprecht Collection at the University of Jena, in Germany. O. Neugebauer (The Exact Sciences in Antiquity) established that the tablet was undoubtedly a copy "from an original composition which was older"; it gives ratios of celestial distances starting from the Moon to Earth and then through space to six other planets.

The second part of the text appears to have provided the mathematical formulas for solving whatever the interplanetary problem

was, stating (according to some readings):

40420640 X 9 is 6 40

13 kasbu 10 ush mul SHU.PA

eli mul GIR sud

40 4 20 6 40 X 7 is 5 11 6 40

10 kasbu 11 ush 6'/2 gar 2 u mul GIR tab

eli mul SHU.PA sud

There has never been full agreement among scholars as to the correct reading of the measurement units in this part of the text (a new reading was suggested to us in a letter from Dr. J. Oelsner, custodian of the Hilprecht Collection at Jena). It is clear, however, that the second part of the text measured distances from SHU.PA (Pluto).

Only the Nefilim, traversing the planetary orbits, could have worked out these formulas; only they needed such data.. Taking into consideration that their own planet and their target, Earth, were both in continuous motion, the Nefilim had to aim their craft not at where Earth was at launch time but where it would be at arrival time. One can safely assume that the Nefilim worked out their trajectories very much as modern scientists map the missions to the Moon and to other planets. The spacecraft of the Nefilim was probably launched from the Twelfth Planet in the direction of the Twelfth Planet's own orbit, but well ahead of its arrival in Earth's vicinity. Based on these and a myriad other factors, two alternative trajectories for the spacecraft were worked out for us by Amnon Sitchin, doctor of aeronautics and engineering. The first trajectory would call for the launching of the spacecraft from the Twelfth Planet before it reached its apogee (the point farthest out). With few power needs, the spaceship would actually not so much change course as slow down. While the Twelfth Planet (a space vehicle, too, even though a huge one) continued on its vast elliptical orbit, the spaceship would follow a much shorter elliptical course and reach Earth far ahead of the Twelfth Planet. This alternative may have offered the Nefilim both advantages and disadvantages. The full span of 3,600 Earth years, which applied to tenures of office and other activities of the Nefilim upon Earth, suggests that they might have preferred the second alternative, that of a short trip and a stay in Earth's skies coinciding with the arrival of the Twelfth Planet itself. This would have called for the launching of the spaceship (C) when the Twelfth Planet was about midway on its course back from the apogee. With the planet's own speed rapidly increasing, the spaceship required strong engines to overtake its home planet and reach Earth (D) a few Earth years ahead of the Twelfth Planet.

Based on complex technical data, as well as hints in Mesopotamian texts, it appears that the Nefilim adopted for their Earth missions the same approach NASA adopted for the Moon missions: When the principal spaceship neared the target planet (Earth), it went into orbit around that planet without actually landing. Instead, a smaller craft was released from the mother ship and performed the actual landing.

As difficult as accurate landings were, the departures from Earth must have been even trickier. The landing craft had to rejoin its mother ship, which then had to fire up its engines and accelerate to extremely high speeds, for it had to catch up with the Twelfth Planet, which by then was passing its perigee between Mars and Jupiter at its top orbital speed. Dr. Sitchin has calculated that there were three points in the spaceship's orbit of Earth that lent themselves to a thrust toward the Twelfth Planet. The three alternatives offered the Nefilim a choice of catching up with the Twelfth Planet within 1.1 to 1.6 Earth years. Suitable terrain, guidance from Earth, and perfect coordination with the home planet were required for successful arrivals, landings, takeoffs, and departures from Earth. As we shall see, the Nefilim met all these requirements. CITIES OF THE GODS

THE STORY of the first settlement of Earth by intelligent beings is a breathtaking saga no less inspiring than the discovery of America or the circumnavigation of Earth. It was certainly of greater importance, for, as a result of this settlement, we and our civilizations exist today.

The "Epic of Creation" informs us that the "gods" came to Earth following a deliberate decision by their leader. The Babylonian

version, attributing the decision to Marduk, explains that he waited until Earth's soil dried and hardened sufficiently to permit

landing and construction operations, Then Marduk announced his decision to the group of astronauts:

In the deep Above,

where you have been residing,

"The Kingly House of Above" have I built.

Now, a counterpart of it

I shall build in The Below.

Marduk then explained his purpose:

When from the Heavens

for assembly you shall descend,

there shall be a restplace for the night

to receive you all.

I will name it "Babylon" -

The Gateway of the Gods.

Earth was thus not merely the object of a visit or a quick, exploratory stay; it was to be a permanent "home away from home." Traveling on board a planet that was itself a kind of spaceship, crossing the paths of most of the other planets, the Nefilim no doubt first scanned the heavens from the surface of their own planet. Unmanned probes must have followed. Sooner or later

they acquired the capacity to send out manned missions to the other planets.

As the Nefilim searched for an additional "home," Earth must have struck them favorably. Its blue hues indicated it had life- sustaining water and air; its browns disclosed firm land; its greens, vegetation and the basis for animal life. Yet when the Nefilim finally voyaged to Earth, it must have looked somewhat different from the way it does to our astronauts today. For when the Nefilim first came to Earth, Earth was in the midst of an ice age - a glacial period that was one of the icing and deicing phases of Earth's climate:

Early glaciation - begun some 600,000 years ago First warming (interglacial period) - 550,000 years ago Second glacial period - 480,000 to 430,000 years ago

When the Nefilim first landed on Earth some 450,000 years ago, about a third of Earth's land area was covered with ice sheets and glaciers. With so much of Earth's waters frozen, rainfall was reduced, but not everywhere. Due to the peculiarities of wind patterns and terrain, among other things, some areas that are well watered today were barren then, and some areas with only seasonal rains now were experiencing year-round rainfalls then.

The sea levels were also lower because so much water had been captured as ice on the land masses. Evidence indicates that at the height of the two major ice ages, sea levels were as much as 600 to 700 feet lower than at present. Therefore, there was dry land where we now have seas and coastlines. Where rivers continued to run, they created deep gorges and canyons if their courses took them through rocky terrain; if their courses ran in soft earth and clay, they reached the ice-age seas through vast marshlands.

Arriving on Earth amidst such climatic and geographic conditions, where were the Nefilim to set up their first abode? They searched, no doubt, for a place with a relatively temperate climate, where simple shelters would suffice and where they could move about in light working clothes rather than in heavily insulated suits. They must also have searched for water for drinking, washing, and industrial purposes, as well as to sustain the plant and animal life needed for food. Rivers would both facilitate the irrigation of large tracts of land and provide a convenient means of transportation.

Only a rather narrow temperate zone on Earth could meet all these requirements, as well as the need for the long, flat areas suitable for landings. The attention of the Nefilim, as we now know, focused on three major river systems and their plains: the Nile, the Indus, and the Tigris-Euphrates. Each of these river basins was suitable for early colonization; each, in time, became the center of an ancient civilization.

The Nefilim would hardly have ignored another need: a source of fuel and energy. On Earth, petroleum has been a versatile and abundant source of energy, heat, and light, as well as a vital raw material from which countless essential goods are made. The Nefilim, judging by Sumerian practice and records, made extensive use of petroleum and its derivatives; it stands to reason that in their search for the most suitable habitat on Earth, the Nefilim would prefer a site rich in petroleum.

With this in mind, the Nefilim probably placed the Indus plain in last place, for it is not an area where oil could be found. The Nile valley was probably given second place; geologically it lies in a major sedimentary rock zone, but the area's oil is found only at some distance from the valley und requires deep drilling. The Land of the Two Rivers, Mesopotamia, was doubtless put in first place. Some of the world's richest oil fields stretch from the tip of the Persian Gulf to the mountains where the Tigris and Euphrates originate. And while in most places one must drill deep to bring up the crude oil, in ancient Sumer (now southern Iraq), bitumens, tars, pitches, and asphalts bubbled or (lowed up to the surface naturally.

(Interestingly, the Sumerians had names for all bituminous substances - petroleum, crude oils, native asphalts, rock asphalts, tars, pyrogenic asphalts, mastics, waxes, and pitches. They had nine different names for the various bitumens. By comparison, the ancient Egyptian language had only two, and Sanskrit, only three.)

The Book of Genesis describes God's abode on Earth - Eden - as a place of temperate climate, warm yet breezy, for God took afternoon strolls to catch the cooling breeze. It was a place of good soil, lending itself to agriculture and horticulture, especially the cultivation of orchards. It was a place that drew its waters from a network of four rivers. "And the name of the third river [was] Hidekel [Tigris]; it is the one which floweth towards the east of Assyria; and the fourth was the Euphrates." While opinions regarding the identity of the first two rivers, Pishon ("abundant") and Gihon ("which gushes forth"), are inconclusive, there is no uncertainty regarding the other two rivers, the Tigris and the Euphrates. Some scholars locate Eden in northern Mesopotamia, where the two rivers and two lesser tributaries originate; others (such as E. A. Speiser, in The Rivers of Paradise) believe that the four streams converged at the head of the Persian Gulf, so that Eden was not in northern but in southern Mesopotamia.

The biblical name Eden is of Mesopotamian origin, stemming from the Akkadian edinu, meaning "plain." We recall that the "divine" title of the ancient gods was DIN.GIR ("the righteous/just ones of the rockets"). A Sumerian name for the gods' abode, E.DIN, would have meant "home of the righteous ones" - a fitting description.

The selection of Mesopotamia as the home on Earth was probably motivated by at least one other important consideration. Though the Nefilim in time established a spaceport on dry land1, some evidence suggests that at least initially they landed by splashing down into the sea in a hermetically sealed capsule. If this was the landing method, Mesopotamia offered proximity to not one but two seas - the Indian Ocean to the south and the Mediterranean to the west - so that in case of an emergency, the landing did not have to depend on one watery site alone. As we shall see, a good bay or gulf from which long sea voyages could be launched was also essential.

In ancient texts and pictures, the craft of the Nefilim were initially termed "celestial boats." The landing of such "maritime" astronauts, one can imagine, might have been described in ancient epic tales as the appearance of some kind of submarine from the heavens in the sea, from which "fish-men" emerged and came ashore.

The texts do, in fact, mention that some of the AB.GAL who navigated the spaceships were dressed as fish. One text dealing with Ishtar's divine journeys quotes her as seeking to reach the "Great gallu" (chief navigator) who had gone away "in a sunken boat." Berossus transmitted legends regarding Oannes, the "Being Endowed with Reason," a god who made his appearance from "the Erythrean sea which bordered on Babylonia," in the first year of the descent of Kingship from Heaven. Berossus reported that though Oannes looked like a fish, he had a human head under the fish's head, and had feet like a man under the fish's tail. "His voice too and language were articulate and human."

The three, Greek historians through whom we know what Berossus wrote, reported that such divine fish-men appeared periodically, coming ashore from the "Erythrean sea" - the body of water we now call the Arabian Sea (the western part of the Indian Ocean).

Why would the Nefilim splash down in the Indian Ocean, hundreds of miles from their selected site in Mesopotamia, instead of in the Persian Gulf, which is so much closer? The ancient reports indirectly confirm our conclusion that the first landings occurred during the second glacial period, when today's Persian Gulf was not a sea but a stretch of marshlands and shallow lakes, in which a splashdown was impossible.

Coming down in the Arabian Sea, the first intelligent beings on Earth then made their way toward Mesopotamia. The marshlands extended deeper inland than today's coastline. There, at the edge of the marshes, they established their very first settlement on our planet.

They named it E.RI.DU ("house in faraway built"). What an appropriate name!

To this very day, the Persian term ordu means "encampment." It is a word whose meaning has taken root in all languages: The settled Earth is called Erde in German, Erda in Old High German, Jordh in Icelandic, Jord in Danish, Airtha in Gothic, Erthe in Middle English; and, going back geographically and in time, "Earth" was Araiha or Ereds in Aramaic, Erd or Ertz in Kurdish, and Eretz in Hebrew.

At Eridu, in southern Mesopotamia, the Nefilim established Earth- Station I, a lonely outpost on a half-frozen planet. Sumerian texts, confirmed by later Akkadian translations, list the original settlements or "cities" of the Nefilim in the order in which they were established. We are even told which god was put in charge of each of these settlements. A Sumerian text, believed to have been the original of the Akkadian "Deluge Tablets," relates the following regarding five of the first seven cities: After kingship had been lowered from heaven, after the exalted crown, the throne of kingship had been lowered from heaven, he ... perfected the procedures, the divine ordinances. . . . Founded five cities in pure places, called their names, laid them out as centers.

The first of these cities, ERIDU,

he gave to Nudimmud, the leader,

The second, BAD-TIBIRA,

he gave to Nugig.

The third, LARAK,

he gave to Pabilsag.

The fourth, SIPPAR,

he gave to the hero Utu.

The fifth, SHURUPPAK,

he gave to Sud.

The name of the god who lowered Kingship from Heaven, planned the establishment of Eridu and four other^A cities, and appointed their governors or commanders, is unfortunately obliterated. All the texts agree, however, that the god who waded ashore to the edge of the marshlands and said "Here we settle" was Enki, nicknamed "Nudimmud" ("he who made things") in the text.

This god's two names - EN.KI ('lord of firm ground") and E.A ("whose house is water") - were most appropriate. Eridu, which remained Enki's seat of power and center of worship throughout Mesopotamian history, was built on ground artificially raised above the waters of the marshlands. The evidence is contained in a text named (by S. N. Kramer) the "Myth of Enki and Eridu": The lord of the watery-deep, the king Enki. built his house.

In Eridu he built the House of the Water Bank. The king Enki. . . has built a house Eridu, like a mountain, he raised up from the earth; in a good place he had built it.

These and other, mostly fragmentary texts suggest that one of the first concerns of these "colonists" on Earth had to do with the shallow lakes or watery marshes. "He brought . . . ; established the cleaning of the small rivers." The effort to dredge the beds of streams and tributaries to allow a better flow of the waters was intended to drain the marshes, obtain cleaner, potable water, and implement controlled irrigation. The Sumerian narrative also indicates some landfilling or the raising of dikes to protect the first houses from the omnipresent waters.

A text named by scholars the "myth" of "Enki and the Land's Order" is one of the longest and best preserved of Sumerian narrative poems so far uncovered. Its text consists of some 470 lines, of which 375 are perfectly legible. Its beginning (some 50 lines) is, unfortunately, broken. The verses that follow are devoted to an exaltation of Enki and to the establishment of his relationship with the chief deity Anu (his father), Ninti (his sister), and Enlil (his brother).

Following these introductions, Enki himself "picks up the microphone." As fantastic as it may sound, the fact is that the text

amounts to a first-person report by Enki of his landing on Earth.

"When I approached Earth,

there was much flooding.

When I approached its green meadows,

heaps and mounds were piled up

at my command.

I built my house in a pure place. ... My house -

Its shade stretches over the Snake Marsh. . . . The carp fish wave their tails in it among the small gizi reeds."

The poem then goes on to describe and record, in the third person, the achievements of Enki. Here are some selected verses:

He marked the marshland,

placed in it carp and . . . - fish;

He marked the cane thicket,

placed in it . . . - reeds and green-reeds.

Enbilulu, the Inspector of Canals,

he placed in charge of the marshlands.

Him who set net so no fish escapes,

whose trap no ... escapes, .

whose snare no bird escapes,

. . . the son of ... a god who loves fish

Enki placed in charge of fish and birds.

Enkimdu, the one of the ditch and dike, Enki placed in charge of ditch and dike.

Him whose . . . mold directs, Kulla, the brick-maker of the Land, Enki placed in charge of mold and brick. The poem lists other achievements of Enki, including the purification of the waters of the Tigris River and the joining (by canal) of the Tigris and Euphrates. His house by the watery bank adjoined a wharf at which reed rafts and boats could anchor, and from which they could sail off. Appropriately, the house was named E.ABZU ("house of the Deep"). Enki's sacred precinct in Eridu was known by this name for millennia thereafter.

No doubt Enki and his landing party explored the lands around Eridu, but he appears to have preferred traveling by water. The marshland, he said in one of the texts, "is my favorite spot; it stretches out its arms to me." In other texts Enki described sailing in the marshlands in his boat, named MA.gUr (literally, "boat to turn about in"), namely, a touring boat. He tells how his crewmen "drew on the oars in unison." how they used to "sing sweet songs, causing the river to rejoice." At such times, he confided, "sacred songs and spells filled my Watery Deep." Even such a minor detail as the name of the captain of Enki's boat is recorded.

The Sumerian king lists indicate that Enki and his first group of Nefilim remained alone on Earth for quite a while: Eight shar's (28,800 years) passed before the second commander or "settlement chief" was named.

Interesting light is shed on the subject as we examine the astronomical evidence. Scholars have been puzzled by the apparent Sumerian "confusion" regarding which one of the twelve zodiacal houses was associated with Enki. The sign of the fish-goat, which stood for the constellation Capricorn, was apparently associated with Enki (and, indeed, may explain the epithet of the founder of Eridu, A.LU.LIM, which could mean "sheep of the glittering waters"). Yet Ea/Enki was frequently depicted as holding vases of flowing waters - the original Water Bearer, or Aquarius; and he was certainly the God of Fishes, and thus associated with Pisces.

Astronomers are hard put to clarify how the ancient stargazers actually saw in a group of stars the outlines of, say, fishes or a water bearer. The answer that comes to mind is that the signs of the zodiac were not named after the shape of the star group but after the epithet or main activity of a god primarily associated with the time when the vernal equinox was in that particular zodiacal house.

If Enki landed on Earth - as we believe - at the start of an Age of Pisces, witnessed a processional shift to Aquarius, and stayed through a Great Year (25,920 years) until an Age of Capricorn began, then he was indeed in sole command on Earth the purported 28,800 years.

The reported passage of time also confirms our earlier conclusion that the Nefilim arrived on Earth in the midst of an ice age. The hard work of raising dikes and digging canals commenced when climatic conditions were still harsh. But within a few shar's of their landing, the glacial period was giving way to a warmer and rainier climate (circa 430,000 years ago). It was then that the Nefilim decided to move farther inland and expand their settlements. Befittingly, the Anunnaki (rank-and-file Nefilim) named the second commander of Eridu "A.LAL.GAR" ("he who is raintime brought rest").

But while Enki was enduring the hardships of a pioneer on Earth, Ann and his other son Enlil were watching the developments from the Twelfth Planet. The Mesopotamian texts make it clear that the one who was really in charge of the Earth mission was Enlil; and as soon as the decision was made to proceed with the mission, Enlil himself descended to Earth. For him a special settlement or base named Larsa was built by eN.KI.DU.NU ("Enki, digs deep"). When Enlil took personal charge of the place? he was nicknamed ALIM ("ram"), coinciding with the "age" of the zodiacal constellation Aries.

The establishment of Larsa launched a new phase in the settlement of Earth by the Nefilim. It marked the decision to proceed with the tasks for which they had come to Earth, which required the shipping to Earth of more "manpower," tools, and equipment, and the return of valuable cargoes to the Twelfth Planet.

Splashdowns at sea were no longer adequate for such heavier loads. The climatic changes made the interior more accessible; it was time to shift the landing site to the center of Mesopotamia. At that juncture, Enlil came to Earth and proceeded from Larsa to establish a "Mission Control Center" - a sophisticated command post from which the Nefilim on Earth could coordinate space journeys to and from their home planet, guide in landing shuttle-craft, and perfect their takeoffs and dockings with the spaceship orbiting Earth.

The site Enlil selected for this purpose, known for millennia as Nippur, was named by him NIBRU.KI ("Earth's crossing"). (We recall that the celestial site of the Twelfth Planet's closest pass to Earth was called the "Celestial Place of the Crossing.") There Enlil established

the DUR.AN.KI, the "bond Heaven-Earth."

The task was understandably complex and time-consuming. Enlil stayed in Larsa for 6 shar's (21,600 years) while Nippur was under construction. The Nippurian undertaking was also lengthy, as evidenced by the zodiacal nicknames of Enlil. Having paralleled the Ram (Aries) while

I in Larsa, he was subsequently associated with the Bull (Taurus). Nippur was established in the "age" of Taurus.

A devotional poem composed as a "Hymn to Enlil, the All-Beneficent" and glorifying Enlil, his consort Ninlil, his city Nippur, and its "lofty house," the E.KUR, tells us much about Nippur. For one thing, Enlil had at his disposal there some highly sophisticated instruments: a "lifted 'eye' which scans the land," and a "lifted beam which searches the heart of all the land." Nippur, the poem tells us, was protected by awesome weapons: "Its sight is awesome fear, dread"; from "its outside, no mighty god can approach." Its "arm" was a "vast net," and in its midst there crouched a "fast-stepping bird," a "bird" whose "hand" the wicked and the evil could not escape. Was the place protected by some death ray, by an electronic power field? Was there in its center a helicopter pad, a "bird" so swift no one could outrun its reach?

In the center of Nippur, atop an artificially raised platform, stood Enlil's headquarters, the KI.UR ("place of Earth's root") - the place where the "bond between Heaven and Earth" rose. This was the communications center of Mission Control, the place from which the Anunnaki on Earth communicated with their comrades, the IGI.GI ("they who turn and see") in the orbiting spacecraft. At this center, the ancient text goes on to say, stood a "heavenward tall pillar reaching to the sky." This extremely tall "pillar," firmly planted on the ground "as a platform that cannot be overturned," was used by Enlil to "pronounce his word" heavenward/This is a simple description of a broadcasting tower. Once the "word of Enlil" - his command - "approached heaven, abundance would pour down on Earth." What a simple way to describe the flow of materials, special foods, medicines, and tools brought down by the shuttlecraft, once the "word" from Nippur was given!

This Control Center on a raised platform, Enlil's "lofty house," contained a mysterious chamber, named the DIR.GA:

As mysterious as the distant Waters,

as the Heavenly Zenith.

Among its ... emblems,

the emblems of the stars.

The ME it carries to perfection.

Its words are for utterance. . . .

Its words are gracious oracles.

What was this dirga? Breaks in the ancient tablet have robbed us of more data; but the name speaks for itself, for it means "the dark, crownlike chamber," a place where star charts were kept, where predictions were made, where the me (the astronaut's communications)" were received and transmitted. The description reminds us of Mission Control in Houston, Texas, monitoring the astronauts on their Moon missions, amplifying their communications, plotting their courses against the starry sky, giving them "gracious oracles" of guidance.

We may recall here the tale of the god Zu, who made his way to Enlil's sanctuary and snatched away the Tablet of Destinies, whereupon "suspended was the issuance of commands . . . the hallowed inner chamber lost its brilliance . . . stillness spread . . . silence prevailed."

In the "Epic of Creation," the "destinies" of the planetary gods were their orbits. It is reasonable to assume that the Tablet of Destinies, which was so vital to the functions of Enlil's "Mission Control Center," also controlled the orbits and flight paths of the spaceships that maintained the "bond" between Heaven and Earth. It might have been the vital "black box" containing the computer programs that guided the spaceships, without which the contact between the Nefilim on Earth and their link to the Home Planet was disrupted.

Most scholars take the name EN.LIL to mean "lord of the wind," which fits the theory that the ancients "personilized" the elements of nature and thus assigned one god to be in charge of winds and storms. Yet some scholars have already suggested that in this instance the term LIL means not a stormy wind of nature but the "wind" that comes out of the mouth- - an utterance, a command, a spoken communication. Once again, the archaic Sumerian pictographs for the term EN - especially as applied to Enlil - and for the term LIL, shed light on the subject. For what we see is a structure with a high tower of antennas rising from it, as well as a contraption that looks very much like the giant radar nets erected nowadays for capturing and emitting signals - the "vast net" described in the texts.

In Bad-Tibira, established as an industrial center, Enlil installed his son Nannar/Sin in command; the texts speak of him in the list of cities as NU.GIG ("he of the night sky"). There, we believe, the twins Inanna/Ishtar and Utu/Shamash were born - an event marked by associating their father Nannar with the next zodiacal constellation, Gemini (the Twins). As the god trained in rocketry, Shamash was assigned the constellation GIR (meaning both "rocket" and "the crab's claw," or Cancer), followed by Ishtar and the Lion (Leo), upon whose back she was traditionally depicted.

The sister of Enlil and Enki, "the nurse" Ninhursag (SUD), was not neglected: In her charge Enlil put Shurup-pak, the medical center of the Nefilim - an event marked by naming her constellation "The Maid" (Virgo).

While these centers were being established, the completion of Nippur was followed by the construction of the spaceport of the Nefilim on Earth. The texts made clear that Nippur was the place where the "words" - commands - were uttered: There, when "Enlil commanded: 'Towards heaven!' . . . that which shines forth rose like a sky rocket." But the action itself took place "where Shamash rises," and that place - the "Cape Kennedy" of the Nefilim - was Sippar, the city in the charge of the Chief of the Eagles, where multistage rockets were raised within its special enclave, the "sacred precinct."

As Shamash matured to take command of the Fiery Rockets, and in time also to become the God of Justice, he was assigned the constellations Scorpio and Libra (the Scales).

Completing the list of the first seven Cities of the Gods and the correspondence with the twelve zodiac constellations was Larak, where Enlil put his son Ninurta an command. The city lists call him PA.BIL.SAG ("great protector"); it is the same name by which the constellation Sagittarius was called.

It would be unrealistic to assume that the first seven Cities of the Gods were established haphazardly. These "gods," who were capable of space travel, located the first settlements in accordance with a definite plan, serving a vital need: to be able to land on Earth and to leave Earth for their own planet. What was the master plan?

As we searched for an answer, we asked ourselves a question: What is the origin of Earth's astronomical and astrological symbol, a circle bisected by a right-angled cross - the symbol we use to signify "target"?

The symbol goes back to the origins of astronomy and f astrology in Sumer and is identical with the Egyptian -hieroglyphic sign for "place": '

Is this coincidence, or significant evidence? Did the Nefilim land on Earth by superimposing on its image or map some kind of "target"?

The Nefilim were strangers to Earth. As they scanned its surface from space, they must have paid special attention to the mountains and mountain ranges. These could present hazards during landings and takeoffs, but they could also serve as navigational landmarks.

If the Nefilim, as they hovered over the Indian Ocean, looked toward the Land Between the Rivers, which they had selected for their earliest colonizing efforts, one landmark stood out unchallenged: Mount Ararat.

An extinct volcanic massif, Ararat dominates the Armenian plateau where the present-day borders of Turkey, Iran, and Soviet Armenia meet. It rises on the eastern and northern sides to some 3,000 feet above sea level, and on the northwestern side to 5,000 feet. The whole massif is some twenty-five miles in diameter, a towering dome sticking out from the surface of Earth, Other features make it stand out not only from the horizon but also from high in the skies. First, it is located almost midway between two lakes, Lake Van and Lake Se-Van. Second, two peaks rise from the high massif: Little Ararat (12,900 feet) and Great Ararat (17,000 feet - well over 5 kilometers). No other mountains rival the solitary heights of the two peaks, which are permanently snow-covered. They are like two shining beacons between the two lakes that, in daylight, act as giant reflectors. We have reason to believe that the Nefilim selected their landing site by coordinating a north - south meridian with an unmistakable landmark and a convenient river location. North of Mesopotamia, the easily identifiable twin-peaked Ararat would have been the obvious landmark. A meridian drawn through the center of the twin-peaked Ararat bisected the Euphrates. That was the target - the site selected for the spaceport. Could one easily land and take off there?

The answer was Yes. The selected side lay in a plain; the mountain ranges surrounding Mesopotamia were a substantial distance away. The highest ones (to the east, northeast, and north) would not interfere with a space shuttle gliding in from the southeast.

Was the place accessible - could astronauts and materials be brought there without too much difficulty?

Again, the answer was Yes. The site could be reached overland and, via the Euphrates River, by waterborne craft.

And one more crucial question: Was there a nearby source of energy, of fuel for light and power? The answer was an emphatic

Yes. The bend in the Euphrates River where Sippar was to be established was one of the richest known sources in antiquity of

surface bitumens, petroleum products that seeped up through natural wells and could be collected from the surface without any

deep digging or drilling.

We can imagine Enlil, surrounded by his lieutenants at the spacecraft's command post, drawing the cross within a circle on the map. "What shall we call the place?" he may have asked. "Why not 'Sippar'?" someone might have suggested.

In Near Eastern languages, the name means "bird." Sippar was the place where the Eagles would come to nest. How would the space shuttles glide down to Sippar?

We can visualize one of the space navigators pointing out the best route. On the left they had the Euphrates and the mountainous plateau west of it; on the right, the Tigris and the Zagros range east of it. If the craft were to approach Sippar at the easily set angle of 45 degrees to the Ararat meridian, its path would take it safely between these two hazardous areas. Moreover, coming in to land at such an angle, it would cross in the south over the rocky tip of Arabia while at a high altitude, and start its glide over the waters of the Persian Gulf. Coming and going, the craft would have an unobstructed field of vision and of communication with Mission Control at Nippur.

Enlil's lieutenant would then make a rough sketch - a triangle of waters and mountains on each side, pointing like an arrow toward Sippar. An "X" would mark Nippur, in the center

Incredible as it may seem, this sketch was not made by us; the design was drawn on a ceramic object unearthed at Susa, in a stratum dated to about 3200 B.C. It brings to mind the planisphere that described the flight path and procedures, which was based on 45-degree segments.

The establishment of settlements on Earth by the Nefilim was not a hit-or-miss effort. All the alternatives were studied, all the resources evaluated, all the hazards taken into account; moreover, the settlement plan itself was carefully mapped out so that each site fit into the final pattern, whose purpose was to outline the landing path to Sippar.

No one has previously attempted to see a master plan in the scattered Sumerian settlements. But if we look at the first seven cities ever established, we find that Bad-Tibira, Shuruppak, and Nippur lay on a line running precisely at a 45-degree angle to the Ararat meridian, and that line crossed the meridian exactly at Sippar! The other two cities whose sites are known, Eridu and Larsa, also Iay on another straight line that crossed the first line and the^A Ararat meridian, also at Sippar. Taking our cue from the ancient sketch, which made Nippur the center of a circle, and drawing concentric circles from Nippur through the various cities, we find that another ancient Sumerian town, Lagash, was located exactly on one of these circles - on a line equidistant from the 45-degree line, like the Eridu-Larsa-Sippar line. The location of Lagash mirrors that of Larsa. Though the site of LA.RA.AK ("seeing the bright halo") remains unknown, the logical site for it would be at Point 5, since there logically was a City of the Gods there, completing the string of cities on the central flight path at intervals of six beru: Bad-Tibira, Shuruppak, Nippur, Larak, Sippar.

The two outside lines, flanking the central line running through Nippur, lay 6 degrees on each side of it, acting as southwest and northeast outlines of the central flight path. Appropriately, the name LA.AR.SA meant "seeing the red light"; and LA.AG.ASH meant "seeing the halo at six." The cities along each line were indeed six beru (approximately sixty kilometers, or thirty-seven miles) from each other.

This, we believe, was the master plan of the Nefilim. Having selected the best location for their spaceport (Sippar), they laid out the other settlements in a pattern outlining the vital flight path to it. In the center they placed Nippur, where the "bond Heaven- Earth" was located.

Neither the original Cities of the Gods nor their remains can ever be seen by man again - they were all destroyed by the Deluge

that later swept over Earth. But we can learn much about them because it was the sacred duty of Mesopotamian kings

continuously to rebuild the sacred precincts in exactly the same spot and according to the original plans. The rebuilders stressed

their scrupulous adherence to the original plans in their dedication inscriptions, as this one (uncovered by Layard) stated:

The everlasting ground plan,

that which for the future

the construction determined

[I have followed].

It is the one which bears

the drawings from the Olden Times

and the writing of the Upper Heaven.

If Lagash, as we suggest, was one of the cities that served as a landing beacon, then much of the information provided by Gudea in the third millennium B.C. makes sense. He wrote that when Ninurta instructed him to rebuild the sacred precinct, an accompanying god gave him the architectural plans (drawn on a stone tablet), and a goddess (who had "travelled between Heaven and Earth" in her "chamber") showed him a celestial map and instructed him on the astronomical alignments of the structure.

In addition to the "divine black bird," the god's "terrible eye" ("the great beam that subdues the world to its power") and the "world controller" (whose sound could "reverberate all over") were installed in the sacred precinct. Finally, when the structure was complete, the "emblem of Utu" was raised upon it, facing "toward the rising place of Utu" - toward the spaceport at Sippar. All these beaming objects were important to the spaceport's operation, for Utu himself "came forth joyfully" to inspect the installations when completed.

Early Sumerian depictions frequently show massive structures, built in earliest times of reeds and wood, standing in fields among grazing cattle. The current assumption that these were stables for cattle is contradicted by the pillars that are invariably shown protruding from the roofs of such structures.

The pillars' purpose, as one can see, was to support one or more pairs of "rings," whose function is unstated. But although these structures were erected in the fields, one must question whether they were built to shelter cattle. The Sumerian pictographs depict the word DUR, or TUR (meaning "abode," "gathering place"), by drawings that undoubtedly represent the same structures shown on the cylinder seals; but they make clear that the main feature of the structure was not the "huts" but the antenna tower. Similar pillars with "rings" were posted at temple entrances, within the sacred precincts of the gods, and not only out in the countryside.

Were these objects antennas attached to broadcasting equipment? Were the pairs of rings radar emitters, placed in the fields to guide the incoming shuttlecraft? Were the eyelike pillars scanning devices, the "all-seeing eyes" of the gods of which many texts have spoken?

We know that the equipment to which these various devices were connected was portable, for some Sumerian seals depict boxlike "divine objects" being transported by boat or mounted on pack animals, which carried the objects farther inland once the boats had docked.

These "black boxes," when we see what they looked like, bring to mind the Ark of the Covenant built by Moses under God's instructions. The chest was to be made of wood, overlaid with gold both inside and outside - two electricity-conducting surfaces were insulated by the wood between them. A kapporeth, also made of gold, was to be placed above the chest and held up by two cherubim cast of solid gold. The nature of the kapporeth (meaning, scholars speculate, "covering") is not clear; but this verse from Exodus suggests its purpose: "And I will address thee from above the Kapporeth, from between the two Cherubim." The implication that the Ark of the Covenant was principally a communications box, electrically operated, is enhanced by the instructions concerning its portability. It was to be carried by means of wooden staffs passed through four golden rings. No one was to touch the chest proper; and when one Israelite did touch it, he was killed instantly - as if by a charge of high-voltage electricity.

Such apparently supernatural equipment - which made it possible to communicate with a deity though the deity was physically somewhere else - became objects of veneration, "sacred cult symbols." Temples at Lagash, Ur, Mari, and other ancient sites included among their devotional objects "eye idols." The most outstanding example was found at an "eye temple" at Tell Brak, in northwestern Mesopotamia. This fourth-millennium temple was so named not only because hundreds of "eye" symbols were un- earthed^A there but mainly because the temple's inner sanctum had only one altar, on which a huge stone "double-eye" symbol was displayed.

In all probability, it was a simulation of the actual divine object - Ninurta's "terrible eye," or the one at Enlil's Mission Control Center at Nippur, about which the ancient scribe reported: "His raised Eye scans the land. . . . His raised Beam searches the land."

The flat plain of Mesopotamia necessitated, it seems, the artificial raising of platforms on which the space-related equipment was to be placed. Texts and pictorial depictions leave no doubt that the structures ranged from the earliest field huts to the later staged platforms, reached by staircases and sloped ramps that led from a broad lower stage to a narrower upper one, and so on. At the top of the ziggurat an actual residence for the god was built, surrounded by a flat, walled courtyard to house his "bird" and "weapons." A ziggurat depicted on a cylinder seal not only shows the customary stage-upon-stage construction, it also has two "ring antennas" whose height appears to have equaled three stages.

Marduk claimed that the ziggurat and temple compound at Babylon (the E.SAG.IL) had been built under his own instructions^A also in accordance with the "writing of Upper Heaven." A tablet (known as the Smith Tablet, after its decipherer), analyzed by Andre Parrot (Ziggurats et Tour de Babel) established that the seven-stage ziggurat was a perfect square, with the first stage or base having sides of 15 gar each. Each successive stage was smaller in area and in height, except the last stage (the god's residence), which was of a greater height. The total height, however, was again equal to 15 gar, so that the complete structure was not only a perfect square but a perfect cube as well.

The gar employed in these measurements was equivalent to 12 short cubits - approximately 6 meters, or 20 feet. Two scholars, H. G. Wood and L. C. Stecchini, have shown that the Sumerian sexagesimal base, the number 60, determined all the primary measurements of Mesopotamian ziggurats. Thus each side measured 3 by 60 cubits at its base, and the total was 60 gar. What factor determined the height of each stage? Stecchini discovered that if he multiplied the height of the first stage (5.5 gar) by double cubits, the result was 33, or the approximate latitude of Babylon (32.5 degrees North). Similarly calculated, the second stage raised the angle of observation to 51 degrees, and each of the succeeding four stages raised it by another 6 degrees. The seventh stage thus stood atop a platform raised to 75 degrees above the horizon at Babylon's geographic latitude. This final stage added 15 degrees - letting the observer look straight up, at a 90-degree angle. Stecchini concluded that each stage acted like a stage of an astronomical observatory, with a predetermined elevation relative to the arc of the sky. There may, of course, have been more "hidden" considerations in these measurements. While the elevation of 33 degrees was not too accurate for Babylon, it was precise for Sippar. Was there a relationship between the 6-degree elevation at each of four stages and the 6-beru distances between the Cities of the Gods? Were the seven stages somehow related to the location of the first seven settlements, or to Earth's position as the seventh planet?

G. Martiny (Astronomisches zur babylonischen Turm) showed how these features of the ziggurat suited it for celestial observations, and that the topmost stage of the Esagila was oriented toward the planet Shupa (which we have identified as Pluto) and the constellation Aries.

But were the ziggurats raised solely to observe the stars and planets, or were they also meant to serve the spacecraft of the Nefilim? All the ziggurats were oriented so that their corners pointed exactly north, south, east, and west. As a result, their sides ran precisely at 45-degree angles to the four cardinal directions. This meant that a space shuttle coming in for a landing could follow certain sides of the ziggurat exactly along the flight path - and reach Sippar without difficulty! The Akkadian/Babylonian name for these structures, zukiratu, connoted "tube of divine spirit." The Sumerians called the ziggurats ESH; the term denoted "supreme" or "most high" - as indeed these structures were. It could also denote a numerical entity relating to the "measuring" aspect of the ziggurats. And it also meant "a heat source" ("fire" in Akkadian and Hebrew). Even scholars who have approached the subject without our "space" interpretation could not escape the conclusion that the ziggurats had some purpose other than to make the god's abode a "high-rise" building. Samuel N. Kramer summed up the scholastic consensus: "The ziggurat, the stagetower, which became the hallmark of Mesopotamian temple architecture . . . was intended to serve as a connecting link, both real and symbolic, between the gods in heaven and the mortals on earth." We have shown, however, that the true function of these structures was to connect the gods in Heaven with the gods - not the mortals - on Earth. MUTINY OF THE ANUNNAKI

AFTER ENLIL ARRIVED on Earth in person, "Earth Command" was transferred out of Enki's hands. It was probably at this point that Enki's epithet or name was changed to E.A ("lord waters") rather than "lord earth."

The Sumerian texts explain that at that early stage in the arrival of the gods on Earth, a separation of powers was agreed upon: Anu was to stay in the heavens and rule over the Twelfth Planet; Enlil was to command the lands; and Enki was put in charge of the AB.ZU (apsu in Akkadian). Guided by the "watery" meaning of the name E.A, scholars have translated AB.zU as "watery deep," assuming that, as in Greek mythology, Enlil represented the thundering Zeus, and Ea was the prototype of Poseidon, God of the Oceans.

In other instances, Enlil's domain was referred to as the Upper World, and Ea's as the Lower World; again, the scholars assumed that the terms meant that Enlil controlled Earth's atmosphere while Ea was ruler of the "subterranean waters" - the Greeklike Hades the Mesopotamians supposedly believed in. Our own term abyss (which derives from apsu) denotes deep, dark, dangerous waters in which one can sink and disappear. Thus, as scholars came upon Mesopotamian texts describing this Lower World, they translated it as Unterwelt ("underworld") or Totenwelt ("world of the dead"). Only in recent years have the Sumerologists mitigated the ominous connotation somewhat by using the term netherworld in translation. The Mesopotamian texts most responsible for this misinterpretation were a series of liturgies lamenting the disappearance of Dumuzi, who is better known from biblical and Canaanite texts as the god Tammuz. It was with him that Inanna/Ishtar had her most celebrated love affair; and when he disappeared, she went to the Lower World to seek him.

The massive Tammuz-Liturgen und Verwandtes by P. Maurus Witzel, a masterwork on the Sumerian and Akkadian "Tammuz texts," only helped perpetuate the misconception. The epic tales of Ishtar's search were taken to mean a journey "to the realm of the dead, and her eventual return to the land of the living."

The Sumerian and Akkadian texts describing the descent of Inanna/Ishtar to the Lower World inform us that the goddess decided to visit her sister Ereshkigal, mistress of the place. Ishtar went there neither dead nor against her will - she went alive and uninvited, forcing her way in by threatening the gatekeeper: If thou openest not the gate so that I cannot enter, I will smash the door, I will shatter the bolt, I will smash the doorpost, I will move the doors.

One by one, the seven gates leading to the abode of Ereshkigal were opened to Ishtar; when she finally made it, and Ereshkigal saw her, she literally blew her top (the Akkadian text says, "burst at her presence"). The Sumerian text, vague about the purpose of the trip or the cause of Ereshkigal's anger, reveals that Inanna expected such a reception. She took pains to notify the other principal deities of her journey in advance, and made sure that they would take steps to rescue her in case she was imprisoned in the "Great Below."

The spouse of Ereshkigal - and Lord of the Lower World - was Nergal. The manner in which he arrived in the Great Below and became its lord not only illuminates the human nature of the "gods" but also depicts the Lower World as anything but a "world of the dead."

The tale, found in several versions, begins with a banquet at which the guests of honor were Anu, Enlil, and Ea. The banquet was held "in the heavens," but not at Anu's abode on the Twelfth Planet. Perhaps it took place aboard an orbiting spacecraft, for when Ereshkigal could not ascend to join them, the gods sent her a messenger who "descended the long staircase of the heavens, reached the gate of Ereshkigal." Having received the invitation, Ereshkigal instructed her counselor, Namtar: "Ascend, Namtar, the long staircase of the heavens; Remove the dish from the table, take my share; Whatever Anu gives to thee, bring it all to me."

When Namtar entered the banquet hall, all the gods except "a bald god, seated in the back," rose to greet him. Namtar reported the incident to Ereshkigal when he returned to the Lower World. She and all the lesser gods of her domain were insulted. She demanded that the offending god be sent to her for punishment.

The offender, however, was Nergal, a son of the great Ea. After a severe reprimand by his father, Nergal was instructed to make

the trip alone, armed only with lots of fatherly advice on how to behave. When Nergal arrived at the gate, he was recognized by

Namtar as the offending god and led in to "Ereshkigal's wide courtyard," where he was put to several tests.

Sooner or later, Ereshkigal went to take her daily bath.

. . . she revealed her body.

What is normal for man and woman,

he ... in his heart . . .

. . . they embraced,

passionately they got into bed.

For seven days and nights they made love. In the Upper World, an alarm had gone out for the missing Nergal. "Release me," he

said to Ereshkigal. "I will go, and I will come back," he promised. But no sooner had he left than Namtar went to Ereshkigal and

accused Nergal of having no intention of coming back. Once more Namtar was sent up to Anu. Ereshkigal's message was clear:

I, thy daughter, was young;

I have not known the play of maidens. . . .

That god whom you didst send,

and who had intercourse with me -

Send him to me, that he may be my husband,

That he might lodge with me.

With married life perhaps not yet on his mind, Nergal organized a military expedition and stormed the gates of Ereshkigal,

intending to "cut off her head." But Ereshkigal pleaded:

"Be thou my husband and I will be thy wife.

I will let thee hold dominion

over the wide Lower Land.

I will place the Tablet of Wisdom in thy hand.

Thou shalt be Master, I will be Mistress."

And then came the happy ending:

When Nergal heard her words,

He took hold of her hand and kissed her,

Wiping away her tears:

"What thou hast wished for me

since months past - so be it now!"

The events recounted do not suggest a Land of the Dead. Quite the contrary: It was a place the gods could enter and leave, a place of lovemaking, a place important enough to be entrusted to a granddaughter of Enlil and a son of Enki. Recognizing that the facts do not support the earlier notion of a dismal region, W. F. Albright (Mesopotamian Elements in Canaanite Eschatology) suggested that Dumuzi's abode in the Lower World was "a bright and fruitful home in the subterranean paradise called 'the mouth of the rivers' which was closely associated with the home of Ea in the Apsu."

The place was far and difficult to reach, to be sure, and a somewhat "restricted area,*' but hardly a "place of no return." Like Inanna, other leading deities were reported going to, and returning from, this Lower World. Enlil was banished to the Abzu for a while, after he had raped Ninlil. And Ea was a virtual commuter between Eridu in Sumer and the Abzu, bringing to the Abzu "the craftsmanship of Eridu" and establishing in it "a lofty shrine" for himself.

Far from being a dark and desolate place, it was described as a bright place with flowing waters.

A rich land, beloved of Enki;

Bursting with riches, perfect in fullness . . .

Whose mighty river rushes across the land.

We have seen the many depictions of Ea as the God of Flowing Waters. It is evident from Sumerian sources that such flowing waters indeed existed - not in Sumer and its flatlands, but in the Great Below. W. F. Albright drew attention to a text dealing with the Lower World as the Land of UT.TU - "in the west" of Sumer. It speaks of a journey of Enki to the Apsu: To thee, Apsu, pure land, Where great waters rapidly flow, To the Abode of Flowing Waters The Lord betakes himself. . . . The Abode of Flowing Waters Enki in the pure waters established; In the midst of the Apsu, A great sanctuary he established. By all accounts, the place lay beyond a sea. A lament for "the pure son," the young Dumuzi, reports that he was carried off to the Lower World in a ship. A "Lamentation over the Destruction of Sumer" describes how Inanna managed to sneak aboard a waiting ship. "From her possessions she sailed forth. She descends to the Lower World."

A long text, little understood because no intact version has been found, deals with some major dispute between Ira (Nergal's title as Lord of the Lower World) and his brother Marduk. In the course of the dispute, Nergal left his domain and confronted Marduk in Babylon; Marduk, on the other hand, threatened: "To the Apsu will I descend, the Anunnaki to supervise . . . my raging weapons against them I will raise." To reach the Apsu, he left the Land of Mesopotamia and traveled over "waters that rose up." His destination was Arali in the "basement" of Earth, and the texts provide a precise clue as to where this "basement" was: In the distant sea, 100 beru of water [away] ... The ground of Arali [is] . . .

It is where the Blue Stones cause ill,

Where the craftsman of Anu

the Silver Axe carries, which shines as the day.

The beru, both a land-measuring and a time-reckoning unit, was probably used in the latter capacity when travel over water was involved. As such it was a double hour, so that one hundred beru meant two hundred hours of sailing. We have no way of determining the assumed or average sailing speed employed in these ancient distance reckonings. But there is no doubt that a truly distant land was reached after a sea voyage of over two or three thousand miles.

The texts indicate that Arali was situated west and south of Sumer. A ship traveling two to three thousand miles in a southwesterly direction from the Persian Gulf could have only one destination: the shores of southern Africa. Only such a conclusion can explain the terms Lower World, as meaning the southern hemisphere, where the Land of Arali was, as contrasted with the Upper World, or northern hemisphere, where Sumer was. Such a division of Earth's hemispheres between Enlil (northern) and Ea (southern) paralleled the designation of the northern skies as the Way of Enlil and the southern skies as the Way of Ea.

The ability of the Nefilim to undertake interplanetary travel, orbit Earth, and land on it should obviate the question whether they could possibly have known of southern Africa, besides Mesopotamia. Many cylinder seals, depicting animals peculiar to the area (such as the zebra or ostrich), jungle scenes, or rulers wearing leopard skins in the African tradition, attest to an "African connection."

What interest did the Nefilim have in this part of Africa, diverting to it the scientific genius of Ea and granting to the important gods in charge of the land a unique "Tablet of Wisdom"?

The Sumerian term AB.ZU, which scholars have accepted to mean "watery deep," requires a fresh and critical analysis. Literally, the term meant "primeval deep source" - not necessarily of waters. According to Sumerian grammatical rules, either of two syllables of any term could precede the other without changing the word's meaning, with the result that AB.ZU and ZU.AB meant the same thing. The latter spelling of the Sumerian term enables identification of its parallel in the Semitic languages, for za-ab has always meant and still means "precious metal," specifically "gold," in Hebrew and its sister languages. The Sumerian pictograph for AB.ZU was that of an excavation deep into Earth, mounted by a shaft. Thus, Ea was not the lord of an indefinite "watery deep," but the god in charge of the exploitation of Earth's minerals!

In fact, the Greek abyssos, adopted from the Akkadian apsu, also meant an extremely deep hole in the ground. Akkadian textbooks explained that "apsu is nikbu"; the meaning of the word and that of its Hebrew equivalent nikba is very precise: a deep, man-made cutting or drilling into the ground.

P. Jensen (Die Kosmologie der Babylonier) observed back in 1890 that the oft-encountered Akkadian term Bit Nimiku should not be translated as "house of wisdom" but as "house of deepness." He quoted a text (V.R.30, 49 - 50ab) that stated: "It is from Bit Nimiku that gold and silver come." Another text (III.R.57, 35ab), he pointed out, explained that the Akkadian name "Goddess Shala of Nimiki" was the translation of the Sumerian epithet "Goddess Who Hands the Shining Bronze." The Akkadian term nimiku, which has been translated as "wisdom," Jensen concluded, "had to do with metals." But why, he admitted simply, "I do not know."

Some Mesopotamian hymns to Ea exalt him as Bel Nimiki, translated "lord of wisdom"; but the correct translation should undoubtedly be "lord of mining.'' Just as the Tablet of Destinies at Nippur contained orbital data, it follows that the Tablet of Wisdom entrusted to Nergal and Ereshkigal was in fact a "Tablet of Mining," a "data bank" pertaining to the mining operations of the Nefilim.

As Lord of the Abzu, Ea was assisted by another son, the god GI.BIL ("he who burns the soil"), who was in charge of fire and smelting. Earth's Smith, he was usually depicted as a young god whose shoulders emit red-hot rays or sparks of fire, emerging from the ground or about to descend into it. The texts state that Gibil was steeped by Ea in "wisdom," meaning that Ea had taught him mining techniques.

The metal ores mined in southeastern Africa by the Nefilim were carried back to Mesopotamia by specially designed cargo ships called MA.GUR UR.NU AB.ZU ("ship for ores of the Lower World"). There, the ores were taken to Bad-Tibira, whose name literally meant "the foundation of metalworking." Smelted and refined, the ores were cast into ingots whose shape remained unchanged throughout the ancient world for millennia. Such ingots were actually found at various Near Eastern excavations, confirming the reliability of the Sumerian pictographs as true depictions of the objects they "wrote" out; the Sumerian sign for the term ZAG ("purified precious") was the picture of such an ingot. In earlier times it apparently had a hole running through its length, through which a carrying rod was inserted.

Several depictions of a God of the Flowing Waters show him flanked by bearers of such precious metal ingots, indicating that he was also the Lord of Mining.

The various names and epithets for Ea's African Land of Mines are replete with clues to its location and nature. It was known as A.RA.LI ("place of the shiny lodes"), the land from which the metal ores come. Inanna, planning her descent to the southern hemisphere, referred to the place as the land where "the precious metal is covered with soil" - where it is found underground. A text reported by Erica Reiner, listing the mountains and rivers of the Sumerian world, stated: "Mount Arali: home of the gold"; and a fragmented text described by H. Radau confirmed that Arali was the land on which Bad-Tibira depended for its continued operations.

The Mesopotamia!! texts spoke of the Land of Mines as mountainous, with grassy plateaus and steppes, and lush with

vegetation. The capital of Ereshkigal in that land was described by the Sumerian texts as being in the GAB. KUR.RA ("in the

chest of the mountains"), well inland. In the Akkadian version of Ishtar's journey, the gatekeeper welcomes her:

Enter my lady,'

Let Kutu rejoice over thee;

Let the palace of the land of Nugia

Be glad at thy presence.

Conveying in Akkadian the meaning "that which is in the heartland," the term KU.TU in its Sumerian origin also meant "the bright

uplands." It was a land, all texts suggest, with bright days, awash with sunshine. The Sumerian terms for gold (KU.GI - "bright out of earth") and silver (KU.BABBAR - "bright gold") retained the original association of the precious metals with the bright (ku) domain of Ereshkigal.

The pictographic signs employed as Sumer's first writing reveal great familiarity not only with diverse metallurgical processes but also with the fact that the sources of the metals were mines dug down into the earth. The terms for copper and bronze ("handsome-bright stone"), gold ("the supreme mined metal"), or "refined" ("bright-purified") were all pictorial variants of a mine shaft ("opening/mouth for dark-red" metal).

The land's name - Arali - could also be written as a variant of the pictograph for "dark-red" (soil), of Rush ("dark-red," but in time meaning "Negro"), or of the metals mined there; the pictographs always depicted variants of a mine shaft. Extensive references to gold and other metals in ancient texts suggest familiarity with metallurgy from the earliest times. A lively metals trade existed at the very beginnings of civilization, the result of knowledge bequeathed to Mankind by the gods, who, the texts state, had engaged in mining and metallurgy long before Man's appearance. Many studies that correlate Mesopotamian divine tales with the biblical pre-Diluvial list of patriarchs point out that, according to the Bible, Tubal-cain was an "artificer of gold and copper and iron" long before the Deluge.

The Old Testament recognized the land of Ophir, which was probably somewhere in Africa, as a source of

gold in antiquity. King Solomon's ship convoys sailed down the Red Sea from Ezion-geber (present-day Elath). "And they went

to Ophir and fetched from thence gold." Unwilling to risk a delay in the construction of the Lord's Temple in Jerusalem, Solomon

arranged with his ally, Hiram, king of Tyre, to sail a second fleet to Ophir by an alternate route:

And the king had at sea a navy of Tarshish.

with the navy of Hiram.

Once every three years came the navy of Tarshish, bringing gold and silver, ivory and apes and monkeys.

The fleet of Tarshish took three years to complete a round trip. Allowing for an appropriate time to load up at Ophir, the voyage in each direction must have lasted well over a year. This suggests a route much more roundabout than the direct route via the Red Sea and the Indian Ocean - a route around Africa.

Most scholars locate Tarshish in the western Mediterranean, possibly at or near the present Strait of Gibraltar. This would have been an ideal place from which to embark on a voyage around the African continent. Some believe that the name Tarshish meant "smeltery."

Many biblical scholars have suggested that Ophir should be identified with present-day Rhodesia. Z. Herman (Peoples, Seas, Ships) brought together evidence showing that the Egyptians obtained various minerals from Rhodesia in earliest times. Mining engineers in Rhodesia as well as in South Africa have often searched for gold by seeking evidence of prehistoric mining. How was the inland abode of Ereshkigal reached? How were the ores transported from the "heartland" to the coastal ports? Knowing of the reliance of the Nefilim on river shipping, one should not be surprised to find a major, navigable river in the Lower World. The tale of "Enlil and Ninlil" informed us that Enlil was banished to exile in the Lower World. When he reached the land, he had to be ferried over a wide river.

A Babylonian text dealing with the origins and destiny of Mankind referred to the river of the Lower World as the River Habur, the "River of Fishes and Birds." Some Sumerian texts nicknamed the Land of Ereshkigal the "Prairie Country of HA.BUR." Of the four mighty rivers of Africa, one, the Nile, flows north into the Mediterranean; the Congo and Niger empty into the Atlantic Ocean on the west; and the Zambezi flows from the heartland of Africa in an eastward semicircle until it reaches the east coast. It offers a wide delta with good port sites; it is navigable inland over a distance of hundreds of miles.

Was the Zambezi the "River of Fishes and Birds" of the Lower World? Were its majestic Victoria Falls the water-lulls mentioned in one text as the site of Ereshkigal's capital?

Aware that many "newly discovered" and promising mining sites in southern Africa had been mining sites in antiquity, the Anglo- American Corporation called in teams of archaeologists to examine the sites before modern earth-moving equipment swept away all traces of ancient work. Reporting on their findings in the magazine Optima, Adrian Boshier and Peter Beaumont stated that they had come upon layers upon layers of ancient and prehistoric mining activities and human remains. Carbon dating at Yale University and at the University of Groningen (Holland) established the age of the artifacts as ranging from a plausible 2000 B.C. to an amazing 7690 B.C.

Intrigued by the unexpected antiquity of the finds, the team extended its area of search. At the base of a cliff face on the precipitous western slopes of Lion Peak, a five-ton slab of hematite stone blocked access to a cavern. Charcoal remains dated the mining operations within the cavern at 20,000 to 26,000 B.C.

Was mining for metals possible during the Old Stone Age? Incredulous, the scholars dug a shaft at a point where, apparently, the ancient miners had begun their operations. A charcoal sample found there was sent to the Groningen laboratory. The result was a dating of 41,250 B.C., give or take 1,600 years!

South African scientists then probed prehistoric mine sites in southern Swaziland. Within the uncovered mine caverns, they found twigs, leaves, and grass, even feathers - all, presumably, brought in by the ancient miners as bedding. At the 35,000 B.C. level, they found notched bones, which "indicate man's ability to count at that remote period." Other remains advanced the age of the artifacts to about 50,000 B.C.

Believing that the "true age of the onset of mining in Swaziland is more likely to be in the order of 70,000-80,000 B.C.," the two scientists suggested that "southern Africa . . . could well have been in the forefront of technological invention and innovation during much of the period subsequent to 100,000 B.C."

Commenting on the discoveries, Dr. Kenneth Oakley, former head anthropologist of the Natural History Museum in London, saw quite a different significance to the finds. "It throws important light on the origins of Man ... it is now possible that southern Africa was the evolutionary home of Man," the "birthplace" of Homo sapiens.

As we shall show, it was indeed there that modern Man appeared on Earth, through a chain of events triggered by the gods' search for metals.

Both serious scientists and science-fiction writers have suggested that a good reason for us to establish settlements on other planets or asteroids might be the availability of rare minerals on those celestial bodies, minerals that might he too scarce or too costly to mine on Earth. Could this have been the Nefilim's purpose in colonizing Earth?

Modern scholars divide Man's activities on Earth into the Stone Age, Bronze Age, Iron Age, and so on; in ancient times, however, the Greek poet Hesiod, for example, listed five ages - Golden, Silver, Bronze, Heroic, and Iron. Except for the Heroic Age, all ancient traditions accepted the sequence of gold-silver-copper - iron. The prophet Daniel had a vision in which he saw "a great image" with a head of fine gold, breast and arms of silver, belly of brass, legs of iron, and extremities, or feet, of clay. Myth and folklore abound with hazy memories of a Golden Age, mostly associated with the time when gods roamed Earth, followed by a Silver Age, and then the ages when gods and men shared Earth - the Age of Heroes, of Copper, Bronze, and Iron. Are these legends in fact vague recollections of actual events on Earth?

Gold, silver, and copper are all native elements of the gold group. They fall into the same family in the periodic classification by atomic weight and number; they have similar crystallographic, chemical, and physical properties - all are soft, malleable, and ductile. Of all known elements, these are the best conductors of heat and electricity.

Of the three, gold is the most durable, virtually indestructible. Though best known for its use as money and in jewelry or fine artifacts, it is almost invaluable in the electronics industry. A sophisticated society requires gold for microelectronic assemblies, guidance circuitry, and computer "brains."

Man's infatuation with gold is traceable to the beginnings of his civilization and religion - to his contacts with the

ancient gods. The gods of Sumer required that they be served food from golden trays, water and wine from golden vessels, that

they be clad in golden garments. Though the Israelites left Egypt in such a hurry that there was no time for them to let their

bread leaven, they were ordered to ask the Egyptians for all available silver and gold objects. This command, as we shall find

out later, anticipated the need for such materials to construct the Tabernacle and its electronic accoutrements.

Gold, which we call the royal metal, was in fact the metal of the gods. Speaking to the prophet Haggai, the Lord made it clear, in

connection with his return to judge the nations: "The silver is mine and the gold is mine."

The evidence suggests that Man's own infatuation with these metals has its roots in the great need of the Nefilim for gold. The Nefilim, it appears, came to Earth for gold and its related metals. They may also have come for other rare metals - such as platinum (abundant in southern Africa), which can power fuel cells in an extraordinary manner. And the possibility should not be ruled out that they came to Earth for sources of radioactive minerals, such as uranium or cobalt - the Lower World's "blue stones that cause ill," which some texts mention. Many depictions show Ea - as the God of Mining - emitting such powerful rays as he exits from a mine that the gods attending him have to use screening shields; in all these depictions, Ea is shown holding a miner's rock saw.

Though Enki was in charge of the first landing party and the development of the Abzu, credit for what was accomplished - as the case should be with all generals - should not go to him alone. Those who actually did the work, day in, day out, were the lesser members of the landing party, the Anunnaki.

A Sumerian text describes the construction of Enlil's center in Nippur. "The Annuna, gods of heaven and earth, are working. The axe and the carrying-basket, with which they laid foundation of the cities, in their hands they held."

The ancient texts described the Anunnaki as the rank-and-file gods who had been involved in the settlement of Earth - the gods

"who performed the tasks." The Babylonian "Epic of Creation" credited Marduk with giving the Anunnaki their assignments. (The

Sumerian original, we can safely assume, named Enlil as the god who commanded these astronauts.)

Assigned to Anu, to heed his instructions,

Three hundred in the heavens he stationed as a guard;

the ways of Earth to define from the Heaven;

And on Earth,

Six hundred he made reside. After he all their instructions had ordered, to the Anunnaki of Heaven and of Earth he allotted their assignments.

The texts reveal that three hundred of them - the "Anunnaki of Heaven," or Igigi - were true astronauts who stayed aboard the spacecraft without actually landing on Earth. Orbiting Earth, these spacecraft launched and received the shuttlecraft to and from Earth.

As chief of the "Eagles," Shamash was a welcome and heroic guest aboard the "mighty great chamber in heaven" of the Igigi. A "Hymn to Shamash" describes how the Igigi observed Shamash approaching in his shuttlecraft:

At thy appearances, all the princes are glad; All the Igigi rejoice over thee. . . . In the brilliance of thy light, their path. . . . They constantly look for thy radiance. . . . Opened wide is the doorway, entirely. . . . The bread offerings of all the Igigi [await thee].

Staying aloft, the Igigi were apparently never encountered by Mankind. Several texts say that they were "too high up for Mankind," as a consequence of which "they were not concerned with the people." The Anunnaki, on the other hand, who landed and stayed on Earth, were known and revered by Mankind. The texts that state that "the Anunnaki of Heaven . . . are 300" also state that "the Anunnaki of Earth . . . are 600."

Still, many texts persist in referring to the Anunnaki as the "fifty great princes." A common spelling of their name in Akkadian, An- nun-na-ki, readily yields the meaning "the fifty who went from Heaven to Earth." Is there a way to bridge the seeming contradiction?

We recall the text relating how Marduk rushed to his father Ea to report the loss of a spacecraft carrying "the Anunnaki who are fifty" as it passed near Saturn. An exorcism text from the time of the third dynasty of Ur speaks of the anunna eridu ninnubi ("the fifty Anunnaki of the city Eridu"). This strongly suggests that the group of Nefilim who founded Eridu under the command of Enki numbered fifty. Could it be that fifty was the number of Nefilim in each landing party?

It is, we believe, quite conceivable that the Nefilim arrived on Earth in groups of fifty. As the visits to Earth became regular, coinciding with the opportune launching times from the Twelfth Planet, more Nefilim would arrive. Each time, some of the earlier arrivals would ascend in an Earth module and rejoin the spaceship for a trip home. But, each time, more Nefilim would stay on Earth, and the number of Twelfth Planet astronauts who stayed to colonize Earth grew from the initial landing party of fifty to the "600 who on Earth settled."

How did the Nefilim expect to achieve their mission - to mine on Earth its desired minerals, and ship the ingots back to the Twelfth Planet - with such a small number of hands?

Undoubtedly, they relied on their scientific knowledge. It was there that Enki's full value becomes clear - the reason for his, rather than Enlil's, being the first to land, the reason for his assignment to the Abzu.

A famous seal now on exhibit at the Louvre Museum shows Ea with his familiar flowing waters, except that the waters seem to emanate from, or be filtered through, a series of laboratory flasks. Such an ancient interpretation of Ea's association with waters raises the possibility that the original hope of the Nefilim was to obtain their minerals from the sea. The oceans' waters do contain vast quantities of gold and other vital minerals, but so greatly diluted that highly sophisticated and cheap techniques are needed to justify such "water mining." It is also known that the sea beds contain immense quantities of minerals in the form of plum-sized nodules - available if only one could reach deep down and scoop them up.

The ancient texts refer repeatedly to a type of ship used by the gods called elippu tebiti ("sunken ship" - what we now call a submarine). We have seen the "fish-men" that were assigned to Ea. Is this evidence of efforts to dive to the depths of the oceans and retrieve their mineral riches? The Land of the Mines, we have noted, was earlier called A.RA.LI. - "place of the waters of the shiny lodes." This could mean a land where gold could be river-panned; it could also refer to efforts to obtain gold from the seas.

If these were the plans of the Nefilim, they apparently came to naught. For, soon after they had established their first settlements, the few hundred Anunnaki were given an unexpected and most arduous task: to go down into the depths of the African soil and mine the needed minerals there.

Depictions that have been found on cylinder seals show gods at what appear to be mine entrances or mine shafts; one shows Ea in a land where Gibil is aboveground and another god toils underground, on his hands and knees.

In later times, Babylonian and Assyrian texts disclose, men - young and old - were sentenced to hard labor in the mines of the Lower World. Working in darkness and eating dust as food, they were doomed never to return to their homeland. This is why the Sumerian epithet for the land - KUR.NU.GI.A - acquired the interpretation "land of no return"; its literal meaning was "land where gods-who-work, in deep tunnels pile up [the ores]." For the time when the Nefilim settled Earth, all the ancient sources attest, was a time when Man was not yet on Earth; and in the absence of Mankind, the few Anunnaki had to toil in the mines. Ishtar, on her descent to the Lower World, described the toiling Anunnaki as eating food mixed with clay and drinking water fouled with dust.

Against this background, we can fully understand a long epic text named (after its opening verse, as was the custom), "When the gods, like men, bore the work."

Piecing together many fragments of both Babylonian and Assyrian versions, W. G. Lambert and A. R. Millard (Atra-Hasis: The Babylonian Story of the Flood) were able to present a continuous text. They reached the conclusion that it was based on earlier Sumerian versions, and possibly on even earlier oral traditions about the arrival of the gods on Earth, the creation of Man, and his destruction by the Deluge.

While many of the verses hold only literary value to their translators, we find them highly significant, for they corroborate our

findings and conclusions in the preceding chapters. They also explain the circumstances that led to the mutiny of the Anunnaki.

The story begins in the time when only the gods lived on Earth:

When the gods, like men,

bore the work and suffered the toil -

the toil of the gods was great,

the work was heavy,

the distress was much.

At that time, the epic relates, the chief deities had already divided the commands among themselves.

Anu, father of the Anunnaki, was their Heavenly King;

Their Lord Chancellor was the warrior Enlil.

Their Chief Officer was Ninurta,

And their Sheriff was Ennugi.

The gods had clasped hands together,

Had cast lots and divided.

Anu had gone up to heaven,

[Left] the earth to his subjects.

The seas, enclosed as with a loop,

They had given to Enki, the prince.

Seven cities were established, and the text refers to seven Anunnaki who were city commanders. Discipline must have been strict, for the text tells us "The seven Great Anunnaki were making the lesser gods suffer the work."

Of all their chores, it seems, digging was the most common, the most arduous, and the most abhorred. The lesser gods dug up the river beds to make them navigable; they dug canals for irrigation; and they dug in the Apsu to bring up the minerals of Earth. Though they undoubtedly had some sophisticated tools - the texts spoke of the "silver axe which shines as the day," even underground - the work was too exacting. For a long time - for forty "periods," to be exact - the Anunnaki "suffered the toil"; and then they cried: No more!

They were complaining, backbiting, Grumbling in the excavations.

The occasion for the mutiny appears to have been a visit by Enlil to the mining area. Seizing the opportunity, the Anunnaki said to one another:

Let us confront our . . . the Chief Officer, That he may relieve us of our heavy work. The king of the gods, the hero Enlil, Let us unnerve him in his dwelling!

A leader or organizer of the mutiny was soon found. He was the "chief officer of old time," who must have held a grudge against

the current chief officer. His name, regrettably, is broken off; but his inciting address is quite clear:

"Now, proclaim war;

Let us combine hostilities and battle."

The description of the mutiny is so vivid that scenes of the storming of the Bastille come to mind:

The gods heeded his words.

They set fire to their tools;

Fire to their axes they put;

They troubled the god of mining in the tunnels;

They held [him] as they went

to the gate of the hero Enlil.

The drama and tension of the unfolding events are brought to life by the ancient poet:

It was night, half-way through the watch.

His house was surrounded -

but the god, Enlil, did not know.

Kalkal [then] observed it, was disturbed.

He slid the bolt and watched. . . .

Kalkal roused Nusku;

they listened to the noise of. ...

Nusku roused his lord -

he got him out of his bed, [saying]:

"My lord, your house is surrounded,

battle has come right up to your gate."

Enlil's first reaction was to take up arms against the mutineers. But Nusku, his chancellor, advised a Council of the Gods:

"Transmit a message that Anu come down;

Have Enki brought to your presence."

He transmitted and Anu was carried down;

Enki was also brought to his presence.

With the great Anunnaki present,

Enlil arose . . . opened his mouth

And addressed the great gods.

Taking the mutiny personally, Enlil demanded to know:

"Is it against me that this is being done?

Must I engage in hostilities . . . ?

What did my very own eyes see?

That battle has come right up to my gate!"

Anu suggested that an inquiry be undertaken. Armed with the authority of Anu and the other commanders, Nusku went to the encamped mutineers. "Who is the instigator of battle?" he asked. "Who is the provoker of hostilities?"

The Anunnaki stood together: "Every single one of us gods has war declared! We have our ... in the excavations; Excessive toil has killed us, Our work was heavy, the distress much."

When Enlil heard Nusku's report of these grievances, "his tears flowed." He presented an ultimatum: either the leader of the

mutineers be executed or he would resign. "Take the office away, take back your power," he told Anu, "and I will to you in

heaven ascend." But Ami, who came down from Heaven, sided with the Anunnaki:

"What are we accusing them of?

Their work was heavy, their distress was much!

Every day . . .

The lamentation was heavy, we could hear the complaint."

Encouraged by his father's words, Ea also "opened his mouth" and repeated Anu's summation. But he had a solution to offer: Let a lulu, a "Primitive Worker," be created!

"While the Birth Goddess is present, Let her create a Primitive Worker; Let him bear the yoke. . . . Let him carry the toil of the gods!"

The suggestion that a "Primitive Worker" be created so that he could take over the burden of work of the Anunnaki was readily

accepted. Unanimously, the gods voted to create "The Worker. Man shall be his name," they said:

They summoned and asked the goddess, The midwife of the gods, the wise Mami, [and said to her:]

"You are the Birth Goddess, create Workers!

Create a Primitive Worker,

That he may bear the yoke!

Let him bear the yoke assigned by Enlil,

Let The Worker carry the toil of the gods!"

Mami, the Mother of the Gods, said she would need the help of Ea, "with whom skill lies." In the House of Shimti, ;i hospital-like place, the gods were waiting. Ea helped prepare the mixture from which the Mother Goddess proceeded to fashion "Man." Birth

goddesses were present. The Mother Goddess went on working while incantations were constantly recited. Then she shouted in

triumph:

"I have created!

My hands have made it!"

She "summoned the Anunnaki, the Great Gods . . . she opened her mouth, addressed the Great Gods":

"You commanded me a task -

I have completed it. ...

I have removed your heavy work

I have imposed your toil on The Worker, 'Man.'

You raised a cry for a Worker-kind:

I have loosed the yoke,

I have provided your freedom."

The Anunnaki received her announcement enthusiastically. "They ran together and kissed her feet." From then on it would be the Primitive Worker - Man - "who will bear the yoke."

The Nefilim, having arrived on Earth to set up their colonies, had created their own brand of slavery, not with slaves imported from another continent, but with Primitive Workers fashioned by the Nefilim themselves. A mutiny of the gods had led to the creation of Man. THE CREATION OF MAN

THE ASSERTION, first recorded and transmitted by the Sumerians, that "Man" was created by the Nefilim, appears at first sight to clash both with the theory of evolution and with the Judeo-Christian tenets based on the Bible. But in fact, the information contained in the Sumerian texts - and only that information - can affirm both the validity of the theory of evolution and the truth of the biblical tale - and show that there really is no conflict at all between the two.

In the epic "When the gods as men," in other specific texts, and in passing references, the Sumerians described Man as both a deliberate creature of the gods and a link in the evolutionary chain that began with the celestial events described in the "Epic of Creation." Holding firm to the belief that the creation of Man was preceded by an era during which only the Nefilim were upon Earth, the Sumerian texts recorded instance after instance (for example, the incident between Enlil and Ninlil) of events that had taken place "when Man had not yet been created, when Nippur was inhabited by the gods alone." At the same time, the texts also described the creation of Earth and the development of plant and animal life upon it, in terms that conform to the current evolutionary theories.

The Sumerian texts state that when the Nefilim first came to Earth, the arts of grain cultivation, fruit planting, and cattle raising had not yet extended to Earth. The biblical account likewise places the creation of Man in the sixth "day" or phase of the evolutionary process. The Book of Genesis, too, asserts that at an earlier evolutionary stage:

No plant of the cleared field was yet on Earth, No herb that is planted had yet been grown. . . . And Man was not yet there to work the soil.

All the Sumerian texts assert that the gods created Man to do their work. Putting the explanation in words uttered by Marduk, the

Creation epic reports the decision:

I will produce a lowly Primitive;

"Man" shall be his name.

I will create a Primitive Worker;

He will be charged with the service of the gods,

that they might have their ease.

The very terms by which the Sumerians and Akkadians called "Man" bespoke his status and purpose: He was a lulu ("primitive"), a lulu amelu ("primitive worker"), an awihim ("laborer"). That Man was created to be a servant of the gods did not strike the ancient peoples as a peculiar idea at all. In biblical times, the deity was "Lord," "Sovereign," "King," "Ruler," "Master." The term that is commonly translated as "worship" was in fact avod ("work"). Ancient and biblical Man did not "worship" his god; he worked for him.

No sooner had the biblical Deity, like the gods in Sumerian accounts, created Man, than he planted a garden and assigned Man to work there:

And the Lord God took the "Man" and placed him in the garden of Eden to till it and to tend it.

Later on, the Bible describes the Deity "strolling in the garden in the breeze of the day," now that the new being was there to tend the Garden of Eden. How far is this version from the Sumerian texts that describe how the gods clamored for workers so that they could rest and relax?

In the Sumerian versions, the decision to create Man was adopted by the gods in their Assembly. Significantly, the Book of

Genesis - purportedly exalting the achievements of a sole Deity - uses the plural Elohim (literally, "deities") to denote "God," and

reports an astonishing remark:

And Elohim said:

"Let us make Man in our image,

after our likeness."

Whom did the sole but plural Deity address, and who were the "us" in whose plural image and plural likeness Man was to be made? The Book of Genesis does not provide the answer. Then, when Adam and Eve ate of the fruit of the Tree of Knowing, Elohim issued a warning to the same unnamed colleagues: "Behold, Man has become as one of us, to know good and evil." Since the biblical story of Creation, like the other tales of beginnings in Genesis, stems from Sumerian origins, the answer is obvious. Condensing the many gods into a single Supreme Deity, the biblical tale is but an edited version of the Sumerian reports of the discussions in the Assembly of the Gods.

The Old Testament took pains to make clear that Man was neither a god nor from the heavens. "The Heavens are the Heavens of the Lord, unto Mankind Earth He hath given." The new being was called "the Adam" because he was created of the adama,

the Earth's soil. He was, in other words, "the Earthling."

Lacking only certain "knowing" and a divine span of life, the Adam was in all other respects created in the image (selem) and likeness (dmut) of his Creator(s). The use of both terms in the text was meant to leave no doubt that Man was similar to the God(s) both physically and emotionally, externally and internally.

In all ancient pictorial depictions of gods and men, this physical likeness is evident. Although the biblical admonition against the worship of pagan images gave rise to the notion that the Hebrew God had neither image nor likeness, not only the Genesis tale but other biblical reports attest to the contrary. The God of the ancient Hebrews could be seen face-to-face, could be wrestled with, could be heard and spoken to; he had a head and feet, hands and fingers, and a waist. The biblical God and his emissaries looked like men and acted like men - because men were created to look like and act like the gods. But in this very simplicity lies a great mystery. How could a new creature possibly be a virtual physical, mental, and emotional replica of the Nefilim? How, indeed, was Man created?

The Western world was long wedded to the notion that, created deliberately, Man was put upon Earth to subdue it and have dominion over all other creatures. Then, in November 1859, an English naturalist by the name of Charles Darwin published a treatise called On the Origin of Species by Means of Natural Selection, or the Preservation of Favored Races in the Struggle for Life. Summing up nearly thirty years of research, the book added to earlier thoughts about natural evolution the concept of natural selection as a consequence of the struggle of all species - of plant and animal alike - for existence. The Christian world had been jostled earlier when, from 1788 on, noted geologists had begun to express their belief that Earth was of great antiquity, much, much greater than the roughly 5,500 years of the Hebrew calendar. Nor was the concept of evolution as such the explosive: Earlier scholars had noted such a process, and Greek scholars as far back as the fourth century B.C. compiled data on the evolution of animal and plant life.

Darwin's shattering bombshell was the conclusion that all living things - Man included - were products of evolution. Man, contrary to the then-held belief, was not generated spontaneously.

The initial reaction of the Church was violent. But as the scientific facts regarding Earth's true age, evolution, genetics, and other biological and anthropological studies came to light, the Church's criticism was muted. It seemed at last that the very words of the Old Testament made the tale of the Old Testament indefensible; for how could a God who has no corporal body and who is universally alone say, "Let us make Man in our image, after our likeness?"

But are we really nothing more than "naked apes"? Is I lie monkey just an evolutionary arm's length away from us, and the tree shrew just a human who has yet to lose his tail and stand erect?

As we showed at the very beginning of this book, modern scientists have come to question the simple theories. Evolution can explain the general course of events that caused life and life's forms to develop on Earth, from the simplest one-celled creature to Man. But evolution cannot account for the appearance of Homo sapiens, which happened virtually overnight in terms of the millions of years evolution requires, and with no evidence of earlier stages that would indicate a gradual change from Homo erectus.

The hominid of the genus Homo is a product of evolution. But Homo sapiens is the product of some sudden, revolutionary event. He appeared inexplicably some 300,000 years ago, millions of years too soon.

The scholars have no explanation. But we do. The Sumerian and Babylonian texts do. The Old Testament does. Homo sapiens - modern Man - was brought about by the ancient gods.

The Mesopotamian texts, fortunately, provide a clear statement regarding the time when Man was created. The story of the toil

and ensuing mutiny of the Anunnaki informs us that "for 40 periods they suffered the work, day and night"; the long years of their

toil are dramatized by repetitious verses.

For 10 periods they suffered the toil;

For 20 periods they suffered the toil;

For 30 periods they suffered the toil;

For 40 periods they suffered the toil.

The ancient text uses the term ma to denote "period," and most scholars have translated this as "year." But the term had the

connotation of "something that completes itself and then repeats itself." To men on Earth, one year equals one complete orbit of

Earth around the Sun. As we have already shown, the orbit of the Nefilim's planet equaled a shar, or 3,600 Earth years.

Forty shars, or 144,000 Earth years, after their landing, the Anunnaki protested, "No more!" If the Nefilim first landed on Earth,

as we have concluded, some 450,000 years ago, then the creation of Man took place some 300,000 years ago!

The Nefilim did not create the mammals or the primates or the hominids. "The Adam" of the Bible was not the genus Homo, but

the being who is our ancestor - the first Homo sapiens. It is modern Man as we know him that the Nefilim created.

The key to understanding this crucial fact lies in the tale of a slumbering Enki, aroused to be informed that the gods had decided

to form an adamu, and that it was his task to find the means. He replied:

"The creature whose name you uttered - IT EXISTS1"

and he added: "Bind upon it" - on the creature that already exists - "the image of the gods."

Here, then, is the answer to the puzzle: The Nefilim did not "create" Man out of nothing; rather, they took an existing creature and manipulated it, to "bind upon it" the "image of the gods."

Man is the product of evolution; but modern Man, Homo sapiens, is the product of the "gods." For, some time circa 300,000

years ago, the Nefilim took ape-man (Homo erectus) and implanted on him their own image and likeness.

Evolution and the Near Eastern tales of Man's creation are not at all in conflict. Rather, they explain and complement each other.

For without the creativity of the Nefilim, modern Man would still be millions years away on the evolutionary tree.

Let us transport ourselves back in time, and try to visualize the circumstances and the events as they unfolded.

The great interglacial stage that began about 435,000 years ago, and its warm climate, brought about a proliferation of food and

animals. It also speeded up the appearance and spread of an advanced manlike ape, Homo erectus.

As the Nefilim looked about them, they saw not only the predominant mammals but also the primates - among them the manlike apes. Is it not possible that the roaming bands of Homo erectus were lured to come close to observe the fiery objects rising to the sky? Is it not possible that the Nefilim observed, encountered, even captured some of these interesting primates?

That the Nefilim and the manlike apes did meet is attested to by several ancient texts. A Sumerian tale dealing with the

primordial times states:

When Mankind was created,

They knew not the eating of bread,

Knew not the dressing in garments;

Ate plants with their mouth like sheep;

Drank water from a ditch.

Such an animal-like "human" being is also described in the "Epic of Gilgamesh." That text tells what Enkidu, the one "born on

the steppes," was like before he became civilized:

Shaggy with hair is his whole body,

he is endowed with head-hair like a woman. . . .

He knows neither people nor land;

Garbed he is like one of the green fields;

With gazelles he feeds on grass;

With the wild beasts he jostles

at the watering place;

With the teeming creatures in the water

his heart delights.

Not only does the Akkadian text describe an animal-like man; it also describes an encounter with such a being:

Now a hunter, one who traps,

faced him at the watering place.

When the hunter saw him,

his face became motionless. ...

His heart was disturbed, overclouded his face,

for woe had entered his belly.

There was more to it than mere fear after the hunter beheld "the savage," this "barbarous fellow from the depths of the steppe"; for this "savage" also interfered with the hunter's pursuits:

He filled the pits that I had dug, he tore up my traps which I had set; the beasts and creatures of the steppe he has made slip through my hands.

We can ask for no better description of an ape-man: hairy, shaggy, a roaming nomad who "knows neither people nor land," garbed in leaves, 'like one of the green fields," feeding on grass, and living among the animals. Yet he is not without substantial intelligence, for he knows how to tear up the traps and fill up the pits dug to catch the animals. In other words, he protected his animal friends from being caught by the alien hunters. Many cylinder seals have been found that depict this shaggy ape-man among his animal friends.

Then, faced with the need for manpower, resolved to obtain a Primitive Worker, the Nefilim saw a ready-made solution: to domesticate a suitable animal.

The "animal" was available - but Homo erectus posed a problem. On the one hand, he was too intelligent and wild to become simply a docile beast of work. On the other hand, he was not really suited to the task. His physique had to be changed - he had to be able to grasp and use the tools of the Nefilim, walk and bend like them so that he could replace the gods in the fields and in the mines. He had to have better "brains" - not like those of the gods but enough to understand speech and commands and the tasks allotted to him. He needed enough cleverness and understanding to be an obedient and useful amelu - a serf. If, as the ancient evidence and modern science seem to confirm, life on Earth germinated from life on the Twelfth Planet, then evolution on Earth should have proceeded as it had on the Twelfth Planet. Undoubtedly there were mutations, variations, accelerations, and retardations caused by different local conditions; but the same genetic codes, the same "chemistry of life" found in all living plants and animals on Earth would also have guided the development of life forms on Earth in the same general direction as on the Twelfth Planet.

Observing the various forms of life on Earth, the Nefilintl and their chief scientist, Ea, needed little time to realize! what had happened: During the celestial collision, their planet had seeded Earth with its life. Therefore, the being, that was available was really akin to the Nefilim - though* in a less evolved form.

A gradual process of domestication through generations of breeding and selection would not do. What was needed was a quick process, one that would permit "mass' production" of the new workers. So the problem was • posed to Ea, who saw the answer at once: to "imprint" the image of the gods on the being that already existed.

The process that Ea recommended in order to achieve a quick evolutionary advancement of Homo erectus was, we believe, genetic manipulation.

We now know that the complex biological process whereby a living organism reproduces itself, creating progeny that resemble their parents, is made possible by the genetic code. All living organisms - a threadworm, a fern tree, or Man - contain in their cells chromosomes, minute rodlike bodies within each cell that hold the complete hereditary instructions for that particular organism. } As the male cell (pollen, sperm) fertilizes the female cell, the two sets of chromosomes combine and then divide to form new cells that hold the complete hereditary characteristics of their parent cells.

Artificial insemination, even of a female human egg, is now possible. The real challenge lies in cross-fertilization between different families within the same species, and even between different species. Modern science has come a long way from the development of the first hybrid corns, or the mating of Alaskan dogs with wolves, or the "creation" of the mule (the artificial mating of a mare and a donkey), to the ability to manipulate Man's own reproduction.

A process called cloning (from the Greek word klon -"twig") applies to animals the same principle as that of I taking a cutting from a plant to reproduce hundreds of 'similar plants. The technique as applied to animals was first demonstrated in England, where Dr. John Gurdon replaced the nucleus of a fertilized frog's egg with the nuclear material from another cell of the same frog. The successful formation of normal tadpoles demonstrated that the egg proceeds to develop and subdivide and create progeny no matter where it obtains the correct set of matching chromosomes.

Experiments reported by the Institute of Society, Ethics land Life Sciences at Hastings-on-Hudson, show that techniques already exist for cloning human beings. It is now possible to take the nuclear material of any human cell not necessarily from the sex organs and, by introducing its twenty-three sets of complete chromosomes into the female ovum, lead to the conception and birth of a "pre-determined" individual. In normal conception, "father" and "mother" chromosome sets merge and then must split to remain at twenty-three chromosome pairs, leading to chance combinations. But in cloning the offspring is an exact replica of the source of the unsplit set of chromosomes. We already possess, wrote Dr. W. Gaylin in The New York Times, the "awful knowledge to make exact copies of human beings" - a limitless number of Hitlers or Mozarts or Einsteins (if we had preserved their cell nuclei).

But the art of genetic engineering is not limited to one [process. Researchers in many countries have perfected a process called "cell fusion," making it possible to fuse cells [rather than combine chromosomes within a single cell. As a result of such a process, cells from different sources can I be fused into one "supercell," holding within itself two [nuclei and a double set of the paired chromosomes. When [this cell splits, the mixture of nuclei and chromosomes j may split in a pattern different from that of each cell before [the fusion. The result can be two new cells, each genetically [ complete, but each with a brand-new set of genetic codes, [completely garbled as far as the ancestor cells were I concerned.

This means that cells from hitherto incompatible living I organisms - say, that of a chicken and that of a mouse can be fused to form new cells with brand-new genetic mixes that produce new animals that are neither chickens nor mice as we know them. Further refined, the process can also permit us to select which traits of one life form shall be imparted to the combined or "fused" cell.

This has led to the development of the wide field of "genetic transplant." It is now possible to pick up from certain bacteria a single specific gene and introduce that gene into an animal or human cell, giving the offspring an added characteristic. We should assume that the Nefilim - being capable of space travel 450,000 years ago - were also equally advanced, compared to us today, in the field of life sciences. We should also assume that they were aware of the various alternatives by which two preselected sets of chromosomes could be combined to obtain a predetermined genetic result; and that whether the process was akin to cloning, cell fusion, genetic transplant, or methods as yet unknown to us, they knew these processes and could carry them out, not only in the laboratory flask but also with living organisms.

We find a reference to such a mixing of two life-sources in the ancient texts. According to Berossus, the deity Belus ('lord") - also called Deus ("god") - brought forth various "hideous Beings, which were produced of a twofold principle": Men appeared with two wings, some with four and two faces. They had one body but two heads, the one of a man, the other of a woman. They were likewise in their several organs both male and female.

Other human figures were to be seen with the legs and-horns of goats. Some had horses' feet; others had the limbs of a horse behind, but in front were fashioned like men, resembling hippocentaurs. Bulls likewise bred there with the heads of men; and dogs with fourfold bodies, and the tails of fishes. Also horses with the heads of dogs; men too and other animals with the heads and bodies of horses and the tails of fishes. In short, there were creatures with the limbs of every species of animals. . . . Of all these were preserved delineations in the temple of Belus at Babylon.

The tale's baffling details may hold an important truth. It is quite conceivable that before resorting to the creation of a being in their own image, the Nefilim attempted to come up with a "manufactured servant" by experimenting with other alternatives: the creation of a hybrid ape-man-animal. Some of these artificial creatures may have survived for a while but were certainly unable to reproduce. The enigmatic bull-men and lion-men (sphinxes) that adorned temple sites in the ancient Near East may not have been just figments of an artist's imagination but actual creatures that came out of the biological laboratories of the Nefilim - unsuccessful experiments commemorated in art and by statues.

Sumerian texts, too, speak of deformed humans created by Enki and the Mother Goddess (Ninhursag) in the course of their

efforts to fashion a perfect Primitive Worker. One text reports that Ninhursag, whose task it was to "bind upon the mixture the

mold of the gods," got drunk and "called over to Enki,"

"How good or how bad is Man's body?

As my heart prompts me,

I can make its fate good or bad."

Mischievously, then, according to this text - but probably unavoidably, as part of a trial-and-error process - Ninhursag produced a Man who could not hold back his urine, a woman who could not bear children, a being who had neither male nor female organs. All in all, six deformed or deficient humans were brought forth by Ninhursag. Enki was held responsible for the imperfect creation of a man with diseased eyes, trembling hands, a sick liver, a failing heart; a second one with sicknesses attendant upon old age; and so on.

But finally the perfect Man was achieved - the one Enki named Adapa; the Bible, Adam; our scholars, Homo sapiens. This being was so much akin to the gods that one text even went so far as to point out that the Mother Goddess gave to her creature, Man, "a skin as the skin of a god" - a smooth, hairless body, quite different from that of the shaggy ape-man. With this final product, the Nefilim were genetically compatible with the daughters of Man and able to marry them and have children by them. But such compatibility could exist only if Man had developed from the same "seed of life" as the Nefilim. This, indeed, is what the ancient texts attest to.

Man, in the Mesopotamian concept, as in the biblical one, was made of a mixture of a godly element - a god's blood or its "essence" - and the "clay" of Earth. Indeed, the very term lulu for "Man," while conveying the sense of "primitive," literally meant "one who has been mixed." Called upon to fashion a man, the Mother Goddess "Washed her hands, pinched off clay, mixed it in the steppe." (It is fascinating to note here the sanitary precautions taken by the goddess. She "washed her hands." We encounter such clinical measures and procedures in other creation texts as well.)

The use of earthly "clay" mixed with divine "blood" to create the prototype of Man is firmly established by the Mesopotamian

texts. One, relating how Enki was called upon to "bring to pass some great work of Wisdom" - of scientific know-how - states that

Enki saw no great problem in fulfilling the task of "fashioning servants for the gods." "It can be done!" he announced. He then

gave these instructions to the Mother Goddess:

"Mix to a core the clay

from the Basement of Earth,

just above the Abzu -

and shape it into the form of a core.

I shall provide good, knowing young gods

who will bring that clay to the right condition."

The second chapter of Genesis offers this technical version:

And Yahweh, Elohim, fashioned the Adam of the clay of the soil;

and He blew in his nostrils the breath of life, and the Adam turned into a living Soul.

The Hebrew term commonly translated as "soul" is nephesh, that elusive "spirit" that animates a living creature and seemingly abandons it when it dies. By no coincidence, the Pentateuch (the first five books of the Old Testament) repeatedly exhorted against the shedding of human blood and the eating of animal blood "because the blood is the nephesh." The biblical versions of the creation of Man thus equate nephesh ("spirit," "soul") and blood.

The Old Testament offers another clue to the role of blood in Man's creation. The term adama (after which the name Adam was coined) originally meant not just any earth or soil, but specifically dark-red soil. Like the parallel Akkadian word adamatu ("dark- red earth"), the Hebrew term adama and the Hebrew name for the color red (adorn) stem from the words for blood: adamu, dam. When the Book of Genesis termed the being created by God "the Adam," it employed a favorite Sumerian linguistic play of double meanings. "The Adam" could mean "the one of the earth" (Earthling), "the one made of the dark-red soil," and "the one made of blood."

The same relationship between the essential element of living creatures and blood exists in Mesopotamian accounts of Man's creation. The hospital-like house where Ea and the Mother Goddess went to bring Man forth was called the House of Shimti; most scholars translate this as "the house where fates are determined." But the term Shimti clearly stems from the Sumerian SHI.IM.TI, which, taken syllable by syllable, means "breath-wind-life." Bit Shimti meant, literally, "the house where the wind of life is breathed in." This is virtually identical to the biblical statement.

Indeed, the Akkadian word employed in Mesopotamia to translate the Sumerian SHI.IM.TI was napishtu - the exact parallel of the biblical term nephesh. And the nephesh or napishtu was an elusive "something" in the blood.

While the Old Testament offered only meager clues, Mesopotamian texts were quite explicit on the subject. Not only do they state that blood was required for the mixture of which Man was fashioned; they specified that it had to be the blood of a god, divine blood.

When the gods decided to create Man, their leader announced: "Blood will I amass, bring bones into being." Suggesting that the

blood be taken from a specific god, "Let primitives be fashioned after his pattern," E* said. Selecting the god,

Out of his blood they fashioned Mankind; imposed on it the service, let free the gods. . . . It was a work beyond comprehension.

According to the epic tale "When gods as men," the gods then called the Birth Goddess (the Mother Goddess, Ninhursag) and

asked her to perform the task:

While the Birth Goddess is present,

Let the Birth Goddess fashion offspring.

While the Mother of the Gods is present,

Let the Birth Goddess fashion a Lulu;

Let the worker carry the toil of the gods.

Let her create a Lulu Amelu,

Let him bear the yoke.

In a parallel Old Babylonian text named "Creation of Man by the Mother Goddess," the gods call upon "The Midwife of the gods,

the Knowing Mami" and tell her:

Thou art the mother-womb,

The one who Mankind can create.

Create then Lulu, let him bear the yoke!

At this point, the text "When gods as men" and parallel texts turn to a detailed description of the actual creation of Man.

Accepting the "job," the goddess (here named NIN.TI - "lady who gives life") spelled out some requirements, including some

chemicals ("bitumens of the Abzu"), to be used for "purification," and "the clay of the Abzu."

Whatever these materials were, Ea had no problem understanding the requirements; accepting, he said:

"I will prepare a purifying bath. Let one god be bled. . . . From his flesh and blood, let Ninti mix the clay."

To shape a man from the mixed clay, some feminine assistance, some pregnancy or childbearing aspects were also needed.

Enki offered the services of his own spouse:

Ninki, my goddess-spouse, will be the one for labor. Seven goddesses-of-birth will be near, to assist.

Following the mixing of the "blood" and "clay," the childbearing phase would complete the bestowal of a divine "imprint" on the creature.

The new-born's fate thou shalt pronounce; Ninki would fix upon it the image of the gods; And what it will be is "Man." Depictions on Assyrian seals may well have been intended as illustrations for these texts - showing how the Mother Goddess (her symbol was the cutter of the

umbilical cord) and Ea (whose original symbol was the crescent) were preparing the mixtures, reciting the incantations, urging each other to proceed. (Figs. 151, 152) The involvement of Enki's spouse, Ninki, in the creation of the first successful specimen of Man reminds us of the tale of Adapa, which we discussed in an earlier chapter:

In those days, in those years, The Wise One of Eridu, Ea, created him as a model of men.

Scholars have surmised that references to Adapa as a "son" of Ea implied that the god loved this human so much that he adopted him. But in the same text Ami refers to Adapa as "the human offspring of Enki." It appears that the involvement of Enki's spouse in the process of creating Adapa, the "model Adam," did create some genealogical relationship between the new Man and his god: It was Ninki who was pregnant with Adapa!

Ninti blessed the new being and presented him to Ea. Some seals show a goddess, flanked by the Tree of Life and laboratory flasks, holding up a newborn being.

The being that was thus produced, which is repeatedly referred to in Mesopotamian texts as a "model Man" or a "mold," was apparently the right creature, for the gods then clamored for duplicates. This seemingly unimportant detail, however, throws light not only on the process by which Mankind was "created," but also on the otherwise conflicting information contained in the Bible. According to the first chapter of Genesis:

Elohim created the Adam in His image - in the image of Elohim created He him. Male and female created He them.

Chapter 5, which is called the Book of the Genealogies of Adam, states that:

On the day that Elohim created Adam,

in the likeness of Elohim did He make him.

Male and female created He them,

and/ He blessed them, and called them "Adam"

on the very day of their creation.

In the same breath, we are told that the Deity created, in his likeness and his image, only a single being, "the Adam," and in apparent contradiction, that both a male and a female were created simultaneously. The contradiction seems sharper still in the second chapter of Genesis, which specifically reports that the Adam was alone for a while, until the Deity put him to sleep and fashioned Woman from his rib.

The contradiction, which has puzzled scholars and theologians alike, disappears once we realize that the biblical texts were a condensation of the original Sumerian sources. These sources inform us that after trying to fashion a Primitive Worker by "mixing" apemen with animals, the gods concluded that the only mixture that would work would be between apemen and the Nefilim themselves. After several unsuccessful attempts, a "model" - Adapa./ Adam - was made. There was, at first, only a single Adam.

Once Adapa/Adam proved to be the right creature, he was used as the genetic model or "mold" for the creation of duplicates, and those duplicates were not only male, but male and female. As we showed earlier, the biblical "rib" from which Woman was fashioned was a play on words on the Sumerian TI ("rib" and "life") - confirming that Eve was made of Adam's "life's essence." The Mesopotamian texts provide us with an eye-witness report of the first production of the duplicates of Adam. The instructions of Enki were followed. In the House of Shimti - where the breath of life is "blown in" - Enki, the Mother Goddess, and fourteen birth goddesses assembled. A god's "essence" was obtained, the "purifying bath" prepared. "Ea cleaned the clay in her presence; he kept reciting the incantation."

The god who purifies the Napishtu, Ea, spoke up. Seated before her, he was prompting her. After she had recited her incantation, She put her hand out to the clay.

We are now privy to the detailed process of Man's mass creation. With fourteen birth goddesses present,

Ninti nipped off fourteen pieces of clay; Seven she deposited on the right, Seven she deposited on the left. Between them she

placed the mould. . . . the hair she the cutter of the umbilical cord.

It is evident that the birth goddesses were divided into two groups. "The wise and learned, twice-seven birth goddesses had assembled," the text goes on to explain. Into their wombs the Mother Goddess deposited the "mixed clay." There are hints of a surgical procedure - the removal or shaving off of hair, the readying of a surgical instrument, a cutter. Now there was nothing to do but wait:

The birth goddesses were kept together.

Ninti sat counting the months.

The fateful 10th month was approaching;

The 10th month arrived;

The period of opening the womb had elapsed.

Her face radiated understanding: She covered her head, performed the midwifery. Her waist she girdled, pronounced the blessing. She drew a shape; in the mould was life.

The drama of Man's creation, it appears, was compounded by a late birth. The "mixture" of "clay" and "blood" was used to

induce pregnancy in fourteen birth goddesses. But nine months passed, and the tenth month commenced. "The period of

opening the womb had elapsed." Understanding what was called for, the Mother Goddess "performed the midwifery." That she

engaged in some surgical operation emerges more clearly from a parallel text (in spite of its fragmentation):

Ninti . . . counts the months. . . .

The destined 10th month they called;

The Lady Whose Hand Opens came.

With the . . . she opened the womb.

Her face brightened with joy.

Her head was covered;

. . . made an opening;

That which was in the womb came forth.

Overcome with joy, the Mother Goddess let out a cry.

"I have created!

My hands have made it!"

How was the creation of Man accomplished?

The text "When the gods as men" contains a passage whose purpose was to explain why the "blood" of a god had to be mixed into the "clay." The "divine" element required was not simply the dripping blood of a god, but something more basic and lasting. The god that was selected, we are told, had TE.E.MA - a term the leading authorities on the text (W. G. Lambert and A. R. Millard of Oxford University) translate as "personality." But the ancient term is much more specific; it literally means "that which houses that which binds the memory." Further on, the same term appears in the Akkadian version as etemu, which is translated as "spirit."

In both instances we are dealing with that "something" in the blood of the god that was the repository of his individuality. All these, we feel certain, are but roundabout ways of stating that what Ea was after, when he put the god's blood through a series of "purifying baths," was the god's genes.

The purpose of mixing this divine element thoroughly with the earthly element was also spelled out:

In the clay, god and Man shall be bound,

to a unity brought together;

So that to the end of days

the Flesh and the Soul

which in a god have ripened -

that Soul in a blood-kinship be bound;

As its Sign life shall proclaim.

So that this not be forgotten,

Let the "Soul" in a blood-kinship be bound.

These are strong words, little understood by scholars. The text states that the. god's blood was mixed into the clay so as to bind god and Man genetically "to the end of days" so that both the flesh ("image") and the soul ("likeness") of the gods would become imprinted upon Man in a kinship of blood that could never be severed.

The "Epic of Gilgamesh" reports that when the gods decided to create a double for the partly divine Gilgamesh, the Mother Goddess mixed "clay" with the "essence" of the god Ninurta. Later on in the text, Enkidu's mighty strength is attributed to his having in him the "essence of Anu," an element he acquired through Ninurta, the grandson of Anu.

The Akkadian term kisir refers to an "essence," a "concentration" that the gods of the heavens possessed. E. Ebeling summed up the efforts to understand the exact meaning of kisir by stating that as "Essence, or some nuance of the term, it could well be applied to deities as well as to missiles from Heaven." E. A. Speiser concurred that the term also implied "something that came down from Heaven." It carried the connotation, he wrote, "as would be indicated by the use of the term in medicinal contexts." We are back to a simple, single word of translation: gene.

The evidence of the ancient texts, Mesopotamian as well as biblical, suggests that the process adopted for merging two sets of genes - those of a god and those of Homo erectus - involved the use of male genes as the divine element and female genes as the earthly element.

Repeatedly asserting that the Deity created Adam in his image and in his likeness, the Book of Genesis later describes the birth

of Adam's son Seth in the following words:

And Adam lived a hundred and thirty years,

and had an offspring

in his likeness and after his image;

and he called his name Seth.

The terminology is identical to that used to describe the creation of Adam by the Deity. But Seth was certainly born to Adam by a biological process - the fertilization of a female egg by the male sperm of Adam, and the ensuing conception, pregnancy, and birth. The identical terminology bespeaks an identical process, and the only plausible conclusion is that Adam, too, was brought forth by the Deity through the process of fertilizing a female egg with the male sperm of a god.

If the "clay" onto which the godly element was mixed was an earthly element - as all texts insist - then the only possible

conclusion is that the male sperm of a god - his genetic material - was inserted into the egg of an ape-woman!

The Akkadian term for the "clay" - or, rather, "molding clay" - is tit. But its original spelling was TI.IT ("that which is with life"). In

Hebrew, tit means "mud"; but its synonym is bos, which shares a root with bisa ("marsh") and besa ("egg").

The story of Creation is replete with plays on words. We have seen the double and triple meanings of Adam-adama -adamtu-

dam. The epithet for the Mother Goddess, NIN.TI, meant both "lady of life" and "lady of the rib."

Why not, then, bos - bisa - besa ("clay - mud-egg") as a play on words for the female ovum?

The ovum of a female Homo erectus, fertilized by the genes of a god, was then implanted within the womb of Ea's spouse; and after the "model" was obtained, duplicates of it were implanted in the wombs of birth goddesses, to undergo the process of pregnancy and birth. The Wise and learned,

Double-seven birth-goddesses had assembled;

Seven brought forth males,

Seven brought forth females.

The Birth Goddess brought forth

The Wind of the Breath of Life.

In pairs were they completed,

In pairs were they completed in her presence.

The creatures were People -

Creatures of the Mother Goddess.

Homo sapiens had been created.

The ancient legends and myths, biblical information, and modern science are also compatible in one more aspect. Like the findings of modern anthropologists - that Man evolved and emerged in southeast Africa - the Mesopotamian texts suggest that

the creation of Man took place in the Apsu - in the Lower World where the Land of the Mines was located. Paralleling Adapa, the "model" of Man, some texts mention "sacred Amama, the Earth woman," whose abode was in the Apsu. In the "Creation of Man" text, Enki issues the following instructions to the Mother Goddess: "Mix to a core the clay from the Basement of Earth, just above the Abzu." A hymn to the creations of Ea, who "the Apsu fashioned as his dwelling," begins by stating:

Divine Ea in the Apsu pinched off a piece of clay, created Kulla to restore the temples.

The hymn continues to list the construction specialists, as well as those in charge of the "abundant products of mountain and sea," who were created by Ea - all, it is inferred, from pieces of "clay" pinched off in the Abzu - the Land of Mines in the Lower World.

The texts make it abundantly clear that while Ea built a brick house by the water in Eridu, in the Abzu he built a house adorned with precious stones and silver. It was there that his creature, Man, originated:

The Lord of the AB.ZU, the king Enki . . . Built his house of silver and lapis-lazuli; Its silver and lapis-lazuli, like sparkling light. The Father fashioned fittingly in the AB.ZU. The Creatures of bright countenance, Coming forth from the AB.ZU, Stood all about the Lord Nudimmud.

One can even conclude from the various texts that the creation of Man caused a rift among the gods. It would appear that at least at first the new Primitive Workers were confined to the Land of Mines. As a result, the Anunnaki who were toiling in Sumer proper were denied the benefits of the new manpower. A puzzling text named by the scholars "The Myth of the Pickax" is in fact the record of the events whereby the Anunnaki who stayed in Sumer under Enlil obtained their fair share of the Black-Headed People.

Seeking to reestablish "the normal order," Enlil took the extreme action of severing the contacts between "Heaven" (the Twelfth Planet or the spaceships) and Earth, and launched some drastic action against the place "where flesh sprouted forth." The Lord,

That which is appropriate he caused to come about. The Lord Enlil,

Whose decisions are unalterable, Verily did speed to separate Heaven from Earth So that the Created Ones could come forth; Verily did speed to separate Earth from Heaven.

In the "Bond Heaven-Earth" he made a gash, So that the Created Ones could come up From the Place-Where-Flesh-Sprouted- Forth.

Against the "Land of Pickax and Basket," Enlil fashioned a marvelous weapon named AL.A.NI ("ax that produces power"). This weapon had a "tooth," which, "like a one-horned ox," could attack and destroy large walls. It was by all descriptions some kind of a huge power drill, mounted on a bulldozer-like vehicle that crushed everything ahead of it:

The house which rebels against the Lord, The house which is not submissive to the Lord, The AL.A.NI makes it submissive to

the Lord. Of the bad . . . , the heads of its plants it crushes; Plucks at the roots, tears at the crown.

Arming his weapon with an "earth splitter," Enlil launched the attack:

The Lord called forth the AL.A.NI, gave its orders.

He set the Earth Splitter as a crown upon its head,

And drove it into the Place-Where-Flesh-Sprouted-Forth.

In the hole was the head of a man;

From the ground, people were breaking through

towards Enlil.

He eyed his Black-headed Ones in steadfast fashion.

Grateful, the Anunnaki put in their requests for the arriving Primitive Workers and lost no time in putting them to work:

The Anunnaki stepped up to him, Raised their hands in greetings, Soothing Enlil's heart with prayers. Black-headed Ones they

were requesting of him. To the Black-headed people, they give the pickax to hold.

The Book of Genesis likewise conveys the information that "the Adam" was created somewhere west of Mesopotamia, then

brought over eastward to Mesopotamia to work in the Garden of Eden:

And the Deity Yahweh

Planted an orchard in Eden, in the east . . .

And He took the Adam

And placed him in the Garden of Eden

To work it and to keep it.

THE END OF ALL FLESH

MAN'S LINGERING BELIEF that there was some Golden Age in his prehistory cannot possibly be based on human recollection, for the event took place too long ago and Man was too primitive to record any concrete information for future generations. If Mankind somehow retains a subconscious sense that in those earliest days Man lived through an era of tranquility and felicity, it is simply because Man knew no better. It is also because the tales of that era were first told Mankind, not by earlier men, but by the Nefilim themselves.

The only complete account of the events that befell Man following his transportation to the Abode of the Gods in Mesopotamia is

the biblical tale of Adam and Eve in the Garden of Eden:

And the Deity Yahweh planted an orchard

In Eden, in the east;

And he placed there the Adam

Whom He had created.

And the Deity Yahweh

Caused to grow from the ground

Every tree that is pleasant to the sight

And good for eating;

And the Tree of Life was in the orchard

And the Tree of Knowing good and evil. . . .

And the Deity Yahweh took the Adam

And placed him in the Garden of Eden

To work it and to keep it.

And the Deity Yahweh

Commanded the Adam, saying:

"Of every tree of the orchard eat you shall;

but of the Tree of Knowing good and evil

thou shalt not eat of it;

for on the day that thou eatest thereof

thou shalt surely die."

Though two vital fruits were available, the Earthlings were prohibited from reaching only for the fruit of the Tree of Knowing. The Deity - at that point - appeared unconcerned that Man might try to reach for the Fruit of Life. Yet Man could not adhere even to that single prohibition, and tragedy followed.

The idyllic picture soon gave way to dramatic developments, which biblical scholars and theologians call the Fall of Man. It is a

tale of unheeded divine commandments, divine lies, a wily (but truth-telling) Serpent, punishment, and exile.

Appearing from nowhere, the Serpent challenged God's solemn warnings:

And the Serpent. . . said unto the woman:

"Hath the Deity indeed said

'Ye shall not eat of any tree of the orchard'?"

And the woman said unto the Serpent:

"Of the fruits of the trees of the orchard

eat we may;

it is of the fruit of the tree in the midst of the orchard that the Deity hath said: 'Ye shall not eat of it, neither touch it, lest ye die.'"

And the Serpent said unto the woman: "Nay, ye will surely not die; It is that the Deity doth know that on the day ye eat thereof your eyes will be opened and ye will be as the Deity - knowing good and evil."

And the woman saw that the tree was good to eat

And that it was lustful to behold;

And the tree was desirable to make one wise;

And she took of its fruit and did eat,

And gave also to her mate with her, and he ate.

and the eyes of both of them were opened,

And they knew that they were naked;

And they sewed fig leaves together,

And made themselves loincloths.

Reading and rereading the concise yet precise tale, one cannot help wondering what the whole confrontation was about. Prohibited under threat of death from even touching the Fruit of Knowing, the two Earthlings were persuaded to go ahead and eat the stuff, which would make them "knowing" as the Deity. Yet all that happened was a sudden awareness that they were naked.

The state of nakedness was indeed a major aspect of the whole incident. The biblical tale of Adam and Eve in the Garden of Eden opens with the statement: "And the both of them were naked, the Adam and his mate, and they were not ashamed." They were, we are to understand, at some lesser stage of human development than that of fully developed humans: Not only were they naked, they were unaware of the implications of such nakedness.

Further examination of the biblical tale suggests that its theme is Man's acquisition of some sexual prowess. The "knowing" that

was held back from Man was not some scientific information but something connected with the male and female sex; for no

sooner had Man and his mate acquired the "knowing" than "they knew that they were naked" and covered their sex organs.

The continuing biblical narrative confirms the connection between nakedness and the lack of knowing, for it took the Deity no

time at all to put the two together:

And they heard the sound of the Deity Yahweh

Walking in the orchard in the day's breeze,

And the Adam and his mate hid

From the Deity Yahweh amongst the orchard's trees.

And the Deity Yahweh called to the Adam

And said: "Where art thou?"

And he answered:

"Thy sound I heard in the orchard

and I was afraid, for I am naked;

and I hid."

And He said:

"Who told thee that thou are naked?

Hast thou eaten of the tree,

whereof I commanded thee not to eat?"

Admitting the truth, the Primitive Worker blamed his female mate, who, in turn, blamed the Serpent. Greatly angered, the Deity put curses on the Serpent and the two Earthlings. Then - surprisingly - "the Deity Yahweh made for Adam and his wife garments of skins, and clothed them."

One cannot seriously assume that the purpose of the whole incident - which led to the expulsion of the Earth-lings from the Garden of Eden - was a dramatic way to explain how Man came to wear clothes. The wearing of clothes was merely an outward manifestation of the new "knowing." The acquisition of such "knowing," and the Deity's attempts to deprive Man of it, are the central themes of the events.

While no Mesopotamian counterpart of the biblical tale has yet been found, there can be little doubt that the tale - like all the biblical material concerning Creation and Man's prehistory - was of Sumerian origin. We have the locale: the Abode of the Gods in Mesopotamia. We have I he telltale play on words in Eve's name ("she of life," "she of rib"). And we have two vital trees, the Tree of Knowing and the Tree of Life, as in Anu's abode.

Even the words of the Deity reflect a Sumerian origin, for the sole Hebrew Deity has again lapsed into the plural, addressing

divine colleagues who were featured not in the Bible but in Sumerian texts:

Then did the Deity Yahweh say:

"Behold, the Adam has become as one of us,

to know good and evil.

And now might he not put forth his hand

And partake also of the Tree of Life,

and eat, and live forever?"

And the Deity Yahweh expelled the Adam

from the orchard of Eden.

As many early Sumerian depictions show, there had been a time when Man, as a Primitive Worker, served his gods stark naked. He was naked whether he served the gods their food and drink, or toiled in the fields or on construction jobs. The clear implication is that the status of Man vis-a-vis the gods was not much different from that of domesticated animals. The gods had merely upgraded an existing animal to suit their needs. Did the lack of "knowing," then, mean that, naked as an animal, the newly fashioned being also engaged in sex as, or with, the animals? Some early depictions indicate that this was indeed the case.