VI - A Planet Called ‘Nibiru’


The notion of space travel is no longer relegated to science-fiction alone. Serious scientists do not rule out that one day, some day, we Earthlings might send astronauts not just to our celestial satellite the Moon, but also to another planet farther out.

 

Some savants even dare acknowledge that life, even like ours, might exist ‘somewhere’ in the vast universe with its countless galaxies and constellations and billions of stars (‘suns’) orbited by satellites called ‘planets’.

 

But such sentient beings, even if clever enough to have their own space program - so the argument goes - could never visit us (or we them) because the nearest possible place in the heavens where such life could exist is "light-years away" - a Light-Year being the ungraspable distance that light travels in one year.


But what if such a compatible planet were to exist much closer -  say, in our own solar system? What if travel between it and Earth needs only so many ‘normal’ years, not Light-Years?


That is not a theoretical question, because that is precisely what we are told by the ancient texts - if only we stop treating them as myth and fantasy and consider them to be factual recollections and records of actual events. It was by doing that, that the trailblazing The 12th Planet book became possible.
Logically, for Eridu in Mesopotamia to be ‘Home away from home’, there had to be a Home from which Enki had come.

 

For his crew of fifty to be called "Those who from Heaven to Earth came" (= Anunnaki), they had to come from a place, an actual place, in the heavens.

 

Thus, there had to be a place, somewhere in the heavens, where the journey to Earth began - a place where intelligent beings, capable of space travel some 450,000 years ago, could live.

 

We can call it ‘Planet X’ or ‘Planet of the Anunnaki’; in ancient Mesopotamia it was called Nibiru; its ubiquitous symbol throughout the ancient world was the Winged Disc (see Fig. 10); its orbit was traced and observed most reverently; and it is beyond dispute that countless texts, starting with the Epic of Creation, refer to it by name repeatedly.


When, at the end of the 19th century, astronomical tablets from Mesopotamia were found and deciphered, the savants at the time -  Franz Kugler and Ernst Weidner stand out to this day - debated whether Nibiru was just another name for Mars or for Jupiter; it was an accepted axiom that the ancients could not be aware of any planet beyond Saturn.

 

It was a major breakthrough moment when it dawned on me, in the middle of one night, that Nibiru is neither Mars nor Jupiter -  that it is the name of one more planet in our own Solar System.


One can start the chain of evidence where the Hebrew Bible has it, in verse 1 of chapter 1 of Genesis: "In the beginning, God created the Heaven and the Earth." So begin virtually all the translations of the Hebrew Bible’s first three words, Bereshit bara Elohim (for the moment, we shall treat such a translation as valid).

 

Continuing with just 31 verses, the Hebrew Bible then encapsulates Creation, from how the Sky above with .the "Hammered Bracelet" and the Earth below were formed, to how life on Earth came to be - from grasses to marine to vertebrate and mammalian, and finally Man. The biblical sequence (including a dinosaur phase, in verse 21) matches modern scientific findings about Evolution, so that the notion that Bible and Science are in conflict is baseless.


The discoveries of the inscribed tablets of the Mesopotamian ‘Epic of Creation’ (as described in a previous chapter) leave no doubt that whoever had written the biblical rendering was well aware of the tale in Enuma Elish, condensing its six tablets plus a laudatory seventh to six phases ("days") of Creation plus a sanctified seventh "day" of divine gratification.


Such awareness of the sequence rendered in Enuma Elish was not only possible due to the proliferation and durability of the tablets containing the text; it was probably unavoidable, because the Epic of Creation was read in public as part of the annual New Year festival, first in Sumer and then in Babylon, Assyria, and beyond - throughout the ancient Near East.

 

The reading started at eve-time on the festival’s fourth day, and lasted through the night, for Enuma Elish (as the most complete Babylonian version of the epic is titled) is long and detailed. Its central religious-scientific aspect was a battle between a celestial goddess called "Tiamat" and a heavenly Avenger-cum-Savior god - the main reason why the text has been treated by modern scholars both as a myth and as an allegorical tale of Good vs. Evil, a kind of ancient ‘St. George and the Dragon’ tale.


In The 12th Planet I audaciously suggested instead that the Epic of Creation is at its core a great scientific text that starts with a cosmogony that embraces the whole Solar System, explains the origins of Earth, Moon, and the Asteroid Belt, reveals the existence of planet Nibiru, proceeds through the arrival of the Anunnaki gods on Earth, and describes the creation of Man and the rise of civilization; adapted to promote religious-political purposes, an appended ending hails the victorious assumption of supremacy by the relevant national god (Enlil in Sumer, Marduk in Babylon, Ashur in Assyria).


Irrespective of version, when the primeval events began, "Heaven above," and "firm Earth below" had yet to come into existence:

Enuma elish la nabu shamamu
When in the above Heaven had not been named
Shaplitu ammatum shuma la zakrat
[And] below Firm Earth had not been called -

 - at that primeval time, the ancient text states, the Solar System began to take shape with just three celestial actors: A primordial Apsu, its companion Mummu, and a female celestial entity called Ti.amat.

 

(The three names in the Babylonian text have been retained unchanged from the undiscovered Sumerian original, and mean, respectively, ‘One who exists from the beginning’, ‘One who was born’, and ‘Maiden who gives life’.)


Celestial gods - planets - then begin to be engendered as Tiamat, a watery planet, starts to "mingle the waters" with the male Apsu (the Sun). First, the pair Lahamu and Lahmu are formed in the space between them; then - "surpassing them in stature" - the larger pair Kishar and Anshar appear; and finally, the pair Anu and Nudimmud are formed farther out.

 

These are Sumerian names (attesting to the Sumerian origin of the epic), except that Anu is Babylonian for the Sumerian An (= ‘The Heavenly One’).
 

 

Fig. 46

 


The resulting Solar System (Fig. 46) accurately conforms to our solar system and its planetary layout as we know them (except for Tiamat, of which much more soon):

SUN - Apsu, "One who existed from the beginning."

MERCURY - Mummu, "The one who was born," the Sun’s companion.
VENUS - Lahamu, "Lady of battles."
MARS - Lahmu, "Deity of war."
 - ?? - Tiamat, "Maiden who gives life."
JUPITER - Kishar, "Foremost of firm lands."
SATURN - Anshar, "Foremost of the heavens."
Gaga - Anshar’s messenger, the future PLUTO

URANUS - Anu, "He of the heavens."
NEPTUNE - Ea/Nudimmud, "Artful creator."

Modern science holds that our Solar System was formed about 4.5 billion years ago when a whirling cloud of cosmic dust ringing the Sun began to coalesce, forming planets orbiting it - planets spaced out in the same orbital plane (called Ecliptic) and circling in the same direction (counterclockwise).

 

The description in the ancient Mesopotamian epic is in accord with these modern findings but offers a different (and probably more accurate!) sequence of planet formation. The Sumerian names of the planets are meaningful and accurate descriptions of these celestial bodies - facts that modern astronomy keeps discovering, as for example a 2009 discovery that it is indeed Saturn (Anshar’) and not the more massive Jupiter (‘Kishar’) that is "Foremost of the heavens" due to its system of rings that tremendously extend its reach.


The resulting Solar System, the epic relates, was unstable and chaotic at its start.

 

The planetary orbits were not yet firmly set:

"The divine brothers banded together" - getting in each other’s way. "They disturbed Tiamat as they surged back and forth" - moving in unstable orbits, crowding toward Tiamat.

Even the gravitational and magnetic forces of the Sun were ineffective - "Apsu could not lessen their clamor."

 

Again, modern science too, discarding a longheld notion that once the Solar System was formed it was done, now finds that it was unstable for a long time after its formation, and that shiftings and collisions were taking place.


The unstable celestial gods, "by their antics in heaven," were now "troubling the belly of Tiamat," Enuma elish relates. They were causing her to sprout her own fearsome "assembly" - a group of her own satellite moons. This, in turn, brings more turmoil that endangers the other celestial gods.

 

At this dangerous phase, the outermost celestial god Nudimmud (our Neptune) takes matters into his hands:

"Surpassing in wisdom, accomplished, resourceful," this celestial deity balances the wobbly Solar System by inviting in an outsider - one more large celestial god.

The newcomer was not formed with the others; it is a stranger coming from afar. It originated far out "in the heart of the Deep," and it is "filled with awesomeness",

Alluring was his figure,
Flashing [was] the gaze of his eyes.
Lordly was his gait,
Commanding from the beginning.

Artfully arranged, beyond comprehension,

were his members - beyond understanding,

difficult to look upon...

Subjected to the gravitational pull of ‘Nudimmud’ and coming under the influence of the other planets, the stranger from outer space curves its course toward the Solar System’s center (Fig. 47).

 

 

Fig. 47

 

 

When it passes too closely near Anu (our Uranus), the cumulative gravitational forces tear off it chunks of matter and the invader sprouts four "winds" - satellites, moons - that whirl around it.


One cannot be certain whether the original Sumerian text had already named this stranger from outer space ‘Nibiru at this point; but it is certain that the Babylonian version changed it here to Marduk - the name of Babylon’s national god.

 

This transformation of Marduk from a god on Earth to a celestial deity by renaming Nibiru ‘Marduk’, was accompanied in the Babylonian text by the revelation that ‘Nudimmud’ - who "engendered" the newcomer by inviting him in - is none other than Ea/Enki, the real father of the Babylonians’ god Marduk, and that Anu is Ea/Enki’s father (as proclaimed, in fact, by Enki in his earlier- quoted autobiography).

 

Thus, with a sleight of hand, the celestial tale became a religious-political legitimization of a dynasty: Anu > Ea/ Enki > Marduk...

 

s the ancient text describes the progression of the invading planet, it becomes clear that it is moving in a clockwise direction - the opposite or ‘retrograde’ of the other planets’ counterclockwise orbital direction. It is a finding that offers the only explanation to varied otherwise inexplicable phenomena in our Solar System.


This ‘retrograde’ direction of Nibiru’s path made an eventual collision with Tiamat inevitable; and the ensuing "Celestial Battle," as the * ancient text calls the collision, was a basic tenet of ancient knowledge, reflected in countless references in the Bible’s books of Psalms, Job, and the Prophets.


Disturbed by the new gravitational forces, "pacing about distraught," Tiamat gives rise to her own defensive host of eleven satellite-moons; the Babylonian text describes them as "roaring dragons, clothed with terror."

 

The largest of them, Kingu, is Chief of her host:

"Kingu she exalted, in their midst she made him great"; his task is to prepare for battle with the oncoming Marduk.

As Kingu’s reward, Tiamat readies him to join the "Assembly of the gods" - to become a planet in his own right - by granting him a Celestial "Destiny" (an orbital path). That alone was reason enough for the Sumerians (and their successors) to count this particular Moon as a member in its own right of our Solar System.


As the stage is set for the Celestial Battle, Tablet I of Enuma elish comes to an end; and the scribe of the best preserved version, one Nabu- mushetiq-umi, inscribes at its end the customary colophon:

"First tablet of Enuma elish, like the original tablet [... ], a copy from Babylon."

He also identifies the scribe whose tablet he copied - a tablet,

"Written and collated by Nabu-balatsu-iqbi, the son of Na’id-Marduk."

The copying scribe then dated his work:

"The month of Iyyar, the ninth day, the twenty seventh year of Darius."

Discovered at Kish, this first tablet of Enuma elish is thus identified by its scribe as a copy made at the start of the 5th century B.C. during the reign of Darius I. By a twist of fate, it was the same Darius whose rock inscription in Behistun (see Fig. 17) enabled Rawlinson to crack open the mystery of cuneiform writing.

 


* * *

 


Tablet II of Enuma elish tracks the emergence of two opposing planetary camps headed for the inevitable collision.


Treating the celestial gods as living entities, the text tells that while Tiamat was forming her ferociously whirling satellites, in the Solar System’s outer reaches Ea/Enki appealed to his ‘grandfather’ Anshar to organize the varied planets and have them anoint ‘Marduk’ as their leader in battling Tiamat and her host:

"Let him who is potent be our Avenger, let Marduk, keen in battle, be the hero!"

A crucial stage is reached when ‘Marduk’ nears the colossal Anshar, for Anshar (Saturn) has "lips" - majestic rings - that extend out off the face of Anshar. Encountering them, the approaching Marduk "kisses the lips of Anshar" (the rings of Saturn).

 

The passage by and ‘acceptance’ by the dynastic great-grandfather encourages Marduk to voice his wishes:

"If I, indeed, as your Avenger, am to vanquish Tiamat... convene an Assembly to proclaim my destiny supreme!"

A celestial "destiny" - an orbit - greater than that of all the other planets is Marduk’s demand.


It is here (by now Tablet III) that, according to Sumerian cosmogony, the future Pluto obtains its planetary status and unique orbit. A moon of Anshar/Saturn called Gaga, it is detached by the force of the oncoming Marduk and is thrust out as an emissary to Lahmu and Lahamu, purportedly to canvass their vote for the elevation of Marduk to leadership.

 

When Gaga returns, it circles back all the way to the outermost Ea/Neptune; there it becomes the planet we call Pluto with its oddly inclined orbit that takes it at times beyond and sometimes inside the orbit of Neptune. (Aware of that unusual orbit, the Sumerians depicted the planet as a two-faced deity, seeing its master Ea/Enki/ Neptune once this way and once the other way, Fig. 48.)

 

 

Fig. 48

 


With all the planets opposing Tiamat agreeing to Marduk’s demands for supremacy (Tablet IV), the giant Kishar/Jupiter adds more weapons to Marduk’s arsenal:

In addition to the four satellites (named "South Wind, North Wind, East Wind, West Wind") that he had obtained from Anu/Uranus, three new awesome satellites ("Evil Wind, Whirlwind, Matchless Wind") are added, creating an awesome whirling battle entourage of "seven in all."

Thus reinforced, Marduk - "filled with a blazing flame," able to shoot lightnings as arrows, possessing a magnetic field to "ensnare Tiamat as in a net" - "Toward the raging Tiamat set his face."

 

Tiamat, meanwhile, is orbiting in a direction toward the oncoming Nibiru/ Marduk; the Celestial Battle, the collision, was about to occur:

Tiamat and Marduk, the wisest of gods, advanced against each other.
They pressed on in single combat, they approached for battle.
The four winds he stationed that nothing of her could escape:
The South Wind, the North Wind, the East Wind, the West Wind.
Close to his side he held the net, gift of his grandfather Anu.
He brought forth the Evil Wind, the Whirlwind and the Hurricane to trouble Tiamat’s insides.
All seven of them rose up behind him.
In front of him he set the lightning, with a blazing flame he filled his body,
With a fearsome halo his head was turbaned, he was wrapped with awesome terror as with a cloak.

As the two hurtling planets neared each other, Marduk went on the attack:

The Lord spread out his net to ensnare her;
The Evil Wind, the rearmost, he let loose in her face.
When Tiamat opened her mouth to devour it,

he drove in the Evil Wind, that she close not her lips.

Tiamat, according to this step-by-step account of the battle, was first struck with one of Marduk’s seven satellites where her ‘mouth’ was.

 

Then Marduk's other moons served as weapons:

The raging Winds then charged her belly;
Her belly was distended, her mouth was opened wide.
He shot through it an arrow, it tore her belly.
It cut through her insides, fracturing her midst.
Having thus subdued her, he extinguished her life.

So, according to Sumerian cosmogony as retained in Enuma elish, in this first encounter between Marduk and Tiamat, the two planets did not collide: It was the "winds" - satellites - of Marduk that struck Tiamat, "fracturing her midst" and "extinguishing her life."

 

We illustrate that first encounter in Fig. 49.

 

 

Fig. 49

 


While the final blow to the gashed Tiamat is yet to be delivered in a subsequent encounter, in this first round Marduk and his Winds deal with Tiamat’s "host" of orbiting satellites.

 

The smaller ones, "shattered, trembling with fear, turned their backs about to save their lives... tightly encircled, they could not escape." The phrase "turned their backs about" - thrust in the direction of the advancing Marduk - they become the otherwise inexplicable retrograde orbiting comets.


Kingu, their leader, "rendered lifeless," is bound and held captive; he is deprived of the "Tablet of Destinies" that was about to make it a planet in its own right. Snatching it, Marduk "took away from him the Tablet of Destinies, not rightfully his," and transferred the orbital capability to himself.

 

Devoid of an atmosphere, Kingu is turned into a Dug.ga.e, a Sumerian term that can best be translated as "Lifeless Circler" - doomed forever to keep circling Earth.


Now enabled to go into orbit, Marduk circles back to revisit Anshar and Ea/Nudimmud and reports his victory to them.

 

As he completes his first solar orbit, he is coming back to the site of the Celestial Battle:

Marduk "turned back to Tiamat, whom he had subdued."

This time, Marduk himself collides with the wounded Tiamat, cleaving her apart:

The Lord paused to view her lifeless body.
To cleave the monster he then artfully planned.
Then, as a mussel, he split her into two parts.

The fate of the two parts is of crucial importance; every word in the ancient text is significant, for it is here that we are witnessing the Anunnaki’s sophisticated understanding of how Earth, the Moon, and the Asteroid Belt came to be:

The Lord trod on Tiamat’s hinder part.
With his weapon her skull he cut loose;
The arteries of her blood he severed, and caused the North Wind to bear it to places that have been unknown.
The [other] half of her
as a screen for the skies he set up.
He bent Tiamat’s tail,
as a bracelet the Great Band to form;
Locking the pieces together, as watchmen he stationed them.

In The 12th Planet I have suggested,

  • that the severed upper half ("skull") of Tiamat, thrust off to another place in the Solar System, became the planet Earth in a new orbital path

  • that Kingu, doomed to become a "Lifeless Circler" was carried with it to become Earth’s Moon

  • that the hinder part of Tiamat, smashed to bits and pieces, became the Asteroid Belt (the "Great Band" or "Hammered Bracelet") - Fig. 50.

 

 

Fig. 50

 

 

That the shattered smaller moons of Tiamat became the puzzling retrograde comets that "turned back" and assumed Marduk’s retrograde orbit is reinforced by the statement that ‘Marduk’ "tied them to his tail" -  pulling them in his own retrograde orbital direction.


This understanding of the Creation tale, reaffirmed repeatedly in various Sumerian texts, also offers the only plausible explanation for the biblical verses in Genesis dealing with the event - and the origin of life on Earth:

  • In the first encounter, satellite/moons of ‘Marduk’ strike and disable Tiamat

  • In the second decisive encounter, ‘Marduk’ itself "treads upon" -  strikes and comes in contact with - Tiamat, splitting her in two; it is thus that the "seed of life" present on Marduk is transferred to and shared with the future Earth. Keeping Tiamat’s waters, it is a future watery planet

  • The upper half ("skull") of Tiamat is thrust off to a new orbital location to become the Earth, now seeded with DNA from Marduk

  • The thrust half (the future Earth) carries with it the lifeless Kingu to become its Moon

  • The bottom part is smashed to bits and pieces; tied together as a bracelet, it becomes the Asteroid Belt

  • Where the Celestial Battle had taken place, where Tiamat had once orbited, is termed Shamamu in Akkadian, and Shamay’im in Hebrew - terms that are translated as ‘Heaven but which stem from Ma’yim, "waters" - the place where the watery Tiamat used to be.

In the Mesopotamian texts, the affirmation of this sequence was repeatedly expressed by the following statement:

After Heaven had been separated from Earth,
After Earth had been moved away from Heaven

* * *

 


Having reshaped the heavens, created Earth, and fashioned the Hammered Bracelet, Marduk,

"crossed the heavens and surveyed the regions... his Great Abode he measured."

Liking what he saw, the Mesopotamian text states,

"He (Marduk) founded the station of Nibiru."

Celestially, by making our Solar System his abode, ‘Marduk’ has become Planet Nibiru.

 

A tenth planet, a twelfth member of the Solar System (Sun, Moon, and ten planets) has been added - exactly as is depicted on a cylinder seal from 2500 B.C. (cataloged VA-243 in the Vorderasiatisches Museum in Berlin, Fig. 51, with enlarged sketch added). The similarity to the order of planetary formation per Enuma elish (depicted in Fig. 46), speaks for itself.


The new planet’s orbit stretched from "the Apsu’s region to the abode of Ea" - from an "abode" (Perigee) near the Sun to an "abode" (Apogee) well beyond Neptune (Fig. 52).

 

With this great elliptical orbit, Marduk’s celestial "destiny" became supreme - just as he had been promised.
 

 


Figure 51

 

 

 

Figure 52

 

This orbit, the epic states, is what gave the new member of our Solar System its name, for Nibiru means ‘Crossing’:

Planet Nibiru:
The crossroads of Heaven and Earth he shall occupy.
Above and below [the gods] shall not go across;
They must await him.
 

Planet Nibiru:
Planet which is brilliant in the heavens.
He holds the central position;
To him the gods shall pay homage.
 

Planet Nibiru:
It is he who without tiring
the midst of Tiamat keeps crossing.
Let ‘Crossing be his name!

Called Shar ( = ‘The King’s’), this orbit equated mathematically 3,600, suggesting that this was the orbital period of Marduk/ Nibiru - 3,600 Earth-years.

 

As it returns annually (one orbit being one year for Nibiru!) to its perigee, where Tiamat had been, Nibiru intersects the ecliptic; it is its Crossing Point; and whenever Mankind had witnessed ahat occurrence, Nibiru was depicted as a radiating planet symbolized by the sign of the Cross (Fig. 53).


Geological, geophysical, and biological evidence gathered on Earth, on the Moon, and from asteroids and meteorites, has convinced modern scientists that a cataclysm, a "catastrophic collision event" affecting our part of the Solar System, had occurred circa 3.9 billion years ago - about 600,000 years after the formation of the Solar System.

 

The "event," I have suggested, was the Celestial Battle between ‘Marduk’ and Tiamat.

 

Figure 53
 

 

Enuma elish filled up four tablets with the Tale of Creation thus far; the Hebrew Bible did it in eight verses and two Divine Days.


In the familiar King James translation, we learn (verses 1-5) that when the creation of Heaven and Earth began, the Earth "was without form and void" and "the Deep" was in darkness.

Then "the Spirit of God moved upon the waters"; and God commanded "Let there be light, and there was light." And having "divided the light from the darkness," God "called the light Day and the darkness Night"; and "it was evening and it was morning, Day One."

One would be less hard put to discern in those words their Mesopotamian origin if the actual Hebrew text is followed.

 

There, the darkness was not "upon the face of the Deep" but upon Tehom (Hebrew for Tiamat) - it is Ruah (wind, not "spirit"), Marduk's satellite - that moved against Tehom/Tizmzt, as his lightning, not mere "light," struck her.


Verses 6-8 - the events of Day Two - translations use the term "Firmament" (to describe the Asteroid Belt) where the Hebrew says Raki’a (.Rakish in the Babylonian text), which literally means ‘Hammered Bracelet’. Located "in the midst of the waters" to separate the "waters above" from the "waters below," it is the Skam-Mayim (= ‘Place of the waters’) that is translated ‘Heaven.


Choosing to skip the polytheistic sections about the multiple gods’ genealogy, rivalries, and discussions, the editor-author of Genesis just restated the scientific fact of an Earth cleaved off Tiamat as a result of a celestial collision.

 

The ancient view was that the Hammered Bracelet/ Asteroid Belt served as a "Firmament" or a "Heaven" separating celestial regions; the Hebrew term for that region, the Shama’yim, and its meaning, "Heaven," were obviously borrowed directly from the opening verse of Enuma elish: "elish, la nabu shamamu’ - "in the Above, Heaven had not been named."

 

Indeed, the whole biblical notion of a celestial ‘Above’ and a celestial ‘Below’ stemmed from the two opening verses of Enuma elish: The ‘Above’ from the first verse just quoted, and the ‘Below’ from the second verse: Shaplitu, ammatum shuma la zakrat -  "Below firm Earth had not been called."


Such a celestial division to an "Above" the Firmament/Heaven and to a "Below" it seem baffling at first glance; but they become pertinent and clear when we illustrate the statement about Nibiru’s attaining the Crossing "in the midst" of where Tiamat had been:

 

Nibiru
Mercury Venus Earth Moon Mars >     < Jupiter Saturn Uranus Neptune Pluto
Asteroid Belt

 

Passing at its perigee between Mars and Jupiter, Nibiru indeed makes the Crossing in the midpoint between all the other planets of the Solar System (Moon included).

 

As the Bible’s terminology explains, the Shama’yim (literally, ‘Place of the Waters’ but translated "Heaven") -  the place of the "Firmament" (Raki’a, Rakish). The place where Nibiru "crosses" indeed divides the planetary system into an "Above" and a "Below" - into the Solar System’s Outer Planets in the "Above" and the Inner Planets in the "Below" nearer the Sun.


What Enuma elish and the Bible say is confirmed by modern astronomy that refers to the "below" group as the ‘Terrestrial Planets’ and the "above" group as the "Outer Planets" - separated by the Asteroid Belt.


That basic tenet of ancient cosmology and astronomy is even confirmed by a depiction on a Sumerian cylinder seal, now on view in the Bible Lands Museum in Jerusalem, Israel, that graphically expresses this celestial division (Fig. 54).

 

 

Fig. 54

 

 

It uses the straw used in beer drinking as the dividing Asteroid Belt; to its left side the "Below" planets (starting with Venus as the eighth planet, then Earth and its crescent Moon, and Mars nearest the Belt); and on the other side, it shows the "Above" Jupiter and Saturn with its rings.

 


* * *

 


As Tablet V begins, the continuing Enuma elish text then ascribes to Marduk the establishment of "the precincts of night and day" by assigning Night to the Moon, Daytime to the Sun, and credits him with all the Sumerian astronomical achievements:

It was he who instituted a luni-solar calendar, fixed the Zenith, divided the heavens into three zones, and grouped the stars in twelve zodiacal constellation, giving them their "images."

We find this segment repeated, almost verbatim, in Genesis 1:14-19, where God is credited with "dividing the day from the night," making the Sun and the Moon responsible "for seasons, days, and years," and t "forming the constellations and also their signs."


With all celestial matters taken care of, divine attention shifted to Earth itself, to making it habitable. In the Mesopotamian text, we reached Tablet V, a complete and almost intact tablet (some 22 lines are still missing) was found only in the late 1950s at an unlikely Turkish site called Sultantepe.

 

From it one learns that after Marduk had given the Sun and the Moon their appointed tasks etc., he turned his attention and creative energy to making Earth - the former upper part of Tiamat - a viable place:

Taking the spittle of Tiamat Marduk created [... ];
He formed the clouds, filled them with [water], raising the winds for bringing rain and cold.
Putting Tiamat’s head into position, he formed thereon the mountains.
He caused the Euphrates and Tigris to flow from her eyes.
 

Stopping her nostrils, he [. . . ].
In her udder he formed the lofty mountains,
[Therein] he drilled the springs, for wells to carry away the [waters].

Clearly, having just been cleaved off from Tiamat, Earth is in need of reworking and reshaping by its creator to become a habitable planet „with mountains, rivers, flowing waters, etc. (the "spittle," I suggest, refers to volcanically ejected lava).


Returning to the Bible, we find that Genesis too reports that having completed the celestial arrangements, divine attention turned to Earth.

 

Verses 9-10 describe the steps taken to make it habitable:

And God said:
Let the waters under the heaven be gathered together unto one place, and let the dry land appear; and it was so.
And God called the dry land ‘Earth’,
and called the gathered together waters ‘Seas’.

This biblical account is in full accord with modern findings that all of Earth’s dry land began as one super-continent (‘Pangaea') that emerged when all the Earth’s waters were gathered into one vast ‘Panocean.'

 

Pangaea in time broke up and its parts drifted off away from each other, becoming several continents (Fig. 55). This modern ‘Continental Drift’ theory is fundamental to all Earth sciences, and to find it clearly stated in the Bible (and probably in the missing lines of Tablet V) is quite remarkable.

 

 

Fig. 55

 


The Hebrew and the Babylonian texts provide here a logical and scientifically accurate process:

the wounded segment of the watery Tiamat begins to assume a planetary shape

the waters collect in the cavitous part (of which the Pacific Ocean is the largest and deepest), revealing dry land

the continents appear, mountains are pushed up

volcanoes spout lava and gases, giving rise to an atmosphere

clouds and rains come

rivers begin to flow

Earth is ready for Life.

"Thus," states Enuma elish in Tablet V, line 65, "he (Marduk) created Heaven and Earth."


"Thus," states the Bible in Genesis 2, verse 1, "were completed the Heavens and the Earth and all of their host."

By treating Enuma elish as a sophisticated cosmogony and not as an allegorical tale of a struggle between good (the Lord/Marduk) and evil (the Monster/Tiamat), we have obtained a coherent explanation for many puzzles in our Solar System and explain the incredibly fast appearance of life on Earth - and the comparability between the Anunnaki and the Daughters of Man.

 

The Bible, I suggest, has done the same.
 

 


THE BEROSSUS VERSION


One must assume that among the crucial texts that were copied and recopied, a version of the tale of Marduk, Tiamat, and the Celestial battle had to be in the hands of Berossus when he compiled his three volume Babyloniaca.


This, apparently, he did.

 

According to the historian Alexander Polyhistor - one of the sources for the Berossus Fragments - in Book I, Berossus wrote (among other things):

There was a time in which there was nothing but darkness and an Abyss of waters, wherein resided most hideous creatures...

 

The one who presided over them was a female named Thallath, which according to Chaldean means "the Sea"...

 

Belus (= The Lord’) came, and cut the female asunder; and out of one half of her he formed the Earth, and of the other half the Heavens;
at the same time he destroyed the creatures of the Abyss...

 

This Belus, whom men call Deus, divided the darkness, and separated the Heavens from the Earth, and put order in the universe...

 

He also formed the stars, and the Sun, and the Moon, together with the five planets.

Did Berossus have access to a complete and undamaged copy of Tablet V of Enuma elishl This interesting question leads to a more general one: Where, in which library, among which collection of tablets, did Berossus sit, copy from the tablets, and write his three volumes?


The answer might lie in the discovery in the 1950s that a mound called Sultantepe, a few miles north of Harran (now in Turkey), was actually the site of a major scribal school and library - where many tablets until then missing were found.
 

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