The 12th Planet

WHEN THE GODS FLED FROM EARTH

WHAT WAS THIS DELUGE, whose raging waters swept over Earth?

Some explain the Flood in terms of the annual inundations of the Tigris-Euphrates plain. One such inundation, it is surmised, must have been particularly severe. Fields and cities, men and beasts were swept away by the rising waters; and primitive peoples, seeing the event as a punishment by the gods, began to propagate the legend of a Deluge.

In one of his books, Excavations at Ur, Sir Leonard Woolley relates how, in 1929, as the work on the Royal Cemetery at Ur was drawing to a close, the workmen sank a small shaft at a nearby mound, digging through a mass of broken pottery and crumbled brick. Three feet down, they reached a level of hard-packed mud - usually soil marking the point where civilization had started.

But could the millennia of urban life have left only three feet of archaeological strata? Sir Leonard directed the workmen to dig farther. They went down another three feet, then another five. They still brought up "virgin soil" - mud with no traces of human habitation. But after digging through eleven feet of silted, dry mud, the workmen reached a stratum containing pieces of broken green pottery and flint instruments.

An earlier civilization had been buried under eleven feet of mud!

Sir Leonard jumped into the pit and examined the excavation. He called in his aides, seeking their opinions. No one had a plausible theory. Then Sir Leonard's wife remarked almost casually,

"Well, of course, it's the Flood!"

Other archaeological delegations to Mesopotamia, however, cast doubt on this marvelous intuition.

The stratum of mud containing no traces of habitation did indicate flooding; but while the deposits of Ur and al-'Ubaid suggested flooding sometime between 3500 and 4000 B.C., a similar deposit uncovered later at Kish was estimated to have occurred circa 2800 B.C. The same date (2800 B.C.) was estimated for mud strata found at Erech and at Shuruppak, the city of the Sumerian Noah. At Nineveh, excavators found, at a depth of some sixty feet, no less than thirteen alternate strata of mud and riverine sand, dating from 4000 to 3000 B.C.

Most scholars, therefore, believe that what Woolley found were traces of diverse local floodings - frequent occurrences in Mesopotamia, where occasional torrential rains and the swelling of the two great rivers and their frequent course changes cause such havoc. All the varying mud strata, scholars have concluded, were not the comprehensive calamity, the monumental prehistoric event that the Deluge must have been.

The Old Testament is a masterpiece of literary brevity and precision. The words are always well chosen to convey precise meanings; the verses are to the point; their order is purposeful; their length is no more than is absolutely needed. It is noteworthy that the whole story from Creation through the expulsion of Adam and Eve from the Garden of Eden is told in eighty verses.

The complete record of Adam and his line, even when told separately for Cain and his line and Seth, Enosh, and their line, is managed in fifty-eight verses. But the story of the Great Flood merited no less than eighty-seven verses. It was, by any editorial standard, a "major story." No mere local event, it was a catastrophe affecting the whole of Earth, the whole of Mankind.

The Mesopotamian texts clearly state that the "four corners of the Earth" were affected.

As such, it was a crucial point in the prehistory of Mesopotamia. There were the events and the cities and the people before the Deluge, and the events and cities and people after the Deluge. There were all the deeds of the gods and the Kingship that they lowered from Heaven before the Great Flood, and the course of godly and human events when Kingship was lowered again to Earth after the Great Flood. It was the great time divider.

Not only the comprehensive king lists but also texts relating to individual kings and their ancestries made mention of the Deluge. One, for example, pertaining to Ur-Ninurta, recalled the Deluge as an event remote in time:

On that day, on that remote day, On that night, on that remote night, In that year, in that remote year - When the Deluge had taken place.

The Assyrian king Ashurbanipal, a patron of the sciences who amassed the huge library of clay tablets in Nineveh, professed in one of his commemorative inscriptions that he had found and was able to read "stone inscriptions from before the Deluge."

An Akkadian text dealing with names and their origins explains that it lists names "of kings from after the Deluge." A king was exalted as "of seed preserved from before the Deluge." Various scientific texts quoted as their source "the olden sages, from before the Deluge."

No, the Deluge was no local occurrence or periodic inundation. It was by all counts an Earthshaking event of unparalleled magnitude, a catastrophe the likes of which neither Man nor gods experienced before or since.

The biblical and Mesopotamian texts that we have examined so far leave a few puzzles to be solved. What was the ordeal suffered by Mankind, in respect to which Noah was named "Respite" with the hope that his birth signaled an end to the hardships? What was the "secret" the gods swore to keep, and of whose disclosure Enki was accused? Why was the launching of a space vehicle from Sippar the signal to Utnapishtim to enter and seal the ark? Where were the gods while the waters covered even the highest mountains?

And why did they so cherish the roasted meat sacrifice offered by Noah/Utnapishtim?

As we proceed to find the answers to these and other questions, we shall find that the Deluge was not a premeditated punishment brought about by the gods at their exclusive will. We shall discover that though the Deluge was a predictable event, it was an unavoidable one, a natural calamity in which the gods played not an active but a passive role.

We will also show that the secret the gods swore to was a conspiracy against Mankind - to withhold from the Earthlings the information they had regarding the coming avalanche of water so that, while the Nefilim saved themselves, Mankind should perish.

Much of our greatly increased knowledge of the Deluge and the events preceding it comes from the text "When the gods as men." In it the hero of the Deluge is called Atra-Hasis. In the Deluge segment of the "Epic of Gilgamesh," Enki called Utnapishtim "the exceedingly wise" - which in Akkadian is atra-hasis.

Scholars theorized that the texts in which Atra-Hasis is the hero might be parts of an earlier, Sumerian Deluge story. In time, enough Babylonian, Assyrian, Canaanite, and even original Sumerian tablets were discovered to enable a major reassembly of the Atra-Hasis epic, a masterful work credited primarily to W. G. Lambert and A. R. Millard (Atra-Hasis: The Babylonian Story of the Flood).

After describing the hard work of the Anunnaki, their mutiny, and the ensuing creation of the Primitive Worker, the epic relates how Man (as we also know from the biblical version) began to procreate and multiply.

In time, Mankind began to upset Enlil.

The land extended, the people multiplied;
In the land like wild bulls they lay.
The god got disturbed by their conjugations;
The god Enlil heard their pronouncements,
and said the great gods:
"Oppressive have become the pronouncements of Mankind;
Their conjugations deprive me of sleep."

Enlil - once again cast as the prosecutor of Mankind - then ordered a punishment.

We would expect to read now of the coming Deluge. But not so. Surprisingly, Enlil did not even mention a Deluge or any similar watery ordeal. Instead, he called for the decimation of Mankind through pestilence and sicknesses.

The Akkadian and Assyrian versions of the epic speak of "aches, dizziness, chills, fever" as well as "disease, sickness, plague, and pestilence" afflicting Mankind and its livestock following Enlil's call for punishment. But Enlil's scheme did not work. The "one who was exceedingly wise" - Atra-Hasis - happened to be especially close to the god Enki.

Telling his own story in some of the versions, he says,

"I am Atra-Hasis; I lived in the temple of Ea my lord." With "his mind alert to his Lord Enki," Atra-Hasis appealed to him to undo his brother Enlil's plan:

"Ea, O Lord, Mankind groans; the anger of the gods consumes the land. Yet it is thou who hast created us! Let there cease the aches, the dizziness, the chills, the fever!"

Until more pieces of the broken-off tablets are found, we shall not know what Enki's advice was. He said of something, "... let there appear in the land." Whatever it was, it worked. Soon thereafter, Enlil complained bitterly to the gods that "the people have not diminished; they are more numerous than before!"

He then proceeded to outline the extermination of Mankind through starvation.

"Let supplies be cut off from the people; in their bellies, let fruit and vegetables be wanting!"

The famine was to be achieved through natural forces, by a lack of rain and failing irrigation.

Let the rains of the rain god be withheld from above; Below, let the waters not rise from their sources. Let the wind blow and parch the ground; Let the clouds thicken, but hold back the downpour.

Even the sources of seafood were to disappear: Enki was ordered to "draw the bolt, bar the sea," and "guard" its food away from the people.

Soon the drought began to spread devastation.
From above, the heat was not....
Below, the waters did not rise from their sources.
The womb of the earth did not bear;
Vegetation did not sprout....
The black fields turned white;
The broad plain was choked with salt.

The resulting famine caused havoc among the people. Conditions got worse as time went on.

The Mesopotamian texts speak of six increasingly devastating sha-at-tam's - a term that some translate as "years," but which literally means "passings," and, as the Assyrian version makes clear, "a year of Anu":

For one sha-at-tam they ate the earth's grass.
For the second sha-at-tam they suffered the vengeance.
The third sha-at-tam came;
their features were altered by hunger,
their faces were encrusted...
they were living on the verge of death.
When the fourth sha-at-tam arrived,
their faces appeared green;
they walked hunched in the streets;
their broad [shoulders?] became narrow.

By the fifth "passing," human life began to deteriorate. Mothers barred their doors to their own starving daughters. Daughters spied on their mothers to see whether they had hidden any food.

By the sixth "passing," cannibalism was rampant.

When the sixth sha-at-tam arrived they prepared the daughter for a meal; the child they prepared for food.... One house devoured the other.

The texts report the persistent intercession by Atra-Hasis with his god Enki.

"In the house of his god ... he set foot;... every day he wept, bringing oblations in the morning... he called by the name of his god," seeking Enki's help to avert the famine.

Enki, however, must have felt bound by the decision of the other deities, for at first he did not respond.

Quite possibly, he even hid from his faithful worshiper by leaving the temple and sailing into his beloved marshlands.

"When the people were living on the edge of death," Atra-Hasis "placed his bed facing the river."

But there was no response.

The sight of a starving, disintegrating Mankind, of parents eating their own children, finally brought about the unavoidable: another confrontation between Enki and Enlil.

In the seventh "passing," when the remaining men and women were "like ghosts of the dead," they received a message from Enki.

"Make a loud noise in the land," he said.

Send out heralds to command all the people:

"Do not revere your gods, do not pray to your goddesses."

There was to be total disobedience!

Under the cover of such turmoil, Enki planned more concrete action. The texts, quite fragmented at this point, disclose that he convened a secret assembly of "elders" in his temple.

"They entered... they took counsel in the House of Enki."

First Enki exonerated himself, telling them how he had opposed the acts of the other gods. Then he outlined a plan of action; it somehow involved his command of the seas and the Lower World.

We can glean the clandestine details of the plan from the fragmentary verses:

"In the night... after he..." someone had to be "by the bank of the river" at a certain time, perhaps to await the return of Enki from the Lower World.

From there Enki "brought the water warriors" - perhaps also some of the Earthlings who were Primitive Workers in the mines. At the appointed time, commands were shouted: "Go!... the order..."

In spite of missing lines, we can gather what had happened from the reaction of Enlil. "He was filled with anger." He summoned the Assembly of the Gods and sent his sergeant at arms to fetch Enki.

Then he stood up and accused his brother of breaking the surveillance-and-containment plans:

All of us, Great Anunnaki,
reached together a decision. ...
I commanded that in the Bird of Heaven
Adad should guard the upper regions;
that Sin and Nergal should guard
the Earth's middle regions;
that the bolt, the bar of the sea,
you [Enki] should guard with your rockets.
But you let loose provisions for the people!

Enlil accused his brother of breaking the "bolt to the sea." But Enki denied that it had happened with his consent:

The bolt, the bar of the sea,
I did guard with my rockets.
[But] when... escaped from me...
a myriad of fish ... it disappeared;
they broke off the bolt...
they had killed the guards of the sea.

He claimed that he had caught the culprits and punished them, but Enlil was not satisfied. He demanded that Enki "stop feeding his people," that he no longer "supply corn rations on which the people thrive."

The reaction of Enki was astounding:

The god got fed up with the sitting; in the Assembly of the Gods, laughter overcame him.

We can imagine the pandemonium. Enlil was furious.

There were heated exchanges with Enki and shouting.

"There is slander in his hand!"

When the Assembly was finally called to order, Enlil took the floor again. He reminded his colleagues and subordinates that it had been a unanimous decision. He reviewed the events that led to the fashioning of the Primitive Worker and recalled the many times that Enki "broke the rule."

But, he said, there was still a chance to doom Mankind. A "killing flood" was in the offing. The approaching catastrophe had to be kept a secret from the people. He called on the Assembly to swear themselves to secrecy and, most important, to "bind prince Enki by an oath."

Enlil opened his mouth to speak
and addressed the Assembly of all the gods:
"Come, all of us, and take an oath
regarding the Killing Flood!"
Anu swore first;
Enlil swore; his sons swore with him.

At first, Enki refused to take the oath.

"Why will you bind me with an oath?" he asked. "Am I to raise my hands against my own humans?"

But he was finally forced to take the oath. One of the texts specifically states:

"Anu, Enlil, Enki, and Ninhursag, the gods of Heaven and Earth, had taken the oath."

The die was cast.

What was the oath he was bound by? As Enki chose to interpret it, he swore not to reveal the secret of the coming Deluge to the people; but could he not tell it to a wall? Calling Atra-Hasis to the temple, he made him stay behind a screen.

Then Enki pretended to speak not to his devout Earthling but to the wall.

"Reed screen," he said,
Pay attention to my instructions.
On all the habitations, over the cities,
a storm will sweep.
The destruction of Mankind's seed it will be....
This is the final ruling,
the word of the Assembly of the gods,
the word spoken by Anu, Enlil and Ninhursag.

(This subterfuge explains Enki's later contention, when the survival of Noah/Utnapishtim was discovered, that he had not broken his oath - that the "exceedingly wise" [atra-hasis] Earthling had found out the secret of the Deluge all by himself, by correctly interpreting the signs.)

Pertinent seal depictions show an attendant holding the screen while Ea - as the Serpent God - reveals the secret to Atra-Hasis.

Enki's advice to his faithful servant was to build a water-borne vessel; but when the latter said, "I have never built a boat... draw for me a design on the ground that I may see," Enki provided him with precise instructions regarding the boat, its measurements, and its construction.

Steeped in Bible stories, we imagine this "ark" as a very large boat, with decks and superstructures. But the biblical term - teba - stems from the root "sunken," and it must be concluded that Enki instructed his Noah to construct a sub-mersible boat - a submarine.

The Akkadian text quotes Enki as calling for a boat "roofed over and below," hermetically sealed with "tough pitch." There were to be no decks, no openings, "so that the sun shall not see inside."

It was to be a boat "like an Apsu boat," a sulili; it is the very term used nowadays in Hebrew (soleleth) to denote a submarine.

"Let the boat," Enki said, "be a MA.GUR.GUR" - "a boat that can turn and tumble."

Indeed, only such a boat could have survived an overpowering avalanche of waters.

The Atra-Hasis version, like the others, reiterates that although the calamity was only seven days away, the people were unaware of its approach. Atra-Hasis used the excuse that the "Apsu vessel" was being built so that he could leave for Enki's abode and perhaps thereby avert Enlil's anger. This was readily accepted, for things were really bad.

Noah's father had hoped that his birth signaled the end of a long time of suffering. The people's problem was a drought - the absence of rain, the shortage of water. Who in his right mind would have thought that they were about to perish in an avalanche of water?

Yet if the humans could not read the signs, the Nefilim could. To them, the Deluge was not a sudden event; though it was unavoidable, they detected its coming. Their scheme to destroy Mankind rested not on an active but on a passive role by the gods. They did not cause the Deluge; they simply connived to withhold from the Earthlings the fact of its coming.

Aware, however, of the impending calamity, and of its global impact, the Nefilim took steps to save their own skins. With Earth about to be engulfed by water, they could go in only one direction for protection: skyward. When the storm that preceded the Deluge began to blow, the Nefilim took to their shuttlecraft, and remained in Earth orbit until the waters began to subside.

The day of the Deluge, we will show, was the day the gods fled from Earth.

The sign for which Utnapishtim had to .watch, upon which he was to join all other in the ark and seal it, was this:

When Shamash,
who orders a trembling at dusk,
will shower down a rain of eruptions -
board thou the ship,
batten up the entrance!

Shamash, as we know, was in charge of the spaceport at Sippar.

There is no doubt in our mind that Enki instructed Utnapishtim to watch for the first sign of space launchings at Sippar. Shuruppak, where Utnapishtim lived, was only 18 beru (some 180 kilometers, or 112 miles) south of Sippar. Since the launchings were to take place at dusk, there would be no problem in seeing the "rain of eruptions" that the rising rocket ships would "shower down."

Though the Nefilim were prepared for the Deluge, its coming was a frightening experience: "The noise of the Deluge ... set the gods trembling." But when the moment to leave Earth arrived, the gods, "shrinking back, ascended to the heavens of Ami." The Assyrian version of Atra-Hasis speaks of the gods using rukub ilani ("chariot of the gods") to escape from Earth. "The Anunnaki lifted up," their rocketships, like torches, "setting the land ablaze with their glare."

Orbiting Earth, the Nefilim saw a scene of destruction that affected them deeply. The Gilgamesh texts tell us that, as the storm grew in intensity, not only,

"could no one see his fellow," but "neither could the people be recognized from the heavens."

Crammed into their spacecraft, the gods strained to see what was happening on the planet from which they had just blasted off.

The gods cowered like dogs,
crouched against the outer wall.
Ishtar cried out like a woman in travail:
"The olden days are alas turned to clay."...
The Anunnaki gods weep with her.
The gods, all humbled, sit and weep;
their lips drawn tight... one and all.

The Atra-Hasis texts echo the same theme.

The gods, fleeing, were watching the destruction at the same time. But the situation within their own vessels was not very encouraging, either.

Apparently, they were divided among several spaceships; Tablet III of the Atra-Hasis epic describes the conditions on board one where some of the Anunnaki shared accommodations with the Mother Goddess.

The Anunnaki, great gods,
were sitting in thirst, in hunger....
Ninti wept and spent her emotion;
she wept and eased her feelings.
The gods wept with her for the land.
She was overcome with grief,
she thirsted for beer.
Where she sat, the gods sat weeping;
crouching like sheep at a trough.
Their lips were feverish of thirst,
they were suffering cramp from hunger.

The Mother Goddess herself, Ninhursag, was shocked by the utter devastation.

She bewailed what she was seeing:

The Goddess saw and she wept...
her lips were covered with feverishness....
"My creatures have become like flies -
they filled the rivers like dragonflies,
their fatherhood was taken by the rolling sea."

Could she, indeed, save her own life while Mankind, which she helped create, was dying?

Could she really leave the Earth, she asked aloud -

"Shall I ascend up to Heaven,
to reside in the House of Offerings,
where Anu, the Lord, had ordered to go?"

The orders to the Nefilim became clear: Abandon Earth, "ascend up to Heaven."

It was a time when the Twelfth Planet was nearest Earth, within the asteroid belt ("Heaven"), as evidenced by the fact that Anu was able to attend personally the crucial conferences shortly before the Deluge.

Enlil and Ninurta - accompanied perhaps by the elite of the Anunnaki, those who had manned Nippur - were in one spacecraft, planning, no doubt, to rejoin the main spaceship. But the other gods were not so determined. Forced to abandon Earth, they suddenly realized how attached they had become to it and its inhabitants. In one craft, Ninhursag and her group of Anunnaki debated the merits of the orders given by Anu.

In another, Ishtar cried out:

"The olden days, alas, are turned into clay"; the Anunnaki who were in her craft "wept with her."

Enki was obviously in yet another spacecraft, or else he would have disclosed to the others that he had managed to save the seed of Mankind. No doubt he had other reasons to feel less gloomy, for the evidence suggests that he had also planned the encounter at Ararat.

The ancient versions appear to imply that the ark was simply carried to the region of Ararat by the torrential waves; and a "south-storm" would indeed drive the boat northward. But the Mesopotamian texts reiterate that Atra-Hasis/Utnapishtim took along with him a "Boatman" named Puzur-Amurri ("westerner who knows the secrets").

To him the Mesopotamian Noah "handed over the structure, together with its contents," as soon as the storm started. Why was an experienced navigator needed, unless it was to bring the ark to a specific destination?

The Nefilim, as we have shown, used the peaks of Ararat as landmarks from the very beginning. As the highest peaks in that part of the world, they could be expected to reappear first from under the mantle of water.

Since Enki, "The Wise One, the All-Knowing," certainly could figure that much out, we can surmise that he had instructed his servant to guide the ark toward Ararat, planning the encounter from the very beginning.

Berossus's version of the Flood, as reported by the Greek Abydenus, relates:

"Kronos revealed to Sisithros that there would be a Deluge on the fifteenth day of Daisies [the second month], and ordered him to conceal in Sippar, the city of Shamash, every available writing. Sisithros accomplished all these things, sailed immediately to Armenia, and thereupon what the god had announced did happen."

Berossus repeats the details regarding the release of the birds.

When Sisithros (which is atra-asis reversed) was taken by the gods to their abode, he explained to the other people in the ark that they were "in Armenia" and directed them back (on foot) to Babylonia. We find in this version not only the tie-in with Sippar, the spaceport, but also confirmation that Sisithros was instructed to "sail immediately to Armenia" - to the land of Ararat.

As soon as Atra-Hasis had landed, he slaughtered some animals and roasted them on a fire. No wonder that the exhausted and hungry gods "gathered like flies over the offering."

Suddenly they realized that Man and the food he grew and the cattle he raised were essential.

"When at length Enlil arrived and saw the ark, he was wroth."

But the logic of the situation and Enki's persuasion prevailed; Enlil made his peace with the remnants of Mankind and took Atra-Hasis/Utnapishtim in his craft up to the Eternal Abode of the Gods.

Another factor in the quick decision to make peace with Mankind may have been the progressive abatement of the Flood and the reemergence of dry land and the vegetation upon it. We have already concluded that the Nefilim became aware ahead of time of the approaching calamity; but it was so unique in their experience that they feared that Earth would become uninhabitable forever. As they landed on Ararat, they saw that this was not so. Earth was still habitable, and to live on it, they needed man.

What was this catastrophe - predictable yet unavoidable? An important key to unlocking the puzzle of the Deluge is the realization that it was not a single, sudden event, but the climax of a chain of events.

Unusual pestilences affecting man and beast and a severe drought preceded the ordeal by water - a process that lasted, according to the Mesopotamia!! sources, seven "passings," or sar's. These phenomena could be accounted for only by major climatic changes. Such changes have been associated in Earth's past with the recurring ice ages and interglacial stages that had dominated Earth's immediate past.

Reduced precipitation, falling sea and lake levels, and the drying up of subterranean water sources have been the hallmarks of an approaching ice age. Since the Deluge that abruptly ended those conditions was followed by the Sumerian civilization and our own present, postglacial age, the glaciation in question could only have been the last one.

Our conclusion is that the events of the Deluge relate to Earth's last ice age and its catastrophic ending.

Drilling into the Arctic and Antarctic ice sheets, scientists have been able to measure the oxygen trapped in the various layers, and to judge from that the climate that prevailed millennia ago. Core samples from the bottoms of the seas, such as the Gulf of Mexico, measuring the proliferation or dwindling of marine life, likewise enable them to estimate temperatures in ages past.

Based on such findings, scientists are now certain that the last ice age began some 75,000 years ago and underwent a mini-warming some 40,000 years ago. Circa 38,000 years ago, a harsher, colder, and drier period ensued. And then, about 13,000 years ago, the ice age abruptly ended, and our present mild climate was ushered in.

Aligning the biblical and Sumerian information, we find that the harsh times, the "accursation of Earth," began in the time of Noah's father Lamech. His hopes that the birth of Noah ("respite") would mark the end of the hardships was fulfilled in an unexpected way, through the catastrophic Deluge.

Many scholars believe that the ten biblical pre-Diluvial patriarchs (Adam to Noah) somehow parallel the ten pre-Diluvial rulers of the Sumerian king lists. These lists do not apply to divine titles DIN.GIR or EN to the last two of the ten, and treat Ziusudra/Utnapishtim and his father Ubar-Tutu as men.

The latter two parallel Noah and his father Lamech; and according to the Sumerian lists, the two reigned a combined total of 64,800 years until the Deluge occurred. The last ice age, from 75,000 to 13,000 years ago, lasted 62,000 years. Since the hardships began when Ubartutu/Lamech was already reigning, the 62,000 fit perfectly into the 64,800.

Moreover, the extremely harsh conditions lasted, according to the Atra-Hasis epic, seven shar's, or 25,200 years. The scientists discovered evidence of an extremely harsh period from circa 38,000 to 13,000 years ago - a span of 25,000 years. Once again, the Mesopotamian evidence and modern scientific findings corroborate each other.

Our endeavor to unravel the puzzle of the Deluge, then, focuses on Earth's climatic changes, and in particular the abrupt collapse of the ice age some 13,000 years ago.

What could have caused a sudden climatic change of such magnitude?

Of the many theories advanced by the scientists, we are intrigued by the one suggested by Dr. John T. Hollin of the University of Maine. He contended that the Antarctic ice sheet periodically breaks loose and slips into the sea, creating an abrupt and enormous tidal wave!

This hypothesis - accepted and elaborated upon by others - suggests that as the ice sheet grew thicker and thicker, it not only trapped more of Earth's heat beneath the ice sheet but also created (by pressure and friction) a slushy, slippery layer at its bottom. Acting as a lubricant between the thick ice sheet above and the solid earth below, this slushy layer sooner or later caused the ice sheet to slide into the surrounding ocean.

Hollin calculated that if only half the present ice sheet of Antarctica (which is, on the average, more than a mile in thickness) were to slip into the southern seas, the immense tidal wave that would follow would raise the level of all the seas around the globe by some sixty feet, inundating coastal cities and lowlands.

In 1964, A. T. Wilson of Victoria University in New Zealand offered the theory that ice ages ended abruptly in such slippages, not only in the Antarctic but also in the Arctic. We feel that the various texts and facts gathered by us justify a conclusion that the Deluge was the result of such a slippage into the Antarctic waters of billions of tons of ice, bringing an abrupt end to the last ice age.

The sudden event triggered an immense tidal wave. Starting in Antarctic waters, it spread northward toward the Atlantic, Pacific, and Indian oceans. The abrupt change in temperature must have created violent storms accompanied by torrents of rain. Moving faster than the waters, the storms, clouds, and darkened skies heralded the avalanche of waters.

Exactly such phenomena are described in the ancient texts.

As commanded by Enki, - Atra-Hasis sent everybody aboard the ark while he himself stayed outside to await the signal for boarding the vessel and sealing it off.

Providing a "human-interest" detail, the ancient text tells us that Atra-Hasis, though ordered to stay outside the vessel,

"was in and out; he could not sit, could not crouch ... his heart was broken; he was vomiting gall."

But then:

... the Moon disappeared....
The appearance of the weather changed;
The rains roared in the clouds....
The winds became savage...
... the Deluge set out,
its might came upon the people like a battle;
One person did not see another,
they were not recognizable in the destruction.
The Deluge bellowed like a bull;
The winds whinnied like a wild ass.
The darkness was dense;
The Sun could not be seen.

The "Epic of Gilgamesh" is specific about the direction from which the storm came: It came from the south. Clouds, winds, rain, and darkness indeed preceded the tidal wave which first tore down the "posts of Nergal" in the Lower World:

With the glow of dawn
a black cloud arose from the horizon;
inside it the god of storms thundered....
Everything that had been bright
turned to blackness. ...
For one day the south storm blew,
gathering speed as it blew, submerging the mountains....
Six days and six nights blows the wind
as the South Storm sweeps the land.
When the seventh day arrived,
the Deluge of the South Storm subsided.

The references to the "south storm," "south wind" clearly indicate the direction from which the Deluge arrived, its clouds and winds, the "heralds of the storm," moving "over hill and plain" to reach Mesopotamia.

Indeed, a storm and an avalanche of water originating in the Antarctic would reach Mesopotamia via the Indian Ocean after first engulfing the hills of Arabia, then inundating the Tigris-Euphrates plain. The "Epic of Gilgamesh" also informs us that before the people and their land were submerged, the "dams of the dry land" and its dikes were "torn out": the continental coastlines were overwhelmed and swept over.

The biblical version of the Deluge story reports that the "bursting of the fountains of the Great Deep" preceded the "opening of the sluices of heaven."

First, the waters of the "Great Deep" (what a descriptive name for the southernmost, frozen Antarctic seas) broke loose out of their icy confinement; only then did the rains begin to pour from the skies. This confirmation of our understanding of the Deluge is repeated, in reverse, when the Deluge subsided.

First the "Fountains of the Deep [were] dammed"; then the rain "was arrested from the skies."

After the first immense tidal wave, its waters were still "coming and going back" in huge waves. Then the waters began "going back," and "they were less" after 150 days, when the ark came to rest between the peaks of Ararat. The avalanche of water, having come from the southern seas, went back to the southern seas.

How could the Nefilim predict when the Deluge would burst out of Antarctica?

The Mesopotamian texts, we know, related the Deluge and the climatic changes preceding it to seven "passings" - undoubtedly meaning the periodic passage of the Twelfth Planet in Earth's vicinity. We know that even the Moon, Earth's small satellite, exerts sufficient gravitational pull to cause the tides. Both Mesopotamian and biblical texts described how the Earth shook when the Celestial Lord passed in Earth's vicinity.

Could it be that the Nefilim, observing the climatic changes and the instability of the Antarctic ice sheet, realized that the next, seventh "passing" of the Twelfth Planet would trigger the impending catastrophe?

Ancient texts show that it was so.

The most remarkable of these is a text of some thirty lines inscribed in miniature cuneiform writing on both sides of a clay tablet less than one inch long. It was unearthed at Ashur, but the profusion of Sumerian words in the Akkadian text leaves no doubt as to its Sumerian origin.

Dr. Erich Ebeling determined that it was a hymn recited in the House of the Dead, and he therefore in-cluded the text in his masterwork (Tod und Leben) on death and resurrection in ancient Mesopotamia.

On close examination, however, we find that the composition "called on the names" of the Celestial Lord, the Twelfth Planet. It elaborates the meaning of the various epithets by relating them to the passage of the planet at the site of the battle with Tiamat - a passage that causes the Deluge!

The text begins by announcing that, for all its might and size, the planet ("the hero") nevertheless orbits the Sun.

The Deluge was the "weapon" of this planet.

His weapon is the Deluge;
God whose Weapon brings death to the wicked.
Supreme, Supreme, Anointed...
Who like the Sun, the lands crosses;
The Sun, his god, he frightens.

Calling out the "first name" of the planet - which, unfortunately, is illegible - the text describes the passage near Jupiter, toward the site of the battle with Tiamat:

First Name:...
Who the circular band hammered together;
Who the Occupier split in two, poured her out.
Lord, who at Akiti time
Within Tiamat's battle place reposes....
Whose seed are the sons of Babylon;
Who by the planet Jupiter cannot be distracted;
Who by his glow shall create.

Coming closer, the Twelfth Planet is called SHILIG.

LU.DIG ("powerful leader of the joyous planets"). It is now nearest to Mars: "By the brilliance of the god [planet] Anu god [planet] Lahmu [Mars] is clothed." Then it loosed the Deluge upon the Earth:

This is the name of the Lord
Who from the second month to the month Addar
The waters had summoned forth.

The text's elaboration of the two names offers remarkable calendarial information.

The Twelfth Planet passed Jupiter and neared Earth "at Akiti time," when the Mesopotamian New Year began. By the second month it was closest to Mars. Then, "from the second month to the month Addar" (the twelfth month), it loosed the Deluge upon Earth.

This is in perfect harmony with the biblical account, which states that "the fountains of the great deep burst open" on the seventeenth day of the second month. The ark came to rest on Ararat in the seventh month; other dry land was visible in the tenth month; and the Deluge was over in the twelfth month - for it was on "the first day of the first month" of the following years that Noah opened the ark's hatch.

Shifting to the second phase of the Deluge, when the waters began to subside, the text calls the planet SHUL. PA.KUN.E.

Hero, Supervising Lord,
Who collects together the waters;
Who by gushing waters
The righteous and the wicked cleanses;
Who in the twin-peaked mountain
Arrested the. ...
... fish, river, river; the flooding rested.
In the mountain-land, on a tree, a bird rested.
Day which... said.

In spite of the illegibility of some damaged lines, the parallels with the biblical and other Mosopotamian Deluge tales is evident: The flooding had ceased, the ark was "arrested" on the twin-peaked mountain; the rivers began to flow again from the mountaintops and carry the waters back to the oceans; fish were seen; a bird was sent out from the ark. The ordeal was over.

The Twelfth Planet had passed its "crossing." It had neared Earth, and it began to move away, accompanied by its satellites:

When the savant shall call out: "Flooding!" -
It is the god Nibiru ["Planet of Crossing"];
It is the Hero, the planet with four heads.
The god whose weapon is the Flooding Storm,
shall turn back;
To his resting place he shall lower himself.

(The receding planet, the text asserts, then recrossed the path of Saturn in the month of Ululu, the sixth month of the year.)

The Old Testament frequently refers to the time when the Lord caused Earth to be covered by the waters of the deep. The twenty-ninth Psalm describes the "calling" as well as the "return" of the "great waters" by the Lord:

Unto the Lord, ye sons of the gods,
Give glory, acknowledge might. ...
The sound of the Lord is upon the waters;
The God of glory, the Lord,
Thundereth upon the great waters....
The Lord's sound is powerful,
The Lord's sound is majestic;
The Lord's sound breaketh the cedars....
He makes [Mount] Lebanon dance as a calf,
[Mount] Sirion leap like a young bull.
The Lord's sound strikes fiery flames;
The Lord's sound shaketh the desert. ...
The Lord to the Deluge [said]: "Return!"
The Lord, as king, is enthroned forever.

In the magnificent Psalm 77 - "Aloud to God I Cry" - the Psalmist recalls the Lord's appearance and disappearance in earlier times:

I have calculated the Olden Days,
The years of Olam....
I shall recall the Lord's deeds,
Remember thy wonders in antiquity....
Thine course, O Lord, is determined;
No god is as great as the Lord....
The waters saw thee, O Lord, and shuddered;
Thine splitting sparks went forth.
The sound of thine thunder was rolling;
Lightnings lit up the world;
The Earth was agitated and it quaked.
[Then] in the waters was thy course,
Thine paths in the deep waters;
And thine footsteps were gone, unknown.

Psalm 104, exalting the deeds of the Celestial Lord, recalled the time when the oceans overran the continents and were made to go back:

Thou didst fix the Earth in constancy,
For ever and ever to be unmoved.
With the oceans, as with garment, thou coveredst it;
Above the mountains did the water stand.
At thy rebuke, the waters fled;
At the sound of thine thunder, they hastened away.
They went upon the mountains, then down to the valleys
Unto the place which thou hast founded for them.
A boundary thou hast set, not to be passed over;
That they turn not again to cover the Earth.

The words of the prophet Amos are even more explicit:

Woe unto you that desire the Day of the Lord;
To what end is it for you?
For the Day of the Lord is darkness and no light....
Turneth morning unto death's shadow,
Maketh the day dark as night;
Calleth forth the waters of the sea
and poureth them upon the face of the Earth.

These, then, were the events that took place "in olden days." The "Day of the Lord" was the day of the Deluge.

We have already shown that, having landed on Earth, the Nefilim associated the first reigns in the first cities with the zodiacal ages - giving the zodiacs the epithets of the various associated gods. We now find that the text uncovered by Ebeling provided calendarial information not only for men but also for the Nefilim.

The Deluge, it informs us, occurred in the "Age of the constellation Lion":

Supreme, Supreme, Anointed;
Lord whose shining crown with terror is laden.
Supreme planet: a seat he has set up
Facing the confined orbit of the red planet [Mars].
Daily within the Lion he is afire;
His light his bright kingships on the lands pronounces.

We can now also understand an enigmatic verse in the New Year's rituals, stating that it was "the constellation Lion that measured the waters of the deep."

These statements place the time of the Deluge within a definite framework, for though astronomers nowadays cannot precisely ascertain where the Sumerians set the beginning of a zodiacal house, the following timetable for the ages is considered accurate.

60 B.C. to A.D. 2100 - Age of Pisces

2220 B.C. to 60 B.C. - Age of Aries

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

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

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

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

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

The zodiacal phenomenon of precession offers even more comprehensive corroboration of our conclusions. We concluded earlier that the Nefilim landed on Earth 432,000 years (120 shar's) before the Deluge, in the Age of Pisces.

In terms of the precessional cycle, 432,000 years comprise sixteen full cycles, or Great Years, and more than halfway through another Great Year, into the "age" of the constellation of the Lion.

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

Years Ago EVENT

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

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

415,000 Enki moves inland, establishes Larsa.

400,000 The great interglacial period spreads globally. Enlil arrives on Earth, establishes Nippur as Mission Control Center. Enki establishes sea routes to southern Africa, organizes gold-mining operations.

360,000 The Nefilim establish Bad-Tibira as their metallurgical center for smelting and refining. Sippar, the spaceport, and other cities of the gods are built.

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

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

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

100,000 Climate warms again. The sons of the gods take the daughters of Man as wives.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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