Zecharia Sitchin

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Zecharia Sitchin (born 1920?) is a best-selling author promoting the ancient astronaut theory of mankind's origins. He attributes the creation of the ancient Sumerian culture to the Nephilim from Nibiru. He also argues that the asteroid belt was once a planet which the Sumerians called Tiamat. Although his planetary theory resembles the giant impact theory of astronomy, Sitchin's views are not supported by mainstream scholars.

Zecharia Sitchin was born in Russia and raised in Palestine, where he acquired a knowledge of modern and ancient Hebrew, other Semitic and European languages, the Old Testament, and the history and archaeology of the Near East. Sitchin attended and graduated from the University of London, majoring in economic history.

A journalist and editor in Israel for many years, he now lives and writes in New York. His books have been widely translated, converted to Braille for the blind, and featured on radio and television.

Sitchin claims that his research coincides with many biblical texts and that the biblical texts come originally from the Sumerian writings of their history.

1 Theories
2 Impact
3 Works
4 See also
5 External links

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Theories

Sitchin has recently put forth his own date for the next passage of Nibiru in the year 2085, but the date most talked about is 2012 which marks the end of the Maya calendar.

Nibiru (the planet associated with Marduk in Babylonian cosmology) is a central element of Sitchin's theory. He claims it was a tenth planet (twelfth to those who included the Sun and Moon) which followed a long, elliptical orbit, reaching the inner solar system every 3600 years.

According to his theories of Sumerian cosmology, Nibiru was the twelfth member in the solar system family of planets (which includes 10 planets, the Sun, and the Moon). Its catastrophic collision with Tiamat, a planet that was between Mars and Jupiter, would have formed the planet Earth and the asteroid belt and comets. It was the home of a technologically advanced human-like alien race Anunnaki of Sumerian myth, who, Sitchin claims, survived and later came to Earth. According to Sitchin, they subsequently genetically engineered our species, originally as slave animals to work in their gold mines, by crossing their genes with those of Homo erectus.

Sitchin says some sources speak about the same planet, possibly being a brown dwarf star and still in a highly elliptic orbit around the Sun, with a perihelion passage some 3,600 years ago and assumed orbital period of about 3,600 to 3,760 years or 3,741 years. However, scientists argue that a planet with such an orbit would eventually either develop a circular orbit or fly off into space and overwhelmingly consider Sitchin's claims to be pseudoscience. Sitchin attributes these figures to astronomers of the Maya civilization. However, a brown dwarf with a period of 3,760 years would be clearly evident through infrared and gravitational observations.

In a recently published book, titled 2012: Appointment With Marduk, Turkish writer/researcher Burak Eldem presents a new theory, suggesting a 3,661 years orbital period for the planet and claiming a "return date" in the year 2012 AD. According to Eldem's theory, 3,661 is one-seventh of 25,627, which is the total time span of "5 World Ages" according to Mayan Long Count Calendar system. The last orbital passage of Marduk, he adds, was in 1649 BC and caused great catastrophes on earth, including the Thera eruption.

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Tiamat Planet Theory

Tiamat, as outlined in the Enûma Elish, is a goddess. According to Sitchin, however, she may have been what we now know as Earth, when one of Marduk's (Nibiru) moons struck Tiamat and broke her into two separate pieces, on a second pass Marduk himself struck the broken pieces and one half of Tiamat was crumbled and became what we now know as the asteroid belt. The second half being struck again by one of Marduk's moons was pushed into a new orbit and created what we now know as Earth. Although most scientists argue that the scenario is improbable, Sitchin's supporters argue that it would explain how the Earth's continents were divided and would also explain why the Earth is layered in sediments.

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Annunaki

Template:Mesopotamian myth (7) Sitchin claims that artifacts and documents from the great library of Ashurbanipal at Nineveh and other sources, show technology and advanced scientific knowledge out of place for their time period. This he claims as proof for the following theory.

According to Sitchin in his book The 12th Planet, the Annunaki were extraterrestrials related to the Biblical Nephilim. He claims that they first arrived on Earth probably 450,000 years ago, looking for minerals, especially gold, which they found and mined in Africa. According to Sitchin, the "gods" of the Anunnaki were the rank and file workers of the colonial expedition to earth from the 12th planet, also known later, through the Babylonians, as Marduk. Sitchin claims that ancient records report that a human civilization in Sumer of Mesopotamia was set up under the tutelage of these "gods" and human kings were inaugurated as go-betweens, foremen of the human populations answering to the Annunaki. The Nephilim "gods" were the commanders of the operation. The Anunnaki performed the menial labor, mining ores and building bases, while the Nephilim issued the orders setting these tasks into motion. It was only due to an uprising by the Anunnaki against the Nephilim in protest of these conditions that the Anunnaki 'workers' revolted against their overseers. Because of this the Nephilim and Anunnaki came together in a project to blend the DNA of Homo erectus with that of their own, thus giving rise to the Homo sapiens. He proposes that fallout from the nuclear weapons used during this struggle was the "evil wind" that destroyed Ur c. 2000 BCE, as recorded in the Lament for Ur [1].

To the right is a list of the seven main Mesopotamian gods for further study.

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Enki

According to Sitchin, Enki was the same as Ptah and Poseidon/Neptune. He supposedly created a being called LU.LU. by mixing the Life Essence of animals with the Life Essence of the gods. This LU.LU. (which means mixed), would go on to receive more god-like attributes as a result of Enki's creator-ambitions, and subsequently humans were created.

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Anu

According to Sitchin, the wife of An (Anu) was a fertility goddess and the mother of the gods; her cult was centered in Munster. However, Anu was one of the Nefilim who came from the planet Nibiru (Marduk). Anu was the leader of the council of the twelve Gods until he later retired and gave the throne to his son Marduk.

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Impact

Sitchin's claims are strongly disputed by archeologists and astronomers. Nevertheless, they have proven popular reading if only as science fiction, and they are a novel way of handling the enduring legacy of Mesopotamian mythology and astrology. His series of books has led directly to other works of popular fiction, such as the successful Stargate movies and TV films that have adapted his fanciful (and perhaps fun) theory that the Mesopotamian gods were in fact strange, resource hungry mortals. If not credible to mainstream scholars, his theory is at least an intriguing interpretation of the related phenomena of religious belief in the divine.

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Works

The 12th Planet (Earth Chronicles, No. 1), 1978
The Stairway to Heaven (Earth Chronicles, No. 2), 1980
The Wars of Gods and Men (Earth Chronicles, No. 3), 1985
The Lost Realms (Earth Chronicles, No. 4), 1990
Genesis Revisited: Is Modern Science Catching Up With Ancient Knowledge?, 1991
When Time Began (Earth Chronicles, No. 5), 1993
Divine Encounters: A Guide to Visions, Angels and Other Emissaries, 1995
The Cosmic Code (Earth Chronicles, No. 6), 1998
The Lost Book of Enki: Memoirs and Prophecies of an Extraterrestrial god, 2002