The 12th Planet (45 page)

Fig. 125

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.

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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 and 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 flowed 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 Gi
h
on ("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 land, 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." (Fig. 126)

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 or 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.

Fig. 126

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
Aratha
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. (Fig. 127)

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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.