Chapter Four
BETWEEN FATE AND DESTINY
 

"Was it Fate, or was it Destiny, that led Marduk by an unseen hand through all his troubles and tribulations over many millennia to his final goal: supremacy on Earth?

"....In the Sumerian language, and thus in Sumerian philosophy and religion, there was a clear distinction between the two. Destiny, NAM, was the predetermined course of events that was unalterable. Fate was NAM.TAR - a predetermined course of events that could be altered; literally, TAR, to cut, break, disturb, change.

"....The fine line distinguishing between the two may be blurred today, but it was a difference well-defined in Sumerian and biblical times. For the Sumerians, Destiny began in the heavens, starting with the preordained orbital paths of the planets. Once the Solar System begot its shape and composition after the Celestial Battle, the planetary orbits became everlasting Destinies; the term and concept could then be applied to the future course of events on Earth, starting with the gods who had celestial counterparts.

"In the biblical realm, it was Yahweh who controlled Destinies and Fates, but while the former was predetermined and unalterable, the latter could be affected by human decisions.... Because of the former powers, the course of future events could be foretold years, centuries and even millennia earlier.

"....But when it came to Fates, the free will and free choice of people and nations could come and did come into play. Unlike destinies, Fates could be changed and punishments could be averted if righteousness replaced sin, if piety replaced profanity, if justice prevailed over injustice. "It is not the death of the evildoer that I seek, but that the wicked shall turn from his ways and live." The Lord God told the Prophet Ezequiel (33:11).

"The distinction made by the Sumerians between Fate and Destiny, and how they can both play a role even in the life of a single individual, becomes apparent in the life story of Gilgamesh.

"....A Sumerian text titled by scholars The Death of Gilgamesh provides an answer. The end, it explains, was preordained, there was no way that Gilgamesh, taking his Fate into his own hands over and over again, could have changed his Destiny. The text provides his conclusion by reporting an omen-dream of Gilgamesh that contained a prediction of his end.

Here is what Gilgamesh is told:

O Gilgamesh,
this is the meaning of the dream;
The great god Enlil, father of the gods,
had decreed thy destiny.
Thy fate for kingship he determined;
for eternal life he has not destined thee.

"The Fate of Gilgamesh, he is told, has been overriden by Destiny. He was fated to be a king; he was not destined to avoid death. And so destined, Gilgamesh is described dying. "He who was firm of muscle, lies unable to rise... He who had ascended mountains, lies, rises not" "On the bed of Namtar he lies, rises not."

"....The What if? question can be expanded from one individual to Mankind as a whole.

"What would have been the course of events on Earth (and elsewhere in the Solar System) were Ea’s original plan to obtain gold from the waters of the Persian Gulf to succeed? At a crucial turn of events, Anu, Enlil, and Ea drew lots to see who would rule Nibiru, who would go to the mines in southeast Africa, who would be in charge of the expanded Edin. Ea/Enki went to Africa and, encountering there the evolving hominids, could tell the gathered gods: The Being that we need, it exists - all that we have to do is put on it our genetic mark!

the gods had clasped hands together,
had cast lots and had divided.

"Would the feat of genetic engineering have taken place had either Anu or Enlil been the one to go to southeastern Africa?

"Would we have shown up on our planet anyway, through evolution alone?  Probably - for that is how the Anunnaki (from the same seed of life!) had evolved on Nibiru, but far ahead of us. But on Earth we came about through genetic engineering, when Enki and Nimah jumped the gun on evolution and made Adam the first "test tube baby."

"The lesson of the Epic of Gilgamesh is that Fate cannot change Destiny. The emergence of Homo sapiens on Earth we believe, was a matter of destiny, a final outcome that might have been delayed or reached otherwise, but undoubtedly reached. Indeed, we believe that even though the Anunnaki deemed their coming to Earth their own decision for their own needs, that too, we believe, was preordained, destined by a cosmic plan. And equally so, we believe, will be Mankind’s Destiny: to repeat what the Anunnaki had done to us by going to another planet to start the process all over again.

"One who understood the connection between Fate and the zodiacal constellations was Marduk himself. They constituted what we have termed Celestial Time, the link between Divine Time (the orbital period of Nibiru) and Earthly Time (the Year, months, seasons, days, and nights resulting from the Earth’s orbit, tilt, and revolution upon its own axis). The heavenly signs that Marduk had invoked - the arrival of the Zodiacal Age of the Ram - were signs in the realm of Fate. What he needed to solidify his supremacy, to eliminate from it the notion that, as Fate, it could be changed, or revised, or reversed, was a Celestial Destiny. And to that aim he ordered what can be considered the most audacious falsification ever.

"We are talking about the most sacred and basic text of the ancient peoples: the Epic of Creation, the core and bedrock of their faith, religion, science. Sometimes called by its opening lines Enuma elish (When in the Heights of Heaven), it was a tale of events in the heavens that involved celestial gods and a Celestial Battle, the favorable outcome of which made possible all the good things on Earth, including the coming into being of Mankind. Without exception the text was viewed by the scholars who began to piece it together from many fragments as a celestial myth, an allegory of the eternal fight between good and evil. The fact that wall sculptures discovered in Mesopotamia depicted a winged (i.e. celestial) god fighting a winged (i.e. celestial) monster, solidified the notion that here was an ancient forerunner of the tale of St. George and the Dragon. Indeed, some of the early translations of the partial text titled it Bel and the Dragon. In those texts, the Dragon was called Tiamat and Bel ("the Lord") was none other than Marduk.

"....In our 1976 book The Twelfth Planet we have suggested that neither the Mesopotamian text nor its condensed biblical version was myth or allegory. They were based, we suggested, on a most sophisticated cosmogony that, based on advanced science, described the creation of our Solar System, stage by stage, and then the appearance of a stray planet from outer space that was gradually drawn into our Solar System, resulting in a collision between it and an older member of the Sun’s family. The ensuing Celestial Battle between the invader - "Marduk" - and the olden planet - Tiamat - led to the destruction of Tiamat. Half of it broke into bits and pieces that became a Hammered Bracelet; the other half, shunted to a new orbit, became the planet Earth, carrying with it Tiamat’s larger satellite that we call the Moon. And the invader, attracted into the center of our Solar System and slowed down by the collision, became permanently the twelfth member of our Solar System.

"....By calling the cosmogony underlying the Epic of Creation Sumerian, rather than Babylonian, we provide a clue to the true source and nature of the text.... They are now convinced that the extant Babylonian version was a deliberate forgery, intended to equate the Marduk that was on Earth with the celestial/planetary "god" who changed the make of our heavens, gave our Solar System its present shape, and - in a manner of speaking - created the Earth and all that was on it. That included Mankind, for according to the Sumerian original version it was Nibiru, coming from some other part of the universe, that brought with it and imparted to Earth during the collision the "Seed of Life."

"(For that matter, it should be realized that the illustration so long deemed to represent Marduk battling the Dragon is also all wrong. It is a depiction from Assyria where the supreme god was Ashur, and not Babylon; the deity is depicted as an Eagleman, which indicates an Enlilite being; the divine cap he wears has three pairs of horns, indicating the rank of 30, which was not Marduk’s rank; and his weapon was the forked lightning, which was the divine weapon of Ishkur/Adad, Enlil’s - not Enki’s son.)

"...."Destiny".... that was the term used to describe the orbital paths. The everlasting, unchanging orbit was a planet’s Destiny; and that is what Marduk was granted according to Enuma elish.

"Once one realizes that this is the meaning and significance of the ancient term for "orbits" one can follow the steps by which the Destiny was attained by Marduk.

And still based on the Celestial Battle, Marduk appropriated the status of "the invader" Nibiru, to himself, the Babylonians called the invader planet "Marduk"....

Mr. Sitchin explains again the Celestial Battle at this point, which it also appears in his book The 12th Planet.

He then continues:

"....Now, finally, Marduk had obtained, permanent, unalterable Destiny - an orbital path that, ever since, has kept bringing the erstwhile invader again and again to the site of the Celestial Battle where Kingu had once been. Together with Marduk, and counting Kingu (our Moon) for it had possessed Destiny, the Sun and its family reached the count of twelve.

It was this count, we suggest, that determined twelve to be the celestial number, and thus the twelve stations ("houses") of the zodiac, twelve months of the year, twelve double-hours in a day-night cycle, twelve tribes of Israel, twelve apostles of Jesus.

"....The distinction between an unalterable Destiny, and a Fate that could be altered and averted was expressed in a two-part Hymn to Enlil, that describes both his powers as a decreer of Fates and as a pronouncer of Destinies:

Enlil:
In the heavens he is the Prince,
On Earth he is the Chief,
His command is far-reaching,
His utterance is lofty and holy;
The shepherd Enlil decrees the Fates.

Enlil:
His command in the heights made the heavens tremble,
down below he made the Earth quake.
He pronounces destinies into the distant future,
his decrees are unchangeable.
He is the Lord who knows the destiny of the Land.

"Destinies, the Sumerians believed, were of a celestial nature. As high-ranking as Enlil was, his pronouncements of unalterable Destinies were not the result of his own decisions or plans. The information was made known to him; he was a "lord who knows the Destiny of the land," he was a "trustworthy called-one" - not a human prophet but a divine prophet.

"That was quite different from the instances when - in consultation with other gods - he decreed Fates. Sometimes he consulted just his trusted vizier, Nusku....

"....Not only Nusku, Enlil’s chamberlain, but also his spouse Ninlil is depicted in [a] hymn as participant in deciding Fates. (Hymn appears on Book.)

"Fates, the Sumerians believed, were made, decreed and altered on Earth; and in spite of the hymnal words of adoration or minimal consultation, it appears that the determination of Fates - including that of Enlil himself - was achieved by a process that was more democratic, more akin to that of a constitutional monarchy. The powers of Enlil seemed to stem not only from above, from Anu and Nibiru, but also from below, from an Assembly of the Gods (a kind of parliament or congress). The most crucial decisions - were made at a Council of the Great Gods, a kind of Cabinet of Ministers where discussions sometimes became debates and as often as not turned into heated exchanges . . .

"The references to the Council and the Assembly of the Anunnaki gods are numerous. The creation of the Adam.... the decision to wipe Mankind off the face of the Earth at the time of the Deluge....

"....And after the Deluge, when the remnants of Mankind began to fill the Earth again and the Anunnaki started to give Mankind civilization and institute Kingship a way to deal with the growing human masses.

"....This manner of determining Fates was not limited to the affairs of Man.

"....Such was the manner, according to the Babylonian version of Enuma elish, that the Destiny of Marduk, to be supreme on Earth (and in the celestial counterpart), was confirmed. In that text the Assembly of the Gods is described as a gathering of Senior Gods, coming from various places (and perhaps not only from Earth, for in addition to Anunnaki the delegates also included Igigi).

"....They bestowed on him the scepter, the throne and the royal robe.... "From this day," they announced, thy decree shall be unrivaled, thy command as that of Anu . . . No one among the gods shall transgress thy boundaries."

"....Other texts that concern the decision-making process suggest that the Assembly stage at which fifty Senior Gods participated was followed by a separate stage of a meeting of the Seven Great Gods Who Judge; and the actual pronouncements of the decision, of the Fate or the Destiny, was made by Enlil in consultation with or after approval by Anu.

"Assemblies of the Gods were sometimes called not to proclaim new Fates, but to ascertain what had been determined at an earlier time, on the Tablets of Destinies.

"....Without doubt one of the most crucial, longest, bitterest, and literally fateful was the Assembly of the Gods where it was determined to approve the use of nuclear weapons to vaporize the spaceport in the Sinai peninsula.

"....The occurrence is also one of the clearest if tragic examples of how Fate and Destiny could be interwoven.

Nannar/Sin, the beloved god of Ur.... cried his eyes out to Anu, to Enlil made supplications "Let not my city be destroyed, verily I say to them," Nannar/Sin later recorded. "Let not the people perish!"

"But the response, coming from Enlil, was harsh and decisive:

Ur was granted Kingship;
Eternal reign it was not granted.

Return



Chapter Five
OF DEATH AND RESURRECTION
 

"The lesson of the destruction of Sumer and Ur was that chance and alterable Fate cannot supersede unalterable Destiny. But what about the other way - can a Fate, no matter by whom decreed, be superseded by Destiny?

"The issue had certainly been pondered in antiquity, for otherwise what was the reason for prayer and supplications that had begun then, of the admonitions of the Prophets for righteousness and repentance?

"....Just as the tale of Gilgamesh demonstrated that Fate could not override his ultimate Destiny (to die as a mortal), so did other tales convey the moral that neither can Fate bring about death if it was not yet destined. A paramount example was none other than Marduk himself, who of all the gods of antiquity set a record in suffering setbacks, of disappearances and reappearances, of exiles and returns, of apparent death and unexpected resurrection; so much so, in fact, that when the full scope of the events concerning Marduk became known after the discovery of ancient inscriptions, scholars seriously debated at the turn of this century whether his story was a prototype of the story of Christ. (The notion was abetted by the close affinity between Marduk with his father Enki on the one hand and with his son Nabu on the other hand, creating the impression of an early Trinity).

"....Not even a Shakespeare could conceive the tragic irony of the events that followed the entombment and resurrection of Marduk as a result of Inanna’s outcry. For as things turned out, while he had not truly died or really come back from the dead, his accuser Inanna did meet actual death and attained true resurrection.... for it was her Fate, not her Destiny, to meet her death; and it was because of that distinction that she could be resurrected. And the account of those events illuminates the issues of Life, Death, and Resurrection not, as the Epic of Gilgamesh, among mortals and demigods, but among the gods themselves. In her tale of Fate versus Destiny, there are clues to the resolution of enigmas that have been calling out for solutions.

"....The tale is recorded in texts written first in the original Sumerian language, with later renderings in Akkadian. Scholars refer to the various renditions as the tale of Inanna’s Descent to the Lower World, although some prefer the term Netherworld instead of Lower World, implying a hellish domain of the dead. But in fact Inanna set course to the Lower World, which was the geographic term denoting the southernmost part of Africa.... And although Inanna was warned not to go there, she decided to make the trip anyway.

"Attending the funeral rites of her beloved Dumuzi was the reason Inanna gave for the journey.... but Inanna intended to demand that Nergal, as an older brother of Dumuzi, sleep with her so that a son be born as a pseudo-son of Dumuzi (who had died sonless) and that intention infuriated Ereshkigal [her sister].

"....Ereshkigal ordered that Inanna be subjected to the "Eyes of Death" - some kind of death rays - that turned the body of Inanna into a corpse; and the corpse was hung on a stake. According to the later Akkadian version, Ereshkigal ordered her chamberlain Nantar to "release against Ishtar the sixty miseries" - afflictions of the eyes, the heart, the head, the feet, "of all parts of her, against her whole body" - putting Ishtar to death.

"Anticipating trouble, Inanna/Ishtar had instructed her own chamberlain, Ninshubur, to raise an outcry in the event she did not return in three days.... Ninshubur appealed to Enlil and Nannar, Inanna’s father.... but they were helpless, but Enki was able to help. He fashioned two artificial beings who could not be harmed by the Eyes of Death, and sent them to the rescue mission. To one android he gave the Food of Life, to the other the Water of Life; and so provided, they descended to the abode of Ereshkigal to reclaim Inanna’s lifeless body. Then,

Upon the corpse, hung from the stake,
they directed the Pulser and the Emitter,
Upon the flesh that had been smitten,
sixty times the Food of Life,
sixty times the Water of Life,
they sprinkled upon it;
And Inanna arose.

"....The androids whom Enki had fashioned to return Inanna from the dead, however, were not the Fishmen-doctor/priests shown in [a] depiction. Requiring food nor water, sexless and bloodless, they may have looked more like the figurines of divine android messengers. It was as androids that they were not affected by Ereshkigal’s death rays.

"....It was Namtar, [Fate, that could be altered] who put Ishtar to death [not NAM "Destiny] by "releasing against her the sixty miseries."

Mr. Sitchin relates at this point also the tale of Dumuzi, [the beloved of Inanna], whose death had been caused by Marduk.

"....Inanna ordered that the preserved body be put upon a stone-slab of lapis lazuli to be kept in a special shrine. It should be preserved, she said, so that one day, on the Final Day, Dumuzi could return from the dead and "come up to me." For that, she asserted, would be the day when

The dead one will arise
and smell the sweet incense.

"This, one should note, is the first mention of a belief in a Final Day when the dead shall arise. It was such a belief that caused the annual wailing for Tammuz (the Semitic rendering of Dumuzi) that continued for millennia even unto the time of the Prophet Ezequiel.

"The death and mummification of Dumuzi.... provide important insights. When he and Inanna/Ishtar fell in love - he an Enkiite, she an Enlilite - in the midst of conflicts between the two divine clans, the betrothal received the blessing of Inanna’s parents, Nannar/Sin and his spouse Ningal/Nikkal. One of the texts in the series of Dumuzi and Inanna love songs has Ningal, "speaking with authority," saying to Dumuzi:

Dumuzi the desire and love of Inanna:
I will give you life unto distant days;
I will preserve it for you,
I will watch over your House of Life.

"But in fact Ningal had no such authority, for all matters of Destiny and Fate were in the hands of Anu and Enlil. And as all later knew, a tragic and untimely death did befall Dumuzi.

"The failure of a divine promise in a matter of life and death is not the only disturbing aspect of the tragic fate of Dumuzi. It raises the issue of the gods’ immortality; we have explained in our writings that it was only a relative longevity, a life resulting from the fact that one year on Nibiru equaled 3,600 Earth years. But to those that in antiquity considered the Anunnaki to be gods, the tale of Dumuzi’s death had to come as a shock. Was it because she had indeed expected Dumuzi to come to life on the Final Day that Inanna ordered his embalmment and his placement on a stone slab rather than burial - or in order to preserve the illusion of divine immortality for the masses? Yes, she might have been saying, the god had died, but that is only a temporary transitional phase, for in due time he shall be resurrected, he will arise and enjoy the sweet incense smells.

After writing about another tale, of Ba’al’s death and resurrection, Mr. Sitchin continues

"....It is perhaps in light of the unacceptability of a god’s death that the notion of resurrection has been brought into play. And whether or not Inanna herself believed that her beloved would return from the dead, the elaborate preservation of Dumuzi’s body and her accompanying words also preserved, among the human masses, the illusion of the immortality of the gods.

"The procedure that she personally outlined for the preservation, so that on the Final Day Dumuzi could arise and rejoin her, is undoubtedly the procedure known as mummification. This might come as a shock to Egyptologists, who have held that mummification began in Egypt at the time of the Third Dynasty, circa 2800 B.C.

"....Inanna ordered that the preserved body be put to rest upon a stone slab of lapis lazuli, to be kept in a special shrine. She named the shrine E.MASH - "House/Temple of the Serpent." It was perhaps more than a symbolic gesture of placing the dead son of Enki in his father’s hands. For Enki was not only the Nachash - Serpent, as well as Knower of Secrets - of the Bible. In Egypt, too, his symbol was the serpent and the hieroglyph of his name PTAH represented the double helix of DNA, for that was the key to all matters of life and death.

"....Dumuzi was an African god. It was thus perhaps inevitable that his death and embalmment would be compared by scholars to the tragic tale of the great Egyptian god Osiris.

"....Like Inanna before her, so did Isis enshroud and mummify her deceased spouse, thereby giving rise in Egypt (as Inanna’s deed had done in Sumer and Akkad) to the notion of the resurrected god. While in Inanna’s case the deed by the goddess might have been intended to satisfy a personal denial of the loss as well as to affirm the gods’ immortality, in Egypt the act became a pillar of the pharaonic belief that the human king could also undergo the transfiguration and, by emulating Osiris, attain immortality in an afterlife with the gods. In the words of E.A. Wallis Budge in the preface of his masterwork Osiris & The Egyptian Resurrection, "The central figure of the ancient Egyptian Religion was Osiris, and the chief fundamentals of his cult were the belief in his divinity, death, resurrection and absolute control of the destinies of the bodies and souls of men." The principal shrines to Osiris in Abydos and Denderah depicted the steps in the god’s resurrection.

Osiris as Supreme Judge

Mr. Sitchin has described the journey of the Pharaoh to the "Afterlife" in his book The Stairway to Heaven.

"....The resurrection of Osiris was coupled with another miraculous feat, that of bringing about the birth of his son, Horus, well after Osiris himself was dead and dismembered. In both events, which the Egyptians rightly considered to be magical, a god called Thoth (always shown in Egyptian art as Ibis-headed), played the decisive role. It was he who aided Isis in putting the dismembered Osiris together, and then instructed her how to extract the "essence" of Osiris from his dismembered and dead body, and then impregnate herself artificially. Doing that, she managed to become pregnant and give birth to a son, Horus.

The essence was not the semen as some might believe, but the "genetic" essence of Osiris.

Because of conflicts with Seth, the child Horus had to be hidden.
He died from a poisonous scorpion sting.

Then Isis sent a cry to heaven
and addressed her appeal to the
Boat of Millions of Years . . .
And Thoth came down....

"Thus revived and resurrected from death (and perhaps forever immunized) by the magical powers of Thoth, Horus, grew up to become Netch-Atef, the "Avenger" of his father.

Above: Horus and Isis   Left: Thoth

"That Thoth had indeed possessed the ability to resurrect a dead person who had been beheaded, reattach the head, and return the victim to life, was known in ancient Egypt because of an incident that had occurred when Horus finally took up arms against his uncle Seth. After battles that raged on land, water, and in the air, Horus succeeded in capturing Seth and his lieutenants. Bringing them before Ra for judgment, Ra put the captives’ fate in the hands of Horus and Isis. Thereupon Horus started to slay the captives by cutting off their heads; but when it came to Seth, Isis could not see this done to her brother and stopped Horus from executing Seth. Enraged, Horus turned on his own mother and beheaded her! She survived only because Thoth rushed to the scene, reattached her head, and resurrected her.

"To appreciate Thoth’s ability to achieve all that, let us recall that we have identified this son of Ptah as Ningishzidda (son of Enki in Sumerian lore), whose Sumerian name meant "Lord of the Tree/Artifact of Life." He was the Keeper of the Divine Secrets of the exact sciences, not the least of which were the secrets of genetics and biomedicine that had served well his father Enki at the time of the Creation of Man.

"....That secret knowledge, those powers granted to Thoth/Ningishzidda, found expression in Mesopotamian art and worship by depicting him by or with the symbol of the Entwined Serpents - a symbol that we have identified as a representation of the double helix DNA - a symbol that has survived to our time as the emblem of medicine and healing.

"....It is perhaps more than a coincidence that one of the leading international authorities of ancient copper mining and metallurgy, Professor Benno Rothenberg (Midianite Timna and other publications), discovered in the Sinai peninsula a shrine dating back to the times of Midianite period - the time when Moses, having escaped to the Sinai wilderness for his life - dwelt with the Midianites and even married the daughter of the Midianite high priest. Located in the area where some of the earliest copper mining had taken place, Professor Rothenberg found in the shrine’s remains a small copper serpent; it was the sole votive object there.

"....The biblical record and the finds in the Sinai peninsula have a direct bearing on the depiction of Enki as a Nachash. The term has not just the two meanings that we have already mentioned ("Serpent," "knower of Secrets") but also a third one - "He of Cooper," for the Hebrew word for copper, Nechoshet, stems from the same root. One of Enki’s epithets in Sumerian, BUZUR, also has the double meaning "He who knows/solves secrets" and "He of the copper mines."

"These various interconnections may offer an explanation of the otherwise puzzling choice by Inanna for a resting place for Dumuzi: Bad-Tibira. Nowhere in the texts is there any indication of a connection between Dumuzi (and, for that matter, Inanna) and that City of the Gods. The only possible connection is the fact that Bad-Tibira was established as the metallurgical center of the Anunnaki. Did Inanna, then, place the embalmed Dumuzi near where not only gold but also copper was refined?

"Another possible relevant tidbit concerns the construction of the Tabernacle and Tent of Appointment in the desert of the Exodus, in accordance with very detailed and explicit instructions by Yahweh to Moses where gold and silver were to be used and how, what kinds of wood and timbers and in what sizes.... Great care is also taken in these instructions regarding the rites.... their clothing, the sacred objects.... the fashioning of a washbasin in which they had to wash their hands and feet, "so that they die not when they enter the Ark of the Covenant." And the washbasin, Exodus 30:17 specified, must be made of copper.

"All these dispersed but seemingly connected facts and tidbits suggest that copper somehow played a role in human biogenetics - a role which modern science is only beginning to uncover (a recent example is a study, published in the journal Science of 8 March 1996, about the disruption of copper metabolism in the brain associated with Alzheimer’s disease).

"Such a role, if not part of the first genetic endeavor by Enki and Ninmah to produce the Adam, seems to have certainly entered the human genome when Enki, as the Nachash engaged in the second manipulation when Mankind was endowed with the ability to procreate.

"Copper, in other words, was apparently a component of our Destiny, and a studious and expert analysis of the Sumerian creation texts might well lead to medical breakthroughs that could affect our own daily lives.

"As for the gods, Inanna, for one, believed that copper might assist her beloved’s resurrection.

Return



Chapter Six
THE COSMIC CONNECTION: DNA
 

"Even before television, courtroom dramas have titillated many and trials made history. We have come a long way from the biblical rule, "by two witnesses shall the verdict be." From eyewitnesses court evidence has moved to documentary evidence, to forensic evidence, and - what seems at the moment as the epitome - to DNA evidence.

"Having discovered that all life is determined by tiny bits of nucleic acids that spell out heredity and individuality on chains called chromosomes, modern science has attained the capability of reading those entwined DNA letters to distinguish their unique, individually spelled "words." Using DNA reading to prove guilt or innocence has become the highlight of courtroom dramas.

"An unmatched feat of twentieth-century sophistication? No, a feat of 100^th-century sophistication in the past - a court drama from 10,000 B.C.

"The ancient celebrated case took place in Egypt, at a time when gods and not yet men reigned over the land; and it concerned not men but the gods themselves.... The [second] time Seth resorted to foul play to rid of Osiris (Isis’ son), he cut Osiris into fourteen pieces, Isis located the dispersed pieces and put them together, and mummified Osiris to start the Afterlife legend. She missed, however, the god’s phallus which she could not find, for Seth had disposed of it so that Osiris would have no heir.

"Determined to have one so that he would avenge his father, Isis appealed to Thoth, the Keeper of Divine Secrets, to help her. Extracting the "essence" of Osiris from the dead god’s available parts, Thoth helped Isis impregnate herself and give birth to a son, Horus.

"The "essence" (not "seed"!), we now know, was what we nowaday call DNA - the genetic nuclei acids that form chains on the chromosomes, chains that are arranged in base pairs in a double helix. At conception, when the male sperm enters the female egg, the entwined double helixes separate, and one strand from the male combines with one strand from the female to form a new double-helixed DNA for their offspring. It is thus essential not only to bring together the two double-helixed DNAs, but also to attain a separation - an unwinding - of the double strands, and then a recombining of only one strand from each source into the new entwined double-helixed DNA.

"....Isis raised the boy (Horus) in secret.... So one day, to Seth’s utter surprise, Horus appealed before the Council of the Great Gods and announced that he was the son and heir of Osiris.... Was the young god really the son of the dead Osiris?

"....Seth asked the deliberation to be recessed.... and invited Horus to "pass a happy day in my house," and Horus agreed. But Seth, who had once tricked Osiris to his death, had new treachery in mind:

When it was eventide,
the bed was spread for them,
and the twain lay thereon....

Mr. Sitchin relates here Seth’s intention to introduce his semen into Horus body, and Seth believed he had been successful. So at the Council of Gods he made the announcement, that now Horus had his semen, therefore he would be a successor of Seth rather than a front-runner.

But Horus, had avoided Seth’s semen enter his body and rather next morning showing it to his mother Isis, she had Horus place his own semen on a lettuce.... a favorite breakfast food of Seth.... unknowingly Seth ate it, and therefore it was Horus semen in him and not otherwise! The gods turned to Thoth, and Horus was examined and was found no traces of Seth’s DNA after examining Seth's semen.

Then Thoth examined Seth and found he indeed had ingested the DNA of Horus.

"Acting as a forensic expert in a modern court, but evidently armed with technical abilities which we are yet to attain, he submitted the DNA analysis results to the Council of the Gods. They voted unanimously to grant the dominion over Egypt to Horus.

"(Seth’s refusal to yield the dominion led to what we have termed the First Pyramid War, in which Horus enlisted, for the first time, humans in a war between the gods. We have detailed those events in The Wars of Gods and Men).

"Recent discoveries in genetics throw light on a persistent and seemingly odd custom of the gods, and at the same time highlight their biogenetic sophistication.

"....In matters of succession, the issue arose again and again (of the wife-sister in the annals of the gods): Who will the successor of the throne be - the Firstborn Son or the Foremost Son, if the latter was born by a half sister and the former not? That issue appears to have dominated and dictated the course of events on Earth from the moment Enlil joined Enki on this planet, and the rivalry was continued by their sons Ninurta and Marduk, respectively). In Egyptian tales of the gods, a conflict for similar reasons reared its head between Ra’s descendants, Seth and Osiris.

"....The rivalry.... by all accounts did not begin on Earth. There were similar conflicts of succession on Nibiru, and Anu did not come by his rulership without fights and battles.

"Like the custom that a widow left without a son could demand the husband’s brother to "know" her as a surrogate husband and give her a son, so did the Anunnaki’s rules of succession, giving priority to a son by a half sister find their way into the customs of Abraham and his descendants....

"....The marrying of a half sister as a wife was prevalent among the Pharaohs of Egypt, as a means both to legitimize the king’s reign and the succession. The custom was even found among the Inca kings of Peru, so much so that the occurrence of calamities during a certain king’s reign was attributed to his marrying a woman who was not his half sister. The Inca customs had its roots in the Legends and Beginnings of the Andean peoples, whereby the god Viracocha created four brothers and four sisters who intermarried and were guided to various lands.... That was why Inca kings - providing they had been born of a succession of brother-sister royal couples - could claim direct lineage to the Creator God Viracocha.

"....In The Lost Realms we have identified him (Viracocha) as the Mesopotamian god Adad = the Hittite god Teshub, and pointed to many other similarities, besides the brother-sister customs, between the Andean cultures and those of the ancient Near East.

"The persistence of the brother-sister intermarriage and the seemingly totally out of proportion significance attached to it, among gods and mortals alike, is puzzling. The custom on the face of it appears to be more than a localized "let’s keep the throne in the family" attitude, and at worst the courting of genetic degradation. Why, then, the lengths to which the Anunnaki.... went to attain a son by such a union? What was so special about the genes of a half sister - the daughter, let us keep in mind, of the male’s mother but definitely not of the father?

"As we search for the answer, it will help to note other biblical practices affecting the mother/father issues. It is customary to refer to the period of Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, and Joseph as the Patriarchal Age, and when asked most people would say that the history related in the Old Testament has been presented from a male-oriented viewpoint. Yet the fact is that it was the mothers, not the fathers, who controlled the act that, in the ancients’ view, gave the subject of the tale its status of "being" - the naming of the child. Indeed, not only a person but a place, a city, a land, were not deemed to have come into being until they were given a name.

"....In the important matter of naming a son (going back to the beginning of time), it was either the gods themselves or the mother whose privilege it was. We thus find that when the Elohim created Homo sapiens, it was them who named the new being "Adam" (Genesis 5:2). But when Man was given the ability to procreate on his own, it was Eve - not Adam - who had the right and privilege of naming their first male child Cain (Genesis 4:1)....

"....The Sumerian texts do not provide this kind of information. We do not know, for example, who named Gilgamesh - his mother the goddess or his father the High Priest. But the tale of Gilgamesh provides an important clue to the solution of the puzzle at hand: the importance of the mother in determining the son’s hierarchical standing.

Gilgamesh, in his search for the longevity of the gods, approached the spaceport in the Sinai peninsula, and was asked questions about his identity, as the "dreaded spotlight that sweeps the mountains" had not harmed him, and the guards became curious, as the spotlight would have killed a mortal.

"....Indeed he was immune to the death rays because his body was of the "flesh of the gods." He was, he explained, not just a demigod - he was "two-thirds divine," because it was not his father but his mother who was a goddess, one of the female Anunnaki.

"Here, we believe, is the key to the puzzle of the succession rules and other emphasis on the mother. It is through her that an extra "qualifying dose" was given to the hero or the heir (be it Anunnaki or patriarchal).

"This seemed to make no sense even after the discovery, in 1953, of the double-helix structure of DNA and the understanding how the two strands unwind and separate so that only one strand from the female egg and one strand from the male sperm recombine, making the offspring a fifty-fifty image of its parents. Indeed, this understanding, while explaining the demigod claims, defied the inexplicable claim of Gilgamesh to be two-thirds divine.

"It was not until the 1980s that the ancient claims began to make sense. This came with the discovery that in addition to the DNA stored in the cells of both males and females in the double-helix structures on the chromosome stems, forming the cell’s nucleus, there was another kind of DNA that floats in the cell outside the nucleus. Given the designation Mitochondrial DNA (mtDNA), it was found to be transmitted only from the mother as is e.g. without splitting and recombining with any DNA from the male.

"In other words, if the mother of Gilgamesh was a goddess, then he had indeed inherited both her half of the regular DNA plus her mtDNA, making him, as he had claimed, two-thirds divine.

"It was this discovery of the existence and transmittal as is of mtDNA that has enabled scientists, from 1986 on, to trace the mtDNA in modern humans to an "Eve" who had lived in Africa 250,000 years ago.

"At first scientists believed that the sole function of mtDNA was to act as the cell’s power plant, providing the energy required for the cell’s myriad chemical and biological reactions. But then it was ascertained that the mtDNA was made of "mitochondrions" containing 37 genes arranged in a close circle, like a bracelet; and such a genetic "bracelet" contains over 16,000 base pairs of the genetic alphabet (by comparison, each of the chromosomes making up the cell’s core that are inherited half from each parent contains upward of 100,000 genes and an aggregate of more than three billion base pairs).

"It took another decade to realize that impairments in the makeup of functions of mtDNA can cause debilitating disorders in the human body, especially of the nervous system, of heart and skeletal muscles, and of the kidneys. In the 1990s researchers found that defects ("mutations") in mtDNA also disrupt the production of 13 important body proteins, resulting in various severe ailments. A list published in 1997 in Scientific American starts with Alzheimer’s disease and goes on to include a variety of vision, hearing, blood, muscle, bone marrow, heart, kidney, and brain malfunctions.

"These genetic ailments join a much longer list of bodily malfunctions and dysfunctions that defects in the nuclear DNA can cause. As scientists unravel and understand the "genome" - the complete genetic code - of humans (a feat recently achieved for a single lowly bacterium), the function that each gene performs (and as the other side of the coin, the ailments if it is absent or malfunctions) is steadily becoming known. By not producing a certain protein or enzyme or other key bodily compound, the gene regulating that has been found to cause breast cancer, or hinder bone formation, deafness, loss of eyesight, heart disorders, the excessive gain of weight or the opposite thereof, and so on and on.

"What is interesting in this regard is that we come across a list of similar genetic defects as we read the Sumerian texts about the creation of the Primitive Worker by Enki with the assistance of Ninmah. The attempt to recombine the strands of hominid DNA with strands of Anunnaki DNA to create the new hybrid being was a process of trial and error, and the beings initially brought about sometimes lacked organs or limbs - or had too many of them.... The text called Enki and Ninmah: The Creation of Mankind, besides listing more dysfunctions (rigid hands, paralyzed feet, dripping semen) also depicted Enki as a caring god who, rather than destroying such deformed beings, found some useful life for them. Thus, when one outcome was a man with faulty eyesight, Enki taught him an art that did not require seeing - the art of singing and the playing of the lyre.

"To all those, the text states, Enki decreed this or that Fate. He then challenged Ninmah to try the genetic engineering on her own. The results were terrible.... but as the trial and error continued, Ninmah was able to correct the various defects. Indeed she reached a point that she became so knowledgeable of the Anunnaki/hominid genomes that she boasted that she could make the new being as perfect or imperfect as she wished....

"....We, too, have now reached the stage where we can insert or replace a certain gene whose role we have uncovered, and try to prevent or cure a specific disease or shortcoming. Indeed, a new industry, the biotechnology industry, has sprung up, with a seemingly limitless potential in medicine (and the stock market).

We have even learned to perform what is called transgenic engineering - the transfer of genes between different species, a feat that is achievable because all the genetic material on this planet, from the lowest bacterium to the most complex being (Man), of all living organisms that roam or fly or swim or grow, is made up of the same genetic ABC - the same nucleic acids that formed the "seed" brought into our Solar System by Nibiru.

"Our genes are, in fact, our cosmic connection.

"Modern advances in genetics move along two parallel yet interconnected routes. One is to ascertain the human genome, the total genetic makeup of the human being; this involves the reading of a code that although written with just four letters (A-G-C-T, sort of the initials of the names given to the four nucleic acids that make up all DNA) is made up of countless combinations of those letters that then form "words" that combine into "sentences" and "paragraphs" and finally a complete "book of life." The other research route is to determine the function of each gene, that is an even more daunting task....

"....The ultimate goal of this search for the cause, and thus the cure, of human ailments and deficiencies is twofold: to find the genes that control the body’s physiology and those that control the brain’s neurological functions....

"....In view of such complexities, one wishes that modern scientists would avail themselves of a road map provided by - yes! - the Sumerians. The remarkable advances in astronomy keep corroborating the Sumerian cosmogony and the scientific data provided in the Epic of Creation:

• the existence of other solar systems

• highly elliptic orbital paths

• retrograde orbits

• catastrophism

• water on the outer planets - as well as explanations for why Uranus lies on its side

• the origin of the Asteroid Belt and of the Moon

• the Earth’s cavity on one side and the continents on the other side

All is explained by the scientifically sophisticated tale of Nibiru and the Celestial Battle.

"Why not then take seriously, as a scientific road map, the other part of the Sumerian creation tales - that of the creation of the Adam?

"The Sumerian texts inform us, first of all, that the "seed of life" - the genetic alphabet - was imparted to Earth by Nibiru during the Celestial Battle, some four billion years ago. If the evolutionary processes on Nibiru began a mere one percent before they were launched on Earth, evolution there had begun forty million years before it started on Earth. It is thus quite plausible that the advanced superhumans, Anunnaki, were capable of space travel half a million years ago. It is also plausible that when they came here, they found on Earth the parallel intelligent beings still at the hominid stage.

"....One must presume that by then the Anunnaki were aware of the complete genome of the Nibiruans, and capable to determine no less of the hominids’ genome as we are by now of ours. What traits, specifically, did Enki and Ninmah choose to transfer from the Anunnaki to the hominids? Both Sumerian texts and biblical verses indicate that while the first humans possessed some (but not all) of the longevity of the Anunnaki, the creator couple deliberately withheld from The Adam the genes of immortality (i.e the immense longevity of the Anunnaki that parallel Nibiru’s orbital period). What defects, on the other hand, remained hidden in the depths of the recombined genome of the Adam?

"We strongly believe that were qualified scientists to study in detail the data recorded in the Sumerian texts, valuable biogenetic and medical information could be obtained. An amazing case in point is the deficiency known as Williams Syndrome. Afflicting roughly one in 20,000 births, its victims have a very low IQ verging on retardation, but at the same time they excel in some artistic field. Recent research has discovered that the syndrome resulting in such "idiot savants" ( as they are sometimes described) is caused by a minute gap in Chromosome 7, depriving the person of some fifteen genes. One of the frequent impairments is the inability of the brain to recognize what the eyes see - impaired eyesight; one of the most common talents is musical.

But that is exactly the instance recorded in the Sumerian text of the man with impaired eyesight whom Enki taught to sing and play music.

"....The next genetic manipulation (echoed in the Bible in the tale of Adam and Eve in the Garden of Eden) was the granting of the ability to procreate - the addition of the X (female) and Y (male) chromosomes to the basic 22. Contrary to wide-held beliefs that these two chromosomes have no other functions besides determining the offspring’s sex, recent research has revealed that the chromosomes play wider and more diverse roles. For some reason this astonished the scientists in particular regarding the Y (male) chromosome. Studies published at the end of 1997 under scientific headings as "Functional Coherence of the Human Y Chromosome" received bold headlines in the press such as "Male Chromosome Is Not a Genetic Wasteland, After All" (the New York Times, October 28, 1997). (These discoveries confirmed, as an unexpected bonus, that, "Adam," too, like Eve, had come out of southeastern Africa).

"Where did Enki - the Nachash - obtained the X and Y chromosomes? And what about the source of the mtDNA? Hints scattered in the Sumerian texts suggest that Ninki, Enki’s spouse, played some crucial role in the final stage of human creation. It was she, Enki decided, who would give the humans the final touch, one more genetic heritage:

The new born’s fate,
thou shalt pronounce;
Ninki would fix upon it
the image of the gods.

"The words echo the biblical statement that "in their image and after their likeness did the Elohim create The Adam." And if indeed it was Ninki, Enki’s spouse and mother of Marduk, who was the source of the mtDNA of "Eve," the importance attached to the sister-wife lineage begins to make sense; for it constituted one more link to Man’s cosmic origins.

"....Clearly identified (in the text of The Legend of Adapa), as a "Son of Eridu,".... he was also called in the text "the son of Ea/Enki...." by a woman other than his spouse. By dint of this lineage, as well as by deliberate action, Adapa was recalled for generations as the Wisest of Men, and was nicknamed the Sage of Eridu.

"....This clash between Fate and Destiny takes us to the moment when Homo sapiens-sapiens appeared. Adapa, too, being the son of a god, asked for immortality. That as we know from the Epic of Gilgamesh, could be obtained by ascending heavenward to the abode of the Anunnaki; and that was what Ea/Enki told Adapa.... "He (Enki) made Adapa take the way to heaven...." Enki provided him with correct instructions of how to gain admittance to the throne room of Anu; but also gave him completely wrong instructions on how to behave when he would be offered the Bread of Life and the Water of Life. If you accept them and partake of them, Enki warned Adapa, surely you shall die! And, so misled by his own father, Adapa refused the food and the waters of the gods and ended up subject to his mortal’s Destiny.

"But Adapa did accept a garment that was brought to him and wrapped himself in it, and did take the oil that was offered to him, and anointed himself with it. Therefore, Anu declared, Adapa would be initiated into the sacred knowledge of the gods. He showed him the celestial expanse, "from the horizon of heaven to heaven’s zenith." He would be allowed to return to Eridu safe and sound, and there would be initiated by the goddess Ninkarrak into the secrets of "the ills that were alloted to Mankind, the diseases that were wrought upon the bodies of mortals," and taught by her how to heal such aliments.

"It would be relevant here to recall the biblical assurances by Yahweh to the Israelites in the wilderness in Sinai. Wandering for three days without any water, they reached a watering hole whose water was unpotable. So God pointed out to Moses a certain tree and told him to throw it into the water, and the water became potable. And Yahweh said to the Israelites: if you shall give ear to my commandments, I shall not impose on thee the illnesses of Egypt; "I Yahweh shall be thy healer" (Exodus 15:26). The promise by Yahweh to act as the healer of his chosen people is repeated in Exodus 23:25, where a specific reference is made to enabling a woman who is barren to bear children....

"....Since we are dealing here with a divine entity, it is safe to assume that we are dealing here also with genetic healing. The incident with the Nefilim, who had found on the eve of the Deluge that the "Daughters of the Adam" were compatible, and sufficiently so to be able to have children together, also involves genetics.

"Was such knowledge of genetics, for healing purposes, imparted to Adapa or other demigods or initiates? And if so - how? How could the complex genetic code be taught to Earthlings in those "primitive" times?

"For the answer, we believe, we have to search in letters and in numbers.

Return