The Dark Star: The Planet X Evidence (5 page)

After
some study, Sitchin had in his mind a complex and far-reaching exposé of the
historical development of civilization, one that turned the tables on the
standard versions of events. He set about collating this magnum opus in a
series of popular books known as the ‘Earth Chronicles’.
⁷
The running
theme of the books was based on the conceptual framework of the 12th Planet,
the home world of the gods. Sitchin wrote that this new planet was known to the
Sumerians as ‘Nibiru’, and to the later Babylonians as ‘Marduk’.

Sitchin’s
rather unique way of thinking is based upon a rather literal interpretation of
the texts, particularly the Babylonian “Epic of Creation”, the "Enuma
Elish”. Many critics voice their disquiet with Sitchin’s mode of
interpretation, and he is utterly dismissed by mainstream Sumerologists. To
some theorists, there may be some good reason to be cautious about some of
Zecharia Sitchin’s claims. But, it is undeniably true that there are clear
references in ancient Mesopotamian texts which mention this enigmatic Nibiru as
a red star that moves through the heavens.

In
their classic book ‘Hamlet’s Mill’, Giorgio de Santillana and Hertha von
Dechend explored the mysterious nature of ‘Nibiru’ in 1969, and showed that, at
that time, no scholarly theory adequately explained its celestial nature:

“The
plain meaning of “nibiru” is “ferry, ferryman, ford” – “mikis nibiri” is the
toll one has to pay for crossing the river – from eberu “to cross”. Alfred
Jeremias insisted that Nibiru “in all star-texts of later times” indicated
Canopus, taking this star for the provider of the meridian of the city of
Babylon. There have been other identifications– the summer solstice, or the
celestial North Pole; the opinions and verdicts collected by Gossmann show
clearly that Nibiru remains an unknown factor for the time being.”
⁸

Most
scholars now believe that Nibiru is simply the planet Jupiter, but that rather
simple explanation is cast into doubt by the mention of Nibiru’s color: Red.
Jupiter is a rather boring looking white color. There is still a real mystery
here, 36 years after ‘Hamlet’s Mill’. The focus of this mystery is the name
‘Ferry’. We shall return to this at a later point.

Sitchin
claims that the ancient Sumerians were aware of all of the planets circling the
sun, both observable ones and those detectable only by use of a modern telescope.
He maintains that the Sumerians counted the planets from outside in. The Earth
was thus the 7th planet. This is said to reflect the appearance of the solar
system from the perspective of travelers from outside, in other words, the
space-faring race of Anunnaki.

Only
the five planets nearest to the sun are visible to the naked eye. Uranus is
observable under extremely good conditions if one knows exactly where to look.
Neptune and Pluto are both non-starters.

Is
it possible that these ancient peoples, barely out of the Stone Age, were able
to detect distant, invisible planets? Robert Temple has shown that many ancient
peoples possessed lens technology, and were thus theoretically capable of
creating rudimentary telescopes.
⁹
But, even so, it is surely beyond
the realm of possibility to imagine that Neptune could have been discovered by
Mesopotamian astronomers in the 3rd Millennium B.C.E.!

Well,
indeed. Except that Zecharia Sitchin is not claiming that the Sumerians
independently discovered these far-flung worlds. He argues that the knowledge
was handed down to them by their gods, becoming an astronomical science, and
that it was later corrupted into astrology by the later civilizations. We now
understand that early science as pure myth and dismiss the possibility that the
Sumerians understood our solar system as well as us. Or perhaps even better!

The
concept that the planets should share the names of the gods is not a new one.
After all, the ‘English’ names for the planets and other heavenly bodies are
derived from the pantheons of Greek and Roman gods and goddesses. This follows
an age-old tradition, and it is certainly not that strange a claim to associate
the gods of ancient Mesopotamia with astronomy. The difference with Sitchin’s
work is that he has taken things to their logical conclusion and has seen the
Enuma Elish to be an accurate representation of the physical creation of the
solar system.

However,
the tale that emerges from this important Babylonian creation myth is somewhat
different from our own understanding of the solar system. This epic tale speaks
of events on a cosmic scale, with a fierce battle between two great planets, or
Gods, that presumably occurred 4 billion years ago. But neither of the two
combatants are known to us. We can recognize many of the planets, but not the
two key players known as Marduk, and a ‘watery monster’ called ‘Tiamat’. Both
do battle on a catastrophic level. It is this difference between the account in
the Enuma Elish and what we now scientifically know about the solar system that
lies at the heart of the Sitchin’s 12th Planet Theory.

According
to Sitchin’s interpretation of the Babylonian ‘Enuma Elish’, there was no
planet between Venus and Mars in the early, primordial solar system, where the
Earth now resides. In the beginning, Earth was absent from the orbital position
we currently take for granted; the classical ‘habitation zone’.

Also, Pluto was a moon (or ‘counselor’ and ‘emissary’) of Saturn,
and there was a ‘watery monster’ of a world called ‘Tiamat’, the “maiden who
gave life” between Mars and Jupiter. It had a major moon called ‘Kingu’. This
configuration was not stable, and the noise of the Gods implied erratic orbits.
Then along came an outsider, a planet that was not born of Apsu, but one that
attempted to join the throng of the celestial gods. In other words, a wandering
‘planet’ entered the solar system, with catastrophic results. It attacks the
watery planet Tiamat and subdues her with terrible weapons. From this cosmic
battle, Marduk becomes the centrally important god of Babylonian myth.

His birth is described in the Enuma Elish, and although he is
described in anthropomorphic terms, like the other gods, his dominance of them
is clear. This powerful description, when applied to a planet, gives the
distinct impression of something massive and fiery:

“Greatly exalted was he
(Marduk) above them, exceeding throughout.

Perfect were his members
beyond comprehension, Unsuited for understanding, difficult to perceive.


Four were his eyes, four
were his ears;


When he moved his lips, fire blazed forth.


Large were all four
hearing organs,


And the eyes, in like number, scanned all things.


He was the loftiest of the
gods, surpassing was his stature; His members were enormous, he was exceeding
tall.


"My little son, my little son!"


My son, the Sun! Sun of
the heavens!"


Clothed with the halo of ten gods, he was strong to the utmost, As
their awesome flashes were heaped upon him.”

Tablet I, 92-105 (10).

Notice also the allusion to the little ‘Sun of the heavens’,
another clue that leads us towards the Dark Star. Marduk is given 50 names, the
49th of which is ‘Nibiru’, or ‘Nebiru’. This name clearly indicates the
appearance of an actual star in the heavens, one that is centrally important to
the movements of the planets in the solar system:

“(49) NEBIRU shall hold
the crossings of heaven and earth, So that the gods cannot cross above and
below,


They must wait upon him.

Nebiru is the star which
in the skies is brilliant.


Truly he holds the central position, they shall bow down to him,
Saying: "He who the midst of the Sea restlessly crosses,


Let `Crossing' be his
name, who controls its midst.


May they uphold the course of the stars of heaven;


May he shepherd all the
gods like sheep.”

Tablet
VII, 125-133 (10).

Marduk
is instrumental in setting up the ‘stations of heaven’, possibly by influencing
the Earth’s orbit and tilt. As part of this he creates the ‘station of Nebiru’:

“He
founded the station of Nebiru to determine their heavenly bands,

That
none might transgress or fall short.” Tablet V, 6-7.
¹⁰

As
planetary gods go, Marduk was a colossal specimen that seemed to breathe fire.
It was red in color, and sparkled from his ‘eyes’. It had a tremendous ‘halo’
surrounding it, the equivalent of that of 10 gods. If Sitchin’s logic is
followed, then the above descriptions of Marduk describe a fiery planet without
equal. It is certainly self-evident that Marduk was strongly associated with
the enigmatic phenomenon that is Nibiru, described in unmistakably astronomical
terms in the Enuma Elish.

But,
that association falls short of the two names being completely interchangeable.
Where Marduk seems more strongly associated with a dominant and powerful god,
Nibiru is evidently a celestial phenomenon observable from Earth. This
complicates matters somewhat.

According to Zecharia Sitchin, Marduk rampaged through the
planetary solar system, pummeling the watery planet Tiamat with one of its
moons (called the ‘North Wind’), and later cleaving Tiamat into two. This may
have been a direct hit, or it may mean that much of the waters of the
primordial Earth were shed as a result of the encounter with the Dark Star. The
‘North Wind’ is presumably also lost. In the description of Marduk above, we
learn that he had four eyes and four ears, perhaps indicating 8 moons
initially. This is speculation, of course, but it seems as though the Dark Star
ended up with seven ‘moons’, the eighth having been lost in this traumatic
encounter.

The major remaining part of Tiamat became the Earth, the smaller
debris was flung out to form the celestial bracelet that is now known as the
asteroid belt. Most of this debris was water from Tiamat’s great oceans. Hence
the ‘division of Heaven and Earth’ in the Bible, as the ‘Lord’ passed over the
waters of the Primordial World.

The wounded Tiamat migrated into a new orbit as a result of this
encounter, that of the ‘habitation zone’. Tiamat becomes the Earth. It somehow
managed to retain its major moon, now over-sized compared to the host planet ‘Earth’.
The Moon was thus denied the possibility of becoming a planet in its own right.

Marduk itself migrated into a new orbit as a result of this melee
with Tiamat, flung into an eccentric orbit that carried it into the comet
clouds. Many of the comets were formed as a result of these events, themselves
debris from Tiamat’s oceans. During the ‘battle’, Nibiru also caused a moon of
Saturn, Pluto, to be swung away from its host planet and take on its eccentric
orbit at the boundary of the realm of the planets.

The Enuma Elish describes Nibiru as an enormous, fiery world.
However, Sitchin also claims that Nibiru was the home-world of the Anunnaki.
The implication is that the Anunnaki came from a massive, fiery world which is
described as the ‘son’ of the Primordial Father, the sun. How could a
terrestrial home-world be an enormous, fiery planet?

A Stellar Character?

An Akkadian description of the visit of the god Anu to Earth,
thought to have occurred in 3760BC, describes the appearance of the ‘sun disks’
in the plural, a point emphasized by Sitchin himself:

“Enlil and Enki were waiting Anu at the 'golden support', standing
by or holding several objects; the Akkadian terms, whose precise meaning
remains elusive, are best translated as ‘that which opens up the secrets’, ‘the
sun discs’ [plural!] and ‘the splendid/shining posts’. Anu then came into the
courtyard accompanied by gods in procession.”
¹¹

Does this mean that Anu came from another ‘sun’ appearing in the
skies? I have argued that this additional sun is the Dark Star. I used to think
that this massive fiery planet became visible in the skies during perihelion,
therefore fitting the description of Nibiru.

But now, I think that the observable phenomenon of Nibiru is
merely associated with the Dark Star, which may itself remain unseen during its
distant perihelion passage. Nevertheless, the indication of 2 suns in the sky
indicates to me the perihelion transit of the Dark Star, and it makes sense
that this event is associated with the return of the gods to Earth; in this
case the visit of the god Anu. This description also gives us one date for
Nibiru's visible presence in our solar system; 3760BC.