Like so many Bad Archaeologists, Zecharia Sitchin assumes that ancient texts are inherently trustworthy, straightforward accounts by disinterested observers. In his view, Sumerian mythological tracts are historical and scientific texts, which he alone has interpreted correctly.

Zecharia Sitchin

Zecharia Sitchin’s
The Twelfth Planet

The Twelfth Planet, Sitchin’s first book, was published in 1976; it forms the first part of a series known as The Earth Chronicles. Not only is Sumerian mythology treated as a straightforward account of the remote past, but the Bible is equally presented as a treatise full of references to an ancient and lost science. Subsequent books (The Stairway to Heaven, 1980, The Wars of Gods and Men, 1985 and The Lost Realms, 1990) build on this story. Sitchin presents his work as erudite and scholarly, with a compendious knowledge of Sumerian myth.

He regards the astronomical knowledge of the various peoples of Mesopotamia as being much more complex and accurate than is usually assumed to be the case. In particular, he reads a number of texts as indicating that there were originally twelve separate planets in our solar system: the Sun (Abzu), Mercury (Mummu), Venus (Lahamu), Mars (Lahmu), Tiamat (a planet then orbiting in what is now the asteroid belt), Jupiter (Kishar), Saturn (Anshar), Pluto (Gaga, which was then in a closer orbit), Uranus (An), Neptune (Enki), Nibiru (Marduk) and its satellite Kingu. The formation of Earth is part of a complex cosmic drama that can only be summarised here.

The planet of Nibiru

According to Sitchin’s interpretation of a text known as The Epic of Creation, Nibiru was the home planet of beings called the Anunnaki. Originally, the Earth and Moon were not present in the solar system, although there was an extra planet (Tiamat) where the asteroid belt now sits, between Mars and Jupiter. According to his reading of the Epic, Nibiru was originally from outer space, entering our solar system on a retrograde path and passed close to Neptune; the gravity of Neptune bent its trajectory so that it entered the solar system on a retrograde path and pulled a bulge in its side. Passing Uranus, the bulge ripped open and several lumps were pulled out of Nibiru to become its moons. Once again, the gravity of Uranus drew Nibiru ever closer to the centre of the solar system. As it pulled on Gaga, a planet orbiting between Saturn and Uranus, Gaga was swept out of its orbit, eventually to settle down as Pluto. Missing Saturn and Jupiter, Nibiru approached Tiamat and its gravity began to tear away bits of the planet. Tiamat was cracked but remained whole. Nibiru then swept past the sun, swinging into an orbit that took it back out into deep space past Neptune. Having been pulled into an eccentric orbit around the sun, Nibiru returned thousand of years later, when it destroyed Tiamat. Half of it became the asteroid belt, while the other half was knocked closer to the sun by one of Nibiru’s satellites and became the Earth. Kingu, one of Tiamat’s satellites, accompanied the broken half and became the Moon. Nibiru continues in this highly eccentric orbit, which takes it out beyond Neptune and back into the asteroid belt in a retrograde orbit that takes 3,600 years to complete. The reason that Sumerian and Babylonian astronomers continued to regard the Moon as a planet, not a satellite of Earth, was that it had originally been a planet in its own right.

In his version of the Sumerian myths, beings from Nibiru much later created humans from apes by genetic engineering. This was possible because although life had originally developed on Nibiru, its collision with Tiamat had seeded some of the genetically identical molecules on what was to become Earth, so the beings of both planets share a common genetic ancestry. Modified eggs were implanted into the Anunnaki women about 450,000 years ago (which is part of the thesis of von Däniken’s second book, Return to the Stars). The created humans were intended to be slaves for the Anunnaki, who needed minerals from the Earth to maintain their own civilisation. The Anunnaki continued to direct events on Earth until about 13,000 years ago.

Conveniently, all evidence disappears

All trace of the civilisation of the Anunnaki on Earth was destroyed in a Deluge caused by part of the Antarctic ice cap breaking off and falling into the ocean about 13,000 years ago. To escape the resulting flood, the Anunnaki retreated into space, while all their millennia of engineering efforts were destroyed. Enki had taken pity on the humans and allowed a small group of them to build an Ark to ride out the floodwaters, so after the Deluge, the Anunnaki returned to Earth and taught them the basics of agriculture and animal husbandry. The Anunnaki built a spaceport in Sinai that was destroyed in a nuclear war 4,000 years ago. For reasons that Sitchin does not make clear, they decided to abandon their mining operations on Earth and to return only occasionally to help out humanity.

This page was last updated on 17 August 2007
Written by Keith Fitzpatrick-Matthews