Zecharia Sitchin, Language and Archaeology

A large part of Sitchin’s thesis is given to an explanation about why civilisation developed where and when it did. According to Sitchin, “most scholars now admit in frustration, by all data Man should still be without civilization”. This is not a view that forms part of mainstream archaeology. Leaving aside different definitions of ‘civilisation’, most archaeologists working on its origins pretty much agree that it develops in those societies where an unusual degree of cooperation between communities is required, for whatever reason. In many parts of the world, such as Mesopotamia, the Indus Valley, Egypt, the Vale of Mexico, the Yangtse Valley and so on, the early civilisations are all basically ‘hydraulic’; in other words, these communities all require large-scale water works for agriculture.

The Sumerians according to Sitchin

Sitchin believes the Sumerians invented a host of technological accomplishments, including writing, printing, metallurgy, a written law, medical technology and so on. He describes Sumerian religion in his own way. According to him, An was the chief god; the problem here is that although the original sources make him the god of the heavens, they nowhere suggest that he outranks the other gods. Indeed, it is usually Enlil, the god of the air, who is usually portrayed as the leader of the gods. Going further, he then claims that twelve gods made up a ruling council of the gods; no ancient or modern sources to agree with this interpretation, although a group of seven deities who decree fate are mentioned (the deities in question being An, Enki, Enlil, Inanna, Nanna-Sin, Ninhursag and Utu). Other documents talk of fifty great gods, who are never named but who seem to be the Anunnanki, the children of An. To make up his list of twelve ruling gods, Sitchin adds some of the sons of Enki and Enlil to the list of the seven who decree fate.

Much of Sitchin’s work depends on the reinterpretation of various words found in ancient texts. One of his key words, shem, is translated by orthodox Sumerian scholars as ‘name’ or ‘reputation’; he prefers to see in it a word meaning ‘sky chamber’ and, by extension, ‘spaceship’. Another is the term Anunnaki, which he translates as ‘those who have come down from the Heavens to Earth’. Once again, orthodox linguists translate the term rather differently, as ‘the descendants of the monarch’. Nevertheless, he suggests that the Biblical term Nephilim (נפלים) is a Hebrew equivalent of Anunnaki allowing him to draw parallels between various Sumerian texts and parts of the Bible. However, it is usually taken to mean ‘those who cause others to fall’)

A genius?

According to his admirers, Zecharia Sitchin is a top-of-the-line linguist, maybe the greatest historian of all time and the creator of the most mind-stretching cosmology to date. Furthermore, it appears academically unchallengeable to his followers. Sitchin also claims to be a Sumerian, whose research has been to prepare us, the human race, for the return of our creators.

Zecharia Sitchin’s interpretations of ancient writings are eccentric, to say the very least. The Anunnaki are known from Sumerian mythology, where they are the children of the god of the heavens and the seven judges of the underworld. It is thought that they were originally regarded as fertility deities, something that makes sense in the context of the first agricultural civilisation on earth. They recur in Assyro-Babylonian mythology. None of the ancient texts seems to treat them as anything other than divinities: there is no suggestion that they are physical visitors to this world. Moreover, Sitchin does not seem to have discovered previously unknown meanings of ancient words and then uncovered the scenario he proposes for the origins of the earth and humanity: rather, he seems to have come up with his thesis first and then looked for new ways of translating key texts to support it, the reverse of normal academic practice.

Sitchin’s account of the creation of Earth can easily be shown to be entirely wrong. The chemical composition of the Moon and Earth, for instance, demonstrate that they both originally formed as a single astronomical body that was town apart early in its history.

Sitchin’s reconstruction of Sumerian mythology and his highly speculative account of the family relationships between the gods, makes An a remote figure who, as the overlord of the gods, visited the Earth only when Nibiru entered the inner solar system every 3,600 years. This return was a time of great rejoicing and activity. Earth was ruled directly by An’s eldest son, Enki, who acted as a viceroy. Eventually, Enki’s position was usurped by Enlil, who was An’s son by his own half sister. This led to a blood feud between the descendants of the half brothers, which continued through many generations. His reconstruction of the family relationships of the Sumerian gods is what has allowed him to work out the stages in the ensuing war, but it is a reconstruction that does not match the results of orthodox scholars.

Sitchin and von Däniken

There are parts of Sitchin’s account that clearly derive from von Däniken: we have the story of Etana and the Eagle (which von Däniken wrongly makes a part of The Epic of Gilgamesh), in which the eagle carrying Etana flies higher and higher, allowing the narrator to give an ‘accurate’ description of the earth from space. We also get the supposition that the Ark of the Covenant was “principally a communications box”.

Sitchin believes that “evolution cannot account for the appearance of Homo sapiens, which happened virtually overnight in terms of the millions of years which evolution requires, and with no evidence of the earlier stages which would indicate a gradual change from Homo erectus”. This is utter nonsense. The evolution from African Homo erectus (which some palaeoanthropologists now prefer to call Homo ergaster) to archaic forms of Homo sapiens took place something like 200,000 years ago and does not involve as huge a change as Sitchin seems to believe. Ironically, many creationists will insist that Homo erectus fossils are the remains of modern humans!

Alan Alford and Gods of the New Millennium

Alan Alford’s first book was probably the first book to bring Sitchin’s work to a wider audience, especially in Britain.

This page was last updated on 19 August 2007
Written by Keith Fitzpatrick-Matthews and James Doeser