Since I first heard about all this planet X stuff I kept asking myself, why only the Sumerians? What makes them special? There are many different creation stories and stories of gods and powerful beings, why are people only following the Sumerian ones? The Japanese creation story says that all of the Emperors (including the current one) are decendents of the sun goddess. Why don't I hear anyone saying the sun goddess of the Japanese is the same as Annunaki (sp?). Their symbol is the sun also.

(PS if anyone sees someone writting a book about the Japanese coming from Planet X, remember is was posted here first

Maybe because the Sumerians are the only ones who have a 'history' that involves planet X (or whatever they called it).

Otherwise, it just doesn't fit their 'doom and gloom' scenarios. I guess you could call it convenient history. History that fits their preconceived notions.

Tom

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And the touch of a world that is older

Sumerians were the first to invent the fairy tale.

so Sumerian science = fairy tale?? :roll:

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I think freddo meant the Planet X/Nibiru fairy tale, not the sum of Sumerian knowledge/accomplishments. Sitchin had a lot to do with the Sumerian/Nibiru connection. Sitchin's "unique" translation of ancient Sumerian tablet(s) fueled the Sitchinite cult that believes, among other things, ancient alien intervention and the planet Nibiru.

Did the Sumerians invent Planet X/Nibiru? Or did Sitchen invent it and put the Sumerians' name on it?

I don't know. We have a couple people on this board that, although I disagree with their take on Sitchin, I'll give them credit for being quite versed in ancient Sumerian mythology. They might be able to answer your question.

That's right...

But as Lycus alluded to - only Sitchin managed to extract the Nibiru tale as it is from the Sumerians - so we can't be sure that's what they were talking about.

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bunk: Empty talk; nonsense.
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Wow Lycus, I didn't read your sig when I responded to your question.. I treated you like a newbie! ops:

I think it's more that the woowoos are able to fit their doomsday prophecies into Sumerian myths.

Most "doomsday" yowlers tend to fit bits and pieces of ancient myths into their prophecies so that it all looks good. Delve into it, and it's like an old crumb cake...it all falls apart.

Oh, that's all right. Even if you add up my posts, I still have less than 100. So, technically I'm still under newbie status.

The Sumerians had a thing called 'Nibiru'. They had nothing called 'Planet X'.
Most historians will tell you that to the Sumerians Nibiru was the name of a god. Then there's Zecharia Sitchin (who isn't even a historian), who says it was a planet, based on his own translations of ancient tablets.
Sitchin was the one who started associating Nibiru with a hypothetical Planet X. When Nancy Leider and her Zetas started their doomsday cult, they borrowed a lot from other sources, among them Sitchin.

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"The moment we want to believe something, we suddenly see all the arguments for it, and become blind to the arguments against it." -George Bernard Shaw

Here, let me correct a few misconceptions being tossed about so freely....


1. The Sumerian gods and goddesses are collectively called the Anunnanki. It is a name that incorporates several word roots, which when worded out say "From Heaven to Earth came."

2. The word "nibiru" is found in many texts, and depending on the ref can mean a "place of crossing" or is a title ascribed to the planet Jupiter. A variant of 'nibiru' was also the name of a city.

3. The creation mythos described in the Enuma Elish makes references to deities dueling it out in the beginning of the world and universe, and some of these same refs can be seen in the purer Hebraic texts of creation, especially the reference to the Tehom and the creation of the "hammered heavens."

4. Sitchin, a Hebrew journalist, took the Sumerian, Akkadian, Babylonian and other Middle Eastern ancient texts and pieced together what he thinks is the truth. Nibiru as a planet and the Anunnanki as inhabitants of that planet is all his doing from the translations he made.
There is no Sumerian book that explicitly lays out this "history" as the "Sitchinites" now believe.

I am not a Sitchinite, but in having read all his books (save his last one), it gives me a better insight into what's what in the Sitchin Tangent.

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"A subtle thought that is in error may yet give rise to fruitful inquiry that can establish truths of great value." - Isaac Asimov

I believe the most mainstream translation of "Nibiru" is "crossing." But apparently it was widely used in astronomical texts; hence the reason
for it also being translated as "star" or "planet."
Here's a Q&A for referrence.

Re: Nibiru

"33. The Planet Nibiru
Question:
I am writing a paper on God, for a philosophy class. I am trying to prove
that the creation story is a story about the birth of an individual, each and every one of us are our own God. I have read all of Zecharia Sitchin's books and believe that what he wrote could be true, but I believe that the physical world is only a reflection of our collective inner or spiritual world. I am curious of how you would translate - Nibiru. I have used your dictionary and some other ones and Sitchin translates it as "The Planet of crossing". I get the planet or body part but not the crossing. I think that maybe it has something to do with a lessening of the physical to equal the spiritual. Could that be plausible?

Answer:
The Sumerians were smart about ethical and practical concerns, but I don't think that they were as abstract as you are being. Neberu is an Akkadian word, not a Sumerian word. It referred to a river crossing, ford, or a ferry (boat). The city of Nippur was probably located at such a spot. The planet Jupiter, which we know was later called Neberu, belonged to the chief deity in the Babylonian pantheon, Marduk. We don't have proof, but earlier it may have belonged to the Sumerian Enlil, the temple god of Nippur and chief deity in the Sumerian pantheon. There is a possibility that Neberu also referred to the North Star. The Sumerians tended to project what they knew on earth onto the heavens."

Here they still associate Nibiru with Jupiter, but Marduk / Nibiru is described in various texts as repeatedly "crossing" in "the midst of heaven." Jupiter is only "in the midst" of the line of planets, with Pluto included. So unless the Sumerians knew of the outer planets, this makes no sense. And in astronomical texts such as Reports of the Babylonian Astronomers and Magicians(right now, the actual text name escapes me, but this is very close), Neberu is used often when describing transits of stars, planets/gods and such "crossing" the horizon, the moon, the constellations, etc. We know that the Babylonian "Epic of Creation" was based on an earlier Sumerian one, so what Sitchin did is used the name Nibiru as the proper ID of the hero "god" / planet described in the Enuma Elish. Along with this he showed how all the names of the "gods" in the original were also used in astronomical texts describing the planets: the sun, the moon, Mars, Venus, Jupiter...

The Babylonian's "deification" of the actual person "Marduk" as the one supreme god was, in my opinion, the first major step toward monotheism. But Sitchin suggests that the "polytheistic" Sumerian version is not a recounting of a universal "creation" by one "supreme god;" instead, he says it should be considered an astronimical "creation" story of the formation of our solar system. This is not unreasonable because back then, priests and kings alike were the astronomers too.
But who's to say for certain? Even now, some 150 years after rediscovering Sumer, scholars still disagree on the various translations.

The Egyptians believed in a central spot of all the Universe ... the Duat ... a physical place that they could see. It had nothing to do with the planets or anything else other than a place they believed the whole of the Universe flowed about in a grand cycle.
Although we do not know exactly what the Sumerians or Akkadians meant by "midsts of heaven" why does it automatically have to mean a place in the middle of the solar system? Why couldn't it mean the exactly what it sounds like ... a place in the celestial dome they thought was central ... perhaps the origin of such a belief later seen in the Egyptian?
Other cultures had different names for the same object depending on where it was or how it looked at a particular time. The moon is a prime example. The Greeks ascribed a different name (patron goddess) to the moon depending on its phase.
Jupiter, perhaps, during its long orbit probably appeared in a specific place at a specific time and was called Nibiru as it "crossed" this "midst of heaven."

That makes better sense to me than an impossible planet with impossible inhabitants.

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"A subtle thought that is in error may yet give rise to fruitful inquiry that can establish truths of great value." - Isaac Asimov

Kind of like saying that Asgard of Teutonic mythology is another alien race and they have leaders with names like Odin, Thor, Freya... wait a second,

#-o D'oh, that's Stargate SG-1!

The "Duat" is perplexing; a "place" often depicted as a subterranean world of chambers and caverns with boiling waters and eerie lights. It is sometimes called the "netherworld," the "underworld" and even the "abode of the gods." Osiris is described as passing through a mountain range in order to get there. What's interesting to me is that the "duat" is divided into 12 divisions and is reached in 12 hours - related to the sexigesimal system of the Sumerians? But why 12? The Duat's 12 divisions are described invariably as fields, plains, walled circles, caverns and halls - beginning above ground and proceeding underground. And in spite of these terrestrial referrences the "duat," heiroglyphically, was shown as a star within a circle, hence the "heavenly" association.
Some texts conceived of the "duat" as an enclosed Circle of the Gods at the top of which was an opening through which the Imperishable Star (also called the Planet of Millions of Years) could be reached.
So I wonder, what is the Imperishable Star or Planet of Millions of Years that could only be reached through the "duat"? In my opinion, the "duat" sounds more like the Til.Mun that Gilgamesh tried to reach in order to rise aloft and reach the abode of the gods and argue for his immortality.

Actually, A.Dim, the Egyptian Duat was a simple point in space. It is actually nonexistent today due to Precession.
Back in those days there was no true pole star. Everything in the celestial dome appeared to move around what seemed to be an empty point in space. Thuban was already out of the picture and Polaris wasn't there quite yet. There was a "road" to the Duat, but this is actually one of the dust trails seen in the visible Milky Way.
A few cultures believed that this place was special.
It doesn't matter what modern thinkers try to ascribe to the term. In those days the Duat was something and somewhere anyone could look up and see.

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"A subtle thought that is in error may yet give rise to fruitful inquiry that can establish truths of great value." - Isaac Asimov

Weren't the Sumerians the first civilization? That might be the reason. (I could be wrong. It might be the Babylonians that came first. I have the area right, though.)

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Sorry, Val, but I do not agree with a "simple point in space" as an explanation for the "duat." As you alluded to, some modern scholars have suggested that the Giza Plateau is a terrestrial map of the "duat" in the heavens, but the literal meaning of "duat" is underworld; this, anyone will find, is in any glossary of Egyptian language. Moreover, it is also called the AmDuat, literally meaning "that which is in the underworld."
However, as I pointed out, and as The Egyptian Book of the Dead, among other texts, describes, the "duat" is considered a terrestrial place, an oval plain surrounded by mountains, where gods ascend and descend from their abode.


Hail to thee, King of the Gods,
Aten, Creator...
Thou extendest the cords for the plan,
thou didst form the lands...
Thou didst make secret the Underworld (duat)...
The Earth is under thy leading;
thou didst make high the sky...
Thou hast built for thee a place protected
in the sacred desert, with hidden name.
Thou risest by day opposite them...
Thou art rising beautifully...
Thou art crossing the sky with a good wind...
Thou art traversing the sky in the barque...

What is interesting about this verse is that the term sheti.ta is used to describe "the place of the Hidden Name" (shem?) in the Sacred Desert.
The Hebrew Bible employs the term sheti to describe the Divine Line, "within it did the Lord come from Sacred Sinai." And coincidentally(?) enough, the biblical term "Desert of Kadesh" is exactly that: a Sacred Desert. Additionally, and to bring this back to the Sumerians, the above verse echoes what Gilgamesh said about the Til.Mun at Mount Mashu: "where daily the shems he watched, as they depart and come in... watched over Shamash as he ascends and descends." So, in my opinion, the "duat" makes more sense as a terrestrial place, a Place of Ascent. For the Egyptians, the Sphinx guided those who wanted to reach it, for its gaze leads eastward, along the 30th parallel to the Sinai's Central Plain. And again, as depicted in the Book of the Dead, Sinai's Central Plain is indeed oval and surrounded by mountains.
Thus, a more literal understanding seems more plausible than some abstract "simple point in space in the center of the universe from which everything flows" notion.

A.Dim, like many other issues, we really have no concrete evidence one way or another. Some Egyptologists are convinced that the Duat was purely mythological, whereas others feel that it was a physical place. Divided in that latter group, you will find those who believe it was a celestial place and those who feel it was a terrestrial one.
I am no Egyptologist, however, in what I have read over the years, I tend to believe the celestial answer is the best one.
In many religious cultures, what is above, so is below. In Catholicism, this takes a more spiritual meaning, as they figure the will of God and his rules are on Earth as they are in Heaven.
The Egyptians, as well as a couple other cultures strewn about the globe, took a more concrete approach to making the Earth a more Heaven-like place as they had a grand knack of building mounuments on Earth to mirror celestial landmarks.
The Complex at Giza is a fine example of bringing the celestial to the terrestrial. Although some may disagree, a study of a map of the main pyramids at Giza clearly shows they were built to mirror some of the stars of Orion, a constellation which held much power in their beliefs.
I believe that this was their intent and that it was fully in their power and skill to undertake such an ambitious endeavour. The power of faith can literally move — or make — mountains.
In some translations, the Duat, if to be found on Earth, would be located to the north of the complex, as this is where some believe the Duat existed in Heaven, at a point towards the apex of the celestial dome, located above the raised arm of Orion the Hunter. There is a point of interest in this locale: The Ecliptic. At one point in time the Vernal Equinox must have occured in this place between Taurus and Gemini.
Other interpretations used to "prove" the celestial nature of the Duat place it further toards the northern apex, or smack-dab in the middle of the sky — according to them — or the north celestial pole. At the time, as I stated above, there was no bright star there. Polaris wasn't exactly in that spot as of yet, and Thuban wasn't either. The whole celestial dome appeared to revolve around what seemed to be a hole in the sky. According to a few, the Cygnus Rift is the path through the mountains, with the Milky Way being the mountain range itself. This is a stretch, I think.
However, in just trying to understand how the sky looked to the ancient Egyptians, with little to no light polution to deal with, their skies were probably plumb full of visible stars, (roughly 3,ooo), and they all seemed to rotate around a hole. To me, it is no wonder — if true — why they thought that place to be the opening to an "underworld" of sorts.
Even the Christian Hell isn't located at the center of this world, but exists elsewhere in the cosmos. Still, it is considered an "underworld" simply because of the element of burial in death.

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"A subtle thought that is in error may yet give rise to fruitful inquiry that can establish truths of great value." - Isaac Asimov

I agree.
But you know me, I prefer to read things more literally than "mythologically." :wink:

And I understand the reason for the "heavenly" association of the Duat.
"As above, so below."
Computer models have shown that the Giza Plateau is a terrestrial "map" of the sky, in the Age of Leo, circa 10500bc. The Egyptians' "Winding Waterway" is the Milky Way represented by the Nile. The constellation Orion represented by the 3 belt stars, is mirrored by the 3 pyramids. The constellation Taurus, represented by the 2 bright stars in the "V" shape is mirrored by the 2 pyramids of Dashur. And, of course, the constellation Leo is mirrored terrestrially by the leonine Sphinx. But this only works in the Age of Leo. Were the Egyptians building the pyramids in the 11th millenium bc? Not according to mainstream Egyptologists. OK. So is it coincidence then that the Giza Plateau aligns in such a way thousands of years before the First Dynasty? I doubt it. What this means to me, then, is that the Egyptians were aware of the Precession of Equinoxes. But how could that be?!
Also, the Great Pyramid has pronounced astronomical connections to the much later epoch of 2500bc where all four shafts in the pyramid line up like gunsights on the meridian transits of four stars that are known to have been significant in the lives of Egyptians (this, I think, is the reason for the "heavenly" Duat): the northern shaft of the Queen's Chamber lined up with Kochab - a star associated with "cosmic regeneration" and the immortality of the soul; the southern shaft lined up with Sirius - associated with Isis, the mother of the Kings of Egypt; the northern shaft in the King's Chamber was aimed at Thuban - associated with "cosmic pregnancy and gestation"; and the southern shaft aimed at AlNitak - associated with Osiris, the god of resurrection and rebirth. But these "alignments" only work in the 2500bc epoch!
So, how do the pyramids align with these stars in 2500bc AND account for precession going back in time and also create the terrestrial "map" of the skies in 10500bc? Coincidence? I wonder.

I know very little of Egyptology, but I do know quite a bit about computer modeling and pattern matching. I'd be very curious about the computer model used to establish this. Matching three points on the ground to three stars in the sky seems very speculative to me, particularly if you are sampling from the stars over the last 10,000 years. Matching two stars to two points on earth is even worse.

How did the model determine an alignment, and did it measure the confidence level (in a statistical sense) that the alignments were not due to chance?

As I understand matters (which is not well) Leo is a construct from Babylonian astrology. Is there good evidence that ancient Egypt and Babylon shared the same constellations of the zodiac?

even if they know about precession, why would they choose to make the connection with 10500bc? i always wondered there was an ancient advanced civilization, but i have no evidence whatsoever to support it. so i'll rest my case here

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For those who don't know ...

1. It is silly to deny that the Giza Complex, and many other ancient sites, are patterned after constellations in the sky. The effort was there, so was the knowledge on how to accomplish it. It is foolish to say that the Egyptians had the wherewithall to build such monumental structures with amazing precision, but they couldn't figure out how to place them accurately to depict a constellation from the ground. I can take any image, and using a grid system, reproduce that image to almost any scale without the need for air balloons or aliens from space.
If you look at a plotting of the pyramids from the same era, the pattern is startlingly accurate, even down to the slight deviation of the third pyramid at Giza in alignment with the others which mirrors the slight deviation of Alnitak in relation to Mintaka and Alnilam.
The thing about it being patterned on the stars as they appeared in 1o,5oo BCE, well, hasn't anyone heard of star maps? Why is it so imposible to think that they couldn't have determined that simply by using the maps they had.
It is arrogant to think that we came up with all this stuff first. Did the first modern astronomer to discover the precession of the heavens given this knowledge by aliens too then?
Just because the records haven't been found, didn't mean they didn't exist.
Who is to say exactly what men lost in that fire at Alexandria.

2. The connection with 1o,5oo BCE came into play when someone looked at the map of the pyramids at Giza and surrounding areas, including the Nile River, and compared this to the heavens.
In relation the Nile, the pyramids line up just as the belt stars in Orion line up to the Milky Way. It isn't perfect, but it is close enough for many to state it wasn't coincidental. That's fine. I think the Egyptians were skilled enough to pull it off.
However, those who really believe this alignment is truth took the sim a step further and tried to extrapolate exactly when the stars and the Milky Way would have lined up to the pyramids and the Nile and that occurs only in the year 1o,5oo BCE.
It is an interesting enigma, but one that cannot be answered by any means other than discovery of the "master plan" in writing dating back to the construction of the pyramids.
Perhaps there was an important alignment in that year. Maybe that was the year of some major cultural event we have no idea. They didn't say.
I am one to believe that it isn't out of the realm of belief to think that a relatively advanced society was functioning back then.

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"A subtle thought that is in error may yet give rise to fruitful inquiry that can establish truths of great value." - Isaac Asimov

I, for one, never expressed an opinion on whether or not the Egyptians of 2500 BC were capable of representing a constellation with structures on the ground. If it comes to that, I wouldn't doubt it at all. They were skilled surveyors, and doubtless learned about the precesesion of the equinoxes they same way everyonse else did: by carefully measuring the positions of the stars over decades.

My question was: How good is the evidence for the particular alignment suggested in the earlier post by A.DIM? When someone tells me a computer model aligned two points on the ground with two stars in the sky during an interval when the celestial pole completed nearly a quarter of its march around the sky I am not impressed. Now if the two landmarks, the two stars, and the date of alignment were all picked a priori rather then a posteriori, that would be interesting, but that is not the impression I got from A. DIM's or Val Trottan's posts. Can anyone point me to this model so I can give it a more studied assesment?

It takes 72 years for precession to move the skies only 1 degree, so "measuring.... stars over decades" doesn't really work for me as an explanation for the Egyptians' discovering the Precession - especially if scholars maintain that the Egyptians didn't know the earth was a sphere.

There appears to be much "evidence" for and against the claim that Giza represents a "terrestrial map" of the skies in 10500bc. Bauval & Hancock, I believe, were the first to "popularize" the idea but many others have delved into this idea as well.
Astronomer Tony Fairall published a piece in the Journal of Royal Astronomical Society in '99 about the alignments and concluded that the evidence was "thin." Here's a link reviewing the "alignment" claims.

This link has terrible grammar and spelling, but does have some good diagrams of the alignments.

And this link claims to show "scientific evidence" that there "indeed may be something to this."

I think I read somewhere that it was CyberGlobe 4.1 or something that was used to model these alignments. But I think that anyone who has "skylab" program can input the coordinates of the sphinx, facing due East, can "rewind" the skies to 10500bc to find out for themselves.

1 degree is almost twice the width of the moon in the sky, this is going to be noticeable if the eqyptians did careful measurement over time and kept historic records. Also, they don't have to know the shape of the Earth to do the measurement. A greek by the name of Hipparchus even developed a device for measuring the precession.

It's funny the degree issue is raised here 'cause just last night, with the lovely pairing of the moon and Venus in the east at about 6 p.m. I was outside, walking to my car and the Society columnist was walking in. I pointed out the moon/Venus conjunction to him and he asked me how far apart they were. I proceeded to show him how to guestimate degrees using fingers held at arms length and he said "One degree is that big?"

The Egyptians were around for a few thousand years. The Greeks for 2,ooo. The sky moves a full 5 degrees, or roughly the width of your fist held at arms length, in just 360 years. To a society tooling about for over 2,ooo years... you do the math.
No wonder they knew about precession. It was right in front of their face the whole time. They just had to have maps and the desire to actually pay attention.
Obviously they had both.

No magic or aliens required.

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"A subtle thought that is in error may yet give rise to fruitful inquiry that can establish truths of great value." - Isaac Asimov

Yes, I'm aware of Hipparchus' contribution to the discovery of Precession, but I don't think it's that simple.
Consider this:

"Further, Newtonian precession cannot be used to mark events prior to Newton. Hipparchus described what is essentially an east to west motion around the equator while Newton describes a north to south and back to north again motion. Assuming structures such as the pyramids were built sighting a star, computing where stars were 5,000 years ago using Newtonian precession will not put the stars in the same location they would be in by using Hipparchus’ view of the stars moving east to west through the houses of the zodiac.

The pyramid builders didn’t know about Newtonian precession."

So, did the Egyptians know about Precession or not?