Marduk, Nibiru, Planet X, 12th Planet, 2012

The Marduk Connection: Part 2

This very brief observation around the world, whispers us an unusual “wind of change” around the globe on this mysterious time period. As if something very serious happened around 1650 BC and it caused a chain of waves which washed the face of the ancient world and led it to a sudden and a dramatic change. A change, which prepared and determined the new circumstances that lead humanity upto today. What can it be?

All data and evidence lead us towards a very big and effective natural disaster: A catastrophe, which probably occured around 1650 BC and all around the world. We do have some recent findings and evidence about the results of a natural calamity. The most certain and obvious one is from the ancient Minoan island of Thera (now called Santorini.) The geologists and archaeologists now know that along with a volcanic eruption, there came strong earthquakes which were followed by tsunamis on the island between 1645-1628 BC. The result was not only a disaster on Thera, which caused the collapse of the advanced city of Akrotiri, but strong effects in nearby areas as well. The tsunamis reached all the East Mediterranean Sea and the shores of Egypt; caused very serious damages in Aegean Islands and Ancient city of Byblos. The effects of the catastrophe were not limited with geological activities but there were also some dramatic climate changes in the near east, caused by the “Volcanic Winter Effect” (8), which was followed by a famine that shook all the old world from Canaan to India.

A well-known Sumerian myth about “Kur” (a dragon) gives us some clues about the climate changes in Mesopotamia in an “unknown” time. Enki, the Lord of the Earth and Waters, finally kills Kur, who caused a lot of trouble to the land. But when Kur died, “the ’subterranean waters’ rose on the ground which made agriculture impossible” as famous sumerologist Samuel N. Kramer comments (9). In another less-known yet very impressive epic called “Seven Evil Winds”, we are informed about a horrible catastrophe which involves a “total darkness in daytime” and the disappearance of the Sun (Shamash) and the Moon (Sin):

“Seven are they, messengers to King Anu are they,
From city to city darkness work they,
A hurricane, which mightily hunts in the heavens, are they
Thick clouds, that bring darkness in heaven, are they,
Gusts of wind rising, which cast gloom over the bright day, are they” (10)

There is a similar story in Hittite mythology: A Hittite cuneiform script found on a clay tablet tells us a story about a cataclysm, caused by a demon named Hahimmas. The plants were dead, the lands were dry, the rivers were short of water and agriculture was almost impossible. Worse than this, when the gods looked for the Sun in order to demand help to stop this calamity, they realized that it was not up there in the sky! “It must be around here somewhere,” thought the gods, because they could feel the heat of it but they were unable to spot it in the sky. The story describes a total nightmare, in which, the sun disappeared as if it was stopped “turning” somewhere below the horizon. (11)

The Earth stopped spinning?

The “easiest” way to explain this Hittite myth is to relate the events mentioned in the story to a “seasonal symbolism” combined with the “memories of a solar eclipse”. But is this simple explanation enough to make ourselves feel “in comfort”? As we know by the achievements of archaeoastronomy in last century, the ancient stargazers were definitely able to tell a “solar eclipse” from a very “unusual” event in which the sun “disappears”. In fact, there are some very interesting records about similar events in both sides of the Atlantic in ancient times. One of them is “the night without sunrise” in ancient Inca land of Peru, as Zecharia Sitchin states in volume 3 of his “Earth Chronicles” series:

“According to Montesinos and other chroniclers, the most unusual event took place in the reign of Titu Yupanqui Pachacuti II, the fifteenth monarch in Ancient Empire times. It was in the third year of his reign, when ‘good customs were forgotten and people were given to all manner of vice,’ that ‘there was no dawn for 20 hours.’ In other words, the night did not end when it usually does and sunrise was delayed for twenty hours. After a great outcry, confessions of sins, sacrifices and prayers, the sun finally rose.” (12)

Sitchin connects this event to another one apparently occured around the same time, on the opposite side of the earth: When Israelites, under the leadership of Joshua had crossed the Jordan River and defeated the Canaanite forces, Lord God had helped them by “casting down great stones” upon the enemies, and during this battle, the sun and the moon had stood still a whole day, according to Bible. Sitchin calculates the time on the both sides of the Atlantic and concludes that the two events coincided around 1393 BC. He uses two reference points to render this calculation: The dating of Biblical Exodus to 1433 BC and the dating of Titu Yupanqui Pachacuti II’s reign to 1400 BC.

Strangely enough, this dating of the “day the sun stood still” does not fit Sitchin’s timetable for the orbital passages of Nibiru, the “12th Planet”, for he places the last two pinpoints to 3800 BC and 200 BC respectively. So it appears as if this very unusual event (which leads us to think of a “polar shift” during which the earth stops spinning for a short while) had occured 2400 years after a previous passage and 1200 years before the next one. We then reserve our right to ask Sitchin “what could have caused this unusual event around 1400 BC if it was not Nibiru” and let us suggest our own dating:

Don Fernando de Montesinos‘ chronicles of Peru were often found “very unorthodox” by the mainstream academicians and generally disregarded. Montesinos, a well educated Spaniard of late 16th century, collected his study on Ancient Inca culture in his famous work: “Memorias Antiguas Historiales y Politicas del Peru.” His work was considered somehow “revolutionary” because Montesinos had two claims about the roots of the Incas: First, the Inca were the descendants of Biblical Ophir from Mt. Ararat; and second, the eve of the civilization in Peru was around 3000 BC.

We may consider the first claim still “very extraordinary” at least; but his timeline about the roots of civilization in Peru has almost been proved by the new evidence. Since 1994, archaeologists (the chief of the team was Ruth Shady, a Peruvian scholar) have been working on an ancient site in Pacific coast of Peru, Caral. The site was first discovered in 1905 but was not excavated. In early 2001, scholars announced the results of their work in Caral: All evidence found at the site indicated a civilization, capable of building pyramides around 3000 BC. On February 24th, 2002, Craig Mauro from the Associated Press, told the story of Caral:

“Since 1994, Shady and a team of archaeologists have sifted through dunelike mounds on this desert plateau overlooking the Supe River valley, 90 miles northwest of Lima, in what could be the cradle of civilization in the Americas. The archaeologists knew early on that they were unearthing a city. But they could not find ceramics or pottery, suggesting it was built when ancient Americans were still thought to live in decentralized rural societies. Shady proposed that Caral predated Mayan settlements in Mexico and Central America by centuries, a claim she said her colleagues greeted with disbelief until last April. That was when she and two American researchers published hard proof in the journal Science. The Americans, Jonathan Haas of Chicago’s Field Museum and Winifred Creamer of Northern Illinois University, had carbon-dated material from Caral’s main pyramid to as far back as 2627 B.C. Shady said people began settling the city about 2900 B.C. and that it was continuously inhabited for 1,000 years. Shady believes Caral was a sacred city and administrative center for a civilization that built 17 other sites, most still buried in the Supe Valley and on the nearby Pacific coast.” (13)

This is definitely a very “revolutionary” finding; at least, as revolutionary as Montesinos, who suggested that the “Year Zero” of the Peruvian civilization was 2900 BC. As Craig Mauro reported on February 24th, chief of the team Ruth Shady told him about a 1000 years time span for the ancient city Caral. Then, this “sacred city and administrative center” was left around 1600 BC.

“Eventually Caral would spawn 17 other pyramid complexes scattered across the 35-square-mile area of the Supe Valley. Then,around 1600 BC., for reasons that may never be answered,the Caral civilization toppled, though it didn ‘t disappear overnight. ‘They had time to protect some of their architectural structures,burying them discreetly,’ says Shady. Other nearby areas,such as Chupacigarro,Lurihuasi and Miraya,became centers of power. But based on Caral ’s size and scope, Shady believes that it is indeed the mother city of the Incan civilization.” (14)

We do not know the other parts of the story, occured in other 17 sites Shady mentioned, because we do not have any findings or traces from that sites yet. But this date alone indicates a much earlier time for “the night without sunrise” than Sitchin suggested. We know that, the ancient Peruvians believed “good customs were forgotten and people were given to all manner of vice,” that “there was no dawn for 20 hours.” Could it be the abandoning of a sacred city (in which the inhabitants had built pyramids for their gods, centuries before the Egyptians)? Though there are no enough evidence to support this, I believe the event called “the night without sunrise” happenned sometime around 1650 BC.

Exodus: Sediments of catastrophic events in collective memory

The “counterpart” of the event in the Near East (”the day the sun stood still”) according to Sitchin was the Israelites’ victory over the Canaanites, as it was told in the Old Testament. While constructing the timeline, Sitchin uses the date he proposed for the Biblical Exodus, 1433 BC. Then, he takes the “40 years of wandering in Sinai Peninsula” literally and places the event just on 1393 BC.

Though he is a brilliant researcher and author without any doubt, there is a disturbing problem with Sitchin’s theories: His obsession to verify the Old Testament as an actual historical source. This is somehow confusing because he is Sitchin himself who already proved that the Old Testament had borrowed most of its themes from much older sources, and the writers of the Old Testament had edited (rewritten) some of them, to make them conform to their supposedly “monotheistic” religion.

Sitchin’s strong belief in the Holy Bible reflects itself when it comes to “fit” the dates of ancient events to the “history of Jews”. It is very obvious when he places the orbital passage of Nibiru to 3800 BC (a well conforming date for “Year Zero” of Jews, 3761 BC) and he marks this dates as the “eve of the Sumerian civilization” in Mesopotamia. According to Sitchin, this supplies a “double check” for the significance of the year but he seems to forget that the year 3761 BC was the “date of Creation” in Jewish calendar, while his own theory mentioned some 432,000 years before the “Deluge” (for which he suggests another date, 8,000 years older than the Jewish “Year Zero”.) Thus, Sitchin takes almost every time span mentioned in the Old Testament literally, and he does the same for “40 years in Sinai” while dating the counterpart of “the night without sunrise.”

I believe, there had never occured a single event, that fits or verifies the Biblical Exodus. Rather, there had been a chain of similar extraordinary events in ancient Near East, that had been carved on the collective memory of ancients, and spread mostly with oral tradition: A horrible catastrophe. Nobody parted the “Red Sea” by raising his staff: Instead, it was “Sea of Reeds” (15) which was dried and fragmented enough to allow passage, by the effects of the earthquakes and sudden climate change. No Pharaoh was able to deal with the departure of some nomadic tribes from Egypt (nor any pharaoh could care), because they were busy enough with the shocking events occured around the “Two Lands”. The calamities attributed to fictitious Moses were actually the results of the catastrophe: Ashes raining, blood in rivers, fatal diseases… Finally, “40 years in the deserts of Sinai Peninsula” was merely about a desperate wandering in vast lands of ancient Near East, during or just after the catastrophe: No place to settle; no fresh water to drink; no food because of the famine; tiredness caused by continuous wandering; sickness came with the diseases; hostile reactions of locals at the places they arrived – nobody was welcome during “dark days”… A typical chaos.

The “40 years” time span is most likely a symbol used to indicate the length of duration. (Just like an idiom Turkish people use in everyday life: To mention about a thing we do very rare, we use the idiom “once in a forty years”. This does not mean we do it every 40 years but it states we do it very rarely.) In fact, the writers of Holy Bible have obviously a special interest in number 40 when measuring the time: Moses spent 40 days at Mount Sinai, Jesus was on a 40 days fast when the Devil “examined” him, Noah sailed 40 days after the Flood and so on. It seems the term of “40 days” or “40 years” represents a process which we can call “a time for preparation”. We believe this was the case for the Israelites during Exodus.

I believe, the stories told in Biblical Exodus are the sediments of the events of 1650 BC in the collective memory of the Jews, which were written down by Jahveh priests in Jerusalem almost 7 centuries after the catastrophe. So, it is very likely that the event called “the day the sun stood still” occured just about the same time, around 1650 BC in the near east.

Giant stones to predict the “doomsday”

Another interesting clue is hidden in Salisbury, England. The world’s most enigmatic megalithic monument, Stonehenge, which according to scholars first built around 3000 BC but experienced “restorations” and “rearrangements” during a time span of 1500 years, was apparently designed by the ancient “farmers” of the British Isles (a.k.a “The Beakers“), to observe the positions and movements of heavenly bodies. Through several centuries, this megalithic masterpiece was used by the people for astronomical and religious purposes. The oldest part of it, the “Heel Stone” belong to 3000 BC. A circle of small ditches, called the “Aubrey Holes” were added around 2900 BC. Another circle at he inner part, made by Sarsen stone was built most probably around 2450 BC (16). At the center of the “monument”, there stood the most famous part of Stonehenge : The huge stone blocks, arranged as the inside circle in a form like “horse shoe”; and the building date of these blocks are about 1800 BC. It seems, the whole “sacred place” was continuously being rearranged through the centuries by the ancients. But, with an exception: The restoration and rearrangement suddenly declined and stopped around 1650 BC. Famous archaeo-astronomer Sir Norman Lockyer suggested in 1894 that Stonehenge was a “Sun Temple” and most probably, oriented towards the Summer Solstice sun. Lockyer proposed 1680 BC as the date of the rearrangement (17). As Zecharia Sitchin indicates, “by 1500 BC this era of prosperity suffered an abrupt decline that lasted the better part of a millenium; and Stonehenge must have shared in this decline” (18). Why and under which circumstances Stonehenge suddenly lost its importance among the Beakers after 1680 BC? Could it be a natural calamity that Stonehenge failed to “warn” its builders?

The amazing megalithic monuments found throughout the British Isles have “something” in common with their counterparts in all ancient world: Ziggurats, temples and “observatories”. In contrary to our modern society, the ancient “wise” men directed their eyes very carefully to the sky. It was not just an effort made for calendrical purposes in order to obtain the most suitable times for agricultural activity, as most of the archaeoastronomers suggest. Instead, the strongest motivation for building these monuments with an amazingly accurate orientation was the “fear”. It is almost obvious that the peoples of the ancient world had a restless fear as if the whole earth would collapse on their heads anyday. And, it is also very clear that they thought the catastrophic events on the earth had a strong relationship with the happenings in the heavens. In their sensational work “In Search Of the Cradle Of Civilization“, the author and researchers Georg Feuerstein, Shubhash Kak and David Frawley underline this fear in collective memories:

“According to a minority opinion, human civilization has not been spared large-scale natural catastrophes. On the contrary, this small dissenting voice asserts, Nature’s cataclysmic changes have shaped much of early culture and thought-leading to the creation of astronomical/astrological and calendrical/divinatory sciences at an early phase of our civilization. Our Neolithic (and possibly late Paleolithic) ancestors were anxious to predict the volatile behaviour of our planet. They kept careful and remarkebly accurate records of the motion of the luminaries in the sky, because they felt that there is a connection between the events in the celestial vault and the events on earth. As the esoteric maxim ascribed to Hermes Trismegistus states: As above, so below.” (19)

The authors also mention about a very serious catastrophe occured in Indus Valley, beginning roughly around 1900 BC. They deny any possibility of a sudden “Arian Invasion” and propose this natural disaster as the cause of the sudden collapse of Harappan civilization. And they recall Charles Pellegrino’s words while mentioning the catastrophic events after the volcanic eruption in Thera in 1628 BC: “When Thera exploded, it changed the history of the world.”

In fact, the effects of the catastrophe and its traces are now being discovered all around the Asia (or even at Central and South America); and the most devastating part of it happened not in 1900 BC but as combined evidence found in the ancient world show, around 1650 BC. Thera incident was most likely the “most terrifying cutscene” of the sequence.

A “Giant Planet”?

According to Zecharia Sitchin, Ancient Sumerian clay tablets mention about a “giant planet” in our very own solar system. With an orbit like a comet, this huge celestial body, called “Nibiru” in Sumerian texts, completes its orbital cycle around 3600 years (20). Again, Sitchin tells us that, the orbital passages of this divine planet causes a very strong gravitational pull upon earth and sometimes the result of this effect is a direct “catastrophe”, just as in the case of the “Great Flood” story of the Bible.

While scholars tend to ignore the theory and evidence Sitchin supplied in his six volumes of “The Earth Chronicles“, modern astronomers, at least some of them, believe that there should be another planet beyond Pluto. Though it is not observed or detected yet, the orbital anomalities of outer planets indicate a giant celestial body, approaching our system. Astronomers call this still unknown member of our solar system “Planet X” and the quest for detecting it, goes on. As famous astronomer Patrick Moore points out, “Planet X is out there somewhere. It must have been very pale. So, without any idea where to look for it, it is unlikely for us to find it”. (21)

In his chronologies, Sitchin suggests 200 BC as the last passage of Nibiru. This draws a picture of a “returning planet” around 3400 AD. However, I don’t think this is the case. If a chain of natural catastrophes caused by a giant planet did occur on earth in ancient times, we have to go back to ancient history and observe the periods which looked somehow “obscured” or appeared as a “gap” in chronologies. As we presented above, 1650 BC was definitely such a period and we can well speculate that its effects had changed the face of the earth since then. The question is, “Does it have anything to do with the so-called giant planet, mentioned in ancient Sumerian texts?” Or, in other words, could 1650 BC be the last passage of Nibiru through our solar system? If the answer is “yes”, then we are about to experience a very special period in our planet’s history. Because, it gives us a new date for the next orbital passage of Nibiru: Around 2000 AD!