Zecharia Sitchin

Personal Life

Zecharia Sitchin was born on July 11, 1920 in Baku, Azerbaijan of the SSR, but was raised in mandatory Palestine, which is modern day Israel. He was the son of Isaac and Genia Sitchin. As a child, Sitchin studied ancient languages, such as Hebrew, Akkadian, and Sumerian. Sitchin received a degree in economic history from the University of London. He moved to New York City, New York in 1952, but before that he worked as an editor and journalist in Israel. He lived in New York City with his wife (died in 2007) and children until he died on October 9, 2010 at 90 years old.

Books

Sitchin published a total of 16 books in his lifetime, the first published in 1976 and last published in 2015. His last two books were published 3 and 5 years after he died. His books list as the following: “The 12th Planet” (1976), “The Stairway to Heaven” (1980), “The Wars of Gods and Men” (1985), “The Lost Realms” (1990), “When Time Began” (1993), “The Cosmic Code” (1998), and “The End of Days” (2007) conclude the Earth Chronicles series. The next four are companion books and they list as the following: “Genesis Revisited” (1990), “Divine Encounters” (1995), and “The Earth Chronicles Handbook” (1995), “There Were Giants Upon the Earth” (2010). Sitchin’s last 3 published books are standalone novels and they list as the following: “The Lost Book of Enki” (2001), “The King Who Refused to Die” (2013), and “The Anunnaki Chronicles” (2015).

Pseudo Archaeological Ideas

Sitchin’s arguably most influential book was his first book published. It is titled “The 12th Planet”. In this book, Sitchin claims the existence of a “12th planet” in our solar system called Nibiru (or Planet X). The evidence provided for this claim is from the famed Sumerian scribed clay tablets. These tablets are inscribed with cuneiform, an ancient language that prevailed for 3 millenia. According to Sitchin, he alone could read and correctly interpret these tablets. Nibiru is said to only come near Earth every ~3,600 years because of its long elliptical orbit. The inhabitants that Sitchin claimed lived on this planet were dubbed the Anunnaki. These technologically advanced, nine feet tall peoples supposedly arrived on Earth 450,000 years ago, landing in the Persian gulf in search of natural resources, specifically gold. In order to mine this gold, the Anunnaki genetically engineered a new species from Anunnaki genes and a native species Homo erectus. Thus Homo sapiens were born.

Mesopotamian Myth and History

According to Mesopatamian mythology, the Anunnaki is the name for the highest gods and goddesses in their pantheon, also sometimes referred to as the Anunna. This pantheon consists of seven most powerful and important deities. They are named An (primordial god of the cosmos), Enlil (god of the winds and the fates), Enki (most likely seen as god of water), Ninhursaĝ (original mother goddess), Nanna (god of the moon), Utu (god of the sun, stands for the light of the sun), and Inana (goddess of love, but fiery, passionate, and sexual love). These names are different according to where exactly in Mesopotamia you are focusing, as Akkadians may have different names from some of these beings. The difference between these empires was where they were located with Akkad in northern Mesopotamia and Sumer in southern Mesopotamia. Eventually Akkad conquered southern Sumer and united northern and southern Mesopotamia under one ruler. These divine beings were worshiped in ziggurats, layered pyramids with a flat top. One of the most important tasks that the Anunna were responsible for was deciding the fates of those who worshipped them.

The famous tablets that Sitchin claimed he alone could read, are a set of clay tablets inscribed with cuneiform. Translations from other scholars pose a very different story than the one Sitchin constructed. According to scholars, the translation is of geometric calculations used to predict the motions of Jupiter, which the Sumerians called Nibiru, the celestial body affiliated with the god Marduk (head of the Mesopotamian pantheon in the first millennium) the patron god of Babylon, the southern capital of Mesopotamia. Babylon was the center of Mesopotamian civilization for roughly two millennia.