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Chapter Ten
ROYAL DREAMS
FATEFUL ORACLES
"....In the ancient Near East
dreams were not considered a matter of
chance; they were all, to varying degrees, Divine Encounters; in the
least, omens that portend things to come; throughout, channels for
conveying divine will or instructions; and in the utmost, carefully
staged and premeditated epiphanies.
"According to the ancient scriptures, dreams have accompanied
Earthlings from the very beginning of Humankind, starting from the
First Mother, Eve, who had an omen-dream about the slaying of Abel.
After the Deluge, when Kingship was instituted to create both a
barrier and a link between the Anunnaki and the mass of people, it
was the kings whose dreams accompanied the course of human affairs.
And then, when human leaders strayed, the Divine Word was conveyed
through the dreams and visions of Prophets. Within that long record
of dreams and visions, some, as we have seen, stand out by crossing
into the Twilight Zone, where the unreal becomes real, a
metaphysical object assumes a physical existence, an unspoken word
becomes a voice actually heard.
"The Bible is replete with records of dreams as a major form of
Divine Encounter.... in Numbers 12:6, Yahweh is quoted as explicitly
stating (to the brother and sister of Moses) that "if there be a
prophet among you" - a person chosen to convey God’s word - "I the
Lord will make myself known to him in a vision and will speak unto
him in a dream." The significance of the statement is enhanced by
the precision of the wording: In a vision Yahweh makes himself
known, recognizable, visible; in a dream he makes himself heard,
granting oracles.
Mr. Sitchin presents in his book the episode of
Samuel, which can be
found in I Samuel chapter 28. He then continues:
"....It will be recalled that the Divine Spirit that provided
King
David with the Tavnit and written instructions for the Jerusalem
Temple came upon him as he sat himself before the Ark of the
Covenant. The call upon Samuel also occurred as "he was lying in the
sanctuary of Yahweh, where the Ark of Elohim was." The Ark, made of
acacia wood and inlaid with gold inside and out, was intended to
safekeep the Two Tablets of the Law. But its main purpose, as stated
in the Book of Exodus, was to serve as a Dvir - literally, a
"Speaker...."
Mr. Sitchin mentions all other components (listed also in the Book
of Exodus) of the Holy of Holies, which played part in the "presence
of the Lord." He then continues:
"....consecrated priests would enter the Holy of Holies, they had to
burn incense (whose composition was also strictly prescribed by the
Lord) so that a cloud would engulf the Ark; for Yahweh told
Moses,
"it is in the cloud that I shall appear, above the Ark’s cover." But
when two of Aaron’s sons "brought near before the Lord a strange
fire," one that (presumably) failed to create the proper cloud, "a
fire went out from before Yahweh and consumed them."
"Such "supernatural" forces,
bringing to pass the dream oracle of
Samuel and the dream-vision of David, continued to permeate the
Tabernacle even after the Ark itself was moved out [to Jerusalem],
as evidenced by the dream-oracle of Solomon.... but the Tent of
Appointment remained in Gibeon, and Solomon went there....
And it was in Gibeon
that
Yahweh appeared unto Solomon
in a nighttime dream.
And Elohim said:
"Ask what I shall give thee."
"The epiphany developed into a two-way conversation in which Solomon
asked to be granted "an understanding heart to judge my people, that
I may discern between good and bad...." Therefore, said Yahweh, he
would grant him extraordinary Wisdom and Understanding, as well as
riches and long life.
And Solomon awoke,
and lo - it was a dream!
"....Solomon was astounded that it was only a dream; and he did
realize that what had taken place represented a reality, with
lasting effects; thereafter he was indeed endowed with extraordinary
Wisdom and Understanding....
"....Solomon.... did not share the Mesopotamian view of temples as
actually divine dwelling places, but rather as a sacred place for
divine communication.... a permanent substitute for the desert Tent
of Appointment for the Divine Presence.
When the cloud of Yahweh’ s Glory filled the House, after the
priests brought the Ark of the Covenant in the Holy of Holies:
"....Solomon said: "Would
Elohim then come to dwell on Earth? If the
heaven and the highest heaven cannot contain thee, would this House
that I have built?"
"....It was then "that Yahweh appeared unto
Solomon for a second
time.... And Yahweh said to him: "I have heard thy prayer and thy
supplications that thou has made before me, and have sanctified this
House that thou hast built, to place my Shem in it forever, so that
my eyes and my heart shall be there in perpetuity."
"The term
Shem is traditionally translated "name" that by which
somebody is known or remembered. But as we have shown in The 12th Planet, quoting Biblical, Mesopotamian and Egyptian
sources, the term paralleled the Sumerian MU that, though in time it
came to mean "that by which one is remembered,"
originally it
referred to the Skychambers or flying machines of the Mesopotamian
gods....
"....The language employed in the Bible to describe the unexpected
realization by Solomon, suddenly awakened, that the experienced
sight and sound were just a dream, duplicated an earlier instance of
such a sudden realization - that of a Pharaoh:
And Pharaoh awoke,
and lo - it was a dream!
Mr. Sitchin refers here to the dreams that the young Hebrew
Joseph
interpreted, and the story may be found in Genesis chapter 41....
And Joseph said to the Pharaoh: The two dreams are but one single
dream; "that which the Elohim will be doing to the Pharaoh has been
told." It was in other words an omen-dream, a divine revelation of
what will happen in the future by God’s design. It is a foretelling
of seven years of plenty that will be overwhelmed by the subsequent
seven years of shortages and hunger.... And the dream was repeated
twice, he added, because "the thing is firmly resolved by the Elohim,
who will hasten it to come to pass."
"Now then, realizing that
Joseph was possessed of the "Spirit of Elohim," the Pharaoh appointed him Overseer over all the land of
Egypt to help avert the hunger....
"....In fact, there exists an earlier Egyptian record of
such a
cycle of seven years of plenty followed by seven lean years. It is a
hieroglyphic text (transcribed by E.A.W. Budge in Legends of the
Gods); it relates that the Pharaoh Zoser (Circa 2650 B.C.) received
a royal dispatch from the governor of Upper Egypt, in the south, of
a grave famine, because "the Nile had not come in for the space of
seven years."
"So the king "extended his heart back to the beginnings," and asked
the Chamberlain of the gods, the Ibis-headed god Thoth, "What is the
birthplace of the Nile? Is there a god there, and who is that god?"
And Thoth answered that there indeed was a god there who regulates
the waters of the Nile from two caverns and that he was his father
Khnum (alias Ptah, alias Enki), the god who had fashioned Mankind.
"....The text does tell us that once Zoser had been told that the
god in whose hands the fate of the Nile and Egypt’s sustenance was
Khnum, residing far away in the island of Elephantine in Upper
Egypt, the king new what to do: he went to sleep... Expecting and
epiphany, he had one....
And as I slept,
with life and satisfaction,
I discovered the god
standing over against me!
Revealed himself to me.
Concerning me, with friendly face,
these words he declared:
"I am Khnum, thy fashioner."
"The god announced that he would heed the king’s prayers [Zoser’s]
if the king would undertake to "rebuild temples, to restore what is
ruined, and to hew out new shrines" for the deity. For that, the god
said, he will be giving the king new stones as well as "hard stones
which have existed from the beginning of time."
"Then the god promised that in exchange he would open the sluices in
two caverns that are beneath his rock chamber and as a result the
waters of the Nile will begin to flow again.... And when the god
finished speaking, and his image vanished, Zoser "awoke refreshed,
my heart relieved of weariness," and decreed permanent rites of
offerings to Khnum in eternal gratitude.
"The god
Ptah and a vision of him is the central theme of two other
Egyptian dream epiphanies; one of them brings to mind the biblical
tales of the woman who cannot bear a male heir.
 "....Among other instances of royal oracle dreams found in Egyptian
records, the most famous is that by the prince who later ascended
the throne to be crowned as Thothmes IV. His dream is well known
because he describes it on a stela that he had erected between the
paws of the great Sphinx in Giza - where it still stands for
all to see
(click image right)
"As recorded on the stela the prince "used to occupy himself with
sport on the desert highland of Memphis." One day he lay to rest
near the necropolis of Giza....
"....As he was sleeping, he heard
the Sphinx speak "with his own
mouth, saying:"
Look at me, my son, Thothmose . . .
Behold, my state is that of one in need,
my whole body is going to pieces.
The sands of the desert above which I had stood
have encroached upon me . . .
"....In exchange [for the sands to be removed, so that the Sphinx
could be seen in all its full majesty], the Sphinx - representing
the god Harmakhis - promised him that he would be the successor on
Egypt’s throne....
Though it was a dream, its contents and meaning were crystal clear
to the prince. "He understood the speech of his god." At first
opportunity he carried out the divine request.... and indeed, in
1421 B.C., the prince ascended Egypt’s throne to become Thothmes IV.
"....it has been recorded in connection with a predecessor,
Thothmes
III. The tale of miraculous happenings and a vision of the "Glory of
the Lord" has been inscribed by this king on the temple walls at
Karnak. In this case the god did not speak out; rather, he indicated
his choice of a future monarch through the "working of miracles."
"....as an indication that this prince was the divinely chosen one
for the succession, the god, [Amon-Ra], "worked a marvel" over the
prince. What ensued, Thothmes III wrote, as incredible as it sounds,
as mysterious these things are, really happened:
He opened for me the doors of Heaven;
He spread open for me the portals of its horizon.
I flew up to the sky as a Divine Falcon,
able to see his mysterious form
which is in Heaven,
that I might adore his majesty.
[And] I saw the being-form of the
Horizon God in his mysterious
Ways of Heaven.
"On his heavenly flight,
Thothmes III wrote in his annals, he "was
made full with the Understanding of the gods." The experience and
its claims, surely bring to mind the heavenly ascents of Enmeduranki
and Enoch, and the "Glory of Yahweh" seen by the Prophet Ezekiel.
"The conviction that dreams were divine oracles, foretelling things
to come, was a firmly held belief throughout the ancient Near East.
Ethiopian kings also believed in the power of dreams as guidelines
for actions to be taken (or avoided) and of events about to happen.
"....The Phillistines called their principal deity Dagon, a name or
epithet that can be translated as "He of the Fishes" - the
god of
Pisces, an attribute of Ea/Enki. This identification, however, is
not so clear-cut and certain, because when this deity appears
elsewhere in the ancient Near East, his name is spelled Dagan, which
could mean "He of the Grains" - a god of farming. Whatever his true
identity, this god featured in several omen-dreams reported in the
state archives of the kingdom of Mari, a city state that flourished
at the beginning of the second millennium B.C. until its destruction
by the Babylonian king Hammurabi in 1759 B.C.
"....Dreams as a venerated form of communication were also recorded
in the lands on the Upper Euphrates and all the way into Asia Minor.
With the coastal lands that are nowadays Israel, Lebanon, and Syria
serving both as a land bridge as well as a battlefield between
contending Egyptian Pharaohs and Mesopotamian kings - each claiming
to act on orders of their gods - no wonder that in that meeting and
melting zone the omen-dreams also reflected the clash of cultures
and mixing of omens.
"Egyptian records of royal omen-dreams include a text known to
scholars as the Legend of the Possessed Princess - one of the oldest
records, inter alia, of exorcism. Written on a stela that is now in
the Louvre Museum in Paris, it tells how the Prince of Bekhten (the
land Bactria on the Upper Uphrates), who had married an Egyptian
princess sought the help of the Pharaoh Ramses II to cure the
princess "of the spirits that possessed her."
"....The Prince of Bekhten asked that an Egyptian god "be brought to
contend with the spirit."
"Receiving the petition in his capital Thebes during a religious
festival, the Pharaoh went to the temple of the god Khensu described
as a son of Ra and usually depicted with a falcon’s head on which
the Moon rests in its crescent....
The god listened.... and using magical powers, the "evil spirit" was
exorcised....
"....Further north of
Bactria, in the Land of the Hittites in Asia
Minor, the conviction that royal dreams were divine revelations was
also firmly held. One of the longest extant texts that reflect that
conviction is called by scholars The Plague Prayers of Mursilis....
As confirmed by historical records, a plague had afflicted the land
and decimated the population....
"Mursilis learned that his father
Shuppiliumas, in whose time the
plague began, did transgress in two ways: he discontinued certain
offerings to the gods, and he broke his oath in a treaty with the
Egyptians to keep the peace, and took Egyptian captives back to
Hatti-land; and it was with them that the plague came to nest among
the Hittites....
By this communication with the god,
Mursilis managed to restore the
land and population after promising the deity restitution of
offerings and peace.
"....Hittite dream reports, at least to the extent that they have
been found, reflect the importance that was attached there to the
proper observance of the rites and requirements of worship. In one
discovered text " a dream of his majesty the king" is reported thus:
In the dream the Lady Hebat Who Judges (the spouse of Teshub) said
again and again to his majesty, ’When the God Storm comes from
heaven, he should not found you to be stingy.’ While dreaming, the
king responded that he had made a golden ritual object for the god.
But the goddess said, "It is not enough!" Then another king, the
king of Hakmish, entered the dream-conversation, saying to his
majesty: " Why have you not given the Hahupal-instruments and the
lapis-lazuli stones which you have promised to Teshub?"
The Hittite king had to comply.
"....The Assyrian king’s interest in, and recording of, the dream of
a foreign king was but a reflection of the extent of Assyrian
beliefs in the power of dreams as a form of Divine Encounter. The
epiphanies and oracles conveyed by royal dreams were a phenomenon
eagerly sought after, and reported, by the kings of Assyria; the
same held true for the kings of their neighbour and rival Babylonia.
"Ashurbanipal himself, who kept extensive annals on baked clay
prisms, recorded several dream experiences, often they were by
others rather than himself....
"....The annals of Ashurbanipal, who claimed that among his great
knowledge was the ability to interpret dreams, are replete with
references to oracles - probably through dreams, though this is not
specified - given him by this or that of the "great gods, my lords"
in connection with his military campaigns. His interest in dreams
and their interpretation led him also to have state archives
examined for records of past oracle dreams....
Mr. Sitchin continues with more examples involving
Esarhaddon,
father of Ashurbanipal; Daniel and the dreams of Nebuchadnezzar
(Daniel chapter 2)....
VIGNETTE
DO GODS TOO DREAM?
Excerpt
"Do all animals who sleep also dream? Or just mammals, or only
primates - or is dreaming unique to Humankind?
"If, as seems to be the case, dreaming is indeed one of the unique
talents and abilities that Man has not acquired by Evolution alone,
then it has to be part of the genetic legacy bequeathed to us by
the
Anunnaki. But to do so, they themselves had to be able to dream. Did
they?
"The answer is Yes; the Anunnaki "gods" also had oracle dreams.
Some examples are given in the book.
Return
Chapter Eleven
ANGELS AND
OTHER EMISSARIES
"A nighttime vision, a UFO sighting, and the appearance of angels
come together in one of the most intriguing dream reports in the
Bible, known as Jacob’s Dream. It was a most significant Divine
Encounter, for in it Yahweh himself vowed to protect Jacob, the son
of Isaac and grandson of Abraham, to bless him and his seed, and to
give the Promised Land to him and his descendants forever.
"....In this
Divine Encounter, in a nighttime vision, Jacob saw
what, without doubt, we would nowadays call a UFO; except that to
him it was not an Unidentified Flying Object: he well realized that
its occupants or operators were divine beings, "angels of Elohim,"
and their Lord or commander none other than Yahweh himself,
"standing upon it." What he had witnessed left no doubt in his mind
that the place was a "Gate-way to Heaven" - a place from which the Elohim could rise skyward....
"....The
commander identified himself to Jacob as "Yahweh, the Elohim" - the
DIN.GIR - "of Abraham thy forefather and the Elohim of
Isaac." The operators of the "ladder" are identified as "Angels of Elohim" not simply as angels; and Jacob, realizing that he had
unknowingly stumbled upon a site used by these divine aeronauts,
named the place Beth-El ("The House of El"),
El being the singular
of Elohim.
"....The Hebrew term Mal’akhim does not mean "angels" at all, it
literary means "emissaries"; and the term is employed in the Bible
for regular, flesh-and-blood human emissaries who carried royal
rather than divine messages....
"....The story of Jacob is dotted with oracle dreams and angelic
encounters....
You may find these stories in the Bible, Book of Genesis chapter 32.
"....The first reference in the Bible to an
Angel of the Lord, in
chapter 16 of Genesis, relates an event in the time of Jacob’s
grandfather Abraham. Abraham and his wife Sarah were getting old -
he in his mid-eighties, she ten years younger; and still they had no
offspring. Abraham had just fulfilled the mission for which he had
been ordered to Canaan - to ward off attacks on the Spaceport in the
Sinai: The War of the Kings (described in chapter 14 of Genesis)....
"....The scene is replete with mystery. These strangers appear to
Abraham suddenly, seen by him as he lifts his eyes skyward. He sees
them standing "above him." Though unidentified at this point, he
quickly recognizes their extraordinary - divine? - nature. Somehow
one of them is distinguished, and Abraham addresses him, calling him
"My Lord...."
"....As the tale continues, we read that "the person rose up from
there to survey over upon Sodom, and Abraham went with them to see
them off."
Besides the fact that this Encounter, with Yahweh himself, accounts
for the promise of an heir through Sarah, it also accounts for the
revelation to Abraham by Yahweh himself for the reason of the visit,
it was to be the fate of Sodom and Gomorrah, which the two "angels"
had gone to survey....
 "....The popular notion of
angels, an image sustained and bolstered
by centuries of religious art, is that of fully anthropomorphic,
humanlike beings who, unlike people, are equipped with wings.
Indeed, were they to be stripped of their wings, they would be
indistinguishable from humans. Brought over to Western iconography
by early Christianity, the undoubted origin of such a representation
of angels was the ancient Near East. We find them in Sumerian art -
the winged emissary who led Enkidu away, the guardians with the
deadly beams. We find them in the religious art of Assyria and
Egypt, Canaan and Phoenicia. Similar Hittite representations were
even duplicated in South America, on the Gate of the Sun in Tiahuanacu
(click image right) -
evidence of Hittite contacts with that distant place.
"Though modern scholars, perhaps wishing to avoid religious
connotations, refer to the depicted beings as "protective geniuses,"
the ancient people considered them to be a class of lesser gods, a
kind of rank-and-file divine being that only carried out orders of
the "Great Lords" who were "Gods of Heaven and Earth."
"Their representation as winged beings was clearly intended to
indicate their ability to fly in Earth’s skies; and in that they
emulated the gods themselves, and specifically so those who had been
depicted as winged deities - Utu/Shamash and his twin sister
Inanna/Ishtar.
The affinity to the Eaglemen whose commander Utu/Shamash was, is
also obvious. In this regard the Lord’s statement (Exodus 19:4) that
he would carry the Children of Israel "on the wings of eagles"
might
have been more than allegorical; it also brings to mind the tale of
Etana whom an eagle or Eagleman had carried aloft on the orders of
Shamash.
"But as the biblical textual descriptions.... such winged assistants
were called in the Bible Cherubim rather than Mal’akhim. Cherub (the
singular of Cherubim) derives from the Akkadian Karabu "to bless,
consecrate." A Karibu (male) was "a blessed/consecrated one" and a
female Kuribi meant a Protective Goddess.
"As such the biblical
Cherubim were assigned (Genesis 3:24) to guard
the "the way to the Tree of Life...."; to protect with their wings
the Ark of the Covenant; and to serve as bearers of the Lord, be it
as supporter of the Divine Throne in the Ezequiel vision or by
simply carrying Yahweh aloft: "He rode upon a cherub and flew away,"
we read in II Samuel 22:11 and Psalms 18:11 (another parallel of the
tale of Etana). According to the Bible, then, the winged Cherubim
had specific and limited functions; not so the Mal’akhim, the
Emissaries who had come and gone on assigned missions and, as
plenipotentiary ambassadors, had considerable discretionary powers.
"This is made clear for the events at Sodom.... Miraculous deeds
performed by Mal’akhim abound in the Bible, the blinding of the
unruly crowds at Sodom being just one of them....
"....Equally illustrative are the instances when the Angels appeared
without such a distinctive object [sword....] in their hands, for
then they had to resort to other magical acts to convince the
recipients of the Divine Word that the embassy was authentic....
Like in the case of the
Angel who appeared to Samson’s father to be, Mano’ah,
"....When the Angel appeared a second time to make sure the
instructions for conceiving and for raising the boy were being
followed, Mano’ah sought to verify the speaker’s identity, for he
looked like a "man". So he asked the Emissary, "What is thy name?"
"Instead of revealing his identity, the "angel did a wonder."
....So Manoah took the kid of sacrifice
and placed it on the rock
as an offering to Yahweh
And the Angel did a wonder,
as Manoah and his wife looked on:
As the flame rose up from the altar,
the angel of Yahweh ascended skyward
within the flame.
And Manoah and his wife were witnessing this
and they fell on their faces to the ground....
"....A more renowned instance of using fire magically in order to
convince the observer that he is indeed being given a divine message
is the incident of the Burning Bush. It was when Yahweh had chosen
Moses, a Hebrew raised as an Egyptian prince, to lead the Israelites
out of bondage in Egypt. Having escaped the wrath of the Pharaoh to
the Wilderness of Sinai, Moses was shepherding the flock of his
father-in-law, the priest of Midian, "and he came to the mountain of
the Elohim in Horeb...."
"Such miracles were not needed for identifying the speaker as a
divine being, as we have recounted, when the speaker was holding the
bent weapon or magical wand.
"Ancient depictions suggest that there was probably, at least in
some instances, another distinctive feature by which the "persons"
or "men" were recognized as Divine Emissaries: the special "goggles"
that they wore, usually as part of their headgear. In this regard
the Hittite pictograph that expressed the term "divine" is
instructive, for it represents the "Eye" symbols that proliferated
in the upper Euphrates region as idols placed atop altars or
pedestals. The latter were clearly emulating depictions of deities
whose outstanding feature (beside their divine helmet) were the
goggled eyes....
"....Mesopotamian kings asserted from time to time that their patron
deity provided them with divine weapons to assure a victory; it was
thus even more plausible that the gods would provide weapons or
magical wands to their own emissaries, the Angels.
"Indeed, the very notion of
Divine Emissaries can be traced back to
the gods of Sumer, the Anunnaki, when they employed emissaries in
their dealings with one another rather than with Earthlings.
After several other examples of personal emissaries of the "gods,"
Mr. Sitchin mentions,
"....Ashurbanipal, in his annals, asserted that it was "Nusku [Enlil’s
emissary] the faithful emissary," who conveyed the divine decision
to make him king of Assyria; then on the god’s command, Nusku
accompanied Ashurbanipal on a military campaign to assure victory.
Nusku, Ashurbanipal wrote, "took the lead of my army and threw down
my foes with the divine weapon."
"....Isimud/Usmu [Enki’s chief emissary] was sometimes referred to
in the texts as "two faced." This curious description, it turns out,
was a factual one, for in both statues and on cylinder seals he was
indeed shown with two faces. Was he deformed at birth, a genetic
aberration, or was there some profound reason for depicting him so?
While no one seems to know, it occurs to us that this two-facedness
might have reflected this emissary’s celestial association.
"There was something unusual also about
the Sukkal of Inanna/Ishtar,
whose name was Ninshubur. The enigma was that Ninshubur sometimes
appeared to be masculine, at which time the scholars translate his
title as "chamberlain, vizier"; and at other times Ninshubur appears
to be feminine, at which times she is called "chambermaid." The
question is, was Ninshubur bisexual or asexual? An androgynous, a
eunuch, or what?
"....The enigmatic bisexuality, or asexuality of
Ninshubur is
reflected by his/her contesting with other beings - mostly but not
only the creations of Enki - that seem to be neither male nor female
as well as neither divine nor human, a kind of android - automatons
in human form.
When Inanna/Ishtar, unauthorized, went to visit her older sister
Ereshkigal in the Lower World, she was not well received, and she
ends by being turned into a corpse, hung from a stake. The existence
of these asexual emissaries comes to light then, Mr. Sitchin
continues,
"....Ninshubur rushed from god to god to seek help; but no one
except Enki could counteract the death-dealing Namtar.... an Angel
of Death. Unlike the deities or humans, "he has no hands, he has no
feet; he drinks no water, eats no food." So, to save Inanna,
Enki
contrived to fashion similar androids who could go to the "Land of
no Return" and perform their mission safely.
They revived Inanna.
"Commenting on the description of the two emissaries
A. Leo Oppenheim (Mesopotamian Mythology) saw the main attributes that
qualified them to penetrate the domain of Ereshkigal and save
Inanna
as having been
(a)
that they were neither male nor female
(b)
that they were not created in a womb.
Moreover, he found a reference
to the ability of the gods to create "robots" in the Enuma elish,
the Babylonian version of the Creation Epic....
"....In an updated translation of the Sumerian version
Diane Wolkstein (Inanna, Queen of Heaven and Earth) explains the nature of
the two emissaries as "creatures neither male nor female."
A more precise explanation is provided, however, by the
Akkadian
version, in which Enki/Ea created only one being to save
Ishtar. As
rendered by E.A. Speiser (Descent of Ishtar to the Nether World) the
relevant verses read:
Ea in his wise heart conceived an image
and created
Ashushunamir, a eunuch.
"....Holding a wand or a weapon, these
androids belonged to a class
of emissaries called Gallu - usually translated "demons" - whom we
have already encountered in the story of the death of Dumuzi, when
Marduk had sent "the sheriffs" - the Gallu - to seize him....
"....although the Gallu had neither the face nor the body of the
divine Sukkals that served as emissaries between the gods
themselves, they did "hold a staff in their hands, carried a weapon
on their loins." Not flesh and blood, they were described as beings,
"who have no mother, who have no father, neither sister nor brother,
nor wife or child, they know not food, know not water. they flutter
in the skies over Earth like wardens."
"Have these Androids of ancient lore come back in recent times?
"The question is pertinent because of the way in which
the occupants
of UFOs have been described by people who claim to have encountered
them (or even abducted by them): of undetermined sex, a plastic
skin, conical heads, oval eyes - humanlike in shape but definitely
nonhuman, behaving like androids....
"....There was yet another class of Divine Emissaries -
demonic
beings. Some were in the service of Enki, some in the service of
Enlil....
Warriors with bodies of cave birds,
a race with raven’s faces.
The great gods created them;
in the plains the gods built them a city.
"....With the passage of time, and as the gods themselves became
more distant and less visible, the "demons" were held responsible
for every malady, mishap, or misfortune. Incantations were composed,
prescribed appeals to the gods to call off their evildoers; amulets
were made (to be worn or affixed to doorstops) whose "sacred words"
could delay the demon depicted on the amulet - a practice that
continued well into the latest pre-Christian times and has persisted
thereafter.
"On the other hand, in post-biblical times and the Hellenistic Age
that followed the conquests of Alexander, Angels as we think of them
nowadays came to dominate popular and religious beliefs....
Return
Chapter Twelve
THE GREATEST
THEOPHANY
Mr. Sitchin introduces this Chapter by bringing to mind the science
fiction film "The Day The Earth Stood Still" (1952),
"....in which the memorable
Michael Rennie was the Extraterrestrial
who stepped out in Washington, D.C. and spoke his reassuring words
in English . . .
"In truth the above scenario need not to be the summary of a science
fiction movie.... in essence if not in detail - has really happened.
Not in modern times but in antiquity; not in the United States but
in the ancient Near East; and in the actual sequence, the Earth
stood still some time after rather than before the spacecraft
appeared.
"It was indeed the greatest Divine Encounter in human memory - the
greatest Theophany on record, witnessed by no less than a multitude
of 600,000 people.
"The site of the Theophany was Mount Sinai, the "Mountain of the Elohim" in the Sinai peninsula; the occasion was the granting of
the
Laws of the Covenant to the Children of Israel, the high point of an
eventful and miracle-filled Exodus from Egypt.
Mr. Sitchin reminds the reader of the chain of events that
culminated in the Exodus....; "it was a path whose milestones were
Divine Encounters."
[These events all appear in his previous books 1 to 7]
"....Jacob was 130 years old when the Children of Israel began their
sojourn in Egypt; as prophesied, it ended in bondage four hundred
years later. It is with the death and burial of Jacob, and the
subsequent death and mummification of Joseph, that the Book of
Genesis ends.
"The Book of Exodus picks up the story centuries later, "when there
arose a new king over Egypt who knew not Joseph...."
"....Almost four hundred years had passed since the Lord had spoken
to Jacob "in a nighttime vision," until he has now come to take a
look at the Children of Jacob/Israel crying out of their bondage.
That the Elohim intended here was Yahweh becomes clear in the
subsequent narrative. Where was he during those long four centuries?
The Bible does not say; but it is a question to be pondered.
"Be that as it may, the time was propitious for drastic action. As
the biblical narrative makes clear, this change of new developments
was triggered by the death of the Pharaoh "after a long time" of
reign. Egyptian records show that Thothmes III, who had ordered that
Moses be put to death, died in 1450 B.C. His successor on the
throne, Amenhotep II, was a weak ruler who had trouble to keep Egypt
united; and with his ascension, the death sentence against Moses
expired.
Mr. Sitchin brings to mind the ten plagues which affected the
Egyptians, and that were the result for not "letting my people go,"
leading to the real departure and the crossing of the waters....
"....the Children of Israel were free at last, free to proceed
through the desert and its hardships to the edge of the Sinai
peninsula - all the while led by the Divine Pillar that was a dark
cloud during the day and a fiery beacon at night. Water and food
shortages, miraculously averted, and a war with an unexpected Amalekite enemy, still were in store for them. Finally "in the third
month," they arrived in the Wilderness of Sinai " and encamped
opposite the Mount."
"They had arrived at their predetermined destination: the "Mountain
of the Elohim." The greatest Theophany ever was about to begin.
"....Earlier when Moses had given his embassy at this very same
mount, Yahweh stated his intention to "adopt the children of Israel
as his people...." With the Covenant came commandments and laws and
restrictions; they were the price to be paid for qualifying for the Theophany....
"...."Yahweh said unto
Moses: Behold, I shall be coming unto thee in
a thick cloud, enabling the people to hear when I speak with thee,
so that in thee too they shall have faith...." on the third day
shall Yahweh come down upon Mount Sinai, in full sight of all the
people."
"The landing, Yahweh indicated to Moses, would create a danger for
anyone coming too near. "Thou shall set bounds at a distance,
telling them to dare not to try to go up or even touch the Mount’s
edge, "for whoever toucheth it shall surely be put to death...."
"...."it was on the third day, when it was morning," that
the
promised Landing of Yahweh upon the Mount of Elohim began. It was a
fiery descent and a noisy one: "There were thundering sounds and
flashes of lightning, and a dense cloud [was] upon the Mount, and
the Shofar sound, exceedingly strong; and all the people in the
encampment were terrified."
"As the descent of the Lord Yahweh began, "Moses brought forth the
people from the encampment toward the Elohim, and they stationed
themselves at the foot of the Mount," at the boundary that Moses had
marked out all around the Mount.
And Mount Sinai was completely engulfed by smoke,
for Yahweh had descended upon it in a fire.
And the smoke thereof rose up like that of a furnace,
and the whole Mount quaked greatly.
And the sound of the Shofar continued to wax louder;
As Moses spoke, the Elohim answered him in a loud voice.
"(The term Shofar associated in this text with the
sounds emanating
from the Mount is usually translated "horn." Literally, however, it
means "Amplifier" - a device, we believe, that was to enable all the
Israelite multitude, standing at the foot of the mountain, to hear
Yahweh’s voice and his talk with Moses).
"Thus did Yahweh, in full view of all the people, all 600,000 of
them - descend upon Mount Sinai.... and Yahweh called Moses up to
the top of the Mount....
"....It was then, from atop the mount, from within the thick cloud,
that "Elohim spoke.... pronouncing the Ten Commandments....
"....The first three Commandments established monotheism,
proclaimed
Yahweh as the Elohim of Israel, the sole God, and prohibited the
making of idols and their worship....
"....Next came a Commandment intended to express the sanctity of the
People of Israel and their subjection to a higher standard of life,
by setting aside one day a week to be the Sabbath - a day devoted to
contemplation and rest, applying equally to all people, to humans as
well as to their livestock....
"....The fifth affirmative Commandment established the family as the
human unit, headed by the patriarch and the matriarch....
"....And then came
the five No’s that established the moral and
social code between Man and Man rather than as at the beginning,
between Man and God.
Mr. Sitchin continues relating the episode of the writing of the
Law
on the Tablets of the Covenant. He then continues,
"....The granting of the Tablets was an event of lasting
significance, embedded in the memory of the Children of Israel and
therefore requiring witnesses of the highest standing.... Aaron and
Aaron’s two priestly sons and seventy of the tribal elders. They
were not allowed to come all the way (only Moses could do that), but
close enough "to see the Elohim of Israel." Even then all they could
see was the space under the Lord’s feet, "made as of pure sapphire,
like the colours of skies in clearness...." They were no struck
down, and lived to celebrate the Divine Encounter and witness
Moses going up to receive the Tablets....
"....the long time Moses stayed atop the Mount was used to instruct
him in the construction of the Tabernacle, the Mishkan ("Residence")
in which Yahweh would make his presence known to the Children of
Israel.... in addition to the architectural details that were given
orally, Yahweh also showed Moses "the structural model of all of the
instruments thereof." These included the Ark of the Covenant, the
wooden chest inlaid with gold, in which the two Tablets were to be
kept, and on top of which the two Cherubim were to be emplaced;
that, the Lord explained, would be the Dvir - literally,
the Speaker
- "where I will keep the appointments with thee, speaking to thee
from between the two Cherubim."
"....Moses was instructed about the priesthood, naming the only ones
who could approach the Lord (besides Moses) and officiate in the
Tabernacle Aaron, the brother of Moses and the four sons of Aaron.
Their vestments were elaborately prescribed.... including the
Breastplate of Judgment.... it was also to hold in place -
precisely against the priest’s heart - the Urim and Tumim. Though
the exact meaning of the terms has eluded scholars, it is clear from
other biblical references (e.g. Numbers 27:21) that they served as
an oracular panel for obtaining a Yes or No answer from the Lord in
response to a question. The inquiring person’s question was put
before the Lord by the priest, "to ask for the Decision of the Urim
before Yahweh, and in accordance thereof to act." When
King Saul (I
Samuel 28:6) sought Yahweh’s guidance whether to engage in war with
the Philistines, he "inquired of Yahweh in dreams, by the Urim, and
through prophets."
"....Back in the encampment his long absence was interpreted as bad
news, and his failure to show up after several weeks as an
indication that he might have perished by seeing God; "for is there
any flesh" - any mortal human - "who hath heard the voice of a
living Elohim speaking from inside the fire, and stayed alive?"
".... Alerted by Yahweh, "Moses turned and went down from the Mount,
with the two Tablets of the Testimony in his hand." And when he
neared the camp and saw the golden calf, Moses was furious, "and he
threw the tablets out of his hand, and broke them at the foot of the
Mount; and he took the calf which they had made and burnt it in
fire, and [its gold] he ground it into a powder, and strewed the
dust upon the waters.... Moses beseeched the Lord not to abandon the
Children of Israel....
"...."And when the people heard these evil tidings, they mourned."
Moses himself discouraged and despairing, picked his tent and
pitched it outside the encampment, far off from the camp,
And it came to pass,
when Moses was entering the tent,
that the pillared cloud descended,
and stood at the entrance of the tent,
and a voice spoke to Moses.
And when the people, all of them,
saw the pillar of cloud standing
at the entrance to the tent,
the whole people rose up and prostrated
themselves, each at his tent’s entrance.
And Yahweh spoke unto Moses face to face,
as a man would speak unto his friend.
"When the Lord spoke to
Moses from inside the Burning bush, "Moses
covered his face, for he was afraid to look at the Elohim.... At the
end of the forty years of wandering, as the Israelites were ready to
enter Canaan, Moses in his testamental review of the Exodus and the
great Theophany made a point of stressing that "on the day
Yahweh
hath spoken unto you in Horeb, out of the midst of the fire, ye saw
no visage of any kind."
"....But now that the relenting God was talking to Moses "face to
face" - but still from within the cloud-pillar - Moses seized a
moment to seek a reaffirmation of his role as the leader chosen by
the Lord.
"Answering enigmatically, Yahweh said: "Thou canst not see my face,
for no Man can see Me and live."
"So Moses pleaded again: "Please show me thy glory!"
"And Yahweh said: "Behold, there is a place by me; go and stand
there upon the rock. And when my glory shall pass by there, I will
put thee in the cleft of the rock, and will cover thee with my hand
until I have passed by; and I will then remove my hand, and you
shall see my back; but my face shall not be seen."
"The Hebrew name that has been rendered "glory" in English
translations, in all the above quoted instances (previous page on
this site), is Kabod; it stems from the root KBD whose seminal
meaning is "weighty, heavy." Literally then, Kabod would mean "the
heaviness, the weighty thing." That a "thing," a physical object and
not an abstract "glory" is meant when applied to Yahweh is clear
from its first mention in the Bible, when the Israelites "beheld the Kabod of Yahweh," enveloped by the
ubiquitous cloud....
"....Indicating a manifestation of
Yahweh, the term Kabod is so used
in all five books of the Pentateuch.... In all instances, called the
"Kabod of Yahweh," it was something concrete that the people could
see - but always engulfed by a cloud, as though within a dark fog.
"The term is repeatedly employed by the Prophet Ezequiel
in his
descriptions of the Divine Chariot....
"....The Kabod,
Ezequiel wrote (10:4) had a luminosity that shone
through the cloud that shrouded it, a kind of a radiance. This
detail provides an insight into a facet of a Close Encounter by
Moses with the Lord Yahweh and his Kabod....
When Moses spent forty days and forty nights at the Mount, with
Yahweh,
And it came to pass,
when Moses was coming down from Mount Sinai
and the two Tablets of the Testimony in his hand
- as Moses was coming down from the mount -
he knew not that the skin of his face radiated
when He was speaking to him.
And Aaron and all of the Children of Israel,
seeing Moses, saw that the skin of his face radiated,
and they were afraid to come nigh unto him.
"....It is evident from this that
Moses, when he had been in the
proximity of the Kabod, was subjected to some kind of radiation that
affected his skin. What exactly the source material of that
radiation was we do not know, but we do know that the Anunnaki could
(and did) employ radiation for a variety of purposes....
"....And we have read in the
Tale of Zu what had happened when he
removed the Tablet of Destinies from the Mission Control Center in Nippur: "Stillness spread all over, silence prevailed; the
sanctuary’s brilliance was taken away."
"A physical object, one that can move about, station itself upon a
mountain, rise and take off, shrouded in a cloud of dark fog,
radiating brilliance - this is how the Bible describes the Kabod -
literally, "The Heavy Object" - in which Yahweh moved about. It all
describes what we nowadays call, out of ignorance or disbelief, a
UFO - an Unidentified Flying Object.
"In this regard it will be helpful to trace the Akkadian and
Sumerian roots from which the Hebrew term had derived. While the
Akkadian Kabbuttu meant "heavy, weighty," the similar-sounding
Kabdu
(paralleling the Hebrew Kabod) meant "Wing-holder" - something to
which wings are attached, or perhaps into which wings can retract.
And the Sumerian term KI.BAD.DU meant "to soar to a faraway
place...."
"We can only speculate whether the Kabod looked like the winged
"Divine Black Bird" of Ninurta, the wingless (or with wings
retracted) bulbous vehicles depicted in the murals of Tell Ghassul -
or as the rocketlike object that Gilgamesh had seen rise from the
Landing Place in Lebanon....
|
Tuspa, the
capital of the Urartu in ancient times, Tuspa is a
hilltop stronghold near present-day Van, on the shore of
Lake Van, Turkey |
"Might it have resembled an American shuttlecraft. We wonder,
because of the similarity to it of a small figurine, discovered a
few years ago at a site in Turkey (the ancient Tuspa). Made of
clay, it shows a flying machine that combines features of a modern
shuttlecraft (including the engine exhausts) with the cockpit of a
single-seater plane (designs of all these appear on Mr. Sitchin’s
book). The partly damaged image of the "pilot" seated on the
cockpit, as well as the totality of the artform bring to our mind
Mesoamerican depictions of bearded gods accompanied by rocketlike
objects. The Archaeological Museum in Istambul, which has been
keeping this figurine, has not put it on display; the official
excuse is that its "authenticity" has not been established. If it is
authentic, it will serve not only to illustrate ancient "UFOs" but
also to add light on the links between the ancient Near East and the
Americas.
Mr. Sitchin continues from here relating the story of Joshua, from
the Book of Joshua chapter 10, "the Sun and the Moon stood still for
a day,
And the Sun stood still and the Moon stayed,
until the people had avenged themselves of the enemies.
Indeed it is all written in the Book of Jashar:
The Sun stood still in the midst of the skies
and it hastened not to go down,
about a whole day.
"....Both Sumerian and Old Babylonian texts speak of celestial
upheavals that were observed in the skies and that called for
incantations against the celestial "demons." Treated as "magical
texts" (e.g. Charles Fossey, Textes Magique; Morris Jastrow,
Die
Religion Babyloniens und Assyriens; and Eric Ebeling, Tod und Leben)
such texts described an "evil seven, born in the vast skies, unknown
in heaven, unknown on Earth" who "attacked Sin and
Shamash" - the
Moon and the Sun, upsetting at the same time Ishtar (Venus) and
Adad
(Mercury). Prior to 1994 the possibilities that seven comets would
"attack" our celestial region all at once was so remote that the
text seemed more a fantasy than a reality witnessed by Mesopotamian
astronomers. But when, in July 1994,
comet Shoemaker-Levy 9 broke up
into twenty-one pieces that impacted Jupiter in quick succession -
in full view from observers from Earth - the Mesopotamian texts
assume an impressive reality.
"....Or, as Alfred Jeremias (The Old Testament in the Light of the
Ancient Near East).... treated it as possibly an unusual alignment
of seven planets that, with the resulting immense gravitational
pull, affected the sun and Moon from the perspective of Earth -
making the Sun and Moon appear to stand still because in reality it
was the Earth whose rotation was temporarily halted.
"Whatever the explanation, there is corroboration for the occurrence
itself from the other side of the world. In both Mesoamerica and
South America, "legends" - collective memories - have persisted of a
long night of about twenty hours during which the Sun failed to
rise. Our investigations (fully reported in
The Lost Realms)
concluded that this long night occurred in the Americas circa 1400
B.C. the same time when the Sun did not set in Canaan for a similar
period....
"....The Mesoamerican and South American recollections thus validate
the tale of the Day the Earth Stood Still - not the movie script,
but the olden biblical tale....
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