CONTENTS

  Foreword

  1

  1. The Cycles of Time

  2

  2. A Computer Made of Stone

  27

  3. The Temples That Faced Heaven 51

  4. DUR.AN.KI—The "Bond

  Heaven-Earth"

  79

  5. Keepers of the Secrets 108

  6. The Divine Architects 140

  7. A Stonehenge on the Euphrates

  170

  8. Calendar Tales

  198

  9. Where the Sun Also Rises 224

  10.In Their Footsteps

  255

  11.Exiles on a Shifting Earth 292

  12.The Age of the Ram

  318

  13.Aftermath

  350

  Additional Sources

  380

  Index

  395

  FOREWORD

  Since the earliest times, Earthlings have lifted their eyes

  unto the heavens. Awed as well as fascinated, Earthlings

  learned the Ways of Heaven: the positions of the stars, the

  cycles of Moon and Sun, the turning of an inclined Earth.

  How did it all begin, how will it end—and what will happen

  in between?

  Heaven and Earth meet on the horizon. For millennia

  Earthlings have watched the stars of the night give way to

  the rays of the Sun at that meeting place, and chose as a

  point of reference the moment when daytime and nighttime

  are equal, the day of the Equinox. Man, aided by the cal-

  endar, has counted Earthly Time from that point on.

  To identify the starry heavens, the skies were divided

  into twelve parts, the twelve houses of the zodiac. But as

  the millennia rolled on, the "fixed stars" seemed not to be

  fixed at all. and the Day of the Equinox, the day of the

  New Year, appeared to shift from one zodiacal house to

  another; and to Earthly Time was added Celestial Time—

  the start of a new era, a New Age.

  As we stand at the threshold of a New Age, when sunrise

  on the day of the spring equinox will occur in the zodiacal

  house of Aquarius rather than, as in the past 2,000 years,

  in the zodiacal house of Pisces, many wonder what the

  change might portend: good or evil, a new beginning or an

  end—or no change at all?

  To understand the future we should examine the past;

  because since Mankind began to count Earthly Time, it has

  already experienced the measure of Celestial Time—the

  arrival of New Ages. What preceded and followed one such

  New Age holds great lessons for our own present station in

  the course of Time.

  1

  1

  THE CYCLES OF TIME

  It is said that Augustine of Hippo, the bishop in Roman

  Carthage (A.D. 354-430), the greatest thinker of the Chris-

  tian Church in its early centuries, who fused the religion of

  the New Testament with the Platonistic tradition of Greek

  philosophy, was asked, "What is time?" His answer was,

  "If no one asks me, I know what it is; if I wish to explain

  what it is to him who asks me, I do not know."

  Time is essential to Earth and all that is upon it, and to

  each one of us as individuals; for, as we know from our

  own experience and observations, what separates us from

  the moment we are born and the moment when we cease

  to live is TIME.

  Though we know not what Time is, we have found ways

  to measure it. We count our lifetimes in years, which—

  come to think of it—is another way of saying "orbits," for

  that is what a "year" on Earth is: the time it takes Earth,

  our planet, to complete one orbit around our star, the Sun.

  We do not know what time is, but the way we measure it

  makes us wonder: would we live longer, would our life

  cycle be different, were we to live on another planet whose

  "year" is longer? Would we be "immortal" if we were to

  be upon a "Planet of millions of years"—as, in fact, the

  Egyptian pharaohs believed that they would be, in an eternal

  Afterlife, once they joined the gods on that "Planet of

  millions of years"?

  Indeed, are there other planets "out there," and, even

  more so, planets on which life as we know it could have

  evolved—or is our planetary system unique, and life on

  Earth unique, and we, humankind, are all alone—or did the

  pharaohs know what they were speaking of in their Pyramid

  Texts?

  2

  The Cycles of Time

  3

  "Look up skyward and count the stars," Yahweh told

  Abraham as He made the covenant with him. Man has

  looked skyward from time immemorial, and has been won-

  dering whether there are others like him out there, upon

  other earths. Logic, and mathematical probability, dictate

  a Yes answer; but it was only in 1991 that astronomers, for

  the first time, it was stressed, actually found other planets

  orbiting other suns elsewhere in the universe.

  The first discovery, in July 1991, turned out not to have

  been entirely correct. It was an announcement by a team of

  British astronomers that, based on observations over a five-

  year period, they concluded that a rapidly spinning star

  identified as Pulsar 1829-10 has a "planet-sized compan-

  ion" about ten times the size of Earth. Pulsars are assumed

  to be the extraordinarily dense cores of stars that have col-

  lapsed for one reason or another. Spinning madly, they emit

  pulses of radio energy in regular bursts, many times per

  second. Such pulses can be monitored by radio telescopes;

  by detecting a cyclic fluctuation, the astronomers surmised

  that a planet that orbits Pulsar 1829-10 once every six

  months can cause and explain the fluctuation.

  As it turned out, the British astronomers admitted several

  months later that their calculations were imprecise and,

  therefore, they could not stand by their conclusion that the

  pulsar, some 30,000 light-years away, had a planetary sat-

  ellite. By then, however, an American team had made a

  similar discovery pertaining to a much closer pulsar, iden-

  tified as PSR 1257+ 12—a collapsed sun only 1,300 light-

  years away from us. It exploded, astronomers estimated,

  about a mere billion years ago; and it definitely has two,

  and perhaps three, orbiting planets. The two certain ones

  were orbiting their sun at about the same distance as Mercury

  does our Sun; the possible third planet orbits its sun at about

  the same distance as Earth does our Sun.

  "The discovery stirred speculation that planetary systems

  not only were fairly common but also could occur under

  diverse circumstances," wrote John Noble Wilford in The

  New York Times of January 9, 1992; "scientists said it was

  most unlikely that planets orbiting pulsars could be hospita-

  4

  WHEN TIME BEGAN

  ble to life; but the findings encouraged astronomers, who

  this fall will begin a systematic survey of the heavens for

  signs of intelligent extraterrestrial life."

  Were, then, the pharaohs right?

  Long before the pharaohs and the Pyramid Texts, an

  ancient civilization—Man's first known one—possessed an

  advanced cosmogony. Six thousand years ago, in ancient

  Sumer, what astronomers have discovered in the 1990s was

  already known; not only the true nature and composition of

  our Solar System (including the farthest out planets), but

  also the notion that there are other solar systems in the

  universe, that their stars ("suns") can collapse or explode,

  that their planets can be thrown off course—that Life, in-

  deed, can thus be carried from one star system to another.

  It was a detailed cosmogony, spelled out in writing.

  One long text, written on seven tablets, has reached us

  primarily in its later Babylonian version. Called the Epic of

  Creation and known by its opening words Enuma elish, it

  was publicly read during the New Year festival that started

  on the first day of the month Nissan, coinciding with the

  first day of spring.

  Outlining the process by which our own Solar System

  came into being, the long text described how the Sun

  ("Apsu") and i t s messenger Mercury ("Mummu") were

  first joined by an olden planet called Tiamat; how a pair of

  planets Venus and Mars—("Lahamu" and "Lahmu") then

  coalesced between the Sun and Tiamat, followed by two

  pairs beyond Tiamat—Jupiter and Saturn ("Kishar" and

  "Anshar") and Uranus and Neptune ("Anu" and "Nudim-

  mud"), the latter two being planets unknown to modern

  astronomers until 1781 and 1846 respectively—yet known,

  and described, by the Sumerians millennia earlier. As those

  newly-created "celestial gods" tugged and pulled at each

  other, some of them sprouted satellites—moonlets. Tiamat,

  in the midst of that unstable planetary family, sprouted

  eleven satellites; one of them, "Kingu," grew so much in

  size that it began to assume the aspects of a "celestial god,"

  a planet, on its own. Modern astronomers were totally ig-

  norant of the possibility that a planet could have many

  The Cycles of Time

  5

  moons until Galileo discovered the four largest moons of

  Jupiter in 1609, with the aid of a telescope; but the Su-

  merians were aware of the phenomenon millennia earlier.

  Into that unstable solar system, according to the millen-

  nia-old Epic of Creation, there appeared an invader from

  outer space—another planet; a planet not born into the fam-

  ily of Apsu, but one that had belonged to some other star's

  family and that was thrust off to wander in space. Millennia

  before modern astronomy learned of pulsars and collapsing

  stars, the Sumerian cosmogony had already envisioned other

  planetary systems and collapsing or exploding stars that

  threw off their planets. And so, Enuma elish related, one

  such cast-off planet, reaching the outskirts of our own Solar

  System, began to be drawn into its midst (Fig. 1 ) .

  As it passed by the outer planets, it caused changes that

  account for many of the enigmas that still baffle modern

  astronomy—such as the cause for Uranus's t i l t on its side,

  the retrograde orbit of Neptune's largest moon, Triton, or

  what pulled Pluto from its place as a moonlet to become a

  planet with an odd orbit. The more the invader was drawn

  into the Solar System's center, the more was it forced onto

  a collision course with Tiamat, resulting in the "Celestial

  Battle." In the series of collisions, with the invader's sat-

  6

  WHEN TIME BEGAN

  ellites repeatedly smashing into Tiamat, the olden planet

  split in two. One half of it was smashed into bits and pieces

  to become the Asteroid Belt (between Mars and Jupiter) and

  various comets; the other half, wounded but intact, was

  thrust into a new orbit to become the planet we call Earth

  ("Ki" in Sumerian); shunted with it was Tiamat's largest

  satellite, to become Earth's Moon. The invader itself was

  caught into permanent orbit around the Sun, to become our

  Solar System's twelfth member (Sun, Moon, and ten

  planets). The Sumerians called it Nibiru—"Planet of the

  Crossing." The Babylonians renamed it Marduk in honor

  of their national god. It was during the Celestial Battle, the

  ancient epic asserted, that the "seed of life," brought by

  Nibiru from elsewhere, was passed to Earth.

  Philosophers and scientists, contemplating the universe

  and offering modern cosmogonies, invariably end up dis-

  cussing Time. Is Time a dimension in itself, or perhaps the

  only true dimension in the universe? Does Time only flow

  forward, or can it flow backward? Is the present part of the

  past or the beginning of the future? And, not least of all,

  did Time have a beginning? For, if so, will it have an end?

  If the universe has existed forever, without a beginning and

  thus without an end, is Time too without a beginning and

  without an end—or did the universe indeed have a begin-

  ning, perhaps with the Big Bang assumed by many astro-

  physicists, in which case Time began when the universe

  began?

  Those who conceived the amazingly accurate Sumerian

  cosmogony also believed in a Beginning (and thus, inex-

  orably, in an End). It is clear that they conceived of Time

  as a measure, the pacesetter from, and the marker of, a

  beginning in a celestial saga; for the very first word of the

  ancient Epic of Creation, Enuma, means When:

  Enuma elish la nabu shamamu

  When in the heights heaven had not been named

  Shaplitu ammatum shuma la zakrat

  And below, firm ground (Earth) had not been called

  The Cycles of Time

  7

  It must have taken great scientific minds to conceive of

  a primordial phase when "naught existed but primordial

  Apsu, their begetter; Mummu, and Tiamat"—when Earth

  had not yet come into being; and to realize that for Earth

  and all upon it the "big bang" was not when the universe

  or even the Solar System was created, but the event of the

  Celestial Battle. It was then, at that moment, that Time

  began for Earth—the moment when, separated from the half

  of Tiamat that became the Asteroid Belt ("heaven"), Earth

  was shunted to its own new orbit and could start counting

  the years, the months, the days, the nights—to measure

  Time.

  This scientific view, central to ancient cosmogony, re-

  ligion, and mathematics, was expressed in many other Su-

  merian texts besides the Epic of Creation. A text treated by

  scholars as the "myth" of "Enki and the world order," but

  which is literally the autobiographical tale by Enki, the

  Sumerian god of science, describes the moment when—

  When—Time began to tick for Earth:

  In the days of yore,

  when heaven was separated from Earth,

  In the nights of yore,

  when heaven was separated from Earth . . .

  Another text, in words often repeated on Sumerian clay

  tablets, conveyed the notion of Beginning by listing the

  many aspects of evolution and civilization that had not yet

  come into being before the crucial event. Before then, the

  text asserted, "the name of Man had not yet been called"

  and "needful things had not yet been brought into being."

  All those developments started to take place only "after

  heaven had been moved away from Earth, after Earth had

  been separated from heaven."

  It is not surprising that the same notions of Time's be-

  ginnings also ruled Egyptian beliefs, whose development

  was subsequent to those of the Sumerians. We read in the

  Pyramid Texts (para. 1466) the following description of the

  Beginning of Things:

  8

  WHEN TIME BEGAN

  When heaven had not yet come into existence,

  When men had not yet come into existence,

  When gods had not yet been born,

  When death had not yet come into existence . . .

  This knowledge, universal in antiquity and stemming

  from the Sumerian cosmogony, was echoed in the very first

  verse of Genesis, the first book of the Hebrew Bible:

  In the beginning

  Elohim created the heaven and the earth.

  And the earth was without form and void

  and darkness was upon the face of Tehom,

  and the wind of the Lord swept over its waters.

  It is now well established that this biblical tale of creation

  was based on Mesopotamian texts such as Enuma elish,

  with Tehom meaning Tiamat, the "wind" meaning "sat-

  ellites," in Sumerian, and "heaven," described as the

  "hammered out bracelet," the Asteroid Belt. The Bible,

  however, is clearer regarding the moment of the Beginning

  as far as Earth was concerned; the biblical version picks up

  the Mesopotamian cosmogony only from the point of the

  separation of the Earth from the Shama'im, the Hammered

  Bracelet, as a result of the breakup of Tiamat.

  For Earth, Time began with the Celestial Battle.

 

1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 31 32 33 34 35 36 37 38 39 40 41 42