The stairway to heaven, p.1
The Stairway to Heaven, page 1
Praise for The Earth Chronicles series
"Exciting . . . credible . . . most provocative and compelling."
—Library Journal
"A dazzling performance . . . Sitchin is a zealous investigator."
—Kirkus Reviews
"Several factors make Sitchin's well-referenced works outstandingly different from all others that present this central theme. For one, his linguistic skills, which include not only several modem languages that make it possible for him to consult other scholars' works in their original tongues, but the ancient Sumerian, Egyptian, Hebrew, and other languages of antiquity as well.
"The devotion of thirty years to academic search and personal investigation before publishing resulted in unusual thoroughness, perspective, and modifications where need arose. The author's pursuit of the earliest available texts and artifacts also made possible the wealth of photos and line drawings made for his books from tablets, monuments, murals, pottery, seals, etc. Used generously throughout, they provide vital visual evidence. . . . While the author does not pretend to solve all the puzzles that have kept intensive researchers baffled for well over one hundred years, he has provided some new clues."
—Rosemary Decker, historian and researcher
Contents
TITLE PAGE
PRAISE FOR THE EARTH CHRONICLES SERIES
CHAPTER I • IN SEARCH OF PARADISE
CHAPTER II • THE IMMORTAL ANCESTORS
CHAPTER III • THE PHARAOH'S JOURNEY TO THE AFTERLIFE
CHAPTER IV • THE STAIRWAY TO HEAVEN
CHAPTER V • THE GODS WHO CAME TO PLANET EARTH
CHAPTER VI • IN THE DAYS BEFORE THE DELUGE
CHAPTER VII • GILGAMESH: THE KING WHO REFUSED TO DIE
CHAPTER VIII • RIDERS OF THE CLOUDS
CHAPTER IX • THE LANDING PLACE
CHAPTER X • TILMUN: LAND OF THE ROCKETSHIPS
CHAPTER XI • THE ELUSIVE MOUNT
CHAPTER XII • THE PYRAMIDS OF GODS AND KINGS
CHAPTER XIII • FORGING THE PHARAOH'S NAME
CHAPTER XIV • THE GAZE OF THE SPHINX
SOURCES
OTHER WORKS BY ZECHARIA SITCHIN
ABOUT THE BOOK
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
ABOUT INNER TRADITIONS • BEAR & COMPANY
BOOKS OF RELATED INTEREST
COPYRIGHT & PERMISSIONS
I
In Search of Paradise
There was a time—our ancient scriptures tell us—when Immortality was within the grasp of Mankind.
A golden age it was, when Man lived with his Creator in the Garden of Eden-Man tending the wonderful orchard, God taking strolls in the afternoon breeze. "And the Lord God caused to grow from the ground every tree that is pleasant to the sight and good for eating; and the Tree of Life was in the orchard, and the Tree of Knowing good and evil. And a river went out of Eden to water the garden, and from there it was parted and became four principal streams: the name of the first is Pishon . . . and of the second Gihon . . . and of the third Tigris . . . and the fourth river is the Euphrates. "
Of the fruit of every tree were Adam and Eve permitted to eat—except of the fruit of the Tree of Knowing. But once they did (tempted by the Serpent)—the Lord God grew concerned over the matter of Immortality:
Then did the Lord Yahweh say:
"Behold, the Adam has become as one of us
to know good and evil;
And now might he not put forth his hand
and partake also of the Tree of Life,
and eat, and live forever?"
And the Lord Yahweh expelled the Adam
from the Garden of Eden . . .
And He placed at the east of the Garden of Eden the Cherubim, and the Flaming Sword which revolveth, to guard the way to the Tree of Life.
So was Man cast out of the very place where eternal life was within his grasp. But though barred from it, he has never ceased to remember it, to yearn for it, and to try to reach it.
Ever since that expulsion from Paradise, heroes have gone to the ends of Earth in search of Immortality; a selected few were given a glimpse of it; and simple folk claimed to have chanced upon it. Throughout the ages, the Search for Paradise was the realm of the individual; but earlier in this millennium, it was launched as the national enterprise of mighty kingdoms.
The New World was discovered—so have we been led to believe—when explorers went seeking a new, maritime route to India and her wealth. True—but not the whole truth; for what Ferdinand and Isabel, king and queen of Spain, had desired most to find was the Fountain of Eternal Youth: a magical fountain whose waters rejuvenate the old and keep one young forever, for it springs from a well in Paradise.
No sooner had Columbus and his men set foot in what they all thought were the islands off India (the "West Indies"), than they combined the exploration of the new lands with a search for the legendary Fountain whose waters "made old men young again." Captured "Indians" were questioned, even tortured, by the Spaniards, so that they would reveal the secret location of the Fountain.
One who excelled in such investigations was Ponce de Leon, a professional soldier and adventurer, who rose through the ranks to become governor of the part of the island of Hispaniola now called Haiti, and of Puerto Rico. In 1511, he witnessed the interrogation of some captured Indians. Describing their island, they spoke of its pearls and other riches. They also extolled the marvelous virtues of its waters. A spring there is, they said, of which an islander "grievously oppressed with old age" had drunk. As a result, he "brought home manly strength and has practiced all manly performances, having taken a wife again and begotten children."
Listening with mounting excitement, Ponce de Leon—himself an aging man—was convinced that the Indians were describing the miraculous Fountain of the rejuvenating waters. Their postscript, that the old man who drank of the waters regained his manly strength, could resume practicing "all manly performances," and even took again a young wife who bore him children—was the most conclusive aspect of their tale. For in the court of Spain, as throughout Europe, there hung numerous paintings by the greatest painters, and whenever they depicted love scenes or sexual allegories, they included in the scene a fountain. Perhaps the most famous of such paintings, Titian's Love Sacred and Love Profane, was created at about the time the Spaniards were on their quest in the Indies. As everyone well knew, the Fountain in the paintings hinted at the ultimate lovemaking; the Fountain whose waters make possible "all manly performances" through Eternal Youth.
Ponce de Leon's report to King Ferdinand is reflected in the records kept by the official court historian, Peter Martyr de Angleria. As stated in his Decade de Orbe Novo [Decades of the New World], the Indians who had come from the islands of Lucayos or the Bahamas, had revealed that "there is an island . . . in which there is a perennial spring of running water of such marvelous virtue, that the waters thereof being drunk, perhaps with some diet, make old men young again." Many researches. such as Ponce de Leon's Fountain of Youth: History of a Geographical Myth by Leonardo Olschki, have established that "the Fountain of Youth was the most popular and characteristic expression of the emotions and expectations which agitated the conquerors of the New World." Undoubtedly, Ferdinand the king of Spain was one of those so agitated, so expectant for the definitive news.
So, when word came from Ponce de Leon, Ferdinand lost little time. He at once granted Ponce de Leon a Patent of Discovery (dated February 23, 1512), authorizing an expedition from the island of Hispaniola northward. The admiralty was ordered to assist Ponce de Leon and make available to him the best ships and seamen, so that he might discover without delay the island of "Beininy" (Bimini). The king made one condition explicit: "that after having reached the island and learned what is in it, you shall send me a report of it. "
In March 1513, Ponce de Leon set out northward, to look for the island of Bimini. The public excuse for the expedition was a search for "gold and other metals"; the true aim was to find the Fountain of Eternal Youth. This the seamen soon learnt as they came upon not one island but hundreds of islands in the Bahamas. Anchoring at island after island, the landing parties were instructed to search not for gold but for some unusual fountain. The waters of each stream were tasted and drunk—but with no evident effects. On Easter Sunday—Pasca de Flores by its Spanish name—a long coastline was sighted. Ponce de Leon called the "island" Florida. Sailing along the coast and landing again and again, he and his men searched the jungled forests and drank the waters of endless springs. But none seemed to work the expected miracle.
The mission's failure appears to have hardly dampened the conviction that the Fountain was undoubtedly there: it only had to be discovered. More Indians were questioned. Some seemed unusually young for the old ages claimed by them. Others repeated legends that confirmed the existence of the Fountain. One such legend (as recounted in Creation Myths of Primitive America by J. Curtin) relates that when Olelbis, "He Who Sits Above," was about to create Mankind, he sent two emissaries to Earth to construct a ladder which would connect Earth and Heaven. Halfway up the ladder, they were to set up a resting place, with a pool of pure drinking waters. At the summit, they were to create two springs: one for drinking and the other for bathing. When a man or woman grows old, said Olelbis, let him or her climb up to this summit, and drink and bathe; whereupon his youth shall be restored.
The conviction that the Fountain existed somewhere on the islands was so strong that in 1514—the year after Ponce de Leon's u
At a distance of 325 leagues from Hispaniola, they tell, there is an island called Boyuca, alias Ananeo, which—according to those who explored its interior—has such an extraordinary fountain that drinking of its waters rejuvenates the old.
And let Your Holiness not think this to be said lightly or rashly; for they have spread word of this as the truth throughout the court, so formally that the whole people, not few of whom are from among those whom wisdom or fortune distinguished from the common people, hold it to be true.
Ponce de Leon, undaunted, concluded after some additional research that what he had to look for was a spring in conjunction with a river, the two possibly connected by a hidden underground tunnel. If the Fountain was on an island, was its source a river in Florida?
In 1521, the Spanish Crown sent Ponce de Leon on a renewed search, this time focusing on Florida. There can be no doubt regarding the true purpose of his mission: writing only a few decades later, the Spanish historian Antonio de Herrera y Tordesillas stated thus in his Historia General de las Indias: "He (Ponce de Leon) went seeking that Sacred Fountain, so renowned among the Indians, as well as the river whose waters rejuvenated the aged." He was intent on finding the spring of Bimini and the river in Florida, of which the Indians of Cuba and Hispaniola "affirmed that old persons bathing themselves in them became young again,"
Instead of Eternal Youth, Ponce de Leon found death by an Indian arrow. And although the individual search for a potion or lotion that can postpone the Last Day may never end, the organized search, under a royal decree, did come to an end.
Was the search futile to begin with? Were Ferdinand and Isabel and Ponce de Leon, and the men who sailed and died in search of the Fountain, all fools childishly believing in some primitive fairy tales?
Not the way they saw it. The Holy Scriptures, pagan beliefs, and the documented tales of great travelers, all combined to affirm that there was indeed a place whose waters (or fruits' nectars) could bestow Immortality by keeping one forever young,
There were still current olden tales—left from the times when the Celts were in the peninsula—of a secret place, a secret fountain, a secret fruit or herb whose finder shall be redeemed of death. There was the goddess Idunn, who lived by a sacred brook and who kept magical apples in her coffer. When the gods grew old, they would come to her to eat of the apples, whereupon they turned young again. Indeed, "Idunn" meant "Again Young"; and the apples that she guarded were called the "Elixir of the Gods."
Was this an echo of the legend of Herakles (Hercules) and his twelve labors? A priestess of the god Apollo, predicting his travails in an oracle, had also assured him: "When this shall be done, thou shall become one of the Immortals." To achieve this, the last but one labor was to seize and bring back from the Hesperides the divine golden apples. The Hesperides—"Daughters of the Evening Land"—resided at the Ends of Earth.
Have not the Greeks, and then the Romans, left behind them tales of mortals immortalized? The god Apollo anointed the body of Sarpedon, so that he lived the life of several generations of men. The goddess Aphrodite granted to Phaon a magic potion; anointing himself with it, he turned into a beautiful youth "who wakened love in the hearts of all the women of Lesbos." And the child Demophon, anointed with ambrosia by the goddess Demeter, would surely have become immortal were not his mother—ignorant of Demeter's identity—to snatch him away from the goddess.
There was the tale of Tantalus, who had become immortal by eating at the gods' table and stealing their nectar and ambrosia. But having killed his son to serve his flesh as food for the gods, he was punished by being banished to a land of luscious fruits and waters—eternally out of his reach. (The god Hermes restored the butchered son to life.) On the other hand, Odysseus, offered Immortality by the nymph Calypso if only he would stay with her forever, forsook Immortality for a chance to return to his home and wife.
And was not there the tale of Glaukos, a mortal, an ordinary fisherman, who became a sea-god? One day he observed that a fish that he had caught, coming in touch with a herb, came back to life and leaped back into the water. Taking the herb into his mouth, Glaukos jumped into the water at the exact same spot; whereupon the sea-gods Okeanos and Tethys admitted him to their circle and transformed him into a deity.
The year 1492, in which Columbus set sail from Spain, was also the year in which the Muslim occupation of the Iberian Peninsula ended with the surrender of the Moors at Granada. Throughout the nearly eight centuries of Muslim and Christian contention over the peninsula, the interaction of the two cultures was immense; and the tale in the Koran (the Muslim holy book) of the Fish and the Fountain of Life was known to Moor and Catholic alike. The fact that the tale was almost identical to the Greek legend of Glaukos the fisherman, was taken as confirmation of its authenticity. It was one of the reasons for seeking the legendary Fountain in India-the land which Columbus had set out to reach, and which he thought he had reached.
The segment in the Koran which contains the tale is the eighteenth Sura. It relates the exploration of various mysteries by Moses, the biblical hero of the Israelite Exodus from Egypt. While Moses was being groomed for his new calling as a Messenger of God, he was to be instructed in such knowledge as he still lacked by a mysterious "Servant of God." Accompanied by only one attendant, Moses was to go find this enigmatic teacher with the aid of a single clue: he was to take with him a dried fish; the place where the fish would jump and disappear would be the place where he would meet the teacher.
After much searching in vain, the attendant of Moses suggested that they stop and give up the search. But Moses persisted, saying that he would not give up until they reached "the junction of the two streams." Unnoticed by them, it was there that the miracle happened:
But when they reached the Junction,
they forgot about their fish,
which took its course through the stream,
as in a tunnel.
After journeying further, Moses said to his attendant: "Bring us our early meal." But the attendant replied that the fish was gone:
"When we betook ourselves to the rock,
sawest thou what had happened?
I did indeed forget about the fish—
Satan made me forget to tell you about it:
It took its course through the stream,
in a marvelous way.
And Moses said:
"That was what we were seeking after."
The tale in the Koran (Fig. 1) of the dried fish that came to life and swam back to the sea through a tunnel, went beyond the parallel Greek tale by relating itself not to a simple fisherman, but to the venerated Moses. Also, it presented the incident not as a chance discovery, but as an occurrence premediated by the Lord, who knew of the location of the Waters of Life—waters that could be recognized through the medium of the resurrection of a dead fish.
As devout Christians, the king and queen of Spain must have accepted literally the vision described in the Book of Revelation, "of a pure river of Water of Life, clear as crystal, proceeding out of the throne of God. . . . In the midst of the street of it, and on either side of the river, was there the Tree of Life, with twelve manner of fruit." They must have believed in the Book's promises: "I will give unto him that is athirst of the Fountain of the Water of Life"—"I will give to eat of the Tree of Life which is the midst of the Paradise of God." And could they not be aware of the words of the biblical Psalmist:
