GODS OF HEAVEN AND EARTH
The Importance of Number 12
Mr. Sitchin takes the reader through the Greek Olympian gods because through their history it is confirmed that the Greek never claimed that their gods came from the heavens. (Rather, they arrived from other lands with traditions and religion). Zeus arrived from the Mediterranean, via Crete. Aphrodite, from the Near East, via Cyprus.
Poseidon (Neptune to the Romans) brought the horse with him from Asia Minor. Athena, brought the olive, fertile and self-sown from the lands of the Bible. And it is in the Mediterranean Island that Mr. Sitchin looks for the origin of the Greek gods and their astral relationship with the number 12.
It is known that the Olympian gods could not exceed 12 in number, nor be less than 12 in number. The Hittites of the Old Testament also practiced this system of no more and no less than 12 gods of Heaven and Earth.
Mr. Sitchin also studies the Hindu system of the ancients and finds a similarity. To read "The 12th Planet" is a must to be able to appreciate and understand the correlation.
"What was it that after hundreds of thousands and even millions of years of painfully slow human development abruptly changed everything so completely, and in a one-two-three punch - circa 11,000-7400-3800 B.C. transformed primitive nomadic hunters and food gatherers into farmers and pottery makers, and then into builders of cities, engineers, mathematicians, astronomers, metallurgists, merchants, musicians, judges, doctors, authors, librarians, priests?
".....It was summed up by one of the tenths of thousands of ancient Mesopotamian inscriptions that have been uncovered: "Whatever seems beautiful, we made by the grace of the gods."
"The gods of Sumer. Who were they?
Over the years, startling evidence has been unearthed!
THE BULL AND THE CROSS.-
"There is now general agreement that the foundations of the distinct Greek civilization were laid on the Island of Crete, where the Minoan culture flourished from circa 2700 B.C. to 1400 B.C. In Minoan myth and legend, the tale of the minotaur is prominent. This half-man, half-bull was the offspring of Pasiphae, the wife of King Minos and a bull. Archaeological finds have confirmed the extensive Minoan worship of the bull, and some cylinder seals depict the bull as a divine being accompanied by a cross symbol, which stood for some unidentified star or planet. It has therefore been surmised that the bull worshiped by the Minoans was not the common earthly creature but the Celestial Bull - the constellation Taurus - in commemoration of some events that had occurred when the Sun’s spring equinox appeared in that constellation, circa 4000 B.C.
THE "GOGGLES".-
"The archaeological find showed conclusively that the Hittites worshiped gods that were of "Heaven and Earth", all interrelated and arranged into a genealogical hierarchy. Some were great and "olden" gods who were originally of the heavens. Their symbol - which in the Hittite pictographic writing meant "divine" or "heavenly god"- looked like a pair of eyes goggles. It frequently appeared on round seals as part of a rocket-like object.
"A long and well preserved Hittite epic tale, entitled "Kingship in Heaven" deals with this very subject - the heavenly origin of the gods. The recounter of those premortal events first called upon twelve "mighty olden gods" to listen to his tale and be witnesses to its accuracy:
Let there listen the gods who are in Heaven,
And those who are upon the dark-hued Earth!
Let there listen, the mighty olden gods.
(The epic tale is very extensive, suffice to say that in it are all the names mentioned below by Mr. Sitchin and more).
"Who were these "olden gods"? The answer is obvious, for all of them - Anu, Antu, Enlil, Ninlil, Ea, Ishkur - bear Sumerian names. Even the name of Teshub, as well as the names of other "Hittite" gods, were often written in Sumerian scripts to denote their identities. Also, some of the places named in the action were those of ancient Sumerian sites.
Mr. Sitchin has taken care of researching also how the Hittites inherited the Sumerian knowledge, the language was studied at Hattu-Shash (the capital city) and Sumerian-Hittite vocabularies were found there.
The bridge were a people called the Hurrians. The Old Testament refers to them as the Horites (free people), the Egyptians referred to their kingdom as the Mitanni. There is confirmation now that they were the Aryans. (Mr. Sitchin gives a vast explanation about this in his book)
It was the Hurrians who absorbed and transmitted the religion of Sumer. This was obvious from the frequent use of the original Sumerian divine names, epithets, and writing signs. Even the Hurrian duplicated Sumerian art, its form, its themes, and its symbols.
There is evidence that the Hurrians were present in Sumeria in the third millennium B.C., that they held important positions in Sumer in the last period of glory, that of the third dynasty of Ur.
"Over the years, startling evidence has been unearthed...."
Sumerian Father of the Gods....
Another Symbol "the Winged Star"
EL, the "lofty deity"....
"In the thirteenth century B.C., under the presence of vast migrations and invasions (including the Israelite thrust from Egypt to Canaan), the Hurrians retreated to the northeastern portion of their kingdom. Establishing their new capital near Lake Van, they called their kingdom Urarty ("Ararat"). There they worshiped a pantheon headed by Tesheba (Teshub), depicting him as a vigorous god wearing a horned cap and standing upon his cult symbol, the bull. They called their main shrine Bitanu ("house of Anu") and dedicated themselves to making their kingdom "the fortress of the valley of Anu, as we shall see, was the Sumerian Father of the Gods.
"......The lands that are today Israel, Lebanon, and southern Syria -which formed the southwestern band of the ancient Fertile Crescent -were then the habitat of peoples that can be grouped together as the Canaanites.
".....The pantheon that unfolds from the Canaanite texts bears many similarities to the later Greek one. At the head of the Canaanite pantheon, too, there was a supreme deity called EL, a word that was the personal name of the god and the generic term meaning "lofty deity."
"A stela found in Palestine depicts an elderly deity sitting on a throne and being served a beverage by a younger deity. The seated deity wears a conical headdress adorned with horns - a mark of the gods, as we have seen, from prehistoric times - and the scene is dominated by the Symbol of a Winged Star - the ubiquitous emblem that we shall increasingly encounter. It is generally accepted by the scholars that this sculptured relief depicts EL, the senior Canaanite deity.
The Winged Star, is a circle in which an eight point star is enclosed and wings sprang opened from the circle’s each side.
"Whence had the Canaanites, for their part, drawn their culture and religion?
"The Egyptians believed in Gods of Heaven and Earth. Great Gods that were clearly distinguished from the multitudes of lesser deities. G.A. Wainwright (The Sky Religion in Egypt) summed up the evidence, showing that the Egyptian belief in Gods of Heaven who descended to Earth from the skies was "extremely ancient." Some of the epithets of these Great Gods - Greatest God-Bull of Heaven, Lord/Lady of the Mountains - sound familiar.
"Although the Egyptians counted by the decimal system, their religious affairs were governed by the Sumerian sexagesimal sixty, and celestial matters were subjected to the divine number twelve. The heavens were divided into three parts, each comprising twelve celestial bodies. The afterworld was divided into twelve parts. Day and night were each divided into twelve hours. And all these divisions were paralleled by "companies" of gods, which in turn consisted of - twelve gods each.
"The head of the Egyptian pantheon was Ra ("creator") who presided over an Assembly of the Gods that numbered twelve.
"......Ra was an unseen celestial god who manifested himself only periodically. His manifestation was the ATEN - the Celestial Disc, depicted as a Winged Globe.
Symbol.- The ATEN was a blank circle with wings spanning from each side. Ra had two sons, Osiris and Seth. Horus, son of Osiris is represented sometimes as a winged and horned deity. Obviously as representation of the Kingdom from Ra.
"The earlier notion that civilization may have begun in Egypt has been discarded by now. There is ample evidence now showing that the Egyptian - organized society and civilization, which began half a millennium and more after the Sumerian one, drew its culture, architecture, technology, art of writing, and many other aspects of a high civilization from Sumer. The weight of evidence also shows that the gods of Egypt originated in Sumer.
The Canaanites could not boast of an original pantheon. They, too, acquired their cosmogony, deities, and legendary tales from elsewhere. Their direct contacts with the Sumerian sources were the Amorites.
"In the 1980’s archaeologists came upon the center and capital city of the Amorites, known as Mari. At a bend of the Euphrates, where the Syrian border now cuts the river, the diggers uncovered a major city whose buildings were erected and continuously reerected, between 3000 and 2000 B.C., on foundations that date to centuries earlier. These earlier remains included a step pyramid and temples to the Sumerian deities Inanna, Ninhursag, and Enlil.
"Who were these Gods of Heaven and Earth, divine yet human, always headed by a pantheon of inner circle and twelve deities?
We have entered the temples of the Greeks, and the Aryans, the Hittites and the Hurrians, the Canaanites, the Egyptians, and the Amorites. We have followed paths that took us across continents and seas, and clues that carried us over several millennia. And all the corridors of all the temples have led us to one source: Sumer.
