Subject: INTERVIEW: Zecharia Sitchin
Date: 29 Jul 93 04:14:16 GMT


        INTERVIEW with Zecharia Sitchin     
        from CONNECTING LINK issue 17

   Zecharia Sitchin was born in Russia and raised in Palestine,
where he acquired a profound knowledge of modern and ancient
Hebrew, other Semitic and European languages, the Old Testament,
and the history and archeology of the Near East.  He is one of
the few scholars who is able to read and understand Sumerian. 
Sitchin attended and graduated from the University of London,
majoring in economic history. A leading journalist and editor in
Israel for many years,  he now lives and writes in New York. 
His books have been widely translated, converted to Braille for
the blind, and featured on radio and television.

               "The Earth Chronicles series is based on the
premise that mythology is not fanciful but the repository of
ancient memories; that the Bible ought to be read literally as a
historic/scientific document; and that ancient
civilizations-older and greater than assumed- were the product
of knowledge brought to Earth by the Anunnaki,'Those Who from
Heaven to Earth Came.'...I trust that modem science will
continue to  confirm ancient knowledge."

                         -Zecharia Sitchin

  Connecting   Link:   What   are    the Earth    Chronicles   
about?  Zecharia Sitchin: The first book, The Twelfth Planet,
refers to the probability that there is one more planet in our
solar system.  That there are twelve members, counting sun, moon
and ten planets, not the nine we know of.  That people from that
planet came to earth almost half a million years ago and did
many of the things about which we read in the Bible, in the book
of Genesis.

         But that was not my starting point at all.  My starting
point was, going back to my childhood and schooldays, the puzzle
of who were the  Nefilim, that are mentioned in Genesis, Chapter
six, as the sons of the gods who married the daughters of Man in
the days before the great flood, the Deluge.   The word Nefilim
is commonly, or used to be, translated  giants."  And I am sure
that you and your readers are familiar with quotes and Sunday
preachings, etc., that those were the days when there were
giants upon the earth.  I questioned this interpretation as a
child at school, and I was  reprimanded for it because the
teacher said "you don't question the Bible."         But I did
not question the Bible, I questioned an interpretation that
seemed inaccurate, because the  word, Nefilim, the name by which
those extraordinary beings, "the sons of the gods" were known,
means literally, "Those who have come down to earth from the
heavens."          
     CL: From the Hebrew word Nafal, which means 'fall"?             
     ZS: Right. Fall, come down, descend.  So,
what did it mean? This led me  to biblical studies and then to
mythology and archeology and all the other  subjects, including
the study of ancient languages, which became my
education and avocation.  So, my research and my decision to
write about it started with a question, Who were the Nefilim?

  All  the  ancient  scriptures,  the  Bible,  the   Greek  
myths,   the  Egyptian myth and texts, the pyramid texts,
everything,  led to the Sumerians, whose civilization was the
first known one six thousand years ago.  I focused on Sumer, the
source of these legends and myths and texts and information.  I
learned to read the cuneiform Sumerian texts and came upon their
persistent and repeated statements that those beings, whom the
Sumerians called Anunnaki, came to earth from a planet called
Nibiru.  The planet was designated by the sign of the cross and
Nibiru meant, "planet of crossing."

     The question thus shifted in my research from who were the
Nefilim and the Anunnaki, to, what planet is Nibiru? Forced to
become proficient in astronomy, I had to learn enough about it
to deal with the subject.  I found out that the scholars were
divided.  Some said it (Nibiru) was Mars, which of course was
described and known to the ancient peo ple, and others said, no,
it was Jupiter.  Those who said it wa Jupiter and not Mars, had
very convincing arguments why it could not be Mars.  And those
who said it was Mars and not Jupiter had very convincing
arguments also.

     Being able to go directly to those ancient sources, clay
tablets and cuneiforn scripts, it seemed to me that neither was
fight, because the description of Nibiru and its position when
it nears the Sun indicated that it could not be Mars, an it
could not be Jupiter.  And then one night I woke up with th
answer: Of course, it is one more planet that comes periodically
between Mars and Jupiter; it is sometimes nearer to Mars and
sometimes nearer to Jupiter, but it isn't Mars or Jupiter.

     Once I realized that this was the answer, that there is one
more planet, everything else fell into place.  The meaning of
the Mesopotamian Epic of Creation on which the first chapters of
Genesis are based and all details about the Anunnaki, who they
were and who their leaders were and how they traveled from their
planet to Earth and how they splashed down in the Persian Gulf
and about their first settlement, their leaders and so on and so
oneverything became clear!     The Sumerians had immense
knowledge.  They knew about Uranus and Neptune and described
them and they knew about Pluto.  They were proficient in
mathematics and, in many respects, their knowledge surpassed
modem times.  They said, "All that we know was told to us by the
Anunnaki."     The first book's innovation, its impact, was the
realization that the ancient peoples, beginning with the
Sumerians, knew of and described and spoke of one more planet in
our solar system.  It was not a discovery like that of Pluto in
1930 (of which the Sumefians knew six thousand years ago). 
Pluto was a very interesting astronomical discovery; textbooks
had to be revised.   But to the average person, the man on the
street, it really made no difference.   Nibiru, on the other
hand was a different story.  If Niburu exists, (and this is the
planet that astronomers nowadays call planet X) then the
Anunnaki exist.     

   So the existence of Nibiru is not a matter of just one more
globe in our solar system.  This is different, because if Nibiru
exists, and the Anunnaki exist, then the Sumerian claim that
they come back to our vicinity every 3,600 years, at which times
in the past they gave us civilization, then we are not alone and
there are more advanced people than us in our solar system.     

     CL: What will happen next time around?
     ZS: Who knows how they will feel about us when they come
back.  Will they decide to give us more knowledge again, and
more technical advancement and more civilization, or will they
decide that we are no good, as happened at the time of the
Deluge, and try to get rid of us?

     So, the first book, laying the foundation and describing
Sumerian knowledge and concluding with the existence of one more
planet is really the key to understanding what it is all about. 
What the tales of Genesis are, what the tales of creation are,
what our past was, and in a way what our future will be.

     CL: And the second book in the series?
     ZS: The Stairway to Heaven looks at the tales of ancient
times, primarily from two new aspects.  One was to bring the
Egyptian texts and mythologies into the picture and show how
they fit with the Sumerian [texts] and what they really meant. 
The second was to look at the issue of man's search for
immortality.  And this ties in with the Sinai, it ties in with
the landing place, with the spaceports in the Sinai Peninsula,
the role of Jerusalem and all that.

     The third book, The Wars of Gods and Men, continues the
story and shows what happened after Kingship, a new phase of
civilization was given to mankind.  Dealing with the conflict
that began with the rivalry between two half brothers, Enlil and
Enki, it relates how this conflict continued among their sons
and their grandchildren, leading to actual warfare which I call
the Pyramid Wars (there were two) in which, eventually, mankind
became involved.  That is how mankind learned to make war.  And
this deals with a moral or theological subject: Is man a warrior
by nature, or was he taught tobecome a warrior?     

    Book four, The Lost Realms is the  tale of the Americas. 
Not just what they call pre-Columbian times but four, five
thousand years ago, which was before the Incas, the Mayans and
the Aztecs.  Who really was in the Americas, how ancient are
some of the antiquities and how were such incredible megalithic
structures built? What for, How come, and By Whom? The Lost
Realms shows that it is part of the same story, that the same
Anunnaki brought mankind or part of mankind to the Americas.     

    Book five, Genesis Revisited, a companion book," was really
written because in the fifteen years since the first book was
published, there have been many scientific advances, especially 
in astronomy and all the discoveries of the Voyager Spacecraft, 
in geology, biology, the discovery of DNA, the ability to create 
babies in a testtube, linguistics, and [in unlocking the secrets of] 
the origin of languages. Each such discovery corroborated what the 
Sumerians had known and had written, and therefore fully confirmed 
what I said in my first book.  And each time there was such a discovery
I would literally jump out of my seat and say, "My god, this is 
exactly what the Sumerians said six-thousand years ago!"

    If you read the relevant page in the Twelfth Planet, you
will see that I quote  a Sumerian text that says exactly how  
the Adam, the first Homo sapiens, was created.*  You will see
that this is a process that today we call the test tube baby
process.  I quote a text that describes Uranus and Neptune as 
Voyager 2 saw them in 1986 and 1989. 1 finally sat down
and put together all this scientific evidence, all these
scientific discoveries to show how they match and corroborate 
ancient knowledge.   Hence  the  subtitle   of   Genesis
Revisited,   is,    Is    Modern   Science Catching Up   With
Ancient Knowledge?   So, this is a review of the five   books.   

      CL:   Astounding    work.    And    it    all   started
with the word Nefilim?   
      ZS:  Yes.   That    was    the    beginning.   
      CL:   Might   people   read    your    books   and  say, 
well,  he's   doing   a   lot   of presuming.    He's    got
fragments    of    tablets,   and  pieces   of   cuneiform,  
and   he's   putmany liberties in piecing together the stories? 
                       

      ZS: There are several different answers to that.  The best
answer is what I   brought out in Genesis Revisited.  The  
knowledge that we have acquired corroborates what the Sumerians
knew six  thousand years ago.  You wonder how     is it
possible, how could they know?  How, as another example, could their
symbol of the entwined serpents, that we still use today to denote 
medicine and healing and biology, be 6,000 years ago, the symbol of Enki,
who engaged in genetic engineering to bring about the Adam? That
was a symbol of thei DNA, the double helix of DNA.

     How could they know without telescopes and spacecraft that
Neptune is a watery planet? They provided the answer by saying
"All that we know we have learned from the Anunnaki.
"So, you say, "Ok. There were Anunnaki."  Now, who were the
Anunnaki and where werei they from?  The Sumerians say, 
"They came here from Nibiru." And you say, "What is Nibiru?"  So they 
say, "It is one more planet in our solar system."  Now, if you say, "I'm
really impressed by the Sumerian knowledge, and, maybe they knew
what they were talking about regarding the Anunnaki.  But I don't think there
is another planet with these advanced beings on it near Earth."  If so, what is your
explanation of who Anunnaki were?  Was there really a race of giants 
who existed on Earth half a million years ago?  Do you believe there was 
a civilization on Earth half a million years ago that surpassed our own 
and disappeared?  When the focus shifts to explaining those other people, 
you have no explanation.  I then say, if you have no explanation, why not
accept the word of the Sumerians.

     The second aspect of the answer is this.  Nowhere in all
these books do I use a text, or do I refer to a tablet and say,
I went to this or that place in the Near East and as I was
visiting that place, I shifted the soil with my foot or with a
stick and look what I found! I found this tablet and look what
it says! It says that there was somebody called Enki who
travelled from Nibiru to Earth and splashed down in the Persian
Gulf.  No, nowhere do I say, "Look what I found." All the time I
say, "There is a tablet in the British Museum, its catalog
number is such and such; it was discovered in this and this
place; the text was first published by this and this scholar,
here is what it says." All the information, all the sources that
I am giving, are academically, scientifically, scholarly known
and accepted sources.  At no time do I invent my own source.

     CL: Just in The Wars of God and Men, the sources you list
take up almost 16 pages!

     ZS: The difference is, and this is the key difference, that
when there is a text, for example, that describes how Enki came
to Earth and splashed down, the scholars, the text books, call
this the "Myth of Enki and the Earth." Another text that deals
with Enlil is called the "Myth of Enlil" and whatever the
subject is.  All these texts are called by scholars "mythology."
I say: What if this is not a myth, what if these texts tell us
what really took place?                                      
CL: Right.

       ZS:  From  that  I  created   the   scenario, a
plausible, a logical scenario that explains so  many  of   the   
enigmas   and   the puzzles and the mysteries which other wise 
remain enigmas, and mysteries and puzzles.  Like, who built the 
pyramids, what for, etc.

     CL: What more can you tell us about the Anunnaki, and do we
have free-will or is it all determined by these same Anunnaki?

     ZS: I'm asked, "Do they look like us?" and I say, no, we
look like them.   They made us through genetic engineering. they
jumped the gun on evolution, and made us to look like them physically, 
and to be like them emotionally.  That is what the Bible says: 
"Let us make the Adam in our likeness and after our image." Physically, 
outwardly and inwardly.  So much of what they are, we are.

     There is a tremendous difference in the lifespan, which is
the cause of the notions of their immortality.  Because one year
to them is one orbit of theirs around the sun.  So, one of their
years equals three-thousand-six-hundred of ours.  This is the
key difference between us and them.

     Then there is the difference in their technological
advancement which enables them not only to travel in space, and
to have traveled half a million years ago, but also to revive
the dead and do other things which in biblical times were
considered miracles.     

     I feel that just as they came to earth and created us
through genetic engineering, and mixed their genes with those of
Apewoman, that one day we will go out in space and land on
another planet somewhere and do the same thing.  In this sense,
I believe things are ordained in a grand pattern.     

    But can events within this grand pattern be determined by
individuals? I think so.  Take the story of the Deluge and the
destruction of mankind and the saving of the seed of mankind,
through Noah and his ark.  Enlil decided to use the opportunity
of the avalanche of water to destroy mankind, while Enki Noah,
(the Sumerian Ziusudra) about what was coming.  Enki taught Noah
how to build an ark and cover and seal it so it wouldn't be
swamped, and Noah was able to take himself and his family and
others, according to the Sumerians, into the ark and save the
seed of mankind.  Here you have a conflict between two leaders
of the Anunnaki.  One felt one way and one felt another way.  So
the question of free choice, of what is right, what is wrong,
what should be done, what should not be done, is there all
along.     

     CL: What about the theory that we are the gods of before?
That we created mankind and now are at the effect end?

     ZS: All I can tell you is that I see my task, or maybe my
mission, to bring to the knowledge of people today, what the
ancient people knew and believed in.  To do so by being able to
go to their sources and their writings and their depictions, and
treating that material not as a myth but as a true story. Now,
my writings have become a basis of quite a substantial
literature.   There are two dozen or more books that are based
on my books.  These are in theology, astrology, and so on and so
forth, and I am sure there are many more about which I don't
know.  They refer to my writings or are based on them.  I
provide the facts as I see them, and everyone is free to
interpret them' as they wish.

          CL: That's the scientific way of looking at it, which
makes your work even more credible, That means you're not making
guesses, you're going by the actual evidence that exists.       
  

           ZS: Yes.  I am pleased that many    have used this
material as evidence, to build on it, to expound on it in
various directions.  Without saying whether I agree or disagree
with the other theories     and developments, I am very happy
that  my books have become text books about     ancient times.

           CL: You said when Pluto was discovered, in 1930, text
books were rewritten to accommodate that fact.  Has anyone or
any textbook publisher done the same with this information?     
    

           ZS: It takes time, but it is beginning  to filter
through.         
           CL: When is this thirty-six hundred  year cycle due
again?          
           ZS: Well, you have to reach your  own conclusions.
           CL: If every time they came back  they taught us
something new, and advanced our civilization, do you have a
theory what their next step for us might be?

          ZS: No. As I said, one time they didn't give us any
civilization, they tried  to destroy us.  So, I don't know what 
the odds are.

          CL: Is there a lesson here for us? If  this is our
history, what are we supposed to have learned to avert another
flood when the Anunnaki come back?  Or is that too unpredictable
to guess?          

           ZS: To some extent it is unpredictable because I
don't know who their leader is now.  Whether he is from the
Enlil  clan or from the Enki clan.  If I knew that, I could
answer you more easily.  That's why I still have books to write
to reach the answer.  It is a big question,     and the answer
is not that simple.

 

          The Earth Chronicles are available in hardcover from
Bear and Co., P.O. Drawer 2860, Santa Fe, NM, 87504. 1-800-932-3277, 
(credit cards only) and in paperback from Avon Books.



 ISSUE    17    CONNECTING    LINK     15

04. 1-800-932-3277, 
(credit cards only) and in paperback from Avon Books.
-- 
============================================================
   "You can lead a horse to water but you can't 
    make it drink"
...Author unknown

============================================================
.Robert K. Rouse..rkrouse@netcom.com
============================================================

