Who are the Anunnaki?

Who are the Anunnaki?

by D.M. Murdock/Acharya S

Are the Anunnaki real? Are they aliens? Or are they part of a bigger picture?

The "Anunnaki" are the major players in a paradigm making its way into popular folklore, via the work of the late Zecharia Sitchin, an economist by education and profession, and the author of several best-selling books, including Genesis Revisited, that explore ancient mythology and the mysterious megalithic ruins found around the globe. These various books also seek to demonstrate that there was in ancient times an extraterrestrial race that genetically manipulated mankind for various reasons.

The Sitchin thesis ("Sitchinism"), now embraced by numerous other writers, who have incorporated it into what is apparently a new worldview, essentially asserts that these ancient Sumero-Babylonian gods, the Anunnaki, are aliens from the planet Nibiru (Sitchin's "12th Planet"), which passes by the earth every 3,500 years or so, at which time they planet-hop to the earth and create mischief.

Although the idea of the ancient gods being aliens may seem novel, the tendency to make the gods of old into "real people" or "flesh and blood" is not at all new, dating to before the time of the Greek historian Herodotus (5th c. BCE) and developed by the Greek philosopher Euhemeros or Evemeras (c. 300 BCE). This tendency is called, in fact, "euhemerism" or "evemerism," which claims that the numerous gods of various cultures were not "mythical" but were in reality kings, queens, warriors and assorted heroes whose lives were turned into fairytales with the addition of miraculous details to their biographies. The current Anunnaki thesis is a modern version of evemerism, although it seeks to explain the miracles as not fabulous "additions" to the tales but genuine attributes of advanced extraterrestrials.

Unfortunately for those who would wish to see concrete evidence of such exciting notions as extraterrestrial visitation in Earth's remote past, the Anunnaki will not be the place to look, as the true nature of these various gods and goddesses was already known long before the era of modern revisionism.

Ancient Astronaut Theory

The tireless researcher Charles Fort was widely known as the chronicler of what are now called "Forteana," bizarre anomalies and mysteries that throw the current perception of reality on its ear, whether it be religious or scientific. In an attempt to explain these anomalies, which include weird stories or "myths" and enormous, astonishing ruins worldwide, a number of people, including Swiss writer Erich von Daniken and Zecharia Sitchin, have created the "ancient astronaut theory," which dictates that alien visitors have been influencing human life for thousands if not millions of years, even to the point of genetic manipulation. von Daniken, it should be recalled, was one of the first moderns to put forth the ancient astronaut theory and was widely ridiculed and vilified for his observations.

Because of Sitchin's apparent scholastic training, he becomes more credible for many, even though he is one of those renegades not scholastically trained in his field. Furthermore, it should be noted that neither man came up with the ancient astronaut theory, which was largely developed by a German occultic society, for one, during the 19th century.

Supporters ("Sitchinites") claim that Sitchin is one of the few people who read the Sumerian language and that because he can read Sumerian, he must be interpreting the data properly. The assertion that he is one of the few scholars of Sumerian is not true. Moreover, the idea that someone may be able to read a language and therefore can interpret its data properly is a specious argument, because the one certainly does not guarantee the other. Years before Sitchin, biblical and Dead Sea scrolls scholar John Allegro studied Sumerian intimately and came to very different conclusions: To wit, that many of the words revolved around sex and drugs. Hence, it is not the "mere" ability to read the Sumerian that will produce an accurate rendering of it.

Biblical Bias?

Yahweh, the angry, jealous tribal god..
Like so many other paradigms that make it into popular culture, the alien astronaut theory has been agenda-driven. In fact, it seems that the most recent attempt may be prompted by the same type of motivation that produced the Bible, a chronicle largely consisting of the plagiarized myths of other cultures that were reconstituted as "humans" of a particular ethnicity. It appears that the Anunnaki thesis has now led to the conclusion that, while the Bible is not infallible, its god Yahweh is valid and its various characters are the superhuman alien-hybrid progenitors of "the chosen."

In reality, there was no reason to recreate the ancient gods as aliens or humans, because the ancients themselves were quite clear about what it was exactly they were worshipping and fancifully describing in epic poetry. The speculation is not needed, as, for example, the Sumero-Babylonians themselves said that the gods were the planets, not people, and that their stories were myths representing personifications of these bodies.

It is believed that by "dismissing" the myths of the ancients as myths, we are somehow robbing them of their "history." This claim is ludicrous, as it is those who insist that there are no myths who are actually defaming the ancients. It seems as if everyone has already forgotten the work of the learned and esteemed mythologist Joseph Campbell. Campbell knew that major biblical tales, such as that of Moses and the Exodus, were mythical. In his book Occidental Mythology, following a discussion of the Bible, Campbell turns to the "Gods and Heroes of the European West," and says, with apparent resentment:

"Fortunately, it will not be necessary to argue that Greek, Celtic or Germanic myths were mythological. The peoples themselves knew they were myths, and the European scholars discussing them have not been overborne by the idea of something uniquely holy about their topic."

Perhaps mythology is simply not as exciting as the UFOlogical paradigm, whereby ancient astronauts were buzzing all over the place, being worshipped for their extraordinary capacities. However, the desire to see such a "history" often seems to be coming from exposure as a youth to comic books and sci-fi movies—and even the History Channel these days, featuring "Ancient Aliens" shows!

Astrotheology of the Ancients

The ancients were not the dark and dumb rabble commonly portrayed. They were, in fact, highly advanced. As such, they developed over a period of many thousands of years a complex astronomical/ astrological system that incorporated the movements and qualities of numerous celestial bodies, which could be called the "celestial mythos."

The celestial mythos is found around the globe in astonishing uniformity. In fact, it served as the manner by which life on Earth was ordered, as it contained information crucial to life, such as the movements and interrelationship of the sun and moon. Without the mythos, no people would have been able to become sea-faring, and planting and harvesting would have been difficult. And the mythos needed no alien intervention to be developed by humans, nor did it need moderns to come along and reinterpret it contrary to what its creators intended.

For example, the Anunnaki play a part in the mythos, but they are not "people," human or otherwise. The Anunnaki, in general, represent the seven "nether spheres" and guardians of the seven "gates" through which the "sun of God" passes into the netherworld or darkness. They are also the "tutelary spirits of the earth." So, immediately we encounter a problem which reveals that what Sitchin is putting forth is not what the ancients themselves said of the traditions they themselves developed. Like so many before him, Sitchin also wants to make the main character of the celestial mythos, the sun, into a person. Actually, he wants to make it into several extraterrestrials. These various gods found around the globe, such as Apollo, Osiris, Horus, Krishna, Hercules, Jesus and Quetzalcoatl, are not people or aliens but personifications of the solar hero, as was stated by the peoples who created them. The ancients were not so dumb that they mistook planets for people, even though they personified those planets and, where the knowledge or gnosis of the mythos was lost, they hoped for "the incarnation," or the carnalization or appearance of a "god." There is no need to recreate the wheel here by speculating upon what the ancients "really" meant.

Contrary to popular belief, the Sumerian culture has been known for centuries and did not appear suddenly out of nowhere with the discovery of the cuneiform tablets found at Ur, capitol of Sumeria, for example. If anything, the tablets and others verified what we already knew about Sumeria from its inheritors, the Akkadians and Assyro-Babylonians. The Sumerians were not a lost civilization, except that their older physical remains such as at Ur had not been remembered through the ages but were rediscovered only in the mid-19th century. Their mythology and culture were fairly well preserved in the succeeding civilizations: For instance, some 300,000 tablets of the Babylonians have been found thus far, which include much commentary on their gods.

The main characters in the Sumero-Babylonian religion/mythology are Enlil/Ellil, Utu/Shamash, Marduk/Merodach, Gilgamesh, Nanna/Sin, Inanna/Ishtar, Ea/Enki and Dumuzi/Tammuz. A number of these deities are in the class called "Anunnaki" and/or "Igigi." The Anunnaki are numbered variously: 7, 50 and 900.

None of these characters is a historical person, as, again, the Sumero-Babylonians correctly identified their own gods as being the "planets," which, of course, included the sun and the moon to the ancients. Says the Catholic Encyclopedia regarding Babel:

Enlil/Ellil/Bel

The "king of the Anunnaki," Enlil is the storm/wind god, also essentially the same as the later Bel or Baal, the Canaanite sun god/solar hero. Enlil and Ninlil give birth to the moon god Nanna, "a major astral deity of the Sumerians," who was called "Sin" in Babylonian. Sin is the same moon god encamped at Mt. Sinai, as well as worshipped at Ur and Harran, where purportedly lived the mythical Abraham, progenitor of the Hebrews, who "borrowed" many of their gods (Elohim) from Mesopotamia (and Canaan, Egypt, etc.). Obviously, neither the moon nor "his parents" are real persons/aliens; nor are the rest. (Akkadian), Sumerian Enlil, Mesopotamian god of the atmosphere and a member of the triad of gods completed by Anu (Sumerian An) and Ea (Enki). Enlil meant 'Lord Wind'- both the hurricane and the gentle winds of spring were thought of as the breath issuing from his mouth, and eventually as his word or command [cf. Christian "logos" (John 1:1)]. He was sometimes called Lord of the Air.

"Although An was the highest god in the Sumerian pantheon, Enlil had a more important role: he embodied energy and force but not authority. Enlil's cult centre was Nippur. Enlil was also the god of agriculture: the Myth of the Creation of the Hoe describes how he separated heaven and earth to make room for seeds to grow. He then invented the hoe and broke the hard crust of earth; men sprang forth from the hole. Another myth relates Enlil's rape of his consort Ninlil (Akkadian Belit), a grain goddess, and his subsequent banishment to the underworld. This myth reflects the agricultural cycle of fertilization, ripening and winter inactivity.

"The name of his Akkadian counterpart, Bel, is derived from the Semitic word baal, or "lord." Bel had all the attributes of Enlil, and his status and cult were much the same. Bel, however, gradually came to be thought of as the god of order and destiny. In Greek writings references to Bel indicate this Babylonian deity and not the Syrian god of Palmyr.

Although there were many Baalim, the singular Baal apparently came to represent the sun in the age of Taurus (c. 4500-2400 BCE), whence, it is said, comes the word "bull."

The moon god Sin is the father of Shamash, the Babylonian sun god, who was worshipped by the Israelites. Indeed, "sun" in Hebrew is "shamash." The sun god Shamash was called the "sublime judge of the Anunnaki."

Enki/Ea

 The "commander of the Anunnaki" and son of Enki/Ea, the god of "the waters" (cf. Gen. 1:1), was Marduk, or Merodach, who is apparently the Mordecai of the biblical book of Esther (Ishtar). Also called a "king of the Igigi," Marduk was the supreme Babylonian god and often represented Jupiter, although as "Bel-Marduk" he incorporated aspects of the sun god as well and was considered as such at a late period in his worship.

One of Marduk's 50 names was "Nibiru" or "Nebiru," in which Robert Temple in The Sirius Mystery sees the Egyptian term "Neb-Heru," meaning "Lord of the sun." The god Horus or "Heru" is indeed largely a sun god, depicted as a hawk with wings outstretched and the solar orb on his head.

Much more here: 

nexusilluminati.com