(This article was originally published in Ufologist, Vol. 21, Vol. 6, March-April 2018)
Zechariah Sitchin (1920-2010), author of The 12th Planet (1976) and its sequels, called The Earth Chronicles, was arguably the second most famous proponent of the ancient aliens theory after Erich von Daniken.
Sitchin claimed to be an expert in ancient Sumerian and Akkadian languages. He argued that their ancient clay tablets, such as the Enuma Elish and the Epic of Atrahasis, said there was another planet Nibiru whose orbit took it from beyond Pluto to the inner solar system every 3600 years. When Nibiru’s orbit took it near Earth 445,000 years ago, aliens called Nephilim travelled to Earth and landed in Mesopotamia to mine gold and other precious minerals. The gold was taken back to Nibiru to fix their atmosphere. For 144,000 years, the Anunnaki, the lesser members of the Nephilim, mined gold until 300,000 years ago when they mutinied, complaining that the work was too hard. The Nephilim decided to create humans by manipulating the DNA of homo erectus so they could work in the mines. About 13,000 years ago Nibiru approached too close to Earth causing the Antarctic ice sheet to slip into the sea. The Nephilim escaped to their orbiting space station while the resulting tidal waves were the basis for the Deluge of the Bible and Mesopotamian myths.
Sitchin’s website says he is “one of the few scholars able to read and interpret ancient Sumerian and Akkadian clay tablets.” However, Sitchin does not have any academic qualifications in ancient history and languages, but a degree in economics from the University of London. There is nothing wrong with teaching oneself Sumerian and Akkadian, although there are plenty of universities where one can learn. The problem is Sitchin does not appear to have taught himself very well and there is no justification for his translations.
It is not only the “sceptics” who have a problem with Sitchin’s interpretations. Ancient aliens believer Philip Coppens has written, “Sitchin is totally wrong.” [1] He has also written,
“Sitchin’s interpretations were all derived from his understanding of the Sumerian language. Since 1976 no scholar of Ugaritic ever corroborated his claims, and as more experts in the Sumerian language were created, none came even close to endorsing Sitchin. In fact, most noted that Sitchin had greatly mistranslated Sumerian.” [2]
Andrew Collins, who appears regularly on Ancient Aliens, has said, “I can say categorically that in my opinion his translations of the text are pure fantasy.” [3]
In his book Magicians of the Gods Graham Hancock describes Sitchin’s books as “science fiction novels … which he successfully passed off to the public as serious factual studies” and “his overall body of work is marred by enough blatant fabrications and fantasy to call for caution, rather than immediate, trusting acceptance, on the part of his readers.” [4]
Hancock suggests that Sitchin “could not read and translate [the cuneiform texts] as he claimed” and “his “translations” were adapted and to some extent “fictionalized” from the work of mainstream scholars.” [5]
Alan Alford was once a supporter of Sitchin’s theories. His 1996 book Gods of the New Millennium drew heavily on Sitchin’s ideas. However, he soon came to no longer believe in the ancient aliens explanation and concluded that the ancient gods were based on natural astronomical phenomena, an exploding planet and meteorites hitting the earth. He believed that some of the evidence for alien intervention could be explained as the product of a lost advanced human civilization, rather than aliens. When he expressed his doubts about the ancient aliens theory at a UFO conference in Nevada in 1999, Sitchin later threatened to sue him for $50 million [6] .Alford died in 2011, but a detailed self-critique of his former view can be found on his website.
Sitchin’s claims, about the Anunnaki mining for gold in southern Africa for 100,000 years before they mutinied and created humans to do the work for them, are supposedly based on The Epic of Atrahasis. However, this says that the Anunnaki made the Igigi, younger gods who were their servants, dig canals in Mesopotamia for 3600 years [7]. There is nothing about digging for gold. It does not say the gods created humans from ape-men.
Sitchin says the planet NIbiru caused the Deluge when it passed too close to Earth, but Atrahasis says nothing about Nibiru causing the Deluge. It says the gods did it to wipe out the humans because they were making too much noise and they could not sleep [8]. This does not sound like something we are meant to take literally.
Sitchin claims that the aliens from Nibiru were called the Nephilim. This comes from Genesis 6 describing conditions before the Flood,
“When men began to increase on the face of the earth and daughters were born to them, the sons of God saw that the daughters of men were beautiful, and they married any of them they chose ….. The Nephilim were on the earth in those days – and also afterward – when the sons of God went to the daughters of men and children by them. They were the heroes of od, men of renown.” (Genesis 6:1-2,4)
Some believe the “sons of God” were just ordinary men. Others believe they were fallen angels who had sex with human women and the Nephilim, their offspring, were human-angel hybrids. The apocryphal Book of Enoch gives a much more detailed version, making it clear the sons of God were understood to be angels called Watchers (Enoch 8).
Ancient aliens proponents believe these passages mean aliens landed and had sex with human women or artificially inseminated them.
Many commentators believe the word Nephilim is derived from the Hebrew “naphal”, to fall, so it means something like the “fallen ones”. Several Bible versions translate it as giants.
Sitchin claims Nephilim means “those who were cast down upon the earth” [9], but he does not offer any evidence for this definition. If the author was trying to convey this meaning, he would have more likely used the Hebrew word “yarad”, not “naphal” which means “to go down” or “to come down”, i.e., “Then the Lord came down (yarad) in the cloud” (Exodus 34:5a). Sitchin makes the Nephilim sound like beings who came down to earth, but even if the ancient aliens believers are right and the sons of God were randy extraterrestrials, the Nephilim were not extraterrestrials. Genesis 6 says the Nephilim were born on earth. At best, they were human-alien hybrids born on earth. Sitchin seems to have misunderstood this and thought the Nephilim were extraterrestrials.
Sitchin claims that Nephilim also means “People of the Rocket Ships”[10] . His reasoning is that in Genesis 6:4 the Nephilim are described as “men of renown”. He translates this literally as “people of the Shem”. “Shem” is Hebrew for “renown” or “name”. It appears to be saying that the famous gods of pagan mythology were based on the Nephilim, however Sitchin claims that the Hebrew “shem” is derived from the Akkadian “shamu” which means “that which is a mu” and “mu” was Sumerian for “that which rises straight”, a rocket [11]. Again, he does not cite any source for this definition.
Scholars of ancient Mesopotamia can be sure about the meanings of Sumerian words because archaeologists have discovered many of their lexical lists or dictionaries on clay tablets. Sumerian was the everyday language in ancient Mesopotamia until it was replaced by Akkadian around 2000 BC. Sumerians was still spoken in some situations (a bit like Latin) and the Mesopotamian lexical lists or dictionaries contained the Sumerian word and its definition in Akkadian. The lexical lists say “shamu” and “mu” mean heaven, sky or rain. Sitchin seems to have just made up his definition [12]. There is no connection with the Hebrew “shem”. Just because words on different languages sound similar, does not mean they mean the same thing, i.e., “Gott” (God) in German and “got” in English may sound similar but there is no connection between them.
In The Twelfth Planet Sitchin claims Anunnaki means “the fifty who went from Heaven to Earth” [13]. In his third book The Wars of Gods and Men he claims it means, “Those Who from Heaven to Earth Came” [14]. Again, he does not cite any evidence for his definition, especially a lexical list, or explain why he apparently changed his mind about its meaning.
According to the lexical lists, Anunnaki means “princely seed” or “princely blood” [15]. The Anunnaki were princes because they were the sons of Anu, the king of the gods and the sky god.
Surely, the best way to understand what a word in a language means is to look it up in their dictionaries. Instead, Sitchin declares himself an expert in Sumerian and Akkadian and basically makes up new definitions of words, which cannot be found in their dictionaries or lexical lists, to justify his theories. I might as well say I am an expert in the English language and I know the word “bird” really means “aliens”, so when people say they saw birds, they really saw aliens. If you question my reasoning, I can say I am an expert so I know these things.
Sitchin’s central thesis, that our solar system has another whose 3600 year orbit takes it beyond Pluto and which can support animal life, is impossible. Astronomers know that for a planet to support advanced animal life, its orbit must fall within a solar system’s “continuously habitable zone” or “goldilocks zone” where it is neither too hot nor too cold. This will vary according to the size of a solar system’s sun, but in our solar system it is apparently between 88.3 and 106.9 million miles from the sun [16] . The hypothetical planet Nibiru would spend over 99% of its orbit in frozen darkness and simply could not support advanced animal life.
Sitchin believed there were 432,000 years between the Nephilim’s landing on Earth and the Deluge from the Babylonian historian Berossus who was mentioned earlier. Berossus said there had been ten kings who reigned before the Flood for a total of 432,000 years [17] . Again, every myth and text is taken literally.
Sitchin suggests these rulers reigned for so long because they were Nephilim from Nibiru. According to Sitchin, our lifespan is based on how long it takes to orbit the sun,
“We live so many years because our biological clocks are geared to so many Earth orbits around the sun.” [18]
Because one Nibiru year or orbit is supposedly 3600 Earth years, they can live for much longer. Our biology determines how long we live, not the length of our ear. Not all life forms on Earth live for the same period of time. Some insects live only for a day. There are also environmental factors. 300 years ago the average human lifespan was about half what it is now. That was not because the Earth was orbiting the Sun faster than it is now.
When we consider the progress of human civilization over the last 4000 years (which was not always onwards and upwards), and the technological progress of the last 100 years, Sitchin’s theory about the Nephilim being around for over 436,000 years sounds highly implausible. They are supposed to have mined gold in southern Africa for 100,000 years. When the work became too much for them, they created humans for slaves. They had invented space travel over 130,000 years earlier, yet they could invent automated mining equipment and had to work manually. For over 440,000 years the Nephilim were supposedly still travelling in rockets. They did not invent more advanced means of space travel, like anti-gravity or warp-drives.
The 12th Planet was written in 1976 in the aftermath of the Apollo moon landings when people had rockets on the brain. This probably explains why Sitchin assumed aliens would travel to Earth in rockets. In contrast, the more recent Ancient Aliens was produced by people who had seen Star Trek and Star Gate, so they suggest the aliens used star gates and faster than light travel, rather than old fashioned rockets.
When the Anunnaki are mentioned on Ancient Aliens, they repeatedly show ancient depictions of winged humans from Mesopotamia [19] . They clearly want to give the impression that these are representations of the Anunnaki. Ancient Aliens are usually showing images of the Apkallus, the seven sages, which were mentioned earlier, on the wall reliefs of the Assyrian capital of Kalhu (Nimrud) from the 9th to 7th centuries BC. They are not the Anunnaki.
The episode “The Anunnaki Connection” also claimed that the Anunnaki had “cone-head skulls”[20] . This is not in any ancient Mesopotamian texts. The Apkallus on the wall reliefs, which they show in the same episode, clearly do not have cone-shaped heads.
When they were discussing the Anunnaki in this episode, they twice showed a scene from the Black Obelisk of Shalmaneser, which was discovered in Nimrud, showing the Israelite king Jehu (841-814 BC) bowing before the Assyrian king Shalmaneser [21]. What is this supposed to have to do with the Anunnaki?
The Ancient Aliens episode “Aliens and Mysterious Mountains” says, “The Sumerian mythology proclaimed that the Anunnaki will return one day.”[22] No, it doesn’t. If any ancient aliens believer thinks I’m wrong about this, they can just cite the relevant ancient cuneiform text.
One of Sitchin’s main sources is the creation epic the Enuma Elish. Sitchin claimed the gods represented the sun and the planets including Nibiru. According to Sitchin, the Enuma Elsih says there were originally Apsu (the Sun), Mummu (Mercury) and Tiamat (a now destroyed planet between Mars and Jupiter). Lahmu (Mars) and Lahanu (Venus) were formed, followed by Anshar (Saturn), KIshar (Jupiter), Anu (Uranus), Nudimmud or Ea (Neptune) and Gaga (Pluto)[23] .
Actually, Apsu represented the fresh water under the earth, Mummu was his vizier and Timat was a salt water goddess. When Apsu and Tiamat’s waters mixed, they produced the other gods. Anu was the god of the sky, not Uranus [24]. Ea and Nudimmud were other names for Apsu, not Neptune[25].
The Sumeran and Akkadian names for the Sun were Utu and Shamash respectively, Mercury was Enki and Nabu, Venus was Inannu and Ishtar, Mars was Gugulanna and Nergal, Jupiter was Enlil and Marduk, Saturn was Ninurta [26] .
Sitchin refers to Nibiru or Marduk as the twelfth planet because he believes the Sumerians regarded the Sum and Moon as celestial bodies like the nine known planets plus Nibiru, making twelve, many ancient cultures had twelve gods because there were twelve celestial bodies [27].
It is more likely to do with the twelve months of the year based on the cycles of the moon.
Modern astronomers do not say there are eleven planets, including the sun and the moon. They understand the difference between the sun, moon and planets. If the ancient Mesopotamians put the sun and moon on a par with the planets, it shows a lack of understanding about the nature of the solar system. They could not have been the recipients of advanced astronomical knowledge from aliens.
The same Berossus, whom Sitchin used to argue that the Nephilim had been on Earth for 432,000 years, also wrote that the god “Belus also formed the stars, and the sun and the moon, together with the five planets.” [28]
The ancient Mesopotamians, like other ancient civilizations, were only aware of the five planets, which could be easily seen with the naked eye, Mercury, Venus, Mars, Jupiter, Saturn. They did not know about the outer planets or any hypothetical Nibiru.
Sitchin’s argument that the Sumerians knew there were more planets, including Nibiru, is based on one seal, catalogued VA 243 in the Museum of the Ancient Near East in Berlin, which appears to show two people making an offering to a seated god. Above them is what Sitchin claims is the sun surrounded by eleven globes, representing the nine undisputed planets, the moon and Nibiru.
However, the symbol for our sun was a circle with four points or arms and wavy lines between them inside a larger circle, while the symbol for other stars was a circle with six, seven or eight arms or points. The symbol in the seal VA 243 is a circle with seven arms and no wavy lines. It does not represent our solar system [29].
Michael Heiser writes,
“There is not a single text in the entire corpus of Sumerian or Mesopotamian tablets in the world that tell us the Sumerians (or later inhabitants of Mesopotamia) knew there were more than five planets ….. Literally every cuneiform text that has any astronomical comment (even with respect to astrology and omens) has been translated, indexed, and discussed in the available academic literature,” [30]
This means that either alien visitors, who were supposed to have brought knowledge and civilization to primitive humans, did not tell them how many planets there are in the solar system, or there were no ancient aliens visiting Earth.
The Antikythera Device was discovered in a shipwreck near Antikythera between Greece and Crete in 1900. It is dated to around 100BC. It was originally a wooden box containing at least 30 bronze gears and was used to plot the movement of the planets. Von Daniken suggests the Antikythera Device was used “on board one of the flying machines of prehistory.” [31]
Since it was found in a shipwreck, it was used by sailors on a ship around 100 BC, not pilots in imaginary prehistoric flying machines.
The Antikythera Device is unique and surprisingly advanced, but it is not proof of ancient aliens. Interplanetary travellers do not used computers comprised of bronze gears. If a 2000 year old equivalent of an iPad, that would be conclusive evidence.
Furthermore, the Antikythera Device only covers the sun, moon, and the five planets which can be seen with the naked eye, and no Nibiru. In other words, it was made by people who had not invented the telescope and did not know how many planets there were in the solar system.
In The Stairway to Heaven Sitchin claimed that the platform on which the Roman temples were built in Baalbek, Lebanon, was originally a landing pad for the Nephilim’s rockets.
The Ancient Aliens episode “Aliens and Sacred Places” says that Baalbek “dates back 9000 years” [32] and “Archaeological surveys have revealed that the enormous stone foundation that lies at the base of the site dates back tens of thousands of years.” [33]
This is half-true at best. The area has been inhabited for about 9000 years, but that does not mean the platform is 9000 years old. Australia may have been inhabited by the Aborigines for 40,000 years, but that does not mean the Sydney Opera House is 40,000 years old.
The same Ancient Aliens episode says that Baalbek “has always been known as the Landing Place. Gilgamesh actually claims to have seen rockets descend and ascend from Baalbek, the Landing Place.” [34] Only Sitchin “knows” this.
The Epic of Gilgamesh was written on twelve clay tablets which were discovered in Nineveh and tells the story of Gilgamesh, the king of Uruk. In Tablets two and Three Gilgamesh and Enkidu decide to go to the Cedar forest to kill the monster Humbada.
In The Stairway to Heaven Sitchin quotes a passage from the Epic of Gilgamesh when they were planning to set out on this journey, “He [Gilgamesh] fell to his needs and prayed to Shamash: “Let me go, O Shamash! My hands are raised in prayer … to the Landing Place, give command… Establish over me thy protection.” [35]
According to Sitchin and his followers, the Landing Place is Baalbek where rockets landed and took off [36].
Sitchin’s works are largely devoid of proper references, such as page numbers, chapters and verses, so it is hard to determine where Gilgamesh is supposed to have said this. The only person, who prays to the sun god Shamash and raises their hands, is Gilgamesh’s mother, the goddess Ninsun,
“She came before Shamash, made a smoke offering, made a surginnu-offering before Shamash and raised her arms; “Why did you single out my son Gilgamesh (and) impose a restless spirit on him? Now you have affected him and he will take the distant path to where Humbada lives. He faces an unknown struggle, he will ride an unknown road until the day when, having travelled far and wide, he finally reaches the Pine Forest, until he slays the ferocious Humbada and exterminates from the land something evil which you hate.” “ [37]
Gilgamesh gave an identical description of his intentions to his mother earlier [38], so it looks like Sitchin somehow got the “Landing Place” from these passages. However, there is no mention of Baalbek in the Epic of Gilgamesh. There is no evidence Baalbek existed during the third millennium BC when Gilgamesh is supposed to have lived. Archaeologists believe the Romans built both the platform and the temples.
In an article “Moving the Stones of Baalbek – The Wonders of Roman Engineering” Aaron Adair writes,
“While artifacts going back thousands of years before the Roman occupation have been found, there is no record of Baalbek in Assyrian records. One particular silence is a war during the reign of Shalmaneser III (9th century BCE), in which a coalition of kingdoms of north Syria, headed by the ruler of Damascus fought the Assyrian forces. In the tribute list after the war, numerous cities are mentioned, but Baalbek is not one of them. The silence continues into the Babylonian and Persian occupations of the Beqaa valley. Suggesting the location was of minimal importance (Jedijian 1975). After Alexander the Great the region would go back and forth under the control of the dynasties Alexander’s generals had formed, and in the Beqaa another dynast formed and had its own currency. By the time the Roman general Pompey conquered the region, the place was noticed by the Roman geographer Strabo as mountainous with high regions controlled by robbers, and the plains had farming communities. There are no indications of any great structures there, let alone the largest stones ever moved.” [39]
The logical conclusion why Baalbek is not mentioned is because it had not been built yet.
Gilgamesh and Enkidu travelled to Lebanon. Each night of the journey Gilgamesh asked the mountain to give him a favourable dream. On the third night he dreamed, “And the dream that I had was extremely upsetting, Heaven cried out, earth groaned. Day grew silent, darkness emerged, Lightning flashed, fire broke out. [Flames] crackled, death rained down. [Then] sparks were dimmed, and the fire was extinguished. [The coals which] kept falling turned to embers.” [40]
This is the source for Sitchin’s claim that Gilgamesh saw a rocket taking off at Baalbek, a dream [41]. Fire, lightning, loud noises and falling coals can be other things than rockets. As mentioned earlier, Sitchin claims that the Akkadian word “shamu”, which means heaven, sky or rain, really means a rocket, but Gilgamesh does not say he saw a “shamu” going up into the sky. The Epic of Gilgamesh does not support Sitchin’s claim that Baalbek was known as the Landing Place where rockets took off.
At the base of the western wall of the Baalbek platform are three large stones known as the Trilithon. Sitchin claims the stones weigh 1000 tons each [42]. Von Daniken goes higher and claims they weigh over 2000 tons each [43]. They both claim that even today no crane could life such weights [44]. According to the Guinness Book of Records, the heaviest object ever lifted was over 23,000 tons [45] . Moreover, the Trilithon “only” weigh about 800 tons each.
Nevertheless, the stones are really heavy. Compared to most of the claims of ancient aliens believers, Baalbek is arguably among their more credible evidence. At first glance it seems hard to believe that ancient people could have move such weights.
However, it was not impossible for pre-industrial people to move something weighing 800 tons. The heaviest object ever moved by humans was the Thunder Stone which was the pedestal of the statue of the Bronze Horseman in St. Petersburg and weighed about 1250 tons. It was dragged over land for about 6 kilometres by 2 teams of 32 men before it was transported by barge to its location in 1770 [46] .
The Trilithon stones came from a quarry about 800 metres away. There are three larger stones still in the quarry, the “Stone of the Pregnant woman”, which weighs about 1000 tons, another stone which weighs about 1200 tons and a third which was discovered in 2014 partly under the “Stone of the Pregnant Woman” and weighs about 1800 tons.
Graham Hancock believes the Romans had the capability to transport the Trilithon, but he does not think they did [47]. He also writes that Sitchin’s theory that Baalbek was a landing platform for rockets “could only have been made by a man who had no idea of the real appearance and layout of Baalbek itself, and could only be believed by others who have no direct knowledge of the site.” [48]
The Trilithon are not a platform. They are part of a retaining wall, which even Sitchin acknowledges [49]. Rockets do not land on or take off from walls.
The Romans were capable of moving heavy objects. The Lateran Obelisk originally weighed around 455 tons. During the reign of Constantius II (337-361 AD), it was moved from Alexandria, Egypt, and re-erected in Rome. If the Romans could move a 455 ton stone hundreds of kilometres, they could probably move an 800 ton stone about 800 metres.
The fact that there are three larger stones still in the quarry suggests that they were too heavy for the Romans to move.
In 1977 Jean-Pierre Adam published an article in French, “Concerning the Trilithon at Baalbek: Transportation and the Implementation of the Megaliths”. Portions of this article have been translated into English by Michael Heiser in an article “Transporting the Trilithon Stones of Baalbek: It’s About Applied Physics, Not Ancient Aliens.” Adam demonstrated that 144 men using 6 capstans could have generated enough power to move an 800 ton stone [50].
Adam also cites Vitruvius (d. circa 15 AD) who was the author of On Architecture, a ten volume work on Roman architecture and engineering which says that the Romans moved large oblong stones by building wheels on both ends and making them into axels so they would roll.
There is another History Channel series with Ancient in the title, Ancient Impossible (2014). In the episode “Moving Mountains” they discuss the Trilithon at Baalbek and also suggest they were moved using the wheel method described by Vitruvius [51]. Ancient Impossible discusses some of the other achievements and mysteries mentioned in Ancient Aliens. After years of listening to Ancient Aliens going on about how useless people in the ancient world were and could not build anything themselves, it is refreshing to hear some real archaeologists and engineers explain how they actually did these things all by themselves.
[1] Philip Coppens, The Ancient Alien Question, New Page books, New Jersey, 2012, p 55
[2] Ibid., p 52
[3] Andrew Collins, “South Africa’s Enigmatic Stone Ruins Explored”, http://www.andrewcollins.com/page/articles/txsa_4_adams.htm
[4] Graham Hancock, Magicians of the Gods, Thomas Dunne Books, New York, 2015, p 346
[5] Ibid., p 279
[6] Alan Alford, “Ancient Astronauts Hypothesis”, http://www.eridu.co.uk/Author/human_origins/ancient_astronauts.html
[7] Atrahasis 1:1
[8] Ibid., 1:7-2:4
[9] Zechariah Sitchin, The 12th Planet, Harper, New York, 2007, p 171
[10] Ibid., p 171
[11] Ibid., p 140-143
[12] Michael Heiser, “SHU.MU = Rocketships?”, http://www.sitchiniswrong.com/shumu/shumu.htm
[13] The 12th Planet, op cit., p 328
[14] Zecharia Sitchin, The Wars of Gods and Men, Harper, New York, 2007, p 78
[15] Burkhart Kienast, “Igigu and Anunnaku in Accordance with the Akkadian Sources” in Hans Guterbock and Thorild Jacobsen (editors), Studies in Honour of Benno Landsberger on His Seventy-fifth Birthday, University of Chicago Press, Chicago, 1965, p 143
[16] Peter Ward and Donald Rowntree, Rare Earth, Copernicus Books, New York, 2004, p 19
[17] E. Richmond Hodges, Cory’s Ancient Fragments, Reeves and Turner, London, 1876, p 60
[18] The 12th Planet, op cit, p 250
[19] “The Mission”, Ancient Aliens, History Channel, 2010, 6 mins, “Alien Devastation”, Ancient Aliens, History Channel, 2010, 29-30 mins, “Aliens and the Creation of Man”, Ancient Aliens, History Channel, 2011, 29,31 mins, “The Anunnaki Connection”, Ancient Aliens, History Channel, 2013, 8,9,14,18,28,40,42,43 mins,
“Aliens and Mysterious Mountains”, Ancient Aliens, History Channel, 2013, 32mins
[20] The Anunnaki Connection, op cit., 22 mins
[21] Ibid., 10, 12 mins
[22] “Aliens and Mysterious Mountains”, op cit., 32-33 mins
[23] The 12th Planet, op cit.,, p 212-216
[24] Kathryn Stevens, “An/Anu (god)”, http://oracc.museum.upenn.edu.amgg/listofdeities/an/
[25] Ruth Horry, “Enki/Ea (god)”, http://oracc.museum.openn.edu.amgg/listofdeiites/enki/
[26] Robert Little, “Names of the Planets”, http://www.weasner.com/etx/fun/2008/little/Names_of_the_ Planets.htm
[27] The 12th Planet, op cit., p 200-203
[28] Cory’s Ancient Fragments, op cit., p 60
[29] Michael Heiser, “The Myth of a 12th Planet: A Brief Analysis of Cylinder Seal VA 243”, http://www.sitchiniswrong.com/VA243seal.pdf
[30] Ibid.
[31] Erich von Daniken Odyssey of the Gods, New Page Books, New Jersey, 2012, p 85
[32] “Aliens and Scared Places”, Ancient Aliens, History Channel, 2011, 37 mins
[33] Ibid., 38 mins
[34] Ibid., 42 mins
[35] Zecharia Sitchin, The Stairway to Heaven, Harper, New York, 2007, p 164
[36] Ibid., p 240-241
[37] Epic of Gilgamesh, 3:2
[38] Epic of Gilgamesh, 3:1
[39] Aaron Adair, “Moving the Stones of Baalbek – The Wonders of Roman Engineering”, https://gilgamesh42.wordpress.com/2013/04/25/moving-the-stones-of-baalbek-the-wonders-of-roman-engineerng/
[40] Epic of Gilgamesh, 4:3
[41] The Stairway to Heaven, op cit., p 168
[42] The stairway to Heaven, op cit., p 23
[43] Erich von Daniken, In Search of Ancient Gods, Corgi, London, 1975, p 111
[44] The Stairway to Heaven, op cit., p 239, In Search of Ancient Gods, op cit., p 112
[45] “Heaviest object lifted on land”, http://www.guinessworldrecords.com/world-records/heaviest-object-lifted-on-land
[46] “Levitating a Monolith, Russian Style”, http://blogs.artinfo.com/lacmonfire/2012/03/05/levitating-a-mass-russian-style/
[47] Magicians of the Gods, op cit., p 250, 256, 265
[48] Ibid., p 278
[49] Zecharia Sitchin, The Earth Chronicles Expedition, Bear and Co., Vermont, 2004, p 177
[50] Michael Heiser, “Transporting the Trilithon Stone at Baalbek: It’s About Applied Physics, Not Ancient Aliens”, http://michaelheiser.com/PaleoBabble/2012/08/transporting-trilithon-stones-baalbek-applied-physics-ancient-aliens
[51] “Moving Mountains”, Ancient Impossible, History Channel, 2014, 26 mins
Malcolm Nicholson 