one whose orbit enables him to encircle all the others. "He keeps hold on their bands [orbits]," makes a "hoop" around them. His
orbit was "loftier" and "grander" than that of any other planet. It thus occurred to Franz Kugler (Sternkunde und Sterndienst in
Babylon) that Marduk was a fast-moving celestial body, orbiting in a great elliptical path just like a comet.
Such an elliptical path, focused on the Sun as a center of gravity, has an apogee - the point farthest from the Sun, where the
return flight begins - and a perigee - the point nearest the Sun, where the return to outer space begins. We find that two such
"bases" are indeed associated with Marduk in the Mesopotamian texts. The Sumerian texts described the planet as going from
AN.UR ("Heaven's base") to E.NUN ("lordly abode"). The Creation epic said of Marduk:
He crossed the Heaven and surveyed the regions. . . .
The structure of the Deep the Lord then measured.
E-Shara he established as his outstanding abode;
E-Shara as a great abode in the Heaven he established.
One "abode" was thus "outstanding" - far in the deep regions of space. The other was established in the "Heaven," within the asteroid belt, between Mars and Jupiter.
Following the teachings of their Sumerian forefather, Abraham of Ur, the ancient Hebrews also associated their supreme deity with the supreme planet. Like the Mesopotamian texts, many books of the Old Testament describe the "Lord" as having his abode in the "heights of Heaven," where he "beheld the foremost planets as they were arisen"; a celestial Lord who, unseen, "in the heavens moves about in a circle." The Book of Job, having described the celestial collision, contains these significant verses telling us where the lordly planet had gone:
Upon the Deep he marked out an orbit; Where light and darkness [merge] Is his farthest limit.
No less explicitly, the Psalms outlined the planet's majestic course:
The Heavens bespeak the glory of the Lord;
The Hammered Bracelet proclaims his handiwork. . . .
He comes forth as a groom from the canopy;
Like an athlete he rejoices to run the course.
From the end of heavens he emanates,
And his circuit is to their end.
Recognized as a great traveler in the heavens, soaring to immense heights at its apogee and then "coming down, bowing unto the Heaven" at its perigee, the planet was depicted as a Winged Globe.
Wherever archaeologists uncovered the remains of Near Eastern peoples, the symbol of the Winged Globe was conspicuous, dominating temples and palaces, carved on rocks, etched on cylinder seals, painted on walls. It accompanied kings and priests, stood above their thrones, "hovered" above them in battle scenes, was etched into their chariots. Clay, metal, stone, and wood objects were adorned with the symbol. The rulers of Sumer and Akkad, Babylon and Assyria, Elam and Urartu, Mari and Nuzi, Mitanni and Canaan - all revered the symbol. Hittite kings, Egyptian pharaohs, Persian shar's - all proclaimed the symbol (and what it stood for) supreme. It remained so for millennia.
Central to the religious beliefs and astronomy of the ancient world was the conviction that the Twelfth Planet, the "Planet of the Gods," remained within the solar system and that its grand orbit returned it periodically to Earth's vicinity. The pictographic sign for the Twelfth Planet, the "Planet of Crossing," was a cross. This
cuneiform sign, also meant "Ami" and "divine," evolved in the Semitic languages to the letter tav, which meant "the sign." Indeed, all the peoples of the ancient world considered the periodic nearing of the Twelfth Planet as a sign of upheavals, great changes, and new eras. The Mesopotamian texts spoke of the planet's periodic appearance as an anticipated, predictable, and observable event:
The great planet: ;
At his appearance, dark red. :
The Heaven he divides in half and stands as Nibiru.
Many of the texts dealing with the planet's arrival were omen texts prophesying the effect the event would have upon Earth and
Mankind. R. Campbell Thompson (Reports of the Magicians and Astronomers of Nineveh and Babylon) reproduced several
such texts, which trace the progress of the planet as it "ringed the station of Jupiter" and arrived at the point of crossing, Nibiru:
When from the station of Jupiter
the Planet passes towards the west,
there will be a time of dwelling in security.
Kindly peace will descend on the land.
When from the station of Jupiter
the Planet increases in brilliance c
and in the Zodiac of Cancer will become Nibiru, ;
Akkad will overflow with plenty,
the king of Akkad will grow powerful.
When Nibiru culminates. . . .
The lands will dwell securely,
Hostile kings will be at peace,
The gods will receive prayers and hear supplications.
The nearing planet, however, was expected to cause rains and flooding, as its strong gravitational effects have been known to do:
When the Planet of the Throne of Heaven
will grow brighter,
there will be floods and rains.
When Nibiru attains its perigee,
the gods will give peace;
troubles will be cleared up, complications will be unravelled. Rains and floods will come.
Like the Mesopotamian savants, the Hebrew prophets considered the time of the planet's approaching Earth and becoming visible to Mankind as ushering in a new era. The similarities between the Mesopotamian omens of peace and prosperity that would accompany the Planet of the Throne of Heaven, and the biblical prophesies of the peace and justice that would settle upon Earth after the Day of the Lord, can best be expressed in the words of Isaiah:
And it shall come to pass at the End of Days: . . . the Lord shall judge among the nations and shall rebuke many peoples. They shall beat their swords into ploughshares and their spears into pruning hooks; nation shall not lift up sword against nation. In contrast with the blessings of the new era following the Day of the Lord, the day itself was described by the Old Testament as a time of rains, inundations, and earthquakes. If we think of the biblical passages as referring, like their Mesopotamian counterparts, to the passage in Earth's vicinity of a large planet with a strong gravitational pull, the words of Isaiah can be plainly understood:
Like the noise of a multitude in the mountains,
a tumultuous noise like of a great many people,
of kingdoms of nations gathered together;
it is the Lord of Hosts,
commanding a Host to battle.
From a far away land they come,
from the end-point of the Heaven
do the Lord and his Weapons of wrath
come to destroy the whole Earth. . . .
Therefore will I agitate the Heaven
and Earth shall be shaken out of its place
when the Lord of Hosts shall be crossing,
the day of his burning wrath.
While on Earth "mountains shall melt . . . valleys shall be cleft," Earth's axial spin would also be affected. The prophet Amos
explicitly predicted:
It shall come to pass on that Day,
sayeth the Lord God,
that I will cause the Sun to go down at noon and I will darken the Earth in the midst of daytime.
Announcing, "Behold, the Day of the Lord is come!" the prophet Zechariah informed the people that this phenomenon of an
arrest in Earth's spin around its own axis would last only one day:
And it shall come to pass on that Day
there shall be no light - uncommonly shall it freeze.
And there shall be one day, known to the Lord,
which shall be neither day nor night,
when at eve-time there shall be light.
On the Day of the Lord, the prophet Joel said, "the Sun and Moon shall be darkened, the stars shall withdraw their radiance"; "the Sun shall be turned into darkness, and the Moon shall be as red blood."
Mesopotamian texts exalted the planet's radiance and suggested that it could be seen even at daytime: "visible at sunrise, disappearing from view at sunset." A cylinder seal, found at Nippur, depicts a group of plowmen looking up with awe as the