Zechariah Sitchin and Bel-Marduk

Marduk or 'Bel-Marduk' is a subject of ancient Near East texts that have been translated by scholars.  The narrative account of Bel-Marduk that appears throughout the books of Zecharia Sitchin is largely hypothetical; however, some of the reported data was familiar to me at the time in my life when I felt compelled to ponder the life of Bel-Marduk — as mentioned in previous blog articles (1, 2, 3, 4, 5 ) and chronicled in the 1997 case study Testament. 

The third book of Sitchin's series The Earth Chronicles is The Wars of Gods and Men (1985).  As one begins reading, before there is any mention of Marduk, a god named Amon-Ra is mentioned as being the inspiration of vicious warfare instigated by pharaohs Thothmes III and Pi-Ankhy.  Sitchin presents a paragraph interpreting an amalgamation of obviously ethnocentric mythology:

The god Amon, to whose battle orders the Egyptians attributed their viciousness, found his match in the God of Israel.  In the words of the Prophet Jeremiah, "Thus sayeth the Lord of Hosts, the God of Israel: 'I will punish Amon, god of Thebes, and those who trust in him, and shall bring retribution upon Egypt and its gods, its Pharaoh and its kings.'"  This, we learn from the Bible, was an ongoing confrontation; nearly a thousand years earlier, in the days of the Exodus, Yahweh, the God of Israel, smote Egypt with a series of afflictions intended not only to soften the heart of its ruler but also as "judgments against all the gods of Egypt."

This paragraph reminds how the diverse records of recalled events categorically known as 'history' is comprised of manifold sources, each filtered through an individual perspective or interpretation (or a succession of sources/perspectives).  Among the translated texts mentioning 'Amon-Re' in the 1950 book edited by James R. Pritchard Ancient Near Eastern Texts Relating to the Old Testament (1950) is a hymn "from the Nineteenth Dynasty, subsequent to the Amarna Revolution."  The hymn is among "extracts from a long document in praise of the imperial god Amon-Re of Thebes and treat that deity as the sole god, or, perhaps, as the first principle and the sole god of immediate attention."  This selection of four stanzas includes what is identified as the three-hundredth stanza mentioning  "All gods are three: Amon, Re, and Ptah, and there is no second to them."  A footnote explains: "This is a statement of trinity, the three chief gods of Egypt subsumed into one of them, Amon."

Sitchin presented his own perceptions in attempting to make sense of ancient texts.  In the prologue of his first book of The Earth Chronicles, The 12th Planet (1976), Sitchin explained:

Using the Old Testament as our anchor, and submitting as evidence nothing but the texts, drawings, and artifacts left us by the ancient peoples of the Near East, we will go beyond the intriguing questions and the provocative suggestions.  We will prove that Earth was indeed visited in its past by astronauts from another planet.

At the beginning of the chapter "Mankind Emerges" of The Wars of Gods and Men, Sitchin reported:

Ever since George Smith found and reported in 1876 (The Chaldean Account of Genesis) detailed Mesopotamian tales of Creation, followed by L. W. King's The Seven Tablets of Creation, scholars and theologians alike have come to recognize that the Creation Tales of the Old Testament (Genesis Chapters 1 through 3) are condensed and edited versions of original Sumerian texts.

Sitchin viewed "primitive myths" as "depositories of advanced scientific knowledge with which modern scholars are only now beginning to catch up."  He turned his attention to Marduk after appraising that "Sumerian records, linking Enki with the African lands of the Nile, assume a double significance: they corroborate the Egyptian tales with Mesopotamian tales and link Sumerian gods—especially the Enki-gods—with the gods of Egypt . . ."  Sitchin found similarities between the Babylonian Marduk and the Egyptian god Ra, explaining "the former was the son of Enki, the latter of Ptah, the two, Enki-Ptah, being in our view one and the same . . ."

Thus, a self-laudatory hymn to Marduk (tablet Ashur/4125) declares that one of his epithets was "The god IM.KUR.GAR RA"—"Ra Who Beside the Mountainland Abides."

Moreover, there is textual evidence that the Sumerians were of the deity's Egyptian name, Ra.  There were Sumerians whose personal names incorporated the divine name RA; and tablets from the time of the Ur III Dynasty mention "Dingir Ra" and his temple E.Dingir.Ra.

In the chapter "The Prisoner in the Pyramid," Sitchin reported that clay tablets found in the ruins of the ancient Assyrian capitals Ashur and Ninevah had apparently "served as a script for a new Year's mystery play in Babylon . . ."  In the ancient script, Bel ("The Lord") is the first character introduced: ". . . Bel, who was confined in The Mountain."  The incidents in the play are described as including the sister-wife of Marduk, Sarpanit, appealing to her father Sin and her brother Utu/Shamash: "Give life to Bel!"  The high priest appeals to the Supreme God, to Sin and to Shamash: "Restore Bel to Life!"  The drama takes a new turn when the actor representing Marduk, "clothed with shrouds which 'with blood are dyed,' speaks out: 'I am not a sinner!  I shall not be smitten!'  He announces that the supreme god has reviewed his case and found him not guilty."  The audience learns the guilty god has been captured and the evildoer is slain.  Sitchin suggested that Marduk's rescuers succeeded in freeing him from 'The Mountain,' which Sitchin believed to signify the Great Pyramid.

Adding to the complexity is that Sitchin in his books also offers commentary about a planet with the name 'Marduk.'  One damaged tablet with incomplete text is identified by Sitchin as offering Marduk's autobiography, relating "his return to Babylon after the twenty-four years of sojourn in the Land of Hatti."  Marduk referred to his "everlasting abode."

His wish, Marduk continued, was to bring peace and prosperity to the land, "chase away evil and bad luck . . . bring motherly love to Mankind."  But it all came to naught: Against his city, Babylon, an adversary god "his wrath had brought."  The name of this adversary god is stated at the very beginning of a new column of the text; but all that has remained of it is the first syllable: "Divine NIN-."  The reference could have been only to Ninurta.

While Sitchin's books suggest occasions when the name Marduk is synonymous with 'God' in ancient texts ("the king of the gods, the ruler of Heaven and Earth"), specific passages show a different orientation.  For example, Sitchin wrote in Divine Encounters (1995):

The Babylonian king Hammurabi recorded thus the legitimization of Marduk's supremacy on Earth:

Lofty Anu,

Lord of the Anunnaki,

and Enlil,

Lord of Heaven and Earth

who determines the destinies of the land,

Determined for Marduk, the first born of Enki,

the Enlil-functions over all mankind

and made him great among the Igigi.

Sitchin presented an overview of his hypothetical conceptions of the life of Bel-Marduk in The Cosmic Code (1998), Book VI of The Earth Chronicles.

Deified in Mesopotamia, Ra/Marduk returned to Egypt to reassert his supremacy there, as the Great God of the new civilization.  The time was 3100 B.C.  There was, of course, the small problem of what to do with Thoth, who had been the reigning deity in Egypt and Nubia while Ra/Marduk was gone.  Unceremoniously, he was sent away . . . In The Lost Realms we have suggested that, taking along a group of his African followers, he went all the way to the New World, to become Quetzalcoatl, the Winged Serpent god.  The first calendar instituted by him in Mesoamerica (the Long Count calendar) began in the year 3113 B.C.; it was, we believe, the precise date of the arrival in the New World of Thoth/Quetzalcoatl.

Still seething from his failure in Mesopotamia, the bitter Marduk turned to settling other scores.  During his absence a divine "Romeo and Juliet"—his brother Dumuzi and Inanna/Ishtar, the granddaughter of Enlil—fell in love and were to be betrothed.  The union was anathema to Ra/Marduk; he was especially alarmed by Inanna's hopes to become Mistress of Egypt through the marriage.  When Marduk's emissaries tried to seize Dumuzi, he accidentally died as he tried to escape.  His death was blamed on Marduk.

Texts that have been discovered in several copies and versions provide details of the trial of Marduk and his punishment: to be buried alive in the Great Pyramid, which was sealed tight to create a divine prison.  With only air to breathe but no food or water, Marduk was sentenced to die in that colossal tomb.  But his spouse and mother successfully appealed to Anu to commute the death sentence into one of exile.  Using the original construction plans, an escape shaft was dug and blasted into the passages above the massive plugs.  The return of Marduk from certain death, his emergence from his tomb, were aspects of the view that the texts—titled by early translators "The Death and Resurrection of the Lord"—were precursors of the New Testament tale of the death, entombment, and resurrection of Jesus.

Sentenced to exile, Ra/Marduk became Amen/Ra, the unseen god.  This time, however, he roamed the Earth.  In an autobiographical text in which his return was prophesied, Marduk described his wanderings thus:

     I am the Divine Marduk, a great god.

     I was cast off for my sins.

     To the mountains I have gone,

     in many lands I have been a wanderer.

     From where the sun rises

     to where it sets I went.

And wherever he roamed, he kept asking the Gods of Fate: "Until when?"

The answer regarding his Fate, he realized, came from the heavens.  The Age of the Bull, the age zodiacally belonging to Enlil and his clan, was ending.  The dawn was nearing when the Sun would rise on the first day of spring, the day of the New Year in Mesopotamia, in the zodiacal constellation of the Ram (Aries)—his constellation.  The celestial cycle of Fates augers his, Marduk's, supremacy!

Not everyone agreed.  Was it just so because of time calculations, or an observable celestial phenomenon?  Marduk could not care less; he launched a march on Mesopotamia while his son, Nabu, organized followers to invade the Sinai and seize the spaceport.  The escalating conflict is described in a text known as the Erra Epos; it tells how, seeing no other choice, the gods opposing Marduk used nuclear weapons to obliterate the spaceport (and, as a sideshow, the unfaithful cities of Sodom and Gomorrah).

But Fate intervened on the side of Marduk.  The prevailing western winds carried the deathly nuclear cloud eastward, toward Sumer.  Babylon, farther north, was spared.  But in southern Mesopotamia the Evil Wind caused sudden death and lasting desolation.  Sumer's great capital, Ur, was a place where wild dogs roamed.

Sitchin's overview seems farcical considered from the standpoint of spiritual awareness.  Such egotism and grandiosity associated with 'Bel-Marduk' or any individual or mortal 'god' is absurd.  Anyone who has worked in the Hollywood entertainment industry (myself having been employed as a talent agent and movie publicist) know the illusory nature of human celebrity and fame or infamy.

As those who have read Testament might understand, I thought my life was 'normal' until it suddenly was not — if working in the entertainment industry can be considered normal.  I was living in the vicinity of the Angelus Temple in Los Angeles, working as a movie publicity writer for Paramount Pictures and planning a career as screenwriter and author.  One of my research projects was the Bell Witch and other 'talking poltergeist' cases for a planned book.  In 1995 I traveled to rural Oklahoma to investigate a contemporary case centering on the enigmatic 'Michael.'

When I returned home to LA only to find the paranormal manifestations continuing to occur in my presence, I began reflecting about my life and remembered a few very odd incidents.  The things that continued to happen were so unusual and occurred in such a quick succession that I decided to publish a journal of my experiences.  After I discussed with my friend Marie the possibility of having an author pseudonym, she heard a disembodied voice say "Mark Russell Bell."  When she told me about the occurrence, I knew this would be the appropriate pen name.

In January 1996 I purchased a "round silver pin" from a nearby antique store that showed the profile of an Egyptian pharaonic figure that looked like me when I was in my late teens/early 20s.  As a child and teenager, it had bothered me to have such distinct 'bags' under my eyes and this was a trait shared by the ancient person depicted on the 'round silver pin.'  I've never found any other object that elicited such a response.  For comparison, the "round silver pin" is shown below as an inset of a photo of me taken by my twin brother Mike during a London vacation when I was in my 20s.