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ZZ EE CC HH AA RR II AA SITCHIN THE END OF DAYS ARMAGEDDON AND PROPHECIES OF THE RETURN TThhee 77tthh aanndd CCoonncclluuddiinngg BBooookk ooff TThhee EEaarrtthh CChhrroo nniicclleess Dedicated to my brother Dr. Amnon Sitchin, whose aerospace expertise was invaluable at all times CONTENTS Preface: The Past, The Future v 1. The Messianic Clock 1 2. “And It Came to Pass” 19 3. Egyptian Prophecies, Human Destinies 33 4. Of Gods and Demigods 47 5. Countdown to Doomsday 63 6. Gone with the Wind 79 7. Destiny Had Fifty Names 97 8. In the Name of God 117 9. The Promised Land 136 10. The Cross on the Horizon 157 11. The Day of the Lord 177 12. Darkness at Noon 198 13. When the Gods Left Earth 224 14. The End of Days 250 15. Jerusalem: A Chalice, Vanished 268 16. Armageddon and Prophecies of the Return 289 About the Author Praise Other Books by Zecharia Sitchin Cover Copyright About the Publisher PREFACE: THE PAST, THE FUTURE “When will they return?” I have been asked this question countless times by people who have read my books, the “they” being the Anunnaki— the extraterrestrials who had come to Earth from their planet Nibiru and were revered in antiquity as gods. Will it be when Nibiru in its elongated orbit returns to our vicinity, and what will happen then? Will there be darkness at noon and the Earth shall shatter? Will it be Peace on Earth, or Armageddon? A Millennium of trouble and tribulations, or a messianic Second Coming? Will it happen in 2012, or later, or not at all? These are profound questions that combine people’s deep- est hopes and anxieties with religious beliefs and expectations, questions compounded by current events: wars in lands where the entwined affairs of gods and men began; the threats of nuclear holocausts; the alarming ferocity of natural disasters. They are questions that I dared not answer all these years—but now are questions the answers to which cannot—must not—be delayed. Questions about the Return, it ought to be realized, are not new; they have inexorably been linked in the past—as they are today—to the expectation and the apprehension of the Day of the Lord, the End of Days, Armageddon. Four millennia ago, the Near East witnessed a god and his son promising Heaven on Earth. More than three millennia ago, king and people in Egypt yearned for a messianic time. Two millennia ago, the people of Judea wondered whether the Messiah had appeared, and we are still seized with the mysteries of those events. Are prophecies coming true? vi PREFACE We shall deal with the puzzling answers that were given, solve ancient enigmas, decipher the origin and meaning of symbols—the Cross, the Fishes, the Chalice. We shall describe the role of space-related sites in historic events, and show why Past, Present and Future converge in Jerusalem, the place of the “Bond Heaven-Earth.” And we shall ponder why it is that our current twenty-first century a.d. is so similar to the twenty-first century b.c.e. Is history repeating itself—is it destined to repeat itself? Is it all guided by a Messianic Clock? Is the time at hand? More than two millennia ago, Daniel of Old Testament fame repeatedly asked the angels: When? When will be the End of Days, the End of Time? More than three centuries ago the famed Sir Isaac Newton, who elucidated the secrets of celestial motions, composed treatises on the Old Testa- ment’s Book of Daniel and the New Testament’s Book of Revelation; his recently found handwritten calculations con- cerning the End of Days will be analyzed, along with more recent predictions of The End. Both the Hebrew Bible and the New Testament asserted that the secrets of the Future are embedded in the Past, that the destiny of Earth is connected to the Heavens, that the affairs and fate of Mankind are linked to those of God and gods. In dealing with what is yet to happen, we cross over from history to prophecy; one cannot be understood without the other, and we shall report them both. With that as our guide, let us look at what is to come through the lens of what had been. The answers will be certain to surprise. Zecharia Sitchin New York, November 2006 1 THE MESSIANIC CLOCK Wherever one turns, humankind appears seized with Apoca- lyptic trepidation, Messianic fervor, and End of Time anxiety. Religious fanaticism manifests itself in wars, rebellions, and the slaughter of “infidels.” Armies amassed by Kings of the West are warring with armies of the Kings of the East. A Clash of Civilizations shakes the foundations of traditional ways of life. Carnage engulfs cities and towns; the high and the mighty seek safety behind protective walls. Natural ca- lamities and ever-intensifying catastrophies leave people wondering: Has Mankind sinned, is it witnessing Divine Wrath, is it due for another annihilating Deluge? Is this the Apocalypse? Can there be—will there be—Salvation? Are Messianic times afoot? The time—the twenty-first century a.d.—or was it the twenty-first century b.c.e.? The correct answer is Yes and Yes, both in our own time as well as in those ancient times. It is the condition of the present time, as well as at a time more than four millennia ago; and the amazing similarity is due to events in the middle time in between—the period associated with the messianic fervor at the time of Jesus. Those three cataclysmic periods for Mankind and its planet—two in the recorded past (circa 2100 b.c.e. and when b.c.e. changed to a. d.), one in the nearing future—are inter- connected; one has led to the other, one can be understood only by understanding the other. The Present stems from the Past, the Past is the Future. Essential to all three is Messi- anic Expectation; and linking all three is Prophecy. 2 THE END OF DAYS How the present time of troubles and tribulations will end—what the Future portends—requires entering the realm of Prophecy. Ours will not be a mélange of newfound predictions whose main magnet is fear of doom and End, but a reliance upon unique ancient records that documented the Past, predicted the Future, and recorded previous Messianic expectations—prophesying the future in antiquity and, one believes, the Future that is to come. In all three apocalyptic instances—the two that had oc- curred, the one that is about to happen—the physical and spiritual relationship between Heaven and Earth was and re- mains pivotal for the events. The physical aspects were expressed by the existence on Earth of actual sites that linked Earth with the heavens—sites that were deemed crucial, that were focuses of the events; the spiritual aspects have been expressed in what we call Religion. In all three instances, a changed relationship between Man and God was central, ex- cept that when, circa 2100 b.c.e., Mankind faced the first of these three epochal upheavals, the relationship was between men and gods, in the plural. Whether that relationship has re- ally changed, the reader will soon discover. The story of the gods, the Anunnaki (“Those who from heaven to Earth came”), as the Sumerians called them, be- gins with their coming to Earth from Nibiru in need of gold. The story of their planet was told in antiquity in the Epic of Creation, a long text on seven tablets; it is usually considered to be an allegorical myth, the product of primitive minds that spoke of planets as living gods combating each other. But as I have shown in my book The Twelfth Planet, the ancient text is in fact a sophisticated cosmogony that tells how a stray planet, passing by our solar system, collided with a planet called Tiamat; the collision resulted in the creation of Earth and its Moon, of the Asteroid Belt and comets, and in the capture of the invader itself in a great elliptical orbit that takes about 3,600 Earth-years to complete (Fig. 1). It was, Sumerian texts tell, 120 such orbits—432,000 Earth-years—prior to the Deluge (the “Great flood”) that the Anunnaki came to Earth. How and why they came, their first