the sun, the moon, and nibiru, a radiating planet

READ THIS BEFORE YOU READ THE BOOK

Unless you are an experienced reader of Zacharia Sitchin's Earth Chronicles Series, the Lost Book of Enki will seem too fantastic and outrageous to take seriously. To start with this book as a beginning point in the tale of the Annunaki is almost certainly to result in the reader tossing the manuscript away as myth.

The introduction to the book is immediately shocking in its fantastic revelations. The very first sentence would have instantly put me on the intellectual defensive--as a trained skeptic and critic. And the paragraphs that follow do not help.  

By the fifth paragraph I would have been so lost in disbelief that I don't think I would have read any further, and any subsequent conversation with anyone who did believe that nonsense would be deemed a complete idiot!

I DON'T WANT THIS TO HAPPEN TO YOU DEAR READER!

So, unless you are like I was, having read the entire Earth Chronicles series several times, having visited locations like Sacsahuaman and Nazca, having studied ancient Mesopotamian prehistory and Biblical canonical and non-canonical texts, my suggestion would be to not even read the introduction. Skip it.

I have given the Book to many friends, and unless they were already predisposed to believe it though previous study, most simply shrug it off as either fake, too ridiculously fantastic, or simply incomprehensible. And who can blame them? Names that are unrecognizable and often confused with multiple personages and celestial bodies and phenomena. Claims that are so unbelievable that each in their own right deserve a treatise. 

Thus, I wrote this Reader for the intelligent, educated, moderate thinker who is not restrained by orthodox Rabbinical, Paulinian, or Muhammadan dogma. Only facts and logic will move me to a determined position, and so it should be with you. Sometimes logic demands an inference, however. So, let us begin.

The introduction I would have preferred to read goes something like this: 

Introduction to the Lost Book of Enki

Prior to World War I, the Great War, both Germany and England were sending archaeologists to the Middle East, today's Iran, Iraq, Syria, Jordan, Lebanon, Egypt, and the Sinai Peninsula. The motivations of each country were different. 

England wanted historical facts that could be used to "shore up" the history as outlined in the Christian (Paulinian) Bible, and the Germans wanted to prove their supposed ancient lineage from the Aryan race, believed by them to be the "master race." As it turns out, the facts will prove them both wrong.

In any event, the area was not very well known at the time because most of the historical sites were simply buried under millennia of sand.  And those that were suspected were largely known through biblical and other non-canonical texts.

Nonetheless, as the decades past and more and more interest in the area developed, archaeological digs began yielding results. One of the largest finds was the library of a certain Assyrian king named Ashurbanipal (668–627 BC). Apparently, he was like the Ptolemies at Alexandria--he wanted copies of everything he could get his hands on. 

His library, near modern day Mosul, was discovered in the mid-nineteenth century by Austen Henry Layard and contained over 30,000 clay cuneiform tablets..  Most of these tablets can be found in the British Museum, though only a few are actually on display.

It took British, German, and eventually American scholars many years to decipher a portion of the tablets, but eventually certain tales began to sound familiar.  A child in a reed basket who later grows up to be king.  Two brothers, one a farmer, one a shepherd, engage in the world's first homicide.  Humanity is saved from a great deluge by a righteous man in a unsinkable boat that later comes to rest on Mount Ararat.

The similarities continue, and in fact the tales are greatly expanded and clarified, and in many cases de-mystified to the point where they actually make sense.  Clearly, this is where the authors of the Old Testament got their material.  

In one of the tablets King Ashurbanipal is found boasting of his literary prowess.  "I can even read the enigmatic writings from before the flood."  he boasts..  It was determined that many tablets in his library were not in the Assyrian language but the far older language of Sumer.

Many of these tablets seemed to be written in a matter-of-fact historical tone, which led Zecharia Sitchin, among others, to begin to ask "what if what we're reading here is not myth, but actual, factual history?"

Most mainstream scholars can't afford to take such an open approach due to peer pressure, academic bullying, and myriad other reasons.  Many have staked their academic reputations on defending their PhD thesis, and could never retract those hallowed words. 

Conversely, Zecharia Sitchin, after many years of sifting through the translated cuneiform tablets, found fourteen tables that seemed to sound more as a lamentation over a historical event.  Zecharia collated these fourteen tablets, and published them as the Lost Book of Enki.. 

Written in a form where the subject and predicate have been swapped, eventually you can catch on to the rhythm of the prose.   Sometimes a sentence requires a second read to get it all straight.  After the Introduction--which i strongly suggest you just skip for now--comes the Attestation.  Interesting to find an attestation on a document purported to be mythical.  It sounds much more like a legal document; clearly what follows is important.