$22.95 Dear Reader, The Earth Chronicles series is based on the premise that mythology is not fanci- ful but the repository of ancient memo- ries; that the Bible ought to be read liter- ally as a historic/scientific document; and that ancient civilizations—older and greater than assumed—were the prod- uct of knowledge brought to Earth by the Anunnaki, “Those Who from Heaven to Earth Came”. The 12th Planet, the first book of the series, presents ancient evidence for the existence of an additional planet in the Solar System: the home planet of the Anunnaki. In confirmation of this evidence, recent data from unmanned spacecraft has led astronomers to ac- tively search for what is being called “Planet X”. The subsequent volume, The Stairway to Heaven, traces man’s unending search for immortality to a spaceport in the Sinai Peninsula and to the Giza pyramids, which had served as landing beacons for it—refuting the notion that these pyra- mids were built by human pharaohs. Recently, records by an eye witness to a forgery of an inscription by the pharaoh Khufu inside the Great Pyramid corrob- orated the book’s conclusions. The Wars of Gods and Men, recount- ing events closer to our times, concludes that the Sinai spaceport was destroyed 4,000 years ago with nuclear weapons. Photographs of Earth from space clearly show evidence of such an explosion. Such gratifying corroboration of audacious conclusions has been even swifter for The Lost Realms. In the rela- tively short interval between the comple- tion of the manuscript and its publica- tion, archaeologists, linguists, and other scientists have offered a “coastal theory” in lieu of the “frozen trekking” one to account for man’s arrival in the Americas—in ships, as this volume has concluded; have “suddenly discovered 2,000 years of missing civilization”, in the words of a Yale University scholar— Praise for The Earth Chronicles series “Exciting . . . credible . . . most provocative and compelling.” —Library Journal “A dazzling performance . . . Sitchin is a zealous investigator.” —Kirkus Reviews “Several factors make Sitchin’s well-referenced works out- standingly different from all others that present this central theme. For one, his linguistic skills, which include not only several modern languages that make it possible for him to consult other scholars’ works in their original tongues, but the ancient Sumerian, Egyptian, Hebrew, and other languages of antiquity as well. “The devotion of thirty years to academic search and per- sonal investigation before publishing resulted in unusual thoroughness, perspective, and modifications where need arose. The author’s pursuit of the earliest available texts and artifacts also made possible the wealth of photos and line drawings made for his books from tablets, monuments, murals, pottery, seals, etc. Used generously throughout, they provide vital visual evidence. . . . While the author does not pretend to solve all the puzzles that have kept intensive researchers baffled for well over one hundred years, he has provided some new clues.” —Rosemary Decker, historian and researcher Other books by Zecharia Sitchin THE EARTH CHRONICLES Book I: The 12th Planet Book II: The Stairway to Heaven Book IV: The Lost Realms Book V: When Time Began Genesis Revisited: Is Modern Science Catching Up with Ancient Knowledge? All of these titles are available in hardcover editions by Bear & Company. ZECHARIA SITCHIN THE WARS OF GODS MEN AND The Third Book of The Earth Chronicles BEAR & COMPANY P U B L I S H I N G SANTA FE, NEW MEXICO LIBRARY OF CONGRESS CATALOGING-IN-PUBLICATION DATA Sitchin, Zecharia. The wars of gods and men / Zecharia Sitchin. p. cm. — (The third book of the Earth chronicles) Includes bibliographical references (p. ) and index. ISBN 0-939680-90-4 1.Civilization, Ancient—Extraterrestrial influences. 2.Interplanetary voyages. 3. Middle East—History—lb 622. I. Title. II. Series: Sitchin, Zecharia. Earth chronicles : 3. CB156.S59 1992 001.9’4—dc20 91-47916 CIP © 1985 by Zecharia Sitchin All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced by any means or in any form whatsoever without written permission from the publisher, except for brief quotations embodied in literary articles or reviews. The Bear & Company edition of The Wars of Gods and Men is the first hardcover edition of this book. It was previously published in paperback by Avon Books in 1985. Bear & Company, Inc. Santa Fe, NM 87504-2860 Jacket design & illustration: Angela Werneke © 1992 Back cover photo: Courtesy of NASA 3 5 7 9 8 6 4 2 TABLE OF CONTENTS Foreword vi 1 The Wars of Man 1 2 The Contending of Horus and Seth 25 3 The Missiles of Zeus and Indra 49 4 The Earth Chronicles 70 5 The Wars of the Olden Gods 91 6 Mankind Emerges 109 7 When Earth Was Divided 129 8 The Pyramid Wars 153 9 Peace on Earth 173 10 The Prisoner in the Pyramid 202 11 “A Queen Am I!” 229 12 Prelude to Disaster 251 13 Abraham: The Fateful Years 281 14 The Nuclear Holocaust 310 Epilogue 343 The Earth Chronicles: Time Chart 345 Sources 351 Index 366 FOREWORD Long before man warred with man, the gods battled among them- selves. Indeed, it was as the Wars of the Gods that the Wars of Man began. And the Wars of the Gods, for control of this Earth, had begun on their own planet. It was thus that mankind’s first civilization succumbed to a nu- clear holocaust. This is fact, not fiction; it has all been written down long ago—in the Earth Chronicles. 1 THE WARS OF MAN In the spring of 1947, a shepherd boy searching for a lost sheep in the barren cliffs overlooking the Dead Sea, discovered a cave that contained Hebrew scrolls hidden inside earthenware jars. Those and other scrolls found in the area in subsequent years—collec- tively spoken of as the Dead Sea Scrolls—had lain undisturbed for nearly two thousand years, carefully wrapped and hidden away during the turbulent years when Judea challenged the might of the Roman empire. Was this part of the official library of Jerusalem, carted away to safety before the city and its temple fell in a.d. 70, or—as most scholars assume—a library of the Essenes, a sect of hermits with messianic preoccupations? The opinions are divided, for the li- brary contained both traditional biblical texts as well as writings dealing with the sect’s customs, organization, and beliefs. One of the longest and most complete scrolls, and perhaps the most dramatic, deals with a future war, a kind of Final War. Titled by scholars The War of the Sons of Light Against the Sons of Dark- ness, it envisages spreading warfare—local battles that will first in- volve Judea’s immediate neighbors, which shall increase in feroc- ity and scope until the whole ancient world would be engulfed: “The first engagement of the Sons of Light against the Sons of Darkness, that is against the army of Belial, shall be an attack upon the troops of Edom, Moab, the Ammonites and the Philistine area; then upon that of the Kittians of Assyria; and upon those violators of the Covenant who give them aid. . . ”. And after those battles, “they shall advance upon the Kittians of Egypt” and “in due time . . . against the kings of the north.” In this War of Men, the scroll prophesied, the God of Israel shall take an active role: On the day the Kittians fall, there shall be mighty combat and carnage, in the presence of the God of Israel; For that is the day which He appointed of old for the final bat- tle against the Sons of Darkness. 1 2 THE WARS OF GODS AND MEN The Prophet Ezekiel had already prophesied the Last Battle, “in the latter days”, involving Gog and Magog, in which the Lord himself shall “smite thy bow out of thy left hand, and will cause thine arrows to fall out of thine right hand”. But the Dead Sea scroll went further, foreseeing the actual participation of many gods in the battles, engaged in combat side by side with mortal men: On that day, the Company of the Divine and the Congregation of the Mortals shall engage side by side in combat and carnage. The Sons of Light shall battle against the Sons of Darkness with a show of godlike might, amid uproarious tumult, amid the war cries of gods and men. Though Crusaders, Saracens, and countless others in historical times have gone to war “in the name of God”, the belief that in a war to come the Lord himself shall be actually present on the bat- tlefield, and that gods and men would fight side by side, sounds as fantasy, to be treated allegorically at best. Yet it is not as extraordi- naiy a notion as it may appear to be, for in earlier times, it was in- deed believed that the Wars of Men were not only decreed by the gods but were also fought with the gods’ active participation. One of the most romanticized wars, when “love had launched a thousand ships”, was the War of Troy, between the Achaean Greeks and the Trojans. It was, know we not, launched by the Greeks to force the Trojans to return the beautiful Helen to her law- ful spouse. Yet an epic Greek tale, the Kypria, represented the war as a premeditated scheme by the great god Zeus: There was a time when thousands upon thousands of men en- cumbered the broad bosom of the Earth. And having pity on them, Zeus in his great wisdom resolved to lighten Earth’s bur- den. So he caused the strife at Ilion (Troy) to that end; that through death he might make a void in the race of men. Homer, the Greek storyteller who related the war’s events in the Iliad, blamed the whim of the gods for instigating the conflict and for turning and twisting it to its ultimate major proportions. Acting directly and indirectly, sometimes seen and sometimes unseen, the various gods nudged the principal actors of this human drama to their fates. And behind it all was Jove (Jupiter/Zeus): “While the