Interview for the documentary "Evidence of the Anunnaki" (July 2018)
I decided to make public the full interview for the Ancient Astronaut Archive collective used to produce the documentary "Evidence of the Anunnaki", released in July 2018. The documentary is a huge work of analysis of Michael Heiser's accuses to Zecharia Sitchin's work.
My interview begins at minute 22:00
QUESTION 1: What is your general response to so-called academics such as Michael Heiser that claim Sitchin’s translations are wrong and contrived to present a fiction?
As a general answer to those who criticize Sitchin’s translations I feel it is due to remember that most academics offer slightly different translations or interpretations not only of the same text, but often of the same passage of the same text. It is thus not honest to dismiss or criticize another proposal (Sitchin’s) on the base of an alleged ‘lack of academic education’. History taught us that sometimes the most outstanding material comes from ‘non-expert’ scholars or amateurs, and that being self-taught in a subject must not be equated to being ‘an ignorant’ or having a ‘lack of education’. As an example I would remember that the proficient linguist Kurt Schildmann was a self-taught who could speak over 10 chinese dialects, and, already as an adult, he taught himself the Sumerian language. His knowledge was so profound that in 1964 he released a compendium about the sumerian grammar. George Smith himself, one of the fathers of assyriology, was a complete self-taught.
Being more specific, I myself have analyzed 40 of Sitchin’s controversial translations, and the result was that in 26 cases his translation was completely justified by academic dictionaries, in 12 cases he gave his interpretation using extended translations of the renown meanings given in the dictionaries, and in 2 cases he offered translations which I wasn’t able to verify in the 4 dictionaries I used for my analysis. But there is more, in many occasions his interpretation and translation was closer to the original knowledge of the first assyriologists than it is now, meaning with this that when he translated those terms, those translations were highly renown and used.
QUESTION 2: One of the criticisms of Sitchin relates to what is perhaps the most important word in the entire study of the Bible – “Nephilim.” Regarding the translation of the word Nephilim, can you explain why Sitchin got it right?
The Nephilim topic is a very hot one, but it is easy to answer. The answer relates to the different forms of word derivations from verbs. The term Nephilim, as written by prof. Ronald S. Hendel in his treatise: “Of demigods… and the Deluge”, is the Qatil form of the verb Naphal, or, as he defines it:
“The verbal adjective has the forms Qatil and Qatul, and it is these forms that make the stative perfects, which are nothing but ‘conjugated adjectives’”
This means that, when we consider a verb and we derive terms from it, we can have a ‘pure past verbal’ form, and an adjective that acts as a substantive. Although sounding like a complex argument, it becomes clearer when we make some examples: consider the verb Nafal = to fall. We can derive 2 forms: “You have fallen” which is a pure verbal form in the past, and “You are the fallen” where ‘fallen’ is still a verbal term in the past, but is acts at the same time as a substantive and an adjective. In many languages the two forms are written in the same exact way (i.e. English ‘to fall’ -> fallen / fallen ; Italian ‘cadere’ -> caduti/caduti) but in some other languages we have two distinct form.
Look at what happens in Romanian: the verb ‘A Cădea’ (to fall) has the past verbal form ‘Căzut’ (e.g. Voi aţi căzut = ‘You have fallen’ and is a plural), but at the same time has the adjectival form Căzuţi (e.g. Voi sunteţi cei Căzuţi = ‘You are the fallen ones’, again in the plural 2nd person). In Polish we have the double form as well, with the verb ‘Spadać’ (to fall) that generates the verbal form Spadli and the adjectival form Upadli.
The same happens in Hebrew, where Nafal (to fall) generates the forms ‘Nophelim’ and ‘Nephilim’.
QUESTION 3: What are Shems and MUs? And how is Heiser wrong again?
MU and Shem are two terms that can be linked to some kind of vehicles used by the gods, but these terms also indicated ‘that by which someone is remembered’. In the case of the ‘gods’ these objects were their flying vehicles, and commemorative stelae in the past had their shapes. In later times, the term maintained the same meaning but, since it was applied to men, ‘that by which someone is remembered’ was interpreted in many ways. Some scholars interpreted it as ‘the name’, and some other scholars interpreted it as ‘the offspring’. Izaak Rapaport (“The Hebrew word shem and its original meaning: The bearing of Akkadian philology on Biblical interpretation”, 1976) has written extensively on the topic.
Linguistically speaking, Shem comes from the Akkadian construct ShuMU, which is translated by Sitchin ‘that which is a MU’, whatever the MU is. Heiser and others criticize this translation because they misinterpreted Sitchin’s idea. Heiser writes that the translation of SHU.MU from the Sumerian language cannot match with Sitchin’s one, because the Sumerian language lacked reative pronouns, so the part ‘that by which’ cannot exist in Sumerian and would not be attributable to SHU. But the error is Heiser’s, not Sitchin’s, because the Russian author clearly states that it is the ‘semitic derivate’ ShuMU – and not the Sumerian term – that mean ‘That which is a MU’. Thus, the relative pronoun (or the lack thereof) should be looked for in the Akkadian disctionaries, not in those of Sumerian. By loking at the Chicago University Sumerian Grammar Akkadian indeed has relative pronouns, and indeed the singular masculine form in the nominative is ‘SHU’.
But what is a MU? Why Shumu is important in its definition of ‘that which is a MU’? The original meaning of the term MU, as reported by John Prince (“Material for a Sumerian Lexicon”, 1908) in its lexicon, was ‘to cause an entrance’, and had homophones that meant ‘to shine, to produce flames, to elevate, to increase or rise’. The presumed meaning of ‘Name’ for the Sumerian MU comes from the extension of the original sign meaning ‘to cause an entrance’ because the ‘Name’ someway ‘causes an entrance’ in one’s history.
QUESTION 4: What would you consider to be the best evidence that the Anunnaki were the genetic engineers of homo sapien sapiens?
Italian researcher Pietro Buffa, who is an academic molecular biologist, has recently written two books where he asserts that the evolution of Homo Abilis and of Homo Sapiens cannot be placed in the frame of a natural chaotic process of mutations and natural selection. Moreover, the procedures described in the text from Mesopotamia (mainly the sumerian text 'Enki and Ninmah' and the babylonian 'Atra Hasis') clearly show the steps of a Heterologue In-Vitro Fertilization. That when the Anunna 'create' the workers a kind of human creature was already present it is clear from the older translation, e.g. Samuel N. Kramer translates the main verse of the poem:
“Mother, the creature whose name you uttered, it exists! Bind on him the (will?) of the Gods”.
This clearly states that, in order to obtain the 'Creature' which was meant to work in the place of the Anunna, the basis was already existing, and it only needed some sort of modification. This involved clays, and nowadays we know that the montmorillonite clay is a strong catalyst of biological processes.
QUESTION 5: The Archive is interested in your essay compilation regarding Sitchin and Sumero-Akkadian translations. What can you let us know about that endeavor?
My work on sumerian and akkadian languages concentrated on analysing Sitchin's translations, but not only; I also analysed some ambiguous verses in many tablets, using academic transliterations, which could be interpreted in different ways. This allowed me to do extremely important discoveries, probably the most important being that the MUL.APIN clearly states that SAG.ME.GAR is Jupiter but IS NOT Marduk / Neberu. I should say that I 're-discovered' this notion, because it was well known to Leonard King when he analyzed the tablets in the British Museum Colections. He wrote in his book:
“It should be noted that throughout the lists the sign (DISH/ANA/GI2) is merely employed as a graphical symbol, denoting a fresh item in the list or merely marking the beginning of a line. It is not to be rendered as ONE since in some cases the item it marks contains the names of two stars counted separately in the total (e. g . Co. I, l. 27)”.
Lines 36-39 of the MUL.APIN read:
36: When the stars of Enlil are finished,
37: a large star of matted light divides the heavens there: the star of d.AMAR.UD of Nibiru
38. the Star SAG.ME.GAR (Giove) changes its position continuously, crossing the heavens
And since the sign DISH occurs both at the beginning of line 37 and at the beginning of line 38, the object mentioned in those lines are clearly two distinct objects. This completely destroys the association of Neberu / Marduk with Jupiter, and leaves place for the identification of Marduk / Neberu with some other object.
