THIS BEGAN on the day called zagmuk, in the month of Nisan (March-April) and lasted 11-12 days. The tablets which describe it have not been handed down intact, but we can get a glimpse of the first six days. We shall follow Roux' interpretation, and add in comments from Sitchin and others pertinent to the festival.
"The central religious event of ancient Mesopotamia, the twelve-day New Year Festival, was replete with symbolism that had to do with the orbit of the Twelfth Planet, the makeup of the solar system, and the journey of the Nefilim to Earth. The best-documented of these 'affirmations of the faith' were the Babylonian New Year rituals; but evidence shows that the Babylonians only copied traditions going back to the beginning of Sumerian civilization.
"In Babylon, the festival followed a very strict and detailed ritual; each portion, act, and prayer had a traditional reason and a specific meaning. The ceremonies started on the first day of Nisan -- then the first month of the year -- coinciding with the spring equinox. For eleven days, the other gods with a celestial status joined Marduk in a prescribed order. On the twelfth day, each of the other gods departed to his own abode, and Marduk was left alone in his splendor. The parallel to the appearance of Marduk within the planetary system, his 'visit' with the eleven other members of the solar system, and the separation on the twelfth day -- leaving the Twelfth God to go on as King of the Gods, but in isolation from them -- is obvious.
"The ceremonies of the New Year Festival paralleled the course of the Twelfth Planet. The first four days, matching Marduk's passage by the first four planets (Pluto, Neptune, Uranus, and Saturn), were days of preparation.
"Of the many aspects of the Babylonian festival that reveal its earlier, Sumerian origins, one of the most significant was that which pertained to the House of Akitu. Several studies, such as The Babylonian Akitu Festival by S. A. Pallis, have established that this house was featured in religious ceremonies in Sumer as early as the third millennium B.C. The essence of the ceremony was a holy procession that saw the reigning god leave his abode or temple and go, via several stations, to a place well out of town. A special ship, a 'Divine Boat,' was used for the purpose. Then the god, successful in whatever his mission was at the A.KI.TI House, returned to the city's quay by the same Divine Boat, and retraced his course back to the temple amid feasting and rejoicing by the king and populace.
"The Sumerian term A.KI.TI (from which the Babylonian akitu derived) literally meant 'build on Earth life.' This, coupled with the various aspects of the mysterious journey, leads us to conclude that the procession symbolized the hazardous but successful voyage of the Nefilim from their abode to the seventh planet, Earth.
"Excavations conducted over some twenty years on the site of ancient Babylon, brilliantly correlated with Babylonian ritual texts, enabled teams of scholars led by F. Wetzel and F. H. Weissbach (Das Hauptheiligtum des Marduks in Babylon) to reconstruct the holy precinct of Marduk, the architectural features of his ziggurat, and the Processional Way, portions of which were reerected at the Museum of the Ancient Near East, in East Berlin." -- Sitchin, The 12th Planet.
The Stations.
"The symbolic names of the seven stations and the epithet of Marduk at each station were given in both Akkadian and Sumerian -- attesting both to the antiquity and to the Sumerian origins of the procession and its symbolism.
"The first station of Marduk, at which his epithet was 'Ruler of the Heavens,' was named 'House of Holiness' in Akkadian and 'House of Bright Waters' in Sumerian. The god's epithet at the second station is illegible; the station itself was named 'Where the Field Separates.' The partly mutilated name of the third station began with the words 'Location facing the planet...'; and the god's epithet there changed to 'Lord of Poured-Out Fire.'
"The fourth station was called 'Holy Place of Destinies,' and Marduk was called 'Lord of the Storm of the Waters of An and Ki.' The fifth station appeared less turbulent. It was named 'The Roadway,' and Marduk assumed the title 'Where the Shepherd's Word Appears.' Smoother sailing was also indicated at the sixth station, called 'The Traveler's Ship,' where Marduk's epithet changed to 'God of the Marked-Out Gateway.'
"The seventh station was the Bit Akitu ('house of building life on Earth'). There, Marduk took the title 'God of the House of Resting.'
"It is our contention that the seven stations in the procession of Marduk represented the space trip of the Nefilim from their planet to Earth; that the first 'station,' the 'House of the Bright Waters,' represented the passage by Pluto; the second ('Where the Field Separates') was Neptune; the third, Uranus; the fourth -- a place of celestial storms -- Saturn. The fifth, where 'The Roadway' became clear, 'where the shepherd's word appears,' was Jupiter. The sixth, where the journey switched to 'The Traveler's Ship,' was Mars.
"And the seventh station was Earth -- the end of the journey, where Marduk provided the 'House of Resting' (the god's 'house of building life on Earth')."(1)
The First Day:
"A priest unlocks the Lofty Gate of the Esagila and opens its great courtyard." -- Ancient Iraq [AI]
"The sacred days began at dusk on the previous evening -- a custom still retained in the Jewish calendar. A text which outlined the duties of the Urigallu priest during the twelve-day New Year festival in Babylon throws light not only on the origin of priestly rituals later on, but also on the close connection between celestial observations and the festival's proceedings. In the discovered text (generally considered to reflect, as the priest's title URI.GALLU itself, Sumerian origins) the beginning, dealing with the determination of the first day of the New Year (the first of the month Nissan in Babylon) according to the spring equinox, is missing." -- Sitchin, When Time Began.
The Second Day:
"The mashmashu (or incantation) priest rises before dawn and washes himself with Euphrates water. He then enters the temple, recites a hymn asking MarDuk to bestow his favors on Babylon and its people, and lets in the erib biti priests and the singers, who perform their rites. An incantation is sung, connected with the replacement of 'forgotten rites' with the new ones. " -- AI
The inscription starts with the instructions for the second day:
"Then, putting on a garment of pure white linen, he could enter into the presence of the great god (Marduk in Babylon) and recite prescribed prayers in the Holy of Holies of the ziggurat (the Esagil in Babylon). The recitation, which no one else was to hear, was deemed so secret that after the text lines in which the prayer was inscribed, the priestly scribe inserted the following admonition: 'Twenty-one lines: secrets of the Esagil temple. Whoever reveres the god Marduk shall show them to no one except the Urigallu priest.'(2)
"After he finished reciting the secret prayer, the Urigallu priest opened the temple's gate to let in the Eribbiti priests, who proceeded to 'perform their rites, in the traditional manner,' joined by musicians and singers." -- Sitchin, When Time Began.
The Third Day:
"Commences much the same as the Second Day, only on this day, three artisans are summoned and provided with material to make two statuettes of wood adorned with precious stones and clad in red garments. One statuette brandishes a serpent, the other a scorpion.
"The text then details the rest of the duties of the Urigallu priest on that night. " -- AI
"'On the third day of the month Nisannu' at a time after sunset too damaged in the inscription to read, the Urigallu priest was again required to perform certain rites and recitations; this he had to do throughout the night, until 'three hours after sunrise' when he was to instruct artisans in the making of images of metal and precious stones to be used in ceremonies on the sixth day." -- Sitchin, When Time Began.
The Fourth Day:
"In the early morning, prayers to MarDuk and his spouse NinLil are chanted. After the second meal, in the late afternoon, the sheshgallu-priest recites the Creation Epic (the Enuma elish) in its entirety, while Anu's Tiara and Enlil's seat remain covered by deference to these gods, who, in the Epic, had been replaced by MarDuk. Perhaps we should also say that EnKi was replaced by MarDuk as well." -- AI
"At the end of the fourth day, the rituals called for marking the appearance of the planet Iku (Jupiter) within sight of Marduk. The celestial Marduk was nearing the place of the celestial battle; symbolically, the high priest began reciting the "Epic of Creation" -- the tale of that celestial battle.
"The night passed without sleep." -- Sitchin, The 12th Planet.
"On the fourth day, at 'three and one third hours of the night,' the rituals repeated themselves but the prayers now expanded to include a separate service for Marduk's spouse, the goddess Sarpanit. The prayers then paid homage to the other gods of Heaven and Earth and asked for the granting of long life to the king and prosperity to the people of Babylon. It was thereafter that the advent of the New Year was directly linked to the Time of the Equinox, in the constellation of the Ram: the heliacal rising of the Ram Star at dawn. Pronouncing the blessing 'Iku-star' upon the 'Esagil, image of heaven and earth,' the rest of the day was spent in prayers, singing and music playing. On that day, after sunset, the Enuma Elish, the Epic of Creation, was recited in its entirety." -- Sitchin, When Time Began.
The Fifth Day:
"The first part of the day is devoted to the purification of the temple. The mashmashu goes around the Esagila with a censer and a torch, sprinkling its walls with Tigris water and smearing them with cedar resin. A slaughterer is then called in to cut off the head of a sheep, and to move its body inside the temple, and with the help of the priest, to throw the head and body into the river, the scapegoat being supposed to take away all the sins of the previous year. [Notice the parallel with the Hebrew ritual yom ha kippurim, which was noticed in the article DuKu and Atonement.] Upon the completion of this task, the slaughterer and the mashmashu leave Babylon to remain in the open country until the end of the festival. The sheshgallu priest, who has kept away from these ceremonies in order to avoid impurity -- orders craftsmen to cover the shrine of MarDuk's son Nabu, with a veil of blue material embroidered with gold.
"In the evening, the king proceeds to the Esagila. Before the statue of MarDuk, he surrenders the insignia of kingship: the sceptre, the circle, and the mace, to the sheshgallu priest, who deposits them on a chair in front of MarDuk, and then strikes the king on the cheek:
'He (the priest says the ritual to which we owe these details, shall accompany him (the king) into the presence of the god Bel... he shall drag him by the ears and make him bow down to the ground.... The king shall speak the following (only) once:
"I did not sin, lord of the countries. I was not neglectful of your godship. I did not destroy Babylon; I did not command its overthrow... The temple Esagila, I did not forget its rites. I did not rain blows on the cheek of a subordinate... I did not humiliate them. I watched out for Babylon; I did not smash its walls....'
"The king is reassured by the priest:
"'Have no fear.... The god Bel will listen to your prayer.... He will magnify your lordship.... He will exalt your lordship.... The god Bel will bless you forever. He will destroy your enemy, fell your adversary.'
"The priest returns the insignia to the king and strikes him once more:
"He (the priest) shall strike the king's cheek. If, when he strikes the king's cheek, the tears flow, (it means that) the god Bel is friendly; if no tears appear, the God Bel is angry: the enemy will rise up and bring about his downfall."
"Here we have in the symbolism of this "humiliating ritual" the following: the king, scapegoat of the community, atones for his sins and is reminded that he owes his powers to none but the gods. Unlike the later copies contrived by the Roman Pontiffs, this is the real thing, based on real historical events, real historical precedents.
"Later in the night, the King takes part in other ceremonies involving the burning of a bull in a fire of reeds.
"When the tale of the celestial battle had been recited, and as the fifth day was breaking, the rituals called for the twelvefold proclamation of Marduk as 'The Lord,' affirming that in the aftermath of the celestial battle there were now twelve members of the solar system. The recitations then named the twelve members of the solar system and the twelve constellations of the zodiac. " -- AI
"Sometime during the fifth day, the god Nabu -- Marduk's son and heir -- arrived by boat from his cult center, Borsippa." -- Sitchin, The 12th Planet.
"The fifth day of Nissan was compared by Henri Frankfort (Kingship and the Gods) to the Jewish Day of Atonement, for on that day the king was escorted to the main chapel and was relieved there by the High Priest of all the symbols of kingship; after which, struck in the face by the priest and humiliated into prostrating himself, the king pronounced declarations of confession and repentance. The text which we have been following (per F. Thureau-Dangin, Rituels accadiens and E. Ebeling in Altorientalische Texte zum alten Testament) deals, however, only with the duties of the Urigallu priest; and we read that on that night the priest, at 'four hours of the night,' recited twelve times the prayer 'My Lord, is he not my Lord' in honor of Marduk, and invoked the Sun, the Moon, and the twelve constellations of the zodiac. A prayer to the goddess followed, in which her epithet, DAM.KI.ANNA, ('Mistress of the Earth and Heaven') revealed the ritual's Sumerian origin. The prayer likened her to the planet Venus 'which shines brilliantly among the stars,' naming seven constellations. After these prayers, which stressed the astronomical-calendrical aspects of the occasion, singers and musicians performed 'in the traditional manner' and a breakfast was served to Marduk and Sarpanit 'two hours after sunrise.'" -- Sitchin, When Time Began.
The Sixth Day:
"Nabu arrives from Borsippa (Birs Nimrud, 10 miles to the south of Babylon), and that, at the same time, the two 'statuettes of evil', which had been made three days before, are decapitated, and their heads cast into the fire.
"Also, on this day, other gods reach Babylon, from Sippar, Kutha, and Kish." -- AI
"...[Nabu] entered Babylon's temple compound only on the sixth day, for by then Nabu was a member of the Babylonian pantheon of twelve and the planet assigned to him was Mars -- the sixth planet.
"The Book of Genesis informs us that in six days 'the Heaven and Earth and all their host' were completed. The Babylonian rituals commemorating the celestial events that resulted in the creation of the asteroid belt and Earth were also completed in the first six days of Nisan." -- Sitchin, The 12th Planet.
The Seventh Day:
"On the seventh day, the festival turned its attention to Earth. Though details of the rituals on the seventh day are scarce, H. Frankfort (Kingship and the Gods) believes that they involved an enactment by the gods, led by Nabu, of the liberation of Marduk from his imprisonment in the 'Mountains of the Lower Earth.' Since texts have been found that detail epic struggles between Marduk and other claimants to the rulership of Earth, we can surmise that the events of the seventh day were a reenactment of Marduk's struggle for supremacy on Earth (the 'Seventh'), his initial defeats, and his final victory and usurpation of the powers." -- Sitchin, The 12th Planet.
The Eighth Day:
"On the eighth day of the New Year Festival in Babylon, Marduk, victorious on Earth, as the forged Enuma Elish had made him in the heavens, received the supreme powers." -- Sitchin, The 12th Planet.
The Ninth Day:
"The King enters MarDuk's shrine, takes his hand (i.e., the King takes MarDuk's hand), a gesture which came to summarize the royal participation in the Festival, and then MarDuk is installed in the ubshu-ukkinna chapel(see DuKu and Atonement), together with the other deities.
"In this first divine assembly was proclaimed the sovereignty of MarDuk (and EnKi before him), as stated in the Epic of Creation and the Destinies were named for the first time.
"A great, solemn procession is then formed, including the statues of all the gods and goddesses. Headed by MarDuk on his chariot glittering with gold and precious stones and led by the king, it goes down Procession Street across Babylon in an aura of incense, songs, and music, while people kneel down in adoration as it passes by. Through the Ishtar Gate, the procession leaves the city, and after a short journey on the Euphrates, reaches the bit akitu, a temple filled with plants and flowers in the middle of a large park. The details of the ceremonial in the bit akitu are wanting, but it is stated that the triumph of MarDuk over the forces of evil was celebrated. The gods stay in the bit akitu for three days. " -- AI
"Having bestowed them on Marduk, the gods, assisted by the king and populace, then embarked, on the ninth day, on a ritual procession that took Marduk from his house within the city's sacred precinct to the 'House of Akitu,' somewhere outside the city. Marduk and the visiting eleven gods stayed there through the eleventh day; on the twelfth day, the gods dispersed to their various abodes, and the festival was over." -- Sitchin, The 12th Planet.
"The Babylonian New Year rituals evolved from the Sumerian AKITI ('On Earth Build Life') festival whose roots can be traced to the state visit paid by Anu and his spouse Antu to Earth circa 3800 B.C., when (as the texts attest) the zodiac was ruled by the Bull of Heaven, the Age of Taurus. We have suggested that it was then that Counted Time, the calendar of Nippur, was granted to Mankind. Inevitably, that entailed celestial observations and thus led to the creation of a class of trained astronomer-priests.
"Several texts, some well preserved and some surviving only in fragments, describe the pomp and circumstance of Anu's and Antu's visit to Uruk (the biblical Erech) and the ceremonies which became the rituals of the New Year Festival in the ensuing millennia. The works of F. Thureau-Dangin and E. Ebeling still constitute the foundation on which subsequent studies have been based; the ancient texts were then brilliantly used by teams of German excavators of Uruk to locate, identify, and reconstruct the ancient sacred precinct -- its walls and gates, its courtyards and shrines and service buildings, and the three principle temples: the E.ANNA ('House of Anu') ziggurat, the Bit-Resh('Main Temple') which was also a stage-tower, and the Irigal which was the temple dedicated to Inanna/Ishtar. Of the many volumes of the archaeologists' reports (Ausgrabungen der Deutschen Forschungsgemeinschaft in Uruk-Warka), of particular interest to the remarkable correlation of ancient texts and modern excavations are the second (Archaische Texte aus Uruk) and third (Topographie von Uruk) volumes by Adam Falkenstein.
"Surprisingly, the texts on the clay tablets (whose scribal colophons identify them as copies of earlier originals) clearly describe two sets of rituals -- one taking place in the month Nissan (the month of the spring equinox) and the other in the month Tishrit (the month of the autumnal equinox); the former was to become the Babylonian and Assyrian New Year, and the latter was retained in the Jewish calendar following the biblical commandment to celebrate the New Year 'in the seventh month,' Tishrei. While the reason for this diversity still mystifies scholars, Ebeling noted that the Nissan texts appear to have been better preserved than the Tisrei texts which are mostly fragmented, suggesting a clear bias on the part of the later temple scribes; and Falkenstein has noted that the Nissan and Tishrei rituals, seemingly identical, were not really so; the former stressed the various celestial observations, the latter the rituals within the Holy of Holies and its anteroom.
"Of the various texts, two main ones deal separately with evetime and sunrise rituals. The former, long and well preserved, is especially legible from the point at which Anu and Antu, the divine visitors from Nibiru, are seated in the courtyard of the sacred precinct at evetime, ready to begin a lavish dinner banquet. As the sun was setting in the west, astronomer-priests stationed on various stages of the main ziggurat were required to watch for the appearance of the planets and to announce the sighting the moment the celestial bodies appeared, beginning with Nibiru:
"As these compositions ('To the one who grows bright, the heavenly planet of the Lord Anu' and 'The Creator's image has arisen') were recited from the ziggurat, wine was served to the gods from a golden libation vessel. Then, in succession, the priests announced the appearance of Jupiter, Venus, Mercury, Saturn, Mars, and the Moon. The ceremony of washing the hands followed, with water poured from seven golden pitchers honoring the six luminaries of the night plus the Sun of daytime. A large torch of 'naphtha fire in which spices were inserted' was lighted; all the priests sang the hymn Kakkab Anu etellu shamame ('The planet of Anu rose in the sky'), and the banquet could begin. Afterward, Anu and Antu retired for the night and leading gods were assigned as watchmen until dawn. Then, 'forty minutes after sunrise,' Anu and Antu were awakened 'bringing an end to their overnight stay.'
"The morning proceedings began outside the temple, in the courtyard of the Bit Akitu ('House of the New Year Festival' in Akkadian). Enlil and Enki were awaiting Anu at the 'golden supporter,' standing by or holding several objects; the Akkadian terms, whose precise meaning remains elusive, are best translated as 'that which opens up the secrets,' 'the Sun disks' (plural!) and 'the splendid/shining posts.' Anu then came into the courtyard accompanied by gods in procession. 'He stepped up to the Great Throne in the Akitu courtyard, and sat upon it facing the rising Sun.' He was then joined by Enlil, who sat on Anu's right, and Enki, who sat on his left; Antu, Nannar/Sin, and Inanna/Ishtar then took places behind the seated Anu.
"The statement that Anu seated himself 'facing the rising Sun' leaves no doubt that the ceremony involved a determination of a moment connected with sunrise on a particular day -- the first day of Nissan (the spring Equinox Day) or the first day of Tishrei (the autumnal Equinox Day). It was only when this sunrise ceremony was completed, that Anu was led by one of the gods and by the High Priest to the BARAG.GAL -- the 'Holy of Holies' inside the temple.
"(BARAG means 'inner sanctum, screened-off place' and GAL means 'great, foremost.' The term evolved to Baragu/Barakhu/Parakhu in Akkadian with the meanings 'inner sanctum, Holy of Holies' as well as the screen which hides it. This term appears in the Bible as the Hebrew word Parokhet, (5) which was both the word for the Holy of Holies in the temple and for the screen that separated it from the anteroom. The traditions and rituals that began in Sumer were thus carried on both physically and linguistically.)"(6)
The Twelfth Day:
"On 11 Nisan, the procession returns to the Esagila, where they assemble again to decree the Destinies of the Land. This would be the National Oracle, like we see in the Tibetan Festivals, which undoubtedly were modelled upon this original, several hundreds of years after the fact.
"The Oracle ends in a huge banquet accompanied by music and prayers." -- AI
The Thirteenth Day:
"All the gods who have come to Babylon return to their respective cities, the priests to their temples, the king to his palace. The great New Year Festival is over. " -- AI
We can thus see that in this original event, the State visit of Anu and Antu to Earth, and the granting of mankind the Calendar, Time Began. This ritual is perhaps the first such ritual, the first to employ the story as a story, as a liturgical framework, as an operative act, as a speculative act, as a mnemonic aid, as a grand rite for the annual festival, and so forth. Imagine being there, in Uruk, when the planet of the Great Anu appeared in the constellation of the Wagon, during the first watch of the night. The priests and the divine representatives each playing their part. Then, at the precise moment, the Divine Chariot descends and Anu and Antu emerge, and are led to their places. All the pomp and fanfare transpires, and then begins the feast. And this is no small cake and punch affair, or b.y.o.b. brown-bag party. This is the annual New Year festival, which occurs once in a year. But this particular event, when Anu and Antu came to Earth to visit, was probably the last time they were here, unless they visited in 173 b.c.e., when Nibiru last came close to Earth. But it is likely that if they did show up then, they didn't show up in the West, for by that time, the Anunnaki had established bases of operations in Northwest India and deeper into Central Asia.
NOTES:
1. Sitchin, The 12th Planet, 263 - 267.
2. Though slightly longer than 21 lines, the "Invocation of the Marduk Gate," in The Necronomicon, "The Incantations of the Gates," pp. 58 - 59 may perhaps be these lost secrets of the Esagil Temple. The Invocation of the Marduk Gate is 24 Lines, if we include the three lines which are in Babylonian.
3. This would correspond, roughly, with approximately 7:00 P.M., the orientation being roughly N-N.E., on the night of 20/21 March (19/20 April in 3800 - 3761 B.C.E. According to our count, the Calendar begins at 3773 B.C.E.). The particular time of day indicated is known as the first watch of the night, which corresponds to the Watch known as Bararitu. ("Peeping of the Stars"). There are six watches, in a twenty-four hour period. There are three in the night, of which this is the first. See the TIME SYSTEM for more details.
4. The constellation of the Wagon is Ursa Major. At the time of the year in question, it is in the N-N.E. part of the sky. It would probably be likely that Nibiru was to appear in the 'dipper' portion of the constellation, as it does resemble a giant gateway.
5. Paroketh, tkrp, == 700, the Veil of the Holy. This word is important in the Portal Grade of the R.R. et A.C. Level of the Golden Dawn. Also, in the manifestation of the Shekinah, in the Holy of Holies on the Day of Atonement Festival. The High Priest stands before the Veil of the Holy, and offers up the Invocation of the True Name.
6. Sitchin, When Time Began, pp. 108 - 113.
Quotes from Georges Roux, ANCIENT IRAQ, Second Edition, paperback, pages 365 - 369.
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