The Rosette

The rosette was the most common decorative temple symbol throughout the ancient lands, prevalent in Mesopotamia, western Asia, Anatolia, Cyprus, Crete, and Greece.

It is the accepted view that the rosette as a temple symbol was an outgrowth or stylization of a celestial phenomenon—a sun encircled by its satellites. That the ancient astronauts wore this symbol on their wrists adds credence to this view.

An Assyrian depiction of the Gateway of Anu in the Heavenly Abode (Fig. 87) confirms ancient familiarity with a celestial system such as our Sun and its planets.

The gateway is flanked by two Eagles—indicating that their services are needed to reach the Heavenly Abode. The Winged Globe—the supreme divine emblem—marks the gateway. It is flanked by the celestial symbols of the number 7 and the crescent, representing (we believe) Anu flanked by Enlil and Enki.

Where are the celestial bodies represented by these symbols? Where is the Heavenly Abode? The ancient artist answers with yet another depiction, that of a large celestial deity extending its rays to eleven smaller celestial bodies encircling it. It is a representation of a Sun, orbited by eleven planets.

That this was not an isolated representation can be shown by reproducing other depictions on cylinder seals, like this one from the Berlin Museum of the Ancient Near East. (Fig. 88)

When the central god or celestial body in the Berlin seal is enlarged (Fig. 89), we can see that it depicts a large, ray-emitting star surrounded by eleven heavenly bodies—planets. These, in turn, rest on a chain of 24 smaller globes.

Is it only a coincidence that the number of all the “moons,” or satellites, of the planets in our solar system (astronomers exclude those of ten miles or less in diameter) is also exactly 24?

Now there is, of course, a catch to claiming that these depictions-of a Sun and 11 planets—represent our solar system, for our scholars tell us that the planetary system of which Earth is a part comprises the Sun, Earth and Moon, Mercury, Venus, Mars, Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus, Neptune, and Pluto.

This adds up to the Sun and only ten planets (when the Moon is counted as one). But that is not what the Sumerians said.

They claimed that our system was made up of the Sun and eleven planets (counting the Moon), and held steadfastly to the opinion that, in addition to the planets known to us today, there has been a 12th member of the solar system—the home planet of the Nefilim. We shall call it the 12th Planet.

Before we check the accuracy of the Sumerian information, let us review the history of our own knowledge of Earth and the heavens around it.

We know today that beyond the giant planets Jupiter and Saturn—at distances insignificant in terms of the universe, but immense in human terms—two more major planets (Uranus and Neptune) and a third, small one (Pluto) belong to our solar system.

But such knowledge is quite recent. Uranus was discovered, through the use of improved telescopes, in 1781. After observing it for some 50 years, some astronomers reached the conclusion that its orbit revealed the influence of yet another planet. Guided by such mathematical calculations, the missing planet—named Neptune—was pinpointed by astronomers in 1846.

Then, by the end of the nineteenth century, it became evident that Neptune itself was being subjected to unknown gravitational pull. Was there yet another planet in our solar system? The puzzle was solved in 1930 with the observation and location of Pluto.

Up to 1780, then, and for centuries before that, people believed there were 7 members of our solar system: Sun, Moon, Mercury, Venus, Mars, Jupiter, Saturn. Earth was not counted as a planet because it was believed that these other celestial bodies circled Earth—the most important celestial body created by God, with God’s most important creation, Man, upon it.

Our textbooks generally credit Nicolaus Copernicus with the discovery that Earth is only one of several planets in a heliocentric (Sun-centered) system.

Fearing the wrath of the Christian church for challenging Earth’s central position, Copernicus published his study (De revolutionibus orbium coelestium) only when on his deathbed, in 1543.

Spurred to reexamine centuries-old astronomical concepts primarily by the navigational needs of the Age of Discovery, and by the findings by Columbus (1492), Magellan (1520), and others that Earth was not flat but spherical, Copernicus depended on mathematical calculations and searched for the answers in ancient writings.

One of the few churchmen who supported Copernicus, Cardinal Schonberg, wrote to him in 1536: “I have learned that you know not only the groundwork of the ancient mathematical doctrines, but that you have created a new theory … according to which the Earth is in motion and it is the Sun which occupies the fundamental and therefore the cardinal position.”

The concepts then held were based on Greek and Roman traditions that Earth, which was flat, was “vaulted over” by the distant heavens, in which the stars were fixed.

Against the star-studded heavens the planets (from the Greek word for “wanderer”) moved around Earth.

There were thus 7 celestial bodies, from which the 7 days of the week and their names originated:

1. The Sun (Sunday)
2. Moon (Monday)
3. Mars (mardi) 4 Mercury (mercredi)
4. Jupiter (jeudi)
5. Venus (vendredi)
6. Saturn (Saturday). (Fig. 90)

These astronomical notions stemmed from the works and codifications of Ptolemy, an astronomer in the city of Alexandria, Egypt, in the 2nd century AD.

His definite findings were that the Sun, Moon, and five planets moved in circles around Earth. Ptolemaic astronomy predominated for more than 1,300 years—until Copernicus put the Sun in the center.

While some have called Copernicus the “Father of Modern Astronomy,” others view him more as a researcher and reconstructor of earlier ideas. The fact is that he pored over the writings of Greek astronomers who preceded Ptolemy, such as Hipparchus and Aristarchus of Samos.

The latter suggested in the third century B.C. that the motions of the heavenly bodies could better be explained if the Sun—and not Earth—were assumed to be in the center. In fact, 2,000 years before Copernicus, Greek astronomers listed the planets in their correct order from the Sun, acknowledging thereby that the Sun, not Earth, was the solar system’s focal point.

The heliocentric concept was only rediscovered by Copernicus; and the interesting fact is that astronomers knew more in 500 B.C. than in A.D. 500 and 1500.

Why did the Greeks and then the Romans assumed that Earth was flat, rising above a layer of murky waters below which there lay Hades or “Hell,” when some of the evidence left by Greek astronomers from earlier times indicates that they knew otherwise?