The Collision with Tiamat

The courses irrevocably set on collision. “Tiamat emitted a roar” … “the Lord raised the flooding storm, his mighty weapon.”

As Marduk came ever closer, Tiamat’s “fury” grew; “the roots of her legs shook back and forth.”

She commenced to cast “spells” against Marduk—the same kind of celestial waves Ea had earlier used against Apsu and Mummu. But Marduk kept coming at her.

The epic now turns to the description of the celestial battle, in the aftermath of which Heaven and Earth were created.

Here, then, (Fig. 107) is a most original theory explaining the celestial puzzles still confronting us.

An unstable solar system, made up of the Sun and nine planets, was invaded by a large, comet-like planet from outer space.

It first encountered Neptune; as it passed by Uranus, the giant Saturn, and Jupiter, its course was profoundly bent inward toward the solar system’s center, and it brought forth 7 satellites.

It was unalterably set on a collision course with Tiamat, the next planet in line.

But the two planets did not collide, a fact of cardinal astronomical importance: It was the satellites of Marduk that smashed into Tiamat, and not Marduk himself. They “distended” Tiamat’s body, made in her a wide cleavage.

Through these fissures in Tiamat, Marduk shot an “arrow,” a “divine lightning,” an immense bolt of electricity that jumped as a spark from the energy-charged Marduk, the planet that was “filled with brilliance.”

Finding its way into Tiamat’s innards, it “extinguished her life-breath”—neutralized Tiamat’s own electric and magnetic forces and fields, and “extinguished” them.

The first encounter between Marduk and Tiamat left her fissured and lifeless;

But her final fate was still to be determined by future encounters between the two.

Kingu, leader of Tiamat’s satellites, was also to be dealt with separately. But the fate of the other 10, smaller satellites of Tiamat was determined at once.

Comets

I think that this “shortered … broken” host that trembled and “turned their backs about”—reversed their direction stands for comets.

The orbits of the planets around the Sun are (with the exception of Pluto) almost circular.

The orbits of the comets are elongated.

The planets (with the exception of Pluto) orbit the Sun in the same general plane; the comets’ orbits lie in many diverse planes.

Most significant, while all the planets known to us circle the Sun in the same counterclockwise direction, many comets move in the reverse direction.

Astronomers are unable to say what force, what event created the comets and threw them into their unusual orbits.

Our answer: Marduk.

Sweeping in the reverse direction, in an orbital plane of his own, he shortered, broke the host of Tiamat into smaller comets and affected them by his gravitational pull, his socalled net:

After the battle was over, Marduk took away from Kingu the Tablet of Destinies (Kingu’s independent orbit) and attached it to his own (Marduk’s) breast: his course was bent into permanent solar orbit. From that time on, Marduk was bound always to return to the scene of the celestial battle.

Having “vanquished” Tiamat, Marduk sailed on in the heavens, out into space, around the Sun, and back to retrace his passage by the outer planets.

Completing his first-ever orbit around the Sun, Marduk “then returned to Tiamat, whom he had subdued.”

Marduk himself now hit the defeated planet, splitting Tiamat in two, severing her “skull,” or upper part.

Then another of Marduk’s satellites, the one called North Wind, crashed into the separated half. The heavy blow carried this part—destined to become Earth—to an orbit where no planet had been orbiting before:

Earth had been created!

The lower part had another fate: on the second orbit, Marduk himself hit it, smashing it to pieces (Fig. 108):

The Celestial Battle, B

Tiamat has been split: its shattered half is the Heaven—the Asteroid Belt; the other half, Earth, is thrust to a new orbit by Marduk’s satellite “North Wind.”

Tiamat’s chief satellite, Kingu, becomes Earth’s Moon; her other satellites now make up the comets.

The pieces of this broken half were hammered to become a “bracelet” in the heavens, acting as a screen between the inner planets and the outer planets.

They were stretched out into a “great band.” The asteroid belt had been created.

Astronomers and physicists recognize the existence of great differences between the inner, or “terrestrial,” planets (Mercury, Venus, Earth and its Moon, and Mars) and the outer planets (Jupiter and beyond), two groups separated by the asteroid belt.

We now find, in the Sumerian epic, ancient recognition of these phenomena. Moreover, we are offered—for the first time—a coherent cosmogonic-scientific explanation of the celestial events that led to the disappearance of the “missing planet” and the resultant creation of the asteroid belt (plus the comets) and of Earth.

After several of his satellites and his electric bolts split Tiamat in two, another satellite of Marduk shunted her upper half to a new orbit as our planet Earth; then Marduk, on his second orbit, smashed the lower half to pieces and stretched them in a great celestial band.