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Spirit of Ma'at: "Sacred Sites" — Vol 2 No 4 an interview with Zecharia Sitchin by Diane M. Cooper
Diane: Zecharia, what is the difference between a ''sacred site'' and an ''ancient site''?
Zecharia: Well, Pompeii is an ancient site, but it's not sacred to anybody. Jerusalem, on the other hand, though ancient, is not a place where people go only to see archeological remains. It is considered a sacred place. Diane: For me, a sacred place can be any place in nature that is honored by a person — a place they can go to for comfort, or to say their prayers. But I'm also aware that there are sites upon the Earth that are sacred because of their specific location and connection to the seen and unseen worlds. Is that what makes a place sacred? Zecharia: I think the common understanding is that a Sacred Site was a place that was sacred religiously. It may not be sacred today anymore, but it used to be sacred. For example, there is a sacred site in Greece called Delphi.[1] When you come to Delphi, which is visited today by many tourists — not pilgrims — you go up the mountain on what they still call ''a sacred way,'' because that is what it was called in antiquity — a path leading from the bottom of this mountain to the top, on which the Temple of Apollo stood. There, was the famous Oracle or oracular priestess. Many in antiquity went up the Sacred Way and reached the temple and sought to learn their future and their Destiny. One person who went there was Alexander the Great before he went on his conquests in the Near East. He went to hear his Destiny and to ask if he should undertake this journey. The first time I was there, I went as a tourist, walking up with a guide. I walked up the Sacred Way and I saw candy wrappers left by people who walked up munching and threw away the wrappers, and sometimes a can of soda. Later, I took a small group of fans on one of my field excursions, and I was leading them up to see the temple and ruins, and I was thinking, you know, first of all, in antiquity at the time of Alexander in 400 BC, not everybody could just go up to the temples. You had to be privileged or selected to be allowed to do that. And whoever went up the Sacred Way to see the temples, to pray and worship, to ask their future from the Oracle, must have shuddered with fear. . . with awe. . . It must have been an awesome thing. And here we just go with this group or that, just a stop on the tour of Greece. You eat candy and you drink soda, and you throw away the wrappers. There's no awe or feeling of respect. Nothing. So the question is, when you say this issue of Spirit of Ma'at is devoted to Sacred Sites, "Sacred when?" And "Sacred to whom?" Delphi, for instance, is not sacred today. And although it was one of the most sacred places in antiquity to the Greeks, it was not sacred to the Jews or other people. Jerusalem: A Sacred Site for the Ages There are places, however, that have remained sacred throughout the ages. One of them that has remained focal in my writings is Jerusalem.Jerusalem is always in the news and seldom leaves the front pages. Many times when I give my lectures I ask this question of the audience, ''Why is Jerusalem sacred?'' Do you know? Diane: I can only guess. I'd say there are two levels to look at — one level would be in regard to the earth sciences. I would say that there might be a confluence of energetic patterns there that causes the Earth to be in such a way that would cause a large amount of people to gather. Perhaps the Ancients were able to perceive something special at this site. And second, there were certain occurrences in religious history that caused this to be a place where people gathered. That would be off the top of my head. Zecharia: Why is Jerusalem sacred today? One of the most common answers is that it is sacred to the Moslems because they believe that Mohammed somehow came to Jerusalem and one night was taken up to visit Heaven on a winged horse from a platform that is called ''The Holy Place.'' Then my next question is, Why is it sacred to the Christians? The answer comes back that this is where Jesus preached and died. And then my question is, Why did Jesus preach and die here? And the answer is because the Jewish Temple was here. So the question then is, why was the Jewish Temple here? Diane: It must have had something to do with the Ancients? Zecharia: Yes — although topographically and geographically there is absolutely no reason for there to be a city in this place. Since civilization began, human habitation developed where there is water, for people and animals to drink, for irrigation, or commerce — either along a river, or the shores of sea or lake. But Jerusalem is in the middle of nowhere. If you look at Jerusalem from the air and forget the buildings, there is no reason for it to be there. There is no river, there is no lake, there is no sea, there is no water. Jerusalem has depended since time immemorial upon rainwater. They collected it in antiquity, and they still do to this day. So. . . Why? My answer is, because it was a Mission Control center of the extra-terrestials who came to Earth. After the Deluge — the Great Flood — they established their mission control center in this particular place because it was equidistant from the spaceport that was in the Sinai Peninsula and from a landing platform that existed from pre-deluvial times (and still exists) in Lebanon. And they developed it on a line that connected the mountains of Ararat with the great pyramids in Egypt. That is why mission control was established precisely at that spot, where there was nothing else to justify it. I explain this in my books The Wars of God and Men and The Twelfth Planet, and also in my latest book, The Cosmic Code.[2] The Sumerians described, in texts which I quote at length in my books, some of the equipment that was placed there — the reddish-blue lights that were there, and other descriptions. There are no parallel descriptions in the Bible or in the Hebrew texts of what used to be in Jerusalem, because the spaceport was literally vaporized at precisely 2024 BC, at the time of Abraham. And then Jerusalem as a mission control center had no more function except that it remained in human memory as the ''place of the gods.'' Dome of the Rock as Landing Platform The first mention of the place in connection with religious godly events was when Abraham was instructed to take his only son, Isaac, to this particular spot and be ready to sacrifice him to God. The divine words are ''to the mountain which I will show you. . .'' The sacrifice did not take place — it was just a test to see how far Abraham's devotion would go. That mountain today is called Mount Moriah, which means the ''Place of the Showing'' — and this is where that artificial platform was built.Almost in the center of it, there is a very unusual rock which from ground level looks like a protrusion. Actually, it is hollow. You can walk down and into the rock that becomes then like a kind of canopy. There is a great chamber within the rock. The building that the Moslems built on that spot, because it is from this spot that Mohammed was taken up to Heaven, is called the Dome of the Rock — ''the structure that covers the rock.'' And according to Jewish tradition and archeologists who studied the location of the temple, that was precisely the spot which constituted the Holy of Holies in both the first temple that Solomon built and the second temple after the Babylonian exile. So in Jerusalem, that particular spot is an example of both an ancient place and a sacred place, a place that was sacred and remains sacred. There is also a place in the mountains of Lebanon called Baalbek, with a similar platform but much, much larger. It also has a massive western wall with massive stones weighing 1,300 tons. It is called in Sumerian texts ''The Landing Place.'' I describe in my various books its function and why it was so called. But this place is not sacred to anybody. Nobody comes to pray there. So Jerusalem in that respect is unique, because it is both ancient and sacred. One can visit both the temple mount and the archeological tunnel which is actually an excavated ancient street running along the western wall. In some places you can see the bedrock on which this massive platform was constructed. To walk through that ''archeological tunnel'' is like being taken to another planet. It is an unforgettable experience. So here you have an ancient place that remains sacred. Diane: So if you look at ancient Jerusalem for instance, would you have to deduce that it was strictly functional to the beings coming to this planet? That it was just a convenient spot? Zecharia: Well, it is something to ponder, isn't it? Delphi was a particular spot reknowned for its Oracle, but there is no record that it was actually an abode or outpost of the gods in antiquity. My thesis is that the gods were extraterrestrial visitors to Earth, so for some reason the Delphic Oracle just went out of use. In Baalbek, there were no temples before the Romans and the Greeks, who venerated the place and called it Heliopolis — the City of the Sun God — and it was regarded to be connected to Heliopolis in Egypt. But nobody is as emotionally, religiously, or otherwise attached to a place as people are to Jerusalem. As far as Jerusalem is concerned it is a unique site because no other site since the Deluge served as a Mission Control Center. The Sumerian name for such a place was Dur-An-Ki: the Bond Heaven-Earth. Diane: So what I'm hearing you say is that originally it was strictly a functional site. Do you mean that it had nothing to do with a spiritual endeavor at that time? Zecharia: Its spiritual aspects stem from its religious aspects, and it has a religious aspect because it is sacred to the three major religions. It is the place that reminds us that We Are Not Alone! Diane: But how did it become a religious site in the first place? Zecharia: Because in antiquity what we call religion stemmed from the teachings and the tales of those so-called gods and their activities on the Earth, incorporating the idea of a Creator, and thus of an aspiring to higher ideals and morals. Diane: So who were the beings who showed up — the so-called ''gods,'' as you say? The Origin of the ''Gods'' Zecharia: Those who showed up were visitors to Earth. They were called Anunnaki by the Sumerians. Anunnaki literally means ''those who from Heaven to Earth came,'' and they are mentioned in the Old Testament.Some of them were involved in the genetic engineering that upgraded the hominids who were on the Earth to bring about homo Sapiens. And in time, as they started to give mankind knowledge and civilization, they were considered ''gods'' because of their superior knowledge and technology. At the beginning, science was religion and religion was science. Now we say, religion is a matter of faith, not of fact or knowledge. But it was not so at the beginning when ''religion'' was actually our link to the vast heavens, making us a part of the Cosmic Saga. Diane: Have you done research in the Orient and China? Zecharia: It is part of the same story, and the chronology continued. It was after 2000 BC that things began to develop or show up there after the demise of the Sumerian civilization. But I'm handicapped there. When it comes to the ancient Near Eastern texts, I can read the tablets myself, I don't have to rely on what others say. But when it comes to Chinese or Japanese, or even Hindu sources like Sanskrit, I just have to accept what others tell me. There are books and translations, but I like to verify things for myself, both by being able to read the tablets or by actually going to the ancient places. I've been to virtually every ancient place in the Near East except Iraq, and Turkey and Greece and Crete and the Americas. So I like to verify things for myself, and once I'm sure that what I'm saying is so, then I go ahead and write a book. The first book was The 12th Planet[2] published in 1976, twenty-five years ago, and it is still being read and translated and printed and reprinted. The paperback in English is in its 27th or 28th printing. And though not everybody agrees with my conclusions, nobody has ever challenged the facts. When I say you will see a certain set of steps in a certain place, that's what you will see. Therefore I'm hesitant to write about the Far East or even India. So I really don't delve into the subject. But whatever happened there is definitely part and parcel of this whole picture. Diane: Does any opposition towards your books have to do with the translations? Zecharia: No. Someone will say, ''Yes, there is indeed such a text and it does indeed say this and that, but it is a myth.'' There is a text that describes the first landing on Earth, and many say it is a myth. This whole body of evidence is called ''mythology'' by others. And I say it is not a myth. It happened. That's where I part company from the others. The Lost Book of Enki Diane: Do you have another book in the making?Zecharia: In my first eight books to date, I deal with evidence left behind by ancient peoples — the Sumerians or the Egyptians or the Hittites or the Canaanites — what they wrote down and what they depicted. However, I always say that there is another side to the story, and that is the side to be told by the so-called ''gods'' themselves. That will be the focus of my next book. What do they have to tell us? Why did they come here? What happened on their planet before they came here? What has happened to their planet since they came here? How do they explain the various events that were later recorded by mankind in antiquity? I am using all the available sources, wherever the reference is to this or that leader of the Anunnaki, what he or she — because some of them were female — said at some point. I am using all this material to reconstruct the memoirs of their leaders as if they had dictated them to a scribe. So, for example, ''Now that this calamity has happened on Earth, let me make a record of how it happened and why it happened. Let me start from the beginning of what happened on our planet and what made us come to Earth.'' And that is important, because the ancient scriptures keep tellin us: ''The First Things Will Be The Last Things.'' Diane: That sounds fascinating. Zecharia: The book will be titled, ''The Lost Book of Enki.'' Enki is a god known to the Egyptians as Ptah, who was the father of Ra. The subtitle is ''Memoirs and Prophecies of an ExtraTerrestrial God.'' And it will be released around January 2002, but it could be in book stores for Christmas. Diane: I'll look for it. Thank you, Zecharia!
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