An Interview with Zecharia Sitchin
by Siron Knight and Michael Starwyn




Considered the father of alternative archeology, Zecharia Sitchin has a profound knowledge of modern and ancient Hebrew and many other Semitic and European languages. This knowledge has enabled him in his research of ancient cultures in Sumer, Egypt and Mesoamerica.

Sitchin has written a series of intriguing books including The 12th Planet, The Wars of Gods and Men, When Time Began, Stairway to Heaven and Lost Realms. These books deal with Earth’s and humankind’s history and prehistory and are based on information actually written on clay tablets by the ancient civilizations of the Near East.

Born in Russia, raised in Palestine, educated in England, and a leading journalist and editor in Israel for many years, he now lives in New York. In a rare interview, we had the opportunity to ask Zecharia Sitchin about his transformational journey, which has led him to the well-researched and documented discovery that our ancestors came from the stars.


Question: When and how did your search or quest in what is now termed “alternative archeology” begin?

Zecharia Sitchin: When I was nine or ten years old, studying the Old Testament in its original language of Hebrew, we reached chapter six of Genesis. This chapter describes the beginning of the deluge – the great flood, which includes Noah and the Ark. Only when you read it in its original language do you understand what it really says.

It begins not with the story of Noah himself and what happened, but with a preamble of some eight verses that are obviously remnants of a much older and different text than the ensuing story of Noah and the Ark. These eight verses have been the delight of Sunday preachers because they talk about the reason for the deluge and why God became angry with humankind. It says that at the time just before the great flood there were giants upon the Earth who married the daughters of men and had children by them.

In class I raised my hand and said: “Excuse me, teacher, why do you say giants when the world is “nephilim,” which means “those who have come down or descended” – because it speaks like they were sons of the gods, who came from Heaven to Earth.” I was expecting to be complimented for my linguistic acumen, but instead I was reprimanded harshly. The teacher ordered me to sit down, and not to question the Bible. I was not questioning the Bible. On the contrary, I was trying to bring out the need to understand precisely what the Bible says.





Question: It sounds like this search for which the “nephilim” were became your life’s work.

Sitchin: It became an obsession with me. What did the Bible mean by “nephilim?” Later on, when I began my Biblical and archeological studies of the ancient Middle East, I realized another verse among these eight verses is even more explosive, because it talks about them as being the sons, plural, of the other gods, plural, which is very odd in a Bible totally devoted to monotheism. The search, which began when I was a schoolboy, lasted about thirty years, and took me through all the various mythologies of the ancient peoples, back to the first place or civilization that had written records. All so-called later myths have been written down on clay tablets. These were the people called the Sumerians, whose civilization blossomed about six thousand years ago in what is now Iraq – then known as Southern Mesopotamia.



Question: Wasn’t it while studying the Sumerian tablets that you discovered the Anunaki: the Keepers of the Secret?


Sitchin: Yes. The Sumerians called “those who descended from heaven to Earth” the “Ananuki.” The term in Sumerian literally means “those who from Heaven to Earth came.” Due to my ability to read the Sumerian clay tablets, I studied and reported the findings to my readers. The tablets said the Ananuki came from another planet in our solar system that comes into our vicinity ever 3,600 years, sometimes a little less, sometimes a little more. They started to come and go between their planet and our planet about 450.000 years ago in search for gold, which they needed to protect the atmosphere of their planet.

In addition, they needed manpower, so they jumped the gun on evolution, combining their genes with the genes of humanoids. They combined their genes with females already on Earth and as a result of evolution brought us about. So no wonder the search for a so-called missing link that connects Homo sapiens has proven fruitless. The link is missing because it was jumped over artificially through genetic engineering. And why were they losing their own atmosphere? Was it a matter of environment? We are facing some of the same issues right now on our own planet.





Question: The link came from another world?

The Sumerian and Biblical Data involves Acknowledging the Existence of Extraterrestrials.

Sitchin: Every planet is a world. The question is, where did their planet come from, because according to the Sumerian texts – which I take as scientific data – their planet was thrust out of another solar system. So in a way, we are the product of a cosmic connection. I can tell you my next book, due in Fall of 1998 is titled The Cosmic Connection. We are genetically a combination of the evolution of humanoids on Earth and of those visitors. This is an eternal chain. They brought it to us, and we will bring it elsewhere.





Question: I am going back to ask you about this concept of the human hybrid. It seems like we are all at that point in our own evolution where we’ve mapping out the DNA helix and starting to do our own genetic engineering. It’s almost as if we are taking on where our ancestors, the Anunaki, left off.

Sitchin: It’s really interesting if you come to think about it, all these scientific advances in genetic and space travel are happening almost at the same time. It is as if the cycle is going back to our beginnings, and we are on the threshold of going out and doing to another planet what was done to us.


Comment: This accounts for some of the changes and transformation happening in the world today.

Sitchin: Yes. I appreciate the back issues of Magical Blend. I was reading over and over again the statement of purpose of the magazine. It says that Magical Blend accepts the premise that society is undergoing a fundamental transformation, and a new world view is being born. The magazine intends to deal with where we are going and how everyone may or may not have some input.

The brought to mind Arabic folk story that dealt with two travelers who were walking from one town to another town. After a while, they reached a crossroad. There was a pole with pointers to the left and right, bearing the names of the various cities. The pole had fallen down. One of the travelers sat and started to cry, saying: “We are lost. This directional pole has fallen down and we do not know where to go and we are lost.” The other traveler said: “”Oh, no, we are not lost.” He took the pole and pointed it towards the town from which they came. When he did this, all the other directions fell into place. He told the one who was crying: “So you see, my friend, in order to know where you are going, you have to know where you came from.”

This, I think, is the moral of my writings, because I really feel a kinship with the past. This is what happened so many millenniums ago. Here is what the Sumerians wrote down, and this is what the Anunaki who came did; they did this and that. They gave this knowledge and that knowledge: the zodiac, etc. The value of this knowledge is that in this information lies the clue to the future. So while I am supposedly writing about the past, I am really erecting the poles with directional signs for the future.





Question: You point out in our books that we are entering a New Age, moving into the Age of Aquarius. Why is that so important?

A Sumerian Cylinder Seal depicts an Astronaut on Mars, The Sixth Planet and an Astronaut on Earth, with a Space ship between them.


Sitchin: A Sumerian Cylinder seal over 4,500 years old depicts an astronaut on Mars, the sixth planet (counting from outside of the solar system in), and an astronaut from Earth, with a space ship between them. There is a date on this, which is Pisces. That encounter took place during the Age of Pisces. The zodiacal cycle returns to exactly the same spot every 25,920 years. So we are now leaving the Age of Pisces. Enki was the prototype god of Aquarius. Whether this means that it is all going to happen again the Enki is coming back, I don’t know There are a lot of signaling and signs that all point in that direction.




Question: The way you correlate temple dates and uses with changing times is intriguing. What was the purpose of the ancient structures such as Stonehenge?

Sitchin: Stonehenge was not the only astronomically-oriented, megalithic structure at that time. For example, there is a kind of Stonehenge on the Golan Heights in Israel. The structures are similar and have similar orientations. Around 2200 BC, the conflict arose between Enki and Enhil and their two sons about who was supreme on Earth, and they used nuclear weapons. They had to do this with the changing of Age of Taurus into the Age of Aries. The spaceport at the Sinai Peninsula was destroyed and the observatory structures were built. These were not structures for use by the Anunaki, but to enable humankind to follow the celestial cycle. There were two different kinds of temples, ones that were oriented by the equinoxes, called eternal temples, and ones that were oriented towards the solstices. The solstice temples were not eternal, because over a period of years the axis changes and shifts. By measuring the shift you can tell when the solstice temples were built.





Question: Why do we feel scholars continue to misinterpret the written records?

Sitchin: There are two prime reasons. One reason is we are all captive of our technology. For example, there is a depiction of two eagle-men saluting a rocket on one tablet. A hundred years ago, if I were asked what this was showing, I would have said two men saluting a pencil, because I would have never heard of a rocket. Some of the Sumerian tablets are so complex they look like computer print-outs. It is quite possible that someone will go back to the texts and say, “How come Sitchin didn’t realize they were talking about this or that?”

The second reason is that accepting the Sumerian and Biblical data involves acknowledging the existence of extraterrestrial. There is a text that describes how Enki leading a group of fifty Anunaki splashed down in the waters of the Persian Gulf, wades ashore, and established the first base on Earth. Then he assigned tasks to his personnel. Privately, many scholars tell me that I am right, but publicly they have to protect the status quo. Even so, my books are being used in many colleges and university courses. They are called alternative archeology. So changes are happening.