Zecharia Sitchin: Where the Anunnaki Alien Theory Came From

Zecharia Sitchin (1920 to 2010) wrote The 12th Planet in 1976, claiming the Anunnaki came from a hidden planet, Nibiru, to mine gold. Cuneiform specialists reject his translations.

Zecharia Sitchin (1920–2010) was born in Baku, grew up in Mandatory Palestine, and worked as a journalist and business executive in New York. In 1976 he published The 12th Planet, the first of the Earth Chronicles series, arguing that Sumerian texts preserve the history of visitors from a hidden planet.

His claims: a twelfth planet, Nibiru, orbits the sun every 3,600 years; its people, the Anunnaki, came to Earth to mine gold; they genetically engineered humans as workers; and Tiamat was a planet destroyed in a collision that formed Earth. He also argued that a cylinder seal in Berlin, VA 243, shows the solar system.

Assyriologists have rejected these readings. The name Anunnaki means 'offspring of An', not 'those who from heaven to earth came'. Nibiru in the Enuma Elish is a name of Marduk and a point in the sky. 3,600 is the sar, a number unit. The seal's star is not the Mesopotamian sun symbol, and its inscription names its owner. Scholar Michael Heiser spent years documenting the errors.

Still, Sitchin's influence is enormous. His books sold millions and seeded the Nibiru doomsday scares. The real texts he drew on, about striking gods and humans made from divine blood and clay, are worth reading directly. His real legacy may be that millions of people learned the names Anu, Enlil, and Enki from his books before they ever opened a translation.