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The resort to nuclear weapons at the end of the twenty-first century B.c.E. ushered—one could say, “with a bang”—the Era of Marduk. It was, in almost all respects, truly a New Age, even the way we understand the term nowadays. Its greatest paradox was that while it made Man look to the heavens, it brought the gods of the heavens down to Earth. The changes that New Age has wrought affect us to this day. For Marduk the New Age was a wrong righted, an ambi- tion attained, prophecies fulfilled. The price paid—the deso- lation of Sumer, the flight of its gods, the decimation of its people—was not his doing. If anything, those who suffered were punished for obstructing Destiny. The unforeseen nu- clear storm, the Evil Wind, and its course that seemed selec- tively guided by an unseen hand only confirmed what the Heavens proclaimed: the Age of Marduk, the Age of the Ram, has arrived. The change from the Age of the Bull to the Age of the Ram was especially celebrated and marked in Marduk’s homeland, Egypt. Astronomical depictions of the heavens (such as at the Denderah temple, see Fig. 20) showed the constellation of the Ram as the focal point of the zodiacal cycle. Lists of zodiacal constellations began not with the Bull as in Sumer, but with the Ram (Fig. 38). The most impres- sive manifestations were the rows of Ram-headed sphinxes that flanked the processional way to the great temples in Karnak (Fig. 39), whose construction, by Pharaohs of the newly established Middle Kingdom, began right after Ra/ DESTINY HAD FIFTY NAMES