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he was not the firstborn son. The unavoidable resentment on the part of Enki and his maternal family was exacerbated by the fact that Anu’s accession to the throne was problematic to begin with: having lost out in a succession struggle to a rival named Alalu, he later usurped the throne in a coup d’état, forcing Alalu to flee Nibiru for his life. That not only back- tracked Ea’s resentments to the days of his forebears, but also brought about other challenges to the leadership of Enlil, as told in the epic Tale of Anzu. (For the tangled relationships of Nibiru’s royal families and the ancestries of Anu and Antu, Enlil and Ea, see The Lost Book of Enki.) The key to unlocking the mystery of the gods’ succession (and marriage) rules was my realization that these rules also applied to the people chosen by them to serve as their proxies to Mankind. It was the biblical tale of the Patriarch Abraham explaining (Genesis 20:12) that he did not lie when he had pre- sented his wife Sarah as his sister: “Indeed, she is my sister, the daughter of my father, but not the daughter of my mother, and she became my wife.” Not only was marrying a half-sister from a different mother permitted, but a son by her—in this case Isaac—became the Legal Heir and dynastic successor, rather than the Firstborn Ishmael, the son of the handmaiden Hagar. (How such succession rules caused the bitter feud between Ra’s divine descendants in Egypt, the half-brothers Osiris and Seth who married the half-sisters Isis and Nephtys, is explained in The Wars of Gods and Men.) Though those succession rules appear complex, they were based on what those who write about royal dynasties call “bloodlines’”—what we now should recognize as sophisticated DNA genealogies that also distinguished between general DNA inherited from the parents as well as the mitochondrial DNA (mtDNA) that is inherited by females only from the mother. The complex yet basic rule was this: Dynastic lines continue through the male line; the Firstborn son is next in succession; a half-sister could be taken as wife if she had a different mother; and if a son by such a half-sister is later born, that son—though not Firstborn—becomes the Legal Heir and the dynastic successor. The rivalry between the two half-brothers Ea/Enki and En- THE END OF DAYS