Page Content (OCR)
123 The Way of Enlil The Way of Ea the latter that the zodiacal constellations were located, and it was there that “Earth met Heaven’—at the horizon. Perhaps because Marduk attained supremacy in accordance with Celestial Time, the zodiacal clock, his astronomer-priests continuously scanned the skies at the horizon, the Sumerian AN.UR, “Heaven’s Base.” There was no point in looking up to the Sumerian AN.PA, “Heaven’s Top,” the zenith, for Marduk as a “star,” Nibiru, was by then gone and unseen. But as an orbiting planet, though unseen now, it was bound to return. Expressing its equivalent of the Marduk-is-Nibiru theme, the Egyptian version of Marduk’s Star-Religion openly promised its faithful that a time will come when this god-star or star-god would reappear as the ATEN. It was this aspect of Marduk’s Star Religion—the eventual Return—that directly challenged Babylon’s Enlilite adver- saries, and shifted the conflict’s focus to renewed messianic expectations. Of the post-Sumer actors on the stage of the Old World, four that grew to imperial status left the deepest imprint on his- tory: Egypt and Babylonia, Assyria and Hatti (the land of the Hittites); and each one had its “national god.” In the Name of God FIGURE 53