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203 Nippur, Uruk, and Sippar in what used to be Sumer. He also sent specialized teams to sort out and loot such tablets from the capitals that the Assyrians overran. The tablets ended up ina famed library where teams of scribes studied, translated, and copied chosen texts from the previous millennia. (A visi- tor to the Museum of the Ancient Near East in Istanbul can see a display of such tablets, neatly arranged on the original shelves, with each shelf headed by a “catalog tablet” that lists all the texts on that shelf.) While the subjects in the accumulated tablets covered a wide range, what was found indicates that particular atten- tion was given to celestial information. Among the purely astronomical texts there were tablets that belonged to a se- ries titled “The day of Bel”—the Day of the Lord! In addi- tion, epic tales and histories pertaining to the gods’ comings and goings were deemed important, especially if they shed light on Nibiru’s passages. Enuma elish—the Epic of Cre- ation that told how an invading planet joined the solar sys- tem to become Nibiru—was copied, translated, and recopied; so were writings dealing with the Great Flood, such as the Atra-Hasis Epic and the Epic of Gilgamesh. While they all seem to legitimately be part of accumulating knowledge in a royal library, it so happens that they all dealt with instances of Nibiru’s appearances in the past—and thus with its next nearing. Among the purely astronomical texts translated and, un- doubtedly, carefully studied, were guidelines for observing Nibiru’s arrival and for recognizing it on its appearance. A Babylonian text that retained the original Sumerian termi- nology stated: Planet of the god Marduk: Upon its appearance SHUL.PA.E; Rising thirty degrees, SAG.ME.NIG; When it stands in the middle of the sky: NIBIRU. While the first-named planet (SHUL.PA.E) is deemed to be Jupiter (but could be Saturn), the next one’s name (SAG.ME.NIG) could just be a variant for Jupiter, but is Darkness at Noon