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204 considered by some to be Mercury (*). A similar text from Nippur, rendering the Sumerian planetary names as UMUN.PA.UD.DU and SAG.ME.GAR, suggested that the arrival of Nibiru will be “announced” by the planet Saturn, and after rising 30 degrees will be near Jupiter. Other texts (e.g., a tablet known as K.3124) state that after passing SHUL.PA.E and SAG.ME.GAR—which I believe mean Sat- urn and Jupiter—‘Planet Marduk” will “enter the Sun” (i.e., reach Perigee, closest to the Sun) and “become Nibiru.” Other texts provide clearer clues in regard to Nibiru’s path, as well as to the time frame for its appearance: From the station of Jupiter, the planet passes toward the west. * The extensive astronomical data that have been found attracted, already in the 19th and early in the 20th centuries, the time, attention, and pa- tience of scholarly giants who brilliantly combined “Assyriology” with knowledge of astronomy. The very first book of The Earth Chronicles, The 12th Planet, covered and used the work and achievements of the likes of Franz Kugler, Ernst Weidner, Erich Ebeling, Herman Hilprecht, Alfred Jeremias, Morris Jastrow, Albert Schott, and Th. G. Pinches, among oth- ers. Their task was complicated by the fact that the same kakkabu (any celestial body, including planets, fixed stars, and constellations) could have more than one name. J also pointed out right then and there the most basic failing of their work: they all assumed that the Sumerians and other ancient peoples had no way of knowing (“with the naked eye”) about plan- ets beyond Saturn. The result was that whenever a planet was named other than the accepted names for the “seven known kakkabani”—Sun, Moon, Mercury, Venus, Mars, Jupiter, Saturn—it was assumed to just be yet an- other name for one of those “known seven.” The principal victim of that erroneous stance was Nibiru; whenever it or its Babylonian equivalent “planet Marduk” was listed, it was assumed to be another name for Jupiter or Mars or (in some extreme views) even for Mercury. Incredibly, modern establishment astronomers continue to base their work on that “only seven” assumption—in spite of the vast contrary evidence that shows that the Sumerians knew the true shape and composition of our solar system, starting with the naming of the outer planets in Enuma elish, or the 4,500- year-old depiction of the complete twelve-member solar system, with the Sun in the center, on cylinder seal VA/243 in the Berlin Museum (Fig. 91), or the depiction of twelve planetary symbols on Assyrian and Babylonian monuments, etc. THE END OF DAYS