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291 and his number is six hundred and threescore and six. Many have attempted to decipher the mysterious number 666, assuming it is a coded message pertaining to the End of Days. Because the book was written when the persecution of Christians in Rome began, the accepted interpretation is that the number was a code for the oppressor emperor Nero, the numerical value of whose name in Hebrew (NeRON QeSaR) added up to 666. The fact that he had been to the space plat- form in Baalbek, possibly to inaugurate the temple to Jupiter there, in the year A.D. 60 may—or may not—have a bearing on the 666 puzzle. That there could be more to 666 than a connection to Nero is suggested by the intriguing fact that 600, 60, and 6 are all basic numbers of the Sumerian sexagesimal system, so that the “code” might hark back to some earlier texts; there were 600 Anunnaki, Anu’s numerical rank was 60, Ishkur/Adad’s rank was 6. Then, if the three numbers are to be multiplied rather than added, we get 666 = 600 x 60 x 6 = 216,000, which is the familiar 2160 (a zodiacal age) times 100—a re- sult that can be speculated on endlessly. Then there is the puzzle that when seven angels reveal the sequence of future events, they do not link them to Rome; they link them to “Babylon.” The conventional explanation has been that, like the 666 was a code for the Roman ruler, so was “Babylon” a code word for Rome. But Babylon was already gone for centuries when Revelation was written, and Revela- tion, speaking of Babylon, unmistakably links the prophecies to “the great river Euphrates” (9: 14), even describing how “the sixth angel poured out his vial upon the great river Euphrates,” drying it up so that the Kings of the East would be joined in the fighting (16: 12). The talk is of a city/land on the Euphra- tes, not on the Tiber River. Since Revelation’s prophecies are of the future, one must conclude that “Babylon” is not a code—Babylon means Babylon, a future Babylon that will get involved in the war of “Armageddon” (which verse 16: 16 correctly explains as Armageddon and Prophecies of the Return