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In the annals of Man on Earth, the twenty-first century B.C.E. saw in the ancient Near East one of civilization’s most glori- ous chapters, known as the Ur ILI period. It was at the same time the most difficult and crushing one, for it witnessed the end of Sumer in a deathly nuclear cloud. And after that, nothing was the same. Those momentous events, as we shall see, were also the root of the messianic manifestations that centered on Jerusalem when B.c.E. turned to A.D. some twenty-one centuries later. The historic events of that memorable century—as all events in history—had their roots in what had taken place before. Of that, the year 2160 B.c.E. is a date worth remembering. The annals of Sumer & Akkad from that time record a major policy shift by the Enlilite gods. In Egypt, the date marked the begin- ning of changes of political-religious significance, and what occurred in both zones coincided with a new phase in Marduk’s campaign to attain supremacy. Indeed, it was Marduk’s chess- like strategy maneuvers and geographic movements from one place to another that controlled the agenda of the era’s “divine chess game.” His moves and movements began with a depar- ture from Egypt, to become (in Egyptian eyes) Amon (also written Amun or Amen), “The Unseen.” The date of 2160 B.c.E. is considered by Egyptologists to mark the beginning of what is designated the First Interme- diate Period—a chaotic interval between the end of the Old Kingdom and the dynastic start of the Middle Kingdom. During the thousand years of the Old Kingdom, when the religious-political capital was Memphis in Middle Egypt, the EGYPTIAN PROPHECIES, HUMAN DESTINIES