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192 gods" who belonged to the dynasty of Thoth. We, however, find the figure highly significant, for it differs but by 50 years from the 3.600-year orbit of Nibiru. the home planet of the Anunnaki. It was no accident, we have maintained, that mankind's ad- vancement from the Stone Age to the high civilization of Sumer oc- curred in 3,600-year intervals—circa 11,000, 7400, and 3800 B.c. It was as though "a mysterious hand" had each time "picked Man out of his decline and raised him to an even higher level of culture, knowledge and_ civilization." we wrote in The 12th Planet: each instance, we hold, coincided with the recurrence of the time when the Anunnaki could come and go between Earth and Nibiru. These advances spread from the Mesopotamian nucleus through- out the ancient world; and the Egyptian "Age of the demigods" (offspring of the cohabitation of gods and humans)—from circa 7100 B.c. to 3450 B.C. per Manetho—unquestionably coincides with the Neolithic period in Egypt. We can assume that at each of these intervals the fate of man- kind and the gods' relations with it were discussed by the Great An- unnaki, the "seven who decree." We know for sure that such a de- liberation had taken place prior to the sudden and otherwise inexplicable blooming of the Sumerian civilization, for the Sume- rians have left us records of such discussions! When the reconstruction of Sumer began, first to have been re- built on its soil were the Olden Cities but no longer as exclusive Cities of the Gods; for mankind was now allowed into these urban centers to tend the surrounding fields, orchards, and cattlefolds in behalf of the gods, and to be in the service of the gods in all con- ceivable manners: not only as cooks and bakers, artisans and cloth- iers, but also as priests, musicians, entertainers, and temple prosti- tutes. First to be reestablished was Eridu. Having been Enki's first set- tlement on Earth, it was given to him anew in perpetuity. His initial shrine there (Fig. 62)—a marvel of architecture in those early days—was in time raised and expanded to a magnificent temple- abode, the E.EN.GUR.RA ("House of the Lord Whose Return Is Triumphant"), adorned with gold, silver, and precious metals from the Lower World and protected by the "Bull of Heaven." For Enlil and Ninlil Nippur was reestablished; there they raised a new Ekur ("Mountain House"—Fig. 63), this time equipped not as Mission Control Center but with awesome weapons: "the Lifted Eye which scans the land"; and "the Lifted Beam," which pene- THE WARS OF GODS AND MEN