Reconstruction of the Past Solar System of Thirteen Planets

Zechariah Sitchin ³⁴ quotes extensively from ancient Sumerian texts about the presence in the solar system of a 12th planet (inclusive of the sun and the moon). Using this convention today on the officially recognised solar system, we can arrive at either ten, eleven, twelve, or thirteen planets, depending upon how we care to define Pluto, Chiron and the asteroid belt. What we currently have are:  

Sun, Mercury, Venus, Earth, Moon, Mars, Asteroid belt, Jupiter, Saturn, Chiron, Uranus, Neptune, Pluto. Of these, a good case can be made for excluding the minor planetoids Chiron and Pluto, together with the asteroids. This leaves us with just ten planets, as defined above. Sitchin would prefer to count the Pluto / Charon asteroid doublet as a planet, as do most modern day astronomers. 

Sitchin refers us to a Sumerian cylinder seal which depicts, in relative order of size and sequence, the following system that appears to have existed at an earlier time and which incorporates twelve "planets" (figure 6). 

Sun, Mercury, Venus, Earth, Moon, Mars, Unknown ( about size of Uranus / Neptune), Jupiter, Saturn, Indeterminate (about size of Mercury), Uranus, Neptune.  

Now this sequence is interesting in view of previous comments about the stone engraving in the valley of the Boyne River in Ireland (figure 5). This engraving shows a large planet between Mars and Jupiter being hammered out of orbit by a satellite of Saturn (probably the present planet Venus). In this zone now is only the asteroid belt. It was previously assumed, as a first approximation, that this planet between Mars and Jupiter had been Neptune, even though Neptune was also shown in its current position beyond Uranus in the rock engraving. We may now need to revise this preliminary assumption. 

Let us re-examine details from the pictograph (rock engraving) on the east orthostat of the entrance to the Knowth chamber (a so-called passage grave) that is found in the valley of the Boyne in Ireland. As previously stated, this engraving can be broken up into four discrete parts, of which we now only need to review one. 

The top section for its full width shows the sun at the left, next the Earth / Moon doublet, then Mars with its two satellites, a traditionally horned Venus (linked to ringed Saturn), a planet (possibly either Neptune or Tiamat) being hammered out of orbit by Venus with its elongated orbit around Saturn, then Jupiter, next a seemingly intrusive or else an orbitally disturbed Saturn with another planet (Mercury) linked to and below it (hammering at a land below. Following Saturn is a squarish and possibly pyramid shaped structure with a tail or train of debris, that includes what may be a minor planetoid (Titan?) and three other planetoid bodies. After these come the planets Uranus and Neptune. 

If taken literally, this engraving shows the twelve normally discernible "planets" shown in the Sumerian depiction of the solar system, plus another clearly intrusive entity, which is depicted as a possible four sided pyramid with three satellites in its train. There are a number of indications that this intrusive entity is really the planet Nibiru of the Sumerians. 

We seem to have here one of those perennial and very touchy conflicts between adherents to the solar number twelve, and adherents to the lunar number thirteen. A classic example is to be found in the number of tribes associated with the nation of ancient Israel. Everybody knows that there were twelve tribes of Israel, but everybody is wrong, and there were really thirteen tribes of Israel, as befitted a nation that reckoned its time by the moon.. Joseph was one of the twelve natural sons of Israel, but there was never a single tribe called Joseph, but rather there were two tribes of Joseph, because both sons of Joseph (Ephraim and Manesseh) were formally adopted by Israel as his own, and from each of these sons of Joseph sprang a quite separate and very distinct tribe. 

Till recently, the British legal system retained the period of "a year and a day". This is a remnant from the time when a year was reckoned as thirteen months of twenty eight days. The isolated extra day was necessary to make the thirteen lunar month year of 364 days equal the observed solar year of 365 days. While on the topic of the British legal system and wilful blindness by scholars , what are we to make of a legal system that insists that one swears a binding oath on the same sacred book which explicitly forbids one to make any such oaths? 

The ancient Greeks recognised twelve Olympians (gods) plus an unknown or un-nameable thirteenth god who was the God above the gods, and who periodically made an inspection to check on their actions Psalm 82 takes on a new light in this context.

"God takes his stand in the court of heaven,
to deliver judgement among the gods themselves.".

The round table of King Arthur had twelve seats for Arthur and his regular knights, plus a thirteenth seat (siege Perilous) held in reserve and in which only a perfect knight might sit. 

Jesus the Christ plus his twelve disciples numbered thirteen in all. 

This additional evidence suggests that maybe we need to look for both a previously known long orbital period planet with an atypical orbit (known as Nibiru or possibly Marduk), plus a large planet. lost from between the orbits of Mars and Jupiter, a planet which may once have been known as Tiamat (or possibly Marduk / Maldek), and which was once the source of discord between the planetary gods. The orbital data cited by Sitchin for Nibiru [planet of crossing and Lord of Hosts] is mutually contradictory, and it is suggestive of an indiscriminate compilation of data for the orbits of two separate "planets of crossing", joined together as though they were one, because everybody knew that there had to be only twelve planetary gods and not thirteen of them. This is not an unreasonable hypothesis since supposedly learned scholars, to this very day, insist that there were only twelve tribes of Israel, even though the Bible explicitly names all thirteen of them. Even the Bible itself has been edited at some time in the past to speak only of "the twelve tribes", while yet naming all thirteen tribes. 

The contents of the asteroid belt are not nearly sufficient to comprise the debris from a destroyed planet the size of Neptune Since such debris is unlikely to have simply disappeared from the solar system, we might perhaps ask if this missing planet could be part of the remaining debris that now comprises Hale Bopp. If so, the head of Hale Bopp might well be much more than say four times larger than Earth (ie the size of Uranus or Neptune or 50, 000 km diameter), rather than a mere 20 to 200 kilometres in diameter as currently guessed at by astronomers. This would place an entirely different complexion on the magnitude of the present situation, but the ancient Irish data makes this possibility seem unlikely, since Nibiru had two large planets between it and planet Tiamat. 

Alternatively, the debris from this missing planet may have become absorbed by Jupiter at some stage in the past and help to explain why Jupiter is by far the largest planet in the solar system., but again the ancient Irish report makes this improbable. 

The most likely possibility is that the missing planet (about the size of Neptune) is now on an extended orbit with its perigee (nearest approach to the sun) in the asteroid belt (or even closer to the Sun). Its apogee (turning point at most distant part of its orbit) would have to be somewhere in the direction of the constellations of Gemini (eg Orion), given the direction from which it was hit. 

The Irish rock engraving (figure 5) also shows a reasonable sized planet between Saturn and Uranus, a planet that is too large to be the asteroid Chiron which currently orbits in this vicinity, and has a diameter of possibly 200 kilometres. The planet between Saturn and Uranus, is thought by Sitchin to have become Pluto, but Pluto is only about 2234 km in diameter compared with 4880 km for Mercury (which is about the same size as the missing planet.) . The missing planet from this zone between Saturn and Uranus is most likely to have become Titan, the current 5150 km diameter satellite of the planet Saturn. 

The planetoid Pluto, appears to be the missing middle satellite of the planet Neptune, since Neptune seems to have a missing middle satellite and its Triton satellite turns retrograde rather than in the direction of practically everything else in the solar system. This is indicative of a past disturbance to Neptune especially since Neptune is traditionally depicted with a three tyned pitchfork, but it now only has two satellites. A dislodged satellite from planet Uranus, due to the disruption of an early approach by planet Nibiru, may well have carried off Neptune's middle satellite to form the Pluto / Charon asteroid doublet, a doublet which currently lies just inside Neptune's orbit. This event may well have provided the basis for the myth of the god Hades carrying off the goddess Persephone to the depths of the netherworld. 

Interestingly enough, the central section of the Irish rock engraving shows a small body coming adrift from the cosmic intruder's path, while it is still in the outer regions of the solar system. This dislodged satellite (??) then rises upwards and is shown close to a body depicted as being about the size of the twin planets, Uranus and Neptune, and with a short projection from it (satellite orbit). Accompanying the main intruder on its incoming orbit, and just below it, appears to be a smaller comet. This comet might well have become the comet now known as Swift Tuttle, since Swift Tuttle continues to orbit in the general location of this early appearance of planet Nibiru, piercing the plane of the ecliptic between planets Saturn and Uranus, and again at the orbit of the Earth.