The war is over but our problems have only just begun. The Sarcodinay were humanity's benevolent masters, galactic guardians who saved us from apocalypse and claimed us as their long-lost children-and like any stern parent, they expected their children to behave. We didn't. A century of violence and conflict followed as humanity tried to overthrow its rulers, but when the Sarcodinay suddenly and without warning announce their surrender, the rebellion is left scrambling for a way to deal with an outcome no one could have predicted: victory. Brash, unorthodox, and brilliant, Lieutenant Mallory MacLain has always been tolerated because of her successes against the enemy, but now faces an uncertain future with a government that no longer has a place for rebels. When Mallory witnesses the assassination of an important Sarcodinay official, she finds herself chasing a murderer that no one seems to want her to stop, and uncovering a truth about the war that could jeopardize the lives of thousands of people...including her own.

Foreword by Peter Machinist Hermann Gunkel's groundbreaking Schöpfung und Chaos, originally published in German in 1895, is here translated in its entirety into English for the first time. Even though available only in German, this work by Gunkel has had a profound influence on modern biblical scholarship. Discovering a number of parallels between the biblical creation accounts and a Babylonian creation account, the Enuma Elish, Gunkel argues that ancient Babylonian traditions shaped the Hebrew people's perceptions both of God's creative activity at the beginning of time and of God's re-creative activity at the end of time. Including illuminating introductory pieces by eminent scholar Peter Machinist and by translator K. William Whitney, Gunkel's Creation and Chaos will appeal to serious students and scholars in the area of biblical studies.

Scholars often assume that the nature of Mesopotamian kingship was such that questioning royal authority was impossible. This volume challenges that general assumption, by presenting an analysis of the motivations,methods, and motifs behind a scholarly discourse about kingship that arose in the final stages of the last Mesopotamian empires. The focus of the volume is the proliferation of a literature that problematizes authority in the Neo-Assyrian period, when texts first begin to specifically explore various modalities for critique of royalty. This development is symptomatic of a larger discourse about the limits of power that emerges after the repatriation of Marduk's statue to Babylon during the reign of Nebuchadnezzar I in the 12th century BCE. From this point onwards, public attitudes toward Marduk provide a framework for the definition of proper royal behavior, and become a point of contention between Assyria and Babylonia. It is in this historical and political context that several important Akkadian compositions are placed. The texts are analyzed from a new perspective that sheds light on their original milieux and intended functions.

This collection of essays contains a state of the field discussion about the nature of revolt and resistance in the ancient world. While it does not cover the entire ancient world, it does focus in on the key revolts of the pre-Roman imperial world. Regardless of the exact sequence, it was an undeniable fact that the area we now call the Middle East witnessed a sequence of extensive empires in the second half of the last millennium BCE. At first, these spread from East to West (Assyria, Babylon, Persia). Then after the campaigns of Alexander, the direction of conquest was reversed. Despite the sense of inevitability, or of divinely ordained destiny, that one might get from the passages that speak of a sequence of world-empires, imperial rule was always contested. The essays in this volume consider some of the ways in which imperial rule was resisted and challenged, in the Assyrian, Persian, and Hellenistic (Seleucid and Ptolemaic) empires. Not every uprising considered in this volume would qualify as a revolution by this definition. Revolution indeed was on the far end of a spectrum of social responses to empire building, from resistance to unrest, to grain riots and peasant rebellions. The editors offer the volume as a means of furthering discussions on the nature and the drivers of resistance and revolution, the motivations for them as well as a summary of the events that have left their mark on our historical sources long after the dust had settled.

This is the first comprehensive study of Babylonian prayers dedicated to Marduk, the god of Babylon, since J. Hehn's essay Hymnen und Gebete an Marduk (1905). Marduk was the god of the city of Babylon and was the most important god in Babylonia from the time of Hammurabi (the 18th century BCE) onwards. In this book, Takayoshi Oshima presents an up-to-date catalog of all known Babylonian prayers dedicated to Marduk from different historical periods and offers critical editions of 31 ancient texts based on newly identified manuscripts and a collation of the previously published manuscripts. The author also discusses various aspects of Akkadian prayers to different deities and the ancient belief in the mechanism of punishment and redemption by Marduk.

There is ample evidence across our solar system of cataclysmic and catastrophic destruction events. The asteroid belt, for example, may be the remains of an exploded planet! The known planets are scarred from incredible impacts, and teeter in their orbits due to causes heretofore inadequately explained. Rejecting the naturalist and materialist assumptions of catastrophism forwarded by other researchers, Farrell asserts that it is time to take the ancient myths of a Cosmic War in the heavens seriously. Incorporating extraterrestrial artifacts, cutting-edge ideas in contemporary physics, and the texts of ancient myths into his argument, Farrell maintains that an ancient interplanetary war was fought in our own solar system with weapons of extraordinary power and sophistication. In doing so, he offers a solution to an enigma that has long mystified researchers, disclosing a cause of that ancient war, the means by which it was waged, and the real nature of the secret technology behind the ancient “Tablets of Destinies.” It is all here, folks! The history of the Exploded Planet hypothesis, and what mechanism can actually explode a planet. The role of plasma cosmology, plasma physics (even plasma paleophysics) and scalar physics. The ancient texts telling of such destructions: from Sumeria (Tiamat’s destruction by Marduk), Egypt (Edfu and the Mars connections), Greece (Saturn’s role in the War of the Titans) and the ancient Americas.

In Weapons of Words: Intertextual Competition in Babylonian Poetry Selena Wisnom offers an in-depth literary study of three poems central to Babylonian culture: Anzû, Enūma eliš, and Erra and Išum. Fundamentally interconnected, each poem strives to out-do its predecessors and competes to establish its protagonist, its ideals, and its poetics as superior to those that came before them. The first of its kind in Assyriology, Weapons of Words explores the rich nuances of these poems by unravelling complex networks of allusion. Through a sophisticated analysis of literary techniques, Selena Wisnom traces developments in the Akkadian poetic tradition and demonstrates that intertextual readings are essential for a deeper understanding of Mesopotamian literature.

Did ancient “visitors”—of extraterrestrial origin—come to Earth long, long ago and fashion man in their own image? Did they then lift the human race out of the ashes of a great global catastrophe around 10,500 BC? Were the science and secrets that they taught the ancients intended to be a guide for all humanity to the present era? Was this crucial information about our future and our true past hijacked by secretive cabals, some with bad intent and some with altruistic designs, who have held these secrets over the millennia? New York Times bestselling author Mike Bara says the answer to each of these questions is “yes.” He examines ancient documents, including the Bible, to delve into the true story of the beginnings of mankind. He establishes the reality of the major catastrophe that jolted the human race, and traces the history of secret societies from the priesthood of Amun in Egypt to the Templars in Jerusalem and the Scottish Rite Freemasons. He shows how the spiritual wisdom and scientific knowledge the ETs sought to bestow on all humanity were kept by these secret societies for their own benefit. The influence of these sects and their extraterrestrial ties are said to be the stuff of myth, but Bara will show readers that this influence is all too real, extending even into the political arena. He has a very interesting take on the Kennedy assassination! Bara also reveals the true origins of NASA and exposes the bizarre triad of secret societies in control of that agency since its inception. In the end, Bara shows how NASA is manipulating the space program to fulfill occult purposes—which may lead to our meeting the very ETs we have been inextricably linked with since the beginning.

The monograph considers the relationships of ethical systems in the ancient Near East through a study of warfare in Judah, Israel and Assyria in the eighth and seventh centuries BCE. It argues that a common cosmological and ideological outlook generated similarities in ethical thinking. In all three societies, the mythological traditions surrounding creation reflect a strong connection between war, kingship and the establishment of order. Human kings’ military activities are legitimated through their identification with this cosmic struggle against chaos, begun by the divine king at creation. Military violence is thereby cast not only as morally tolerable but as morally imperative. Deviations from this point of view reflect two phenomena: the preservation of variable social perspectives and the impact of historical changes on ethical thinking. The research begins the discussion of ancient Near Eastern ethics outside of Israel and Judah and fills a scholarly void by placing Israelite and Judahite ethics within this context, as well as contributing methodologically to future research in historical and comparative ethics.

This book is the sequel to ""Elohim: Ancient Science Fiction or Biblical God?"" It explores what may have been and offers a glimpse at those who could soon be returning to Earth in our very near future. At the core of the facts presented within these chapters, lies a conundrum. There once existed an author who claimed to be the creator of the human race, and he wrote down his memoirs over 5,000 years ago. His tale evolved into many ancient religions. The question is, was he actually an alien being who came to Earth from another planet and wrote a truthful autobiography, or was his book a science fiction novel written by a mere mortal? Either scenario reveals a compelling reality: an ancient, pre-historic society once thrived on our planet that either rivaled or exceeded our modern achievements in science and space technology.