Anunnaki
In the earliest Sumerian writings about them, which come from the Post-Akkadian period, the Anunnaki are deities in the pantheon, descendants of An (the god of the heavens) and Ki (the goddess of earth), and their primary function was to decree the fates of humanity.
[2] Samuel Noah Kramer identifies Ki with the Sumerian mother goddess Ninhursag, stating that they were originally the same figure.
[23] The gods had boats, full-sized barges which were normally stored inside their temples[24] and were used to transport their cult statues along waterways during various religious festivals.
[16] The earliest known usages of the term Anunnaki come from inscriptions written during the reign of Gudea (c. 2144–2124 BC) and the Third Dynasty of Ur.
[9][11] In the earliest texts, the term is applied to the most powerful and important deities in the Sumerian pantheon: the descendants of the sky-god An.
In an abbreviated Akkadian version of Inanna's Descent written in the early second millennium, Ereshkigal, the queen of the Underworld, comments that she "drink[s] water with the Anunnaki".
[43] Later in the same poem, Ereshkigal orders her servant Namtar to fetch the Anunnaki from Egalgina,[44] to "decorate the threshold steps with coral",[44] and to "seat them on golden thrones".
[9][11] In the late Akkadian Atra-Hasis epic, the Igigi are the sixth generation of the gods who are forced to perform labor for the Anunnaki.
[2] During this period, the underworld deities Damkina, Nergal, and Madānu are listed as the most powerful among the Anunnaki,[2] alongside Marduk, the national god of ancient Babylon.
[2] In the standard Akkadian Epic of Gilgamesh (c. 1200 BC) Utnapishtim, the immortal survivor of the Great Flood, describes the Anunnaki as seven judges of the Underworld, who set the land aflame as the storm approaches.
[2] In gratitude, the Anunnaki, the "Great Gods", build Esagila, a "splendid" temple dedicated to Marduk, Ea, and Ellil.
[51] In the eighth-century BC Poem of Erra, the Anunnaki are described as the brothers of the god Nergal[9] and are depicted as antagonistic towards humanity.
[9] A badly damaged text from the Neo-Assyrian Period (911 – 612 BC) describes Marduk leading his army of Anunnaki into the sacred city of Nippur and causing a disturbance.
[52] The disturbance causes a flood,[52] which forces the resident gods of Nippur to take shelter in the Eshumesha temple to Ninurta.
[57] In one Hittite ritual, the names of the old gods are listed as: "Aduntarri the diviner, Zulki the dream interpretess, Irpitia Lord of the Earth, Narā, Namšarā, Minki, Amunki, and Āpi.
[63] The Hittite account of the old gods' banishment to the Underworld is closely related with the Greek poet Hesiod's narrative of the overthrow of the Titans by the Olympians in his Theogony.
[64] The Greek sky-god Ouranos (whose name means "Heaven") is the father of the Titans[65] and is derived from the Hittite version of Anu.
in 1968), pseudoarchaeologist Erich von Däniken claimed that extraterrestrial "ancient astronauts" had visited a prehistoric Earth.
Däniken explains the origins of religions as reactions to contact with an alien race, and offers interpretations of Sumerian texts and the Old Testament as evidence.
[70][74] Sitchin's writings have been universally rejected by mainstream historians, who have labelled his books as pseudoarchaeology,[75] asserting that Sitchin seems to deliberately misrepresent Sumerian texts by quoting them out of context, truncating quotations, and mistranslating Sumerian words to give them radically different meanings from their accepted definitions.
