Review of “The Cosmic Code”

I read this book on a dare some time ago.

This is the sixth book in the late Zechariah Sitchin’s (1920-2010) Earth Chronicles series detailing his ideas on how humans and human culture are the byproducts of ancient extra-terrestrial meddling. He sees evidence of this in Sumerian mythology, in particular, positing that Sumerian gods were, in fact, aliens from other worlds.

I will go out on a limb and say that cosmologists don’t see much in his cosmology, nor do sumerologists think highly of his interpretation of Mesopotamian mythology and/or history.

But that isn’t to say his works are without an audience. Even the History Channel has disseminated programs that support the ideas we’re all here because of some clever ancient aliens. Despite little evidence, narrators always ask, “Could it be…?”

A thumbnail sketch of Zechariah Sitchin’s ideas:

Aliens from a planet called Nibiru came to earth in the distant past to mine gold. (Hey. It could happen). The name of their planet, which takes 3600 years to orbit the sun, is a word based on the Sumerian for the city of Nippur. Their reason for going to all that trouble must be explained in another book. Their “splashdown” in the Persian Gulf is recorded in the Sumerian myth Sitchin refers to as “Ea and the Earth,” which may or may not be the myth more commonly known as “Enki and the World Order.”

Sitchin also refers to a myth he calls “The Erra Epos,” which he claims describes a nuclear holocaust. Because the winds blew the right way, it destroyed the older cities and allowed newer ones, like Babylon, to flourish. I could not find anything with the title “Erra Epos,” either in print or online, but there is a story in From Distant Days by Benjamin Foster titled “How Erra Wrecked the World” (pp. 132-163). While it talks about destructive winds (Tablet 4, lines roughly 38-40), it is rather a leap to assume they must have come from a nuclear blast.

I offer a single sample of Sitchin’s writing:

Indeed, as we contemplate this limitation to twenty-two [letters in the Mosaic-Semitic alphabet]—no more, no less—we cannot help recalling the constrictions applied to the sacred number twelve [Huh? 22 equals 12? Granted, math was not my strongest subject, but I don’t think that’s the case. Maybe I was out sick that day.—Ed. Note ] (requiring the addition or dropping of deities in order to keep the “Olympic Circle” to precisely twelve). Did such a hidden principle—divinely inspired—apply to the restriction of the original alphabet to twenty-two letters?

The number ought to be familiar in this day and age. It is the number of human chromosomes when The Adam was created before the second genetic manipulation had added the sex chromosomes “Y” and “X”!

Did the Almighty who had revealed to Moses the secret of the alphabet then, use the genetic code as the secret code of the alphabet?

The answer seems to be Yes.

(pp. 148- 149)

I found most of the writing to be this tedious and overblown, not to mention, well, nonsensical. It is the only book of this author’s that I have read. I will not be reading another. It is sad because the man was obviously quite bright but inextricably caught up in a personal mythology that facts can’t reverse.

I cannot recommend it unless one wants to read it out of curiosity.

Title: The Cosmic Code Book VI of the Earth Chronicles
Author: Zechariah Sitchin (1920-2010)