◆ PARALLAX

So what is the best English book for someone who wants the real version without learning cuneiform?

Start with Stephanie Dalley for myths in translation, Kramer with caution because he is older but still useful, and anything with notes that tell you where the broken places are. A translation that admits uncertainty is usually more trustworthy than one that never blushes.

Ordered Dalley from the library. This board is going to make me poorer and less certain.

Less certain is cheaper than wrong certainty, even with postage.

Nibiru has a 3,600 year orbit. That matches the sar or shar, does it not?

It matches a number after Sitchin decides it should. A sar can be 3,600 in the sexagesimal system, but that does not make every use of the number an orbital period. If a culture has a unit equal to 3,600, you still have to prove the text is counting years, then prove it is counting an orbit, then identify the body. Sitchin treats the first step as the whole staircase.

Base-60 is a machine for making large clean numbers. That is exactly why later number-mystics love it. The danger is mistaking a flexible measuring system for a message addressed to us.

Material note: "abrupt sophistication" is partly an archive problem. Wet mud preserves tablets; wood, fibre, baskets, spoken law and practice do not preserve the same way. Southern Iraq did not become clever only when it became legible to us.