◆ PARALLAX

I want to say one thing in Sitchin's favor: he got people reading about Sumer. I mean that genuinely. Before his books, how many people outside universities knew the cuneiform tablets existed? How many had any sense that Mesopotamian civilization was as sophisticated and strange as it was?

His translations may not hold up. But he opened a door. People read his books, got hooked, and some went looking for the real sources. That's not nothing. It doesn't justify misrepresenting the texts -- but the dismissal sometimes forgets that his success made Sumerology more visible, not less.

Here's what actually survives the translation: a civilization that spent centuries mapping the sky with remarkable accuracy, not because aliens told them how, but because they were brilliant observers. The Sumerian astronomers tracked Venus through its cycle, understood planetary motion, built sophisticated mathematical models. They did this without Nibiru, without the Anunnaki as engineers. Just human ingenuity and patience.

The real cosmology is stranger than Sitchin's version in some ways. The Enuma Elish describes creation through conflict, the establishment of order from chaos -- theology and literature at once. Sitchin reduces it to "they had visitors." What survives translation is something much more interesting: a civilization that looked up at the same stars we do and built an entire intellectual framework to understand them. Without outside help. That's the real achievement.