Mars

GOING TO MARS

WAS THE “FACE” DEPICTED 4,500 YEARS AGO?

--Second of two articles—

The successful landing by NASA of two robotic rovers on Mars earlier this year was an occasion for joy and expectation – joy because so many of the preceding attempts (including by the Japanese and the British) have failed, and expectation of obtaining confirmation that Mars was once a watery planet.

This confirmation was announced by NASA on March 2, 2004. NASA's spokesman even went as far as stating that "where there was water there could be life." They speak of course, about bacteria.

Commenting on predictions this would happen, I wrote in a Letter To The Editor of The New York Times (on January 18, 2004) that even if NASA succeeds in proving the existence of water in the past, “it would only affirm what most people by now believe anyway.” NASA’s own photographs from the 1970’s and thereafter have already shown such evidence.

“To conclude that bacteria might have existed on Mars” (a possibility that would be indicated by the existence of water), I further wrote in my Letter, “will hardly excite the public; what would be exciting and highly significant for mankind’s past and future would be to find evidence of intelligent life – beings like us – on Mars. The ancient Sumerians asserted so in their texts inscribed on clay tablets. Mariner photographs from the 1970’s show possible remains of artificial structures (to leave aside the famed Face). To send rovers to find bacterial evidence rather than verify evidence for intelligent beings on Mars, e.g. in the Cydonia region, is a red-herring cover-up.”

Intriguing Remains in Cydonia

The Letter, not unexpectedly, was not published… But the question remains; Why had NASA persistently avoided on-site examination of the Cydonia area?

In Genesis Revisited (1990) I reproduced a series of NASA’s own photographs, including photo 035-A-72 (Plate “E” in the book) that captured a panoramic view of Cydonia (see below). There, clearly, the camera captured a rock carved to look like a human face, of a male wearing a helmet (plate “F” in the book) and the remains of walled structures, with two walls forming a right angle (plate “G” in the book).

Other NASA photographs reproduced in the book showed a lake shore, a water channel outfitted with piers, the remains of a pentagonal structure, of roads leading to elongated buildings.

Ignoring The Evidence

While in my writings and lectures I emphasized the structural evidence, it was the Face that captured the interest and imagination of various individuals and groups. NASA, on its part, ignored all the evidences in its subsequent missions, focusing instead on geology. It was only as a result of a public outcry that NASA finally directed an orbiter, Mars Pathfinder, to take a look at the Face – but only after a dust storm that covered most of the planet, and after fiddling electronically with the photographs to end up with a fuzzy picture. (Some of the serious work to uncover the distortions was done by the Meta Research Institute under the leadership of the astronomer Thomas Van Flandern). Yet, now distorted or not, the fact remains that the unusual rock is still there, and that it clearly showed a human-like face in the 1970’s photographs.

My conclusions were and still are that intelligent beings akin to us had been to Mars thousands of years ago. The Sumerians knew who they were: The same Anunnaki from Nibiru who had come to Earth and maintained a way-station on Mars.

The Cylinder Seal Depiction

The Sumerian information is provided in texts on clay tablets; and in pictorial support of my conclusions I included in my books the rendering of a depiction on a 4,500 years-old cylinder seal, now kept in the Hermitage Museum in St. Petersburg in Russia (Fig. 91 in Genesis Revisited):

It shows an astronaut (“Eagleman”) on Earth (indicated by the seven dots, Earth being the seventh planet counted from outside into the solar system, accompanied by the Moon’s crescent) greeted by an astronaut (“Fishman”, equipped for splashdowns) on Mars (the sixth planet when our solar system is entered from afar), and a spacecraft with extended panels and antennas in the heavens between them.

The “Face – 4,500 Years Ago?

It was a discerning fan, Richard L.C. of Manheim, PA, who drew my attention to the similarity between the Face in the NASA photographs (yes, there were several ones) as depicted in Genesis Revisited and the helmeted face of the astronaut on Mars as depicted on the Sumerian seal; the latter has been enlarged for better comparison:

Though one is shown full face and the other (in the seal) in profile, the similarity is nothing short of uncanny!

Could the Sumerians have known of the Face on Mars 4,500 years ago?

The Yes answer is detailed in my latest book, The Lost Book of Enki.

It is time to start looking for the Real evidence Mars.

ZECHARIA SITCHIN