posted on Oct, 4 2009 @ 07:01 PM
The Anunnaki (also transcribed as: Anunnaku, Ananaki and other variations) are a group of Sumerian, Akkadian and Babylonian deities. The name is
variously written "da-nuna", "da-nuna-ke4-ne", or "da-nun-na", meaning something to the effect of 'those of royal blood'[1] or 'princely
offspring'.[2]
Anunnaki was a collective term for deities in general, especially those who were not otherwise named. Dr. Jeremy Black and Dr. Anthony Green write
that the word eventually suggested the deities of earth and the underworld after the term Igigi was used more to refer to the heavenly deities.[2]
The Anunnaki appear in the Babylonian creation myth, Enuma Elish. In the late version magnifying Marduk, after the creation of mankind, Marduk divides
the Anunnaki and assigns them to their proper stations, three hundred in heaven, three hundred on the earth. In gratitude, the Anunnaki, the "Great
Gods", built Esagila, the splendid: "They raised high the head of Esagila equaling Apsu. Having built a stage-tower as high as Apsu, they set up in
it an abode for Marduk, Enlil, Ea." Then they built their own shrines.
According to later Babylonian myth, the Anunnaki were the children of Anu and Ki, brother and sister gods, themselves the children of Anshar and
Kishar (Skypivot and Earthpivot, the Celestial poles), who in turn were the children of Lahamu and Lahmu ("the muddy ones"), names given to the
gatekeepers of the Abzu temple at Eridu, the site at which the creation was thought to have occurred. Finally, Lahamu and Lahmu were the children of
Tiamat and Abzu.