The Stairway to Heaven (Earth Chronicles)

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Zecharia Sitchin

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Pages: 464 (Mass Market Paperback)

ISBN: 0061379204

Pub: Avon Books

Pub date: 2007-04

Amazon.co.uk Sales Rank: 58040

Reader Reviews:

Man's search for the immortality of the gods (19/19 people found this helpful)

In this second entry in the Earth Chronicles series, Sitchin focuses on man's eternal and perpetual search for immortality and ties his findings in with his theories of ancient Sumer and the Annunaki who originally colonized earth. In particular, he discusses Alexander the Great's desperate search for a way to escape an early death as well as Gilgamesh's epic search for everlasting life; more importantly, he provides a map of their quests, identifying their most important destinations with the ancient Sumerian sites he wrote about in The 12th Planet. Basically, the ultimate destinations of the men of legend corresponded to the areas from which the Annunaki journeyed back and forth between earth, their orbiting spacecraft, and their home planet. Having described an intricate grid system accounting for the specific locations of the ancient cities both before and after the Deluge, he makes some fascinating arguments. I was most struck by his conclusion that the new, post-Deluge space port was actually Jerusalem. As always, Sitchin incorporates Biblical texts into his story, revealing compelling connections between the books of the Bible and the ancient records of the earliest Middle Eastern cultures.

I found myself plodding to some degree through the first half of the book, even laying the book aside for a few days, but the latter sections here are quite interesting because they focus on ancient Egypt. Sitchin's discussions of the ancient Egyptian monuments, particularly the Great Pyramids at Giza are enlightening and fascinating. He forcibly argues that the pyramids were never meant to serve as burial places of ancient Egyptians and that the Great Pyramids and the majestic Sphinx were built long before Khufu, Chefren, and other pharaohs of the 4th Dynasty came to power. Egyptologists dispute this conclusion, of course, but the evidence as presented by Sitchin and other scholars is quite strong on this point. Sitchin lays waste to the only real evidence we have that Khufu built the Great Pyramid. The masons' markings found in the chambers above the King's Chamber in the Great Pyramid purportedly show that Khufu was the builder, but Sitchin puts forth a very convincing argument that those marks were forged (and rather unconvincingly in fact) by an unscrupulous pseudo-archaeologist.

I try to read these books with an open mind. I can't say if Sitchin is correct or not in his theories, but I can say that he breathes life into an ancient world I would otherwise know very little about, and he tells a fascinating story in a very engaging manner.

A Challenge For Orthodox Science (9/10 people found this helpful)

In this book Sitchin continues on the theme set in his first book, and poses many interesting questions that orthodox science cannot explain and so glosses over or ignores. The central theme in this book is Man's search for 'The Fountain of Eternal Youth'. This crops up time and time again in mythology, yet where did Man get the idea that he could cheat death? Sitchin offers theories that really try to explain this. As for the lack of proof, as he makes clear in all his books, it IS there to be seen, but only if you are prepared to look - people trust too much in orthodox science to always be 100 percent right in archaeology. For those with an open mind Sitchin wil show you that they are just as human and as fallible as those who believed that the Earth was flat.

A Genre is Born (7/7 people found this helpful)

I have read the whole series of "The Earth Chronicles", which I think is marvelously written. It is neither fictional nor scientific, however, I would classify it as pseudo-scientific non-fiction. It is not really important whether Sitchin's writings are scientificly true, but it makes marvelous reading, nothing like I have ever read before. He masterfully creates an illusion of a scientific research, and in it he creates a new genre -- the Disneyland for science-oriented minds. For all that, even if one reads it with a sceptical smirk on one's face, there is always a thought frollicking somewhere in the backyard swimming pool of your mind, "What if some of this stuff is in fact true?" And that makes the whole series very attractive.

If you like Earth Chronicles, try the Book of Urantia (0/2 people found this helpful)

For those who are fascinated with Earth Chronicles of Zecharia Sitchin I would like to recommend the Book of Urantia as complementary reading. I think it treats the same subject from a very different point of view.

Garbage (3/10 people found this helpful)

Proves that if you keep an open mind people will throw all their garbage in it.

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