Nygdan, I have read only two of Sitchin's books,
12th Planet and (at the request of a friend)
Genesis Revisited.
12th Planet was brilliantly debunked by Rob Hafernik (
www.geocities.com...).
A blurb about Sitchin says that:
"Zecharia Sitchin was born in Russia and raised in Palestine, where he acquired a profound knowledge of modern and ancient Hebrew, other Semitic
and European languages, the Old Testament, and the history and archeology of the Near East. He is one of the few scholars who is able to read and
understand Sumerian. Sitchin attended and graduated from the University of London, majoring in economic history. A leading journalist and editor in
Israel for many years, he now lives and writes in New York. His books have been widely translated, converted to Braille for the blind, and featured on
radio and television."
Sitchin is not a scholar; he never studied Sumerian in a university. His undergraduate degree is in economic history and he has, as near as I
can tell,
no academic credentials whatsoever. His knowledge appears to be all self-taught; while this is not automatically a bad thing, it
certainly doesn't make him a "scholar".
Nor is he one of the "few who is able to read and understand Sumerian"; there are many real scholars out there who teach in Universities, prepare
submissions for scholarly journals, develop detailed Sumerian and Akkadian dictionaries and grammars, etc. Most if not all of them consider Sitchin
to be a fraud. These include people like Ortiz de Montellano, Jagersma and de Maaijer, Heise, etc.
Another self-description of Sitchin, copied by van de Bogart (
www.earthportals.com...), says:
"These astounding statements are made possible by the Sumerian cuneiform deciphering skills of Zecharia Sitchin, a linguist in command of
many ancient languages who has set the scientific world on its ear with his astounding interpretations of ancient writings."
Sitchin is
not a linguist but a hobbyist, and the only scientific people who are "on their ear" are those who have fallen over laughing at
him.
I think the best desctiption of Sitchin, with which I concur heartily, comes from Hafernik:
"Clearly, Sitchin is a smart man. He weaves a complicated tale from the bits and pieces of evidence that survive from ancient Sumeria to the
present day. Just as clearly, Sitchin is capable of academic transgressions (fracturing quotes, ignoring dissenting facts), theft of intellectual
property (those tables he copied) and flights of intellectual fancy (the whole book, really). Worst of all, he is almost utterly innocent of astronomy
and other assorted fields of modern science."
"He nevertheless paints a picture that is very attractive. One wants to believe it, for it explains so many things. Intellectual honesty, however,
prevents anyone with common sense, access to archeological and astronomical data and the ability to read from taking his book seriously. In the end,
he's just another nut making a living selling books that treat folks to a tale they want to believe in." 
