Iraqi heritage holds many old stories and the Anunnaki stand out as the most puzzling beings in ancient Mesopotamian tales. The Sumerians, Akkadians, Assyrians besides Babylonians all wrote about them calling them the offspring of Anu, lord of the sky and Ki, lady of the earth. In Sumerian poems they
formed the highest circle of gods and counted seven leaders - Enlil, Enki, Inanna and four others. Some stories say they fixed the days of a person's life and later sat as judges in the land of the dead.
No list gives one clear count. A few tablets name seven chief gods - others list twelve. In the city of Eridu, scribes wrote that up to fifty Anunnaki lived there. Each town paired itself with one god and the people built a temple so the god had a house on earth.
Later Akkadian or Babylonian scribes drew the Anunnaki as rulers of the grave and the dark. They met in formal gatherings that copied the councils of human kings. The sky itself was split among them - Anu took the middle heavens, Enlil the north, Enki the south.
People of Mesopotamia pictured their gods as towering beings wrapped in “melam,” a bright terror that struck all who neared. Temples kept carved figures of the gods - folk saw the stone not as art but as the god in person. Priests fed, washed and dressed the statues and on feast days they carried them in boats or carts so the gods could visit other towns.
The Anunnaki still fire the minds of modern authors. Turkish writer Shafak Gokturk claims in his book that they arrived from a wandering planet called Nibiru and handed science to early humans. Before him, Zachariah Sitchin next to Erich von Däniken said the gods were space travelers and their books fed fringe tales. No proof supports such claims - yet the stories stay fixed to Iraqi soil, where myth, record and fancy mix.
