It takes more guts to actually listen to and consider what the skeptics here are saying instead of just responding with more and unsupported nonsense over and over. It's the difference between someone who is genuinely curious versus someone who just wants to be right.
I responded to your post... Are you saying the idea people built structures to mirror what they saw in the sky is unsupported nonsense?
Oh my. sigh Berzerker, we went through all this a while back. I even posted a link to the "Stitchen is wrong" website that goes through all of the imagery on 243 and explains it in terms of Sumerian culture and language. Stitchin was and still is just wrong. Oh, btw, if the Sumerians had knowledge of a heliocentric solar system, why was their cosmology a flat earth, with a dome of air surrounded by water?
First, modern astronomers depict the Earth as flat for purposes of charting celestial objects and teaching newcomers positional astronomy. Second, people have been sailing the oceans and migrating across the planet for eons, they figured out it was curved long ago.
The Spanish royalty were not skeptical of Colombus because they thought the world was flat, but because they knew he was under estimating its diameter. But he had a map, allegedly the same one Piri Reis had.
As for Sitchiniswrong, I read his pdf long ago and explained his mistakes.
http://www.sitchiniswrong.com/VA243seal.pdf
Here's what I see thats wrong (and it would be a long list but I'll focus on his main arguments).
1) He insists the central star in VA 243 cant be the sun because thats not how they depicted it.
So I asked him how did they depict the Abzu in the Enuma Elish. He responded to my email with his own questions but wouldn't answer me. The Abzu was the primordial fresh water and it mixed with Tiamat's salt water to start forming planets (gods). Well, the sun did put out fresh water and a planet forming at the asteroid belt would have plenty of salt water.
I dont know why these two would mix to form Lahmu and Lahamu, but the text says these two were male and female warriors (Mars and Venus). I suppose the sun's water did mix with dust etc to become saltwater and this provided the breeding ground for planets.
From there Kishar and Anshar were born beyond the gods, thats Jupiter and Saturn. Then Saturn gave birth to Anu (Uranus) and Nudimmud (Neptune) came next. At this point the divine brothers banded together disrupting Tiamat, their ways were loathesome (sounds like the grand tack theory). Abzu was advised by his consort/companion Mummu (Mercury) to kill them. Tiamat objected, but war was coming.
Nudimmud (Ea, Marduk's father) poured sleep on Abzu robbing him of his creative power. Abzu and Tiamat would no longer give birth to gods, Ea would bring forth the next God from the outer reaches, the deepness and darkness of space.
Just poetic language describing an invading planet entering the solar system. Saturn sent his emissary Gaga (Pluto) to announce Marduk's supremacy. Pluto does lie on Saturn's equatorial plane at perihelion. Quite an amazing coincidence, and if we subtract Saturn's distance from the sun from Pluto's perihelion and aphelion, we get a 1:2 ratio.
The problem is he points to symbols for Utu or Shamash (the sun god) to show they aren't stars and therefore the sun was not a star. But Utu/Shamash is not the Abzu. I asked him what were the symbols for other gods in the Enuma Elish? We have images of Marduk and Tiamat as warrior and dragon in battle, but what about Abzu, Mummu, Lahmu, Lahamu, Kishar, Anshar, Anu, Nudimmud and Gaga?
We have plenty of images for the planetary gods, Nergal (Mars), Inanna/Ishtar (Venus), the Moon (Sin), etc, but these were not the names of the olden gods described in the Enuma Elish. Anu and Nudimmud (Ea) being the exceptions. But that was the Akkadian version, in the earlier Sumerian story other gods - Anu, Enili and Ea, or Anu, Enlil and his son Ninurta - played the main roles.
Now here's an interesting factoid, Venus was shown as an 8 pointed star, Mars was a 6 pointed star, and the Earth was shown as 7 dots. Thats the order of the planets from the outside.
The Earth as 7 dots?
https://www.truthcontrol.com/pictures/sumerian-tablet-depicting-defeat-devil
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Inca_mythology#/media/File:Santa_Cruz_Pachacuti_Yamqui_es.gif
Now we're told the 7 dots are the Pleaides, but they dont look like that. Another clue comes to us from one of Enlil's designations. He's the god in charge of the Earth and he has a rank of 50 in the Sumerian pantheon, 12 deities ranging from 5, 10, 15, 20, and so on up to An(u) at 60. The male gods even numbers and their female kin or consorts odd. Enlil (50) was the celestial 7, or the celestial 7 was 50. Enlil's domain was the Earth. This is why the 7 dots is also depicted as a star with 7 points, both refer to the Earth and/or its God Enlil.
2) He says nowhere in all of Mesopotamian literature do we see knowledge of more than 5 planets. Not only does Uranus become visible during its orbit to the sharp eyed astronomer, we have the Enuma Elish describing the 'olden gods' - Abzu, Mummu, Lahma, Lahamu, Tiamat, Kishar, Anshar, Anu, Nudimmud followed by Gaga and later by Kingu (Moon). Again, the text says Marduk was clothed with the halo of 10 gods.
3) The text on the seal doesn't say its the solar system. The text is limited, its a deity introducing a human to a seated god. He says its something to do with the harvest, but who knows. The text doesn't tell us much of anything or what the star and 11 dots are. You wont find literary explanations for much of the celestial symbols found on cylinder seals.
Thats about it, his argument is the Sumerians didn't depict the sun as a star because the sun god Utu or Shamash had 4 'star' points and 4 wavy lines. But if VA 243 depicts the olden gods with Abzu as the sun, then Utu's symbol aint relevant and it would get confusing if the Abzu had the same symbol as Utu the sun god.
