Burak Eldem (born 1961) is a Turkish writer/researcher, a former radio and TV programmer, web developer and journalist. He is the author of "2012: Rendez-vous With Marduk" (also known as ''2012: Appointment With Marduk'' - 2003), ''Fraternis: Lost Books, Secret Brotherhood'' (2006) and ''Talismans Protect Thee'' (2004). The first two titles belong to a trilogy about the history of civilization, which he named "The Hidden History". The latter is a science-fiction novel on immortality, ancient secrets and international conspiracies. His latest work ''Sunset Fandango'', sequel to "Talismans", was published in November 2007.
Early life and journalism
Eldem spent his early childhood in Ankara, the capital of Turkey. His father, Atilla Eldem, was a well-known actor of the Ankara State Theatre and his mother was a high school literature teacher. He is also a great-grandson of
İbrahim Edhem Pasha
Ibrahim Edhem Pasha (1819–1893) was an Ottoman statesman, who held the office of Grand Vizier in the beginning of Abdul Hamid II's reign between 5 February 1877 and 11 January 1878. He resigned from that post after the Ottoman chances on wi ...
,
Grand Vizier
Grand vizier ( fa, وزيرِ اعظم, vazîr-i aʾzam; ota, صدر اعظم, sadr-ı aʾzam; tr, sadrazam) was the title of the effective head of government of many sovereign states in the Islamic world. The office of Grand Vizier was first ...
(Sadrazam) of
Ottoman Sultan
Abdulhamid II
Abdülhamid or Abdul Hamid II ( ota, عبد الحميد ثانی, Abd ül-Hamid-i Sani; tr, II. Abdülhamid; 21 September 1842 10 February 1918) was the sultan of the Ottoman Empire from 31 August 1876 to 27 April 1909, and the last sultan to ...
. Eldem moved to Istanbul in 1975 when his father died and continued his high school education in this city. Graduated from
Boğaziçi University
Boğaziçi University ( tr, Boğaziçi Üniversitesi), also known as Bosphorus University, is a major research university in Istanbul, Turkey. Its main campus is located on the European side of the Bosphorus, Bosphorus strait. It has six facult ...
's Tourism Management department and then
Marmara University
Marmara University ( Turkish: ''Marmara Üniversitesi'') is a public university in Istanbul, Turkey.
The university is named after the Sea of Marmara and was founded as a university in 1982. However, it was created in 1883 under the name of ''H ...
's Business Administration Faculty, but never intended to be a business executive; his main interests were writing and history.
His journalism career began in 1984, writing feature articles for Turkish arts and culture magazines; among them were "Gösteri", "Sanat Olayı" and "Milliyet Sanat", the most popular publications of the early eighties. His writings mostly concentrated on post-
World War II
World War II or the Second World War, often abbreviated as WWII or WW2, was a world war that lasted from 1939 to 1945. It involved the vast majority of the world's countries—including all of the great powers—forming two opposin ...
counter-culture movements in Western World, particularly the avant-garde literature of the fifties and particularly in rock music. His colorful analysis on the
Beat Generation
The Beat Generation was a literary subculture movement started by a group of authors whose work explored and influenced American culture and politics in the post-war era. The bulk of their work was published and popularized by Silent Generatio ...
literature and the
Flower Power
Flower power was a slogan used during the late 1960s and early 1970s as a symbol of passive resistance and nonviolence. It is rooted in the opposition movement to the Vietnam War. The expression was coined by the American Beat poet Allen Ginsber ...
movement of the sixties, were welcomed by young urban intellectuals. In 1985, his first book was published by Imge Publications, titled "
Bob Marley
Robert Nesta Marley (6 February 1945 – 11 May 1981; baptised in 1980 as Berhane Selassie) was a Jamaican singer, musician, and songwriter. Considered one of the pioneers of reggae, his musical career was marked by fusing elements o ...
and
Reggae
Reggae () is a music genre that originated in Jamaica in the late 1960s. The term also denotes the modern popular music of Jamaica and its diaspora. A 1968 single by Toots and the Maytals, " Do the Reggay" was the first popular song to use ...
"; a biography of Jamaican reggae star and a summary of the
Rastafarian
Rastafari, sometimes called Rastafarianism, is a religion that developed in Jamaica during the 1930s. It is classified as both a new religious movement and a social movement by scholars of religion. There is no central authority in control ...
movement, slightly emphasising its politics, its elements of
anti-imperialism
Anti-imperialism in political science and international relations is a term used in a variety of contexts, usually by nationalist movements who want to secede from a larger polity (usually in the form of an empire, but also in a multi-ethnic so ...
. The same year he published "The History of Rock Music"; a research on the roots of jazz, blues and rock music, as a sociological and political phenomenon of the twentieth century capitalist world.
Eldem was among the founders of the monthly music and counter-culture magazine "Studyo Imge" (now considered as a cult) and became its first editor in early 1985. In 1986, his third book came: "From May Flower to the Song of Peace"; a work on American protest folk music of sixties, centered around the singer
Joan Baez
Joan Chandos Baez (; born January 9, 1941) is an American singer, songwriter, musician, and activist. Her contemporary folk music often includes songs of protest and social justice. Baez has performed publicly for over 60 years, releasing more ...
. The same year he began to write for the daily newspaper Cumhuriyet (The Republic) and became its one of the most popular freelance writers. In early 1988, he was hired for Playboy magazine's Turkish edition as the editorial director and ran that position until 1990. Between 1991 and 1996, he prepared and presented documentary music programs for Turkish television (TRT).
In 1997, he shifted his career towards "new media" working as a contributing editor and a columnist at
ZDNet
ZDNET is a business technology news website owned and operated by Red Ventures.
The brand was founded on April 1, 1991, as a general interest technology portal from Ziff Davis and evolved into an enterprise IT-focused online publication.
Hist ...
's Turkish edition; then in 2000, he became the portal manager of the leading internet content provider and ISP "Ixir". He also ran a personal web site named "Atlantis", where he shared his research on humanities and particularly on ancient history.
Researcher and novelist
Eldem has published dozens of articles and essays on archaeo-astronomy, along with unorthodox interpretations of sacred texts and papyri. His writings on ancient
Mesopotamian
Mesopotamia ''Mesopotamíā''; ar, بِلَاد ٱلرَّافِدَيْن or ; syc, ܐܪܡ ܢܗܪ̈ܝܢ, or , ) is a historical region of Western Asia situated within the Tigris–Euphrates river system, in the northern part of the F ...
cosmology
Cosmology () is a branch of physics and metaphysics dealing with the nature of the universe. The term ''cosmology'' was first used in English in 1656 in Thomas Blount (lexicographer), Thomas Blount's ''Glossographia'', and in 1731 taken up in ...
and
Mayan
Mayan most commonly refers to:
* Maya peoples, various indigenous peoples of Mesoamerica and northern Central America
* Maya civilization, pre-Columbian culture of Mesoamerica and northern Central America
* Mayan languages, language family spoken ...
astronomy
Astronomy () is a natural science that studies astronomical object, celestial objects and phenomena. It uses mathematics, physics, and chemistry in order to explain their origin and chronology of the Universe, evolution. Objects of interest ...
eventually became the basis and nucleus of a trilogy, named "The Hidden History". The first volume was published in 2003: the best-selling "2012: Rendez-vous With Marduk".
Examining, adapting and developing the work of
Zecharia Sitchin
Zecharia Sitchin (July 11, 1920 – October 9, 2010) was an author of a number of books proposing an explanation for human origins involving ancient astronauts. Sitchin attributed the creation of the ancient Sumerian culture to the ''Anunnaki'' ...
, the book refers to the hypothetical
Planet X
Following the discovery of the planet Neptune in 1846, there was considerable speculation that another planet might exist beyond its orbit. The search began in the mid-19th century and continued at the start of the 20th with Percival Lowell's ...
, and suggests an orbital period of 3661 solar years with a return date in 2012. Eldem also suggests that the number 3661 was written as "three wedges" with cuneiform in Mesopotamian
sexagesimal
Sexagesimal, also known as base 60 or sexagenary, is a numeral system with sixty as its base. It originated with the ancient Sumerians in the 3rd millennium BC, was passed down to the ancient Babylonians, and is still used—in a modified form ...
mathematics: One wedge each for 3600's, 60's and units digits. This
cuneiform
Cuneiform is a logo-syllabic script that was used to write several languages of the Ancient Middle East. The script was in active use from the early Bronze Age until the beginning of the Common Era. It is named for the characteristic wedge-sha ...
sign, claims Eldem, was misinterpreted by Jewish exiles in
Babylon
''Bābili(m)''
* sux, 𒆍𒀭𒊏𒆠
* arc, 𐡁𐡁𐡋 ''Bāḇel''
* syc, ܒܒܠ ''Bāḇel''
* grc-gre, Βαβυλών ''Babylṓn''
* he, בָּבֶל ''Bāvel''
* peo, 𐎲𐎠𐎲𐎡𐎽𐎢 ''Bābiru''
* elx, 𒀸𒁀𒉿𒇷 ''Babi ...
and the enigmatic
666
666 may refer to:
* 666 (number)
* 666 BC, a year
* AD 666, a year
* The number of the beast, a reference in the Book of Revelation in the New Testament
Places
* 666 Desdemona, a minor planet in the asteroid belt
* U.S. Route 666, an America ...
was created: the
Number of the Beast
The number of the beast ( grc-koi, Ἀριθμὸς τοῦ θηρίου, ) is associated with the Beast of Revelation in chapter 13, verse 18 of the Book of Revelation. In most manuscripts of the New Testament and in English translations of ...
was actually the number of solar years in
Marduk
Marduk (Cuneiform: dAMAR.UTU; Sumerian: ''amar utu.k'' "calf of the sun; solar calf"; ) was a god from ancient Mesopotamia and patron deity of the city of Babylon. When Babylon became the political center of the Euphrates valley in the time of ...
's orbital period.
The book became a best-seller in Turkey in 2004 and Eldem was criticized by religious writers for being an atheist, denying the Old Testament prophets such as Moses, promoting the theory of evolution, accusing Moses and Aaron of inventing the concept of God in order to reassure themselves following natural disasters such as floods.
On the other hand, his works had very positive critics from some of the outstanding writers and journalists of the Turkish Press, like Engin Ardıç and Serdar Turgut, the editor-in-chief of daily newspaper ''
Akşam
''Akşam'' (''Evening'') is a Turkish newspaper founded in 1918, owned by Zeki Yeşildağ's Türk Medya Grup (T Medya Yatırım San. ve Tic. AŞ.) since 2013. In 2013 it had a circulation of around 100,000.
History
''Akşams founders in 1918 incl ...
'' (The Evening). Ardıç, a very popular writer, columnist and former TV commentator, also contributed to "2012: Rendez-vous With Marduk" by writing its foreword.
The same year came his first novel, ''Seni Tılsımlar Korur'' "Talismans Protect Thee"; a semi-fantastic fiction on immortality, a five thousand years old dark secret which had been hidden from humanity, a dark international conspiracy and a top secret research on human DNA. "Talismans" became one of the best-selling novels of 2005 in Turkey.
Eldem's second book of "The Hidden History" trilogy, ''
Fraternis: Lost Books, Secret Brotherhood'' was published in April 2006. "Fraternis" focuses on alleged lost records of ancient wisdom; a mysterious, legendary collection of writings, traces of which he says can be found under various names like "The
Sibylline Books
The ''Sibylline Books'' ( la, Libri Sibyllini) were a collection of oracular utterances, set out in Greek hexameters, that, according to tradition, were purchased from a sibyl by the last king of Rome, Tarquinius Superbus, and were consulted at mo ...
", "Corpus
Hermetica
The ''Hermetica'' are texts attributed to the legendary Hellenistic figure Hermes Trismegistus, a syncretic combination of the Greek god Hermes and the Egyptian god Thoth. These texts may vary widely in content and purpose, but are usually subd ...
" or "The Lost Books of
Phoenicians
Phoenicia () was an ancient Semitic-speaking peoples, ancient thalassocracy, thalassocratic civilization originating in the Levant region of the eastern Mediterranean, primarily located in modern Lebanon. The territory of the Phoenician city-st ...
".
Eldem prepared an eight-days article series
[See Akşam, ] in April 2005 for the daily newspaper Akşam, which presented a mini summary of "2012: Rendez-vous With Marduk". Since then, he publishes his articles only at his official website and once in a month contributes to the online magazine "Derki".
See also
*
ZetaTalk
External links
Burak Eldem's website.His site in Turkishİnkılap Kitabevi - Burak Eldem's publisher
A downloadable English synopsis of "2012: Rendez-vous With Marduk" (Microsoft Word document)
References
{{DEFAULTSORT:Eldem, Burak
1961 births
Living people
Pseudohistorians
Ancient astronauts proponents
Turkish journalists
Turkish writers