Anunnaki

A group of deities in Sumerian and later Akkadian religion. The name is generally understood to mean something close to "offspring of Anu", the sky god, and in later Akkadian usage the Anunnaki are associated with the underworld. In the texts they are gods, treated as gods, receiving the offerings gods receive.

The modern association with visitors from another planet is not ancient. It traces to a reading of Sumerian and Akkadian material published in 1976, which held that the texts are a literal record rather than religious literature, and that the Anunnaki came to Earth from a further planet in search of gold. Specialists in the languages do not accept those translations, and the disagreement concerns what individual words mean rather than how to interpret them.

Almost everything said about the Anunnaki in popular sources today descends from that one reading, usually at second or third hand and usually without attribution.