“Unfortunately, what one might call “primary” source material …
for the political history of the reign is almost entirely lacking”.
Ronald H. Sack
One could be put off quite early when attempting to figure out King Neriglissar after learning just how meagre are the primary sources associated with him. Ronald Sack explains this at the beginning of his Chapter One (in Neriglissar – King of Babylon, 1994, p. 1):
Before an attempt at writing the biography of Neriglissar can be made, it is essential that available source material be noted and discussed. Unfortunately, what one might call “primary” source material for the political history of the reign is almost entirely lacking. One is therefore forced to use the numerous secondary works which have survived the ages. These, as their contents show, are interesting not only in the varied amounts of information they contain, but also because of the striking similarities or differences among them. Included in this group are the writings of the classical authors, as well as material from the Middle Ages. Some of these contain items not found elsewhere; others merely repeat what earlier writers have to say. … it is worthwhile to attempt a reexamination. ….
I would have to agree at least with this last suggestion of Ronald Sack’s, that “it is worthwhile to attempt a reexamination”. For Sack’s overall account does little to inspire much confidence.
So a re-examination is what it will be here.
Looking through the various neo-Babylonian king-lists, from cuneiform sources to the so-called Middle Ages, one finds how poorly attested, for instance, is King Labaši-Marduk, he sometimes dropping out of the lists altogether.
Sack writes about the poorly attested kings:
The reigns of a number of the monarchs of the Neo-Babylonian period are copiously attested either through the “Babylonian Chronicle” or numerous building inscriptions. Neriglissar, Amēl-Marduk and Labaši-Marduk are clearly exceptions. To date, no chronicle detailing any military campaign Amēl-Marduk or Labaši-Marduk may have conducted has ever been published. ….
On p. 9 Sack will write, referring to the king-list of Alexander Polyhistor, whom he calls “a late source, born 105 BC”: “The list is interesting for two reasons. First Labaši-Marduk is omitted, for what reasons we do not know. Secondly, and most important, is the fact that the figures given in all cases are correct save one – the assignment of twelve years to Amēl-Marduk”.
Regarding Sack’s puzzlement above that “… Labaši-Marduk is omitted, for what reasons we do not know”, I can immediately offer a reason – the reason that I usually tend to give for such situations, alter ego: in other words, Labaši-Marduk ought to be also someone else. And I have, in my neo-Babylonian revisions, told who that someone else is, namely Amēl-Marduk (var. Evil-Merodach). See for example my article:
Sack continues (p. 9): “This is a common feature throughout the series of king-lists, how wildly the reign-lengths of the kings can differ from one list to the next”.
Earlier he, telling of a neo-Babylonian king-list discovered at Uruk, had written (p. 3): “This list is interesting particularly because of the inaccuracy of the lengths of the reigns and the fact that no figure is given for Nebuchednezzar”.
In my article above I have suggested that Nebuchednezzar’s known son, Amēl-Marduk (or Evil-Merodach) – {Sack, p. 1: “… a few vase fragments … confirming the fact that Amēl-Marduk was the son of Nebuchadnezzar”} – was also the same as Labaši-Marduk, and was Belshazzar (the latter name being omitted from virtually all of the king-lists).
That identification would answer Sack’s above, “for whatever reasons we do not know”, regarding the omission of Labaši-Marduk from Polyhistor’s list.
Amēl-Marduk, the son of Nebuchednezzar, was also Labaši-Marduk, was also Belshazzar.
Moreover, I have further argued (logically, I believe), that Belshazzar, also a known son of Nebuchednezzar, but this time known from the Bible (Baruch 1:11, 12), was the same as the historically well-known Belshazzar (thought not to have been a king), the son of Nabonidus – Nabonidus being Nebuchednezzar.
The king-lists are consistent insofar that they have Neriglissar succeed Amēl-Marduk.
In biblical terms, that must lead to an identification of Neriglissar as “Darius the Mede”, who did indeed succeed King Belshazzar (Daniel 5:30).
So, our attention must now turn to Neriglissar, as a potential candidate for Darius the Mede.
Ronald Sack finds Neriglissar to be a little more promising from the cuneiform sources than, at least, Amēl-Marduk/ Labaši-Marduk (pp. 1-2):
Fortunately, several cylinder inscriptions and a short chronicle survive from Neriglissar’s reign. While the language of the cylinders is quite formulaic, it nevertheless details building activity in Babylon and elsewhere during the king’s reign. In attending to needed repairs in Esagila and Ezida, as well as necessary work on his palaces and the walls around Babylon, he was fulfilling a traditional responsibility of Babylonian monarchs. ….
The lists of Megasthenes with its funny kings’ names, also discussed by Ronald Sack, I find most interesting because it supports both the biblical data and my own revision. Sack tells of it on pp. 4-5:
…. Nabuchodrosorus [Nebuchednezzar] … was succeeded by his son Evilmaruchus [Evil-Merodach], who was slain by his kinsman, Neriglisares [Neriglissar] … Labassoarascus [Labaši-Marduk] … he also has suffered death by violence … Nabannidochus [Nabonidus] king, being of no relation to the royal race. ….
Let us unpack this.
Nebuchednezzar was succeeded by his true son, Evil-Merodach (i.e., Belshazzar).
The latter was slain by Neriglissar.
Belshazzar was likewise slain (though not necessarily by Darius the Mede himself), and was succeeded by his kinsman (that is, Darius the Mede).
A comparison of Jeremiah with Daniel attests that Darius was the ‘grandson’ (no doubt though marriage) of Nebuchednezzar.
“Labassoarascus” [Labaši-Marduk] is just a repeat story of Evil-Merodach, slain.
Nabonidus was “of no relation to the royal race”, he – claiming to be “Son of a nobody” – was, as Nebuchednezzar, a ‘son’ of Sennacherib only in the sense that Darius the Mede was a ‘grandson’ of Nebuchednezzzar, through marriage.
Nebuchednezzar (= Esarhaddon) commenced a new dynasty – the Chaldean one.
In my historical reconstructions, Darius the Mede was also Cyrus, and was the “Ahasuerus” of the Book of Esther. According to Jewish tradition, the wife of this Ahasuerus, Vashti, was the daughter of King Belshazzar.
Darius likewise commenced a new dynasty – the Medo-Persian one. He was Chaldean presumably only though marriage, but was “by birth a Mede” (Daniel 9:1).
A footnote to the The Jerusalem Bible claims of this Darius that “he is unknown to history”.
Well hopefully not any more, if he was Neriglissar.
How well does Neriglissar stack up with the biblical Darius the Mede?
We can make a few comparisons despite the dearth of available evidences (historical and biblical) for both names.
Neriglissar, “kinsman”, is related to the Neo-Babylonians by marriage only.
Berossus has Neriglissar as the brother-in-law (more likely son-in-law) of Evil-Merodach (Sack, pp. 7-8).
Neriglissar, like Darius, came to the throne owing to a coup d’êtat in which Darius must have been involved. Berossus tells of it (p. 6):
… Evilmerodachus … governed public affairs in an illegal and improper manner [seems to fit with Daniel’s “King Belshazzar”]; and, by means of a plot laid against him by Neriglissoorus, his sister’s husband [more likely his daughter’s husband], he was slain. ….
What here happened to Evil-Merodach, Berossus then repeats for Labaši-Marduk (“Laborosoarchodus”), his alter ego according to my view: “… on account of the evil practices which [Labaši-Marduk] manifested, a plot was made against him by his friends, he was tortured to death”.
My revised historical sequence for the succession from Sennacherib to Neriglissar is as follows:
Nabopolassar = Assyrian Sennacherib (Nabopolassar probably being his name as rule of Babylon).
New dynasty
Nebuchednezzar = Nabonidus (no blood relation to the Assyrian kings)
Belshazzar = Evil-Merodach, Amēl-Marduk and Labaši-Marduk
(and biblical Belshazzar, the evil son of Nebuchadnezzar).
New dynasty
Darius the Mede = Neriglissar (also Cyrus and Ahasuerus of the Book of Esther)
Josephus (Ant. Bk X, 11, 2) gives Neriglissar (“Eglisaros”) a reign of an incredible “forty years”, which is far longer than given to that king in any other list.
Similarly, the Talmud assigns “a twenty-three year reign to Amēl-Marduk” (Sack, p. 11).
More credibly, Josephus calls Neriglissar “son” of Evil-Merodach.
That fits with Jeremiah’s statement (27:7) regarding “grandson” of Nebuchadnezzar (but through marriage, as I have suggested).
Belshazzar, by that name, is usually missing form the king-lists. The Midrash Rabbah, though, explains why this may be. “… perhaps because of the similarity in the names Bel-sharra-uṣur and Nergal-sharra-uṣur …”.
This similarity of names was in fact a reason previously preventing me from making any proper historical sense of Neriglissar, thinking that he was yet another alter ego of Belshazzar.
As it turns out, he was nothing like that!
The books of Baruch and Daniel give the true sequence for the Chaldeans (only two kings). Thus Sack (p. 11): “… the Book of Baruch … fails to mention Amēl-Marduk [sic], but instead declares Belshazzar to be the direct successor to Nebuchadnezzar (as does Daniel 5)”.
This is because, as we have found, Amēl-Marduk was Belshazzar.
Neriglissar in the Bible
We more than likely meet Neriglissar about mid-way through the reign of Nebuchednezzar, at the siege of Jerusalem, as “Nergal-sharezer”, thanks to Jeremiah 39:3: “… all the officers of the king of Babylon marched in and took up their quarters at the Middle Gate: Nergal-sharezer, prince of Sin-magir, the chief officer, Nebushazban, the high official, and all the other officers of the king of Babylon”.
Ronald Sack comments on this passage (p. 20):
Although this passage has received much attention … and questions are still being raised as to the identification of the persons mentioned here, there seems little doubt, as Bright has already pointed out … that Nergal-sharezer is to be identified with our Nergal-šarra-usur of the cuneiform tablets.
In his note 61 on the same page, Sack will explain the place name associated here with Nergal-sharezer, “Sin-magir… a district of which Nergalsharezer is known from a contemporary inscription to have been governor (read sar simmagir)”.
Neriglissar in historical documents
Neriglissar can be found significantly earlier than this during Nebuchednezzar’s reign, as Sack tells on p, 22: “The earliest known mention of Neriglissar occurs in a contract dated in the ninth year of Nebuchadnezzar …”.
By biblical estimates, he (as Darius the Mede) would at that stage (Year 9) have been approximately 30 years of age (as a round figure).
This leads Sack to conclude – {and perfectly in accord with Daniel 6:1, that Darius the Mede was already old when he took the throne: “Darius the Mede received the kingdom, at the age of sixty-two} – that: “Our present evidence suggests not only that he was well advanced in age when he became king, but that he was a member of a prominent family known for its business activities in northern Babylonia.
He was apparently wealthy (p. 24): “… Neriglissar … undoubtedly already possessed considerable wealth …. Probably coming from a prestigious banking family … he can be found buying property and loaning money in the reign of Amēl-Marduk”.
This might explain the accountant-like tendency to be found in his various biblical guises, ‘that the king may suffer no less’ being a recurring theme (e.g. Ezra 4:22; Esther; Daniel 6:3). The Greek description of a “Darius” as a “shopkeeper” (or “huckster”) might be entirely relevant here.
A possible hint of the plot against King Belshazzar (as Amēl-Marduk) might be there in Sack’s account (pp. 26-27) of a seeming overlap in the reigns of Amēl-Marduk and Neriglissar, having “to my knowledge, no parallel in the Chaldean period”.
… it should not really be surprising to find a Sippar document identifying Neriglissar as “king of Babylon” earlier than was formerly thought. It would be remembered that the Babylonian priest Berossus asserted in his Babyloniaca that Amēl-Marduk’s reign ended through assassination and that Neriglissar thus seized the throne through a coup d’etat …. Information contained in sources from southern Babylonia have suggested for years that Berossus was correct in asserting that Neriglissar was a usurper.
He set about re-ordering the kingdom as Darius the Mede had done immediately (Daniel 6:20). Sack (p.27): “Once safely on the throne, Neriglissar appears to have 1) removed temple administrators from their positions of authority in areas where support for his rule would be minimal at best, or 2) established ties with prominent personnel in other temples”.
Neriglissar is perfectly placed chronologically (revised) to have been the well-advanced in years Darius the Mede. He may indeed have come to the throne, like Darius, through a coup d’êtat. He was a high military official and wealthy banker from quite early in the reign of Nebuchednezzar, and related to the royal family through marriage.
that historians will not be able to give a definitive account of who the Sumerians were, from whence they originated, and what was the basis of their language.
Nita Gleimius will introduce the enigmatic Sumerians with the phrase commonly used for them, “The Sumerian Problem” (2022):
Did the Sumerian civilization really exist? Were they immigrants? And why is their language so unique?
Oct 22, 2022 • By Nita Gleimius, BA Ancient Near Eastern Cultures & Biblical Archaeology
Controversies regarding the Sumerian people — generally called “The Sumerian Problem” — started almost as soon as their civilization was rediscovered. After almost two centuries of discoveries and interpretations, and the deciphering of ancient cuneiform texts from various ancient Near Eastern sources, the very existence of the Sumerians as a distinct nation is still questioned today by some learned scholars.
Add to this the various theories about ancient aliens and mysterious teachers, and we have a veritable melting pot of beliefs, myths, and interpretations that defy logic. Many Assyriologists and Sumerologists, like Thorkild Jacobsen and Samuel Noah Kramer, have contributed immensely to the unraveling and interpretation of facts from conjecture. They started to create a semblance of order using the conglomeration of information from archaeology, cuneiform texts, guesswork, and unsubstantiated theories. But even they had to guess and make assumptions.
What Is the Sumerian Problem?
Discovering our ancient roots is enlightening and wonderfully exciting, one clue leads to a discovery, which leads to another clue, which leads to another discovery, and so on — almost like a top-selling mystery novel. But imagine that your favorite mystery or crime novelist suddenly ends a book without tying up the pieces — and with some crucial pieces of the mystery still missing. Without crucial evidence, without enough hints to lead you further, you may check and recheck if you were right in your analysis and tentative conclusions. Sometimes archaeologists end up with just such a mystery.
In the case of the Sumerians, the problems started from the very beginning; their very existence, their identity, their origin, their language, and their demise have all been questioned. Once most of the archaeological and linguistic fraternities agreed that a previously unknown group of people had in fact settled in southern Mesopotamia (modern Iraq) before 4000 BCE, theories abounded.
Scholars theorized, reasoned, and debated. Instead of arriving at a reasonable potential geographic location, questions and mysteries multiplied. The issue became several issues. The Sumerian Problem became so emotional for some scholars that they attacked each other openly and personally. The media had a field day, and the scholarly war became in itself part of the problem.
The truth is that a civilization that lasted for more than 3,000 years [sic] would inevitably have gone through deep changes — in social, political, cultural, and economic terms. It will have been affected by outside factors such as the physical environment, contact with and incursions from outsiders, and pestilence. It would also have been impacted by population growth patterns, cultural changes, habits, the natural diffusion of immigrant cultures, as well as thought patterns, religious influences, internal strife, and wars among city-states.
Mackey’s comment: Problems, questions, are arising due to a greatly over-expanded chronology and to an uncertain geography, making it impossible to be really definite about the situation. Hence the question below: Why Is There a Problem?
How then can we define such a multiplex of societal epochs as one single civilization? Were the Sumerians rough and robust outsiders that took over an already refined and more advanced southern Mesopotamian society?
Background: Why Is There a Problem?
After thousands of years of nomadic and semi-nomadic seasonal settlements created by hunter-gatherers, some settlements in southern Mesopotamia were settled all year round. From around 4000 BCE there appears to have been a relatively rapid development in agriculture, culture, and technology.
Mackey’s comment: The Great Agricultural Leap had begun before this, at Karaca Dağ.
See e.g. my article:
Great Leap to Agriculture made by Noah’s family in mountains of SE Turkey
Low-lying Sumer was still, at that stage, under the influence of the vestiges of the Flood. Far from being the Cradle of Civilisation, its settlement was relatively later.
Nita Gleimius continues:
Crops were planted using irrigation: canals diverted rivers, channels ran from rivers to crop fields, and furrows led water into the fields. A simple plow was converted into a seeder plow which could do both jobs at once — and could be pulled by draught animals.
By 3500 BCE agriculture was no longer so labor-intensive, and people could direct their attention to other occupations. Urbanization and specialization in the manufacturing of goods such as ceramics, farm implements, boat building, and other crafts led to cities being built around large religious centers by 3000 BCE. Why and where did this burst of innovation come from?
Various Biblical scholars and treasure hunters have actively searched the ancient Near East for proof of Biblical stories and to find legendary riches from ancient civilizations. Scholars and historians from as far back as Herodotus knew well enough about the Assyrians and the Babylonians. Nobody, though, knew that these civilizations inherited their advanced cultures from a still older civilization.
Mackey’s comment: Assyrian Nineveh was surely settled before Sumer (which is not the biblical “Shinar”) was (Genesis 10:10, 11).
Assyria was called “the land of Nimrod” (Micah 5:6).
Nita Gleimius continues:
Though the Sumerians were gone and forgotten, their legacy was very much alive. It had passed down through other geographic locations …
Mackey’s comment: Even its own supposed geographic locations belonged far away elsewhere.
… and through social, political, and economic developments as empires came and went through the ages that followed.
….
The Sumerian Language Quest
The discovery of Ashurbanipal’s library at Nineveh and the subsequent translation of its texts revealed three distinct languages written in similar cuneiform script. Assyrian and Babylonian were distinctly Semitic, but a third Semitic script contained words and syllables that just did not fit into the rest of its Semitic vocabulary. This language was Akkadian with non-Semitic Sumerian phraseology interlaced. Excavations at Lagash and Nippur provided plenty of cuneiform tablets, and these were entirely in this non-Semitic language.
Researchers noted that the Babylonian kings called themselves the kings of Sumer and Akkad. Akkadian was accounted for, so they named the new script Sumerian. Then they found tablets with bilingual texts, believed to be from school exercises. Although these tablets were dated to the first millennium BCE, long after Sumerian as a spoken language had ceased to exist, it continued as a written language similar to the use of Latin today.
Identifying and deciphering Sumerian did not solve the problem of their origins. The language is what is known as a language isolate — it fits into no other known language group. Instead of clarifying the origins of the Sumerians, it added to the confusion.
Scholars have identified many Semitic names among the place names used by the Sumerians for some of their greatest cities. Ur, Uruk, Eridu, and Kish are but a few of these. This could mean that they moved into places that were already settled — or it could mean that they kept the place names given to these cities by their conquerors — the Akkadians and the Elamites — after regaining their independence. The Elamites, though, were also a non-Semitic speaking people, and the identified names are Semitic.
Another scholarly argument is that some of the earliest words from the Sumerian language are from the most primitive phase of their agricultural development. Many words are names for local southern Mesopotamian animals and plants. This may mean that the Sumerians were primitive immigrants settling into a more advanced culture (the Ubaid culture).
They then later adopted the culture of their host country and developed it further with more innovations. Another argument in favor of this hypothesis is that the Sumerian words for these above objects are mostly one syllable, whereas the words for more sophisticated objects have more than one syllable, indicating the more advanced culture of another group.
Samuel Noah Kramer has argued that the Ubaid culture in the region was already advanced when the Sumerians arrived. The Ubaid culture, he posited, came from the Zagros mountains, and amalgamated over time with several Semitic groups from Arabia and elsewhere. After the Sumerians conquered this more advanced Ubaid culture, they and the Sumerians together achieved the heights that we now assign to the Sumerian civilization.
More Sumerian Origin Hypotheses
Archaeological finds from the earliest levels of Sumerian civilization, such as the oldest Eridu temple structures, confirms that southern Mesopotamian culture is similar from at least the Ubaid Period right through the giant leaps towards urbanized civilization. There is no sign of any outside material in these earliest levels, and a lack of foreign pottery clinches it.
On the other hand, some theorists maintain that religious structures like ziggurats appear in Sumer only in the late Uruk period. The time selected by the immigrant theorists for the Sumerian arrival in the already flourishing Ubaid Period of southern Mesopotamia. ….
The hypothesis that the Sumerians came from a homeland beyond the Persian Gulf towards the East has been floated on and off since their identification. This theory is popular with those who do not believe that the Sumerians would have traveled across the hinterland of Mesopotamia all the way to the tip of the land where resources are more limited. Another southern origin idea posits that the Sumerians were Arabs who lived on the east coast of the Persian Gulf before their home was flooded after the last ice age.
Other scholars theorize that their skills with metalwork — for which there were zero resources in Sumer — and the building of high places (ziggurats), indicate that their homeland must have been in the mountains. The most popular theory here points to the foothills and plains of the Zagros mountains — today’s Iranian plateau.
Others suggest that they may be related to the original peoples of ancient India. They find similarities between the Sumerian language and the Dravidian group of languages from this region.
Mackey’s comment: Very much needing to be factored in here as well is the noticeable similarity between Sumerian and Chinese:
Ancient Chinese History and the Book of Genesis. Part Four: Chinese and Sumerian
To the north, we have several areas that could be likely candidates if the Sumerians were immigrants to southern Mesopotamia. The areas around the Caspian Sea, Afghanistan, Anatolia, the Taurus mountains, Northern Iran, Kramer’s trans-Caucasian area, Northern Syria, and more.
Mackey’s comment: So much guesswork here.
Might I suggest trying “Northern Syria” (above)/ southern Turkey?
Kings David and Solomon
With the geography of Sumer (supposedly) unscrambled, we are surprised to find deeds pertaining to the Israelite kings, David and Solomon, in the Eshnunna and Lagash tales of the c. C18th BC, with Solomon appearing even well before that, in the c. C22nd BC.
But, given the apparently long history of this region – artificial though it all may be – we would expect to find other Israelite/Judean history there as well.
And that we surely do.
But I shall need an article supplementary to this one to cover it.
This is what I have previously written on David, Solomon and Eshnunna, Lagash.
*****
One of the most important contributions to the revision of ancient history, with a keen reference to the Bible, has been Dean Hickman’s re-location of King Hammurabi of Babylon from, originally, c. 2400, now c. 1800 BC (conventional dating) – with some revisionists opting for c. 1450 BC, the time of Joshua – to the era of kings David and King Solomon (c. 1000 BC, standard dating).
Dean Hickman most helpfully identified the powerful Assyrian ruler of the time, Shamsi-Adad I, as the biblical (Syrian) king, Hadadezer, against whom King David successfully campaigned (2 Samuel 8:3).
And Hickman skilfully identified Hadadezer’s father, Rekhob (or Rehob), as Shamsi-Adad’s father, Uru-kabkabu (Urukab = Rekhob).
Surely, so I then thought, kings David and Solomon must also be historically identifiable amongst these supposed C18th BC kings and their wars.
A tentative thought of mine was that King Solomon may have been King Jabin of Hazor (Mari Letters) at this time, seeing that Solomon had control of that city (I Kings 9:15).
Unfortunately, several good revisionist historians, ignoring Dean Hickman’s work, have identified this Jabin with the one at the time of Joshua (11:1), thereby throwing their revisions right out of kilter, by about half a millennium.
Jabin was a generic name for rulers of Hazor, and there was another such Canaanite king at the time of Deborah (Judges 4).
King Solomon may have taken the name as well when he gained control of Hazor. Or, this Jabin may have been another Canaanite king under that name whom Solomon conquered.
The Mari Letters do not name places further south than this, so any reference to Solomon may have associated him with one of his northern cities (closer to Mari), rather than to Jerusalem much further to the south.
Of more pressing interest to me, though, was that there was a king with a David-like name, who was, again like King David, an opponent of Shamsi-Adad I (Hadadezer).
I refer to a King of Eshnunna, Naram-Sin (“Beloved of” the Lord) – the Syrians interchanged Sin and El.
Even closer to David’s name was Dadusha of Eshnunna of the same approximate era.
Hence, I badly wanted Eshnunna re-situated from Sumer to the region of Jerusalem.
The trouble was that Eshnunna seemed firmly situated in Central Mesopotamia, to the north of Sumer.
But that was not to be the end of the story.
I had, in my university thesis (2007) distinguished between two forts named Ashdod, the well-known coastal one belonging to the Philistines, known in Sargon II’s Annals as Ashdudimmu, “Ashdod-by-the-Sea”, and another Ashdod that Sargon II’s General (Turtan) captured (Isaiah 20:1), which I determined to have been the famous Lachish.
It needs to be noted that Lachish was second in importance to Jerusalem itself:
“Among cities in ancient Judah, Lachish was second only to Jerusalem in importance. A principal Canaanite and, later, Israelite site, Lachish occupied a major tell (mound) 25 miles southwest of Jerusalem, nestled in the foothills of Judah (the region known as the Shephelah)”.
Eventually it struck me that my combination, Ashdod-Lachish, had to be the supposed Sumerian combination of Eshnunna-Lagash. (Friend Robert R. Salverda, at the same time, had come to the conclusion that Lagash was Lachish).
Now, with Eshnunna as Ashdudda (merely requiring an n and d interchange), or Ashdod (Lachish), then Dadusha king of Eshnunna could certainly be King David. Thanks to Dean Hickman’s revision, Dadusha was now an approximate contemporary of King David.
But why Lachish and not Jerusalem for David (Dadusha)?
Well, it is an indication of the importance of Lachish. However, some Sumeriologists think that Lagash was not the capital, but that Girsu, the religious centre, actually was.
The religious centre, Girsu, therefore, with Lagash secondary to it, must be Jerusalem.
This has since led me to the realisation that the land of Sumer needs to be de-nuded of some of its most famous names. Places that seemingly just drop out of history.
That is because they did not belong there in the first place.
Seth Richardson, refers to them as ‘falling off the political map’. Thus I wrote on this:
Amazingly – though not really surprisingly under the circumstances – Lagash and Girsu seem to ‘fall permanently off the political map’, according to Seth Richardson (and that is because they do not belong on this map):
Ningirsu returns to his plow: Lagaš and Girsu take leave of Ur (2008)
The Ur III state came to its end through a series of passive defections of individual provinces over the course of about twenty years, rather than by any single catastrophic event. This pattern of defections is nowhere better reflected than in the gradual progression of provinces abandoning the use of Ibbi-Sîn’s year names over his years 2–8.
Among the cities that fell away from the control of Ur in those years were Girsu and Lagaš, where Ur III year names are not attested after Ibbi-Sîn’s sixth year. …. Like Puzriš-Dagān and Umma (but unlike Larsa, Uruk, Isin, and Nippur), these cities seemingly fell permanently off the political map of lower Mesopotamia following their departure from Ur’s control, never again the seat of significant institutional life to judge by the low number of texts and inscriptions coming from the sites. At the same time, it is difficult to assert from evidence that any hardship or conflict either precipitated or resulted from Lagaš-Girsu’s decamping from Ur’s authority; no especial difficulty marks the event. ….
Considering that Puzrish-Dagan and Umma likewise fall off the map, we may need now to begin critically examining these two places as well.
Happily, for Sumeriologists and the like, Larsa, Uruk, Isin, and Nippur, seem to be firmly established in Sumer.
Though I would distinguish between the well-known Sumerian Uruk and the Urukku seemingly associated with Girsu (my Jerusalem) as its sanctuary.
(Ur, Uruk, appear to have been very common ancient names, widely distributed).
Also to be distinguished, in this context, are the Sumerian Ur and the home of Abram, “Ur of the Chaldees”, which is Urfa (Şanliurfa) in SE Turkey, far from Sumer.
Finally, given my view (and that of others) that Jerusalem was the same site as the antediluvian Garden of Eden, then the Gu-Edin (Guedena) over which the king of Lagash, Eannatum (yet to be identified), and the king of Umma, fought, could perhaps be a reference to the region of Jerusalem (or some place closely associated with it).
[End of quotes]
When the Jews were exiled to Sumer, their history must have become known, but re-cast in Sumerian fashion, with Sumerian pronunciations replacing Hebrew ones.
King Dadusha’s famous stele, honouring the god, Adad, might lead one to think that David (if Dadusha) was an idolater.
But some think that this stele would have been set up, instead, by Dadusha’s son, Ibal-pi-el, who must then be King Solomon himself, who did apostatise, and who did build polytheistic and idolatrous shrines (I Kings 11:1-13).
Or, it might simply be that the god, Adad, was the best name representation for the God of Israel in that SE part of the ancient world.
Some commentators suggest that King David, rather than Hadadezer, set up his boundary stele, at the Euphrates (2 Samuel 8:3): “Moreover, David defeated Hadadezer son of Rehob, king of Zobah, when he [meaning David] went to restore his monument at the Euphrates River”.
King Solomon
I have most tentatively identified King Solomon above with Jabin king of Hazor (the Mari Letters). And, somewhat more confidently, with Ibal-pi-el of Eshnunna.
Most confidently, I have identified King Solomon, in Eighteenth Dynasty Egypt, as Senenmut, adviser (consort?) to the female pharaoh, Hatshepsut. See e.g. my article:
I also suggested in this article that the sage king Solomon has been appropriated by the Greeks as the Athenian statesman (using Hebrew laws, no less), Solomon.
Senenmut is often considered by historians to have been ‘the real power behind the throne’ of Egypt.
Conventional historians, however, have no hope whatsoever of identifying any of the above characters (presuming any of them be legitimate) with King Solomon. To do so, they would need to cross geographical boundaries and timelines. Thus:
C18th BC Syro-Palestine, as Jabin of Hazor and/or Ibal-pi-el of Eshnunna.
C15th BC Egypt, as Senenmut during the Eighteenth Dynasty. Not to mention
C11th BC Jerusalem, as the biblical King Solomon.
Naturally, this throws into absolute chaos the conventional archaeology.
And so we get puerile statements by the likes of Israeli professor Israel Finkelstein: “Now Solomon. I think I destroyed Solomon, so to speak. Sorry for that!”
(Draper, R., “Kings of Controversy”, National Geographic, December 2010, p. 85).
Doubtlessly, there will be other intriguing manifestations of the great king as well, including possibly in a pseudo AD ‘history’ (Charlemagne?, Suleiman?).
Now, with Lagash re-identified as the Judean Lachish, then a supposedly much earlier character of note emerges as a prime candidate for King Solomon the Temple builder.
I refer to:
Gudea ensi of Lagash
We now have to locate ourselves back in c. 2100 BC, although the dating of Gudea is almost as liquid as has been that of Hammurabi of Babylon.
Gudea is variously dated to c. 2144-2124 BC (middle chronology), or c. 2080–2060 BC (short chronology).
I am going to date him closer to c. 950 BC – about 1200 years lower than the earliest conventional estimate for him.
“Parallels between Gudea’s and Solomon’s account include … taxing the people; costly imports; divine word requiring obedience; detailed description of opulent furnishings; consecration; installation of divine majesty into temple; speech by ruler at consecration imploring divine bounty; specification of ruler’s offering …”.
Diane M. Sharon
Having the ancient city of Lagash rudely transferred from deep in Sumer, to be re-located 1300-plus km (as I estimate it) westwards, as the fort of Lachish, as I have proposed to be necessary in articles such as:
As Ashduddu (Ashdod) is to Lachish, so, likewise, is Eshnunna to Lagash
then it comes as no surprise – in fact, I would have expected it – to learn that Gudea’s Temple hymn has Jewish resonances.
It just remains to be determined with which prominent Jewish builder, Gudea – {a name that looks like Judea, but supposedly means: “the messenger or the one called by the god, or “the receiver of revelation”, meaning “the prophet”} – may have been.
Diane M. Sharon, who has dated the era of Gudea about a millennium too early, has nevertheless written most interestingly at the beginning of her 1996 article, “A Biblical Parallel to a Sumerian Temple Hymn? Ezekiel 40–48 and Gudea”:
Ezekiel’s remarkably detailed vision of the future temple as described in chapters 40–48 is unique in Biblical literature. …. However, it bears undeniable resemblance to the ancient Near Eastern genre of Sumerian temple hymns, and to one example in particular. …. This example, commonly referred to as the Gudea Cylinders, was written at about 2125 B.C.E. to commemorate the building of a temple to the god Ningirsu by Gudea, king of Lagash. …. It recounts a vision received by Gudea in a dream, in which he is shown the plan and dimensions of the temple he is to build. While in fundamental ways these texts are quite different, this paper will focus on the common features of theme, structure, and detail shared by these two documents.
We will focus first on the major themes which are common to Ezekiel and Gudea, addressing especially the association of the temple with abundance, and particularly with water as a symbol of fertility associated with the temple. We will also address a second theme in common, the concern with gradations of purification and consecration.
Ezekiel’s vision of the restored temple is the culmination of his prophetic mission, which spanned more than twenty years during the sixth century B.C.E. …. The burden of his message in most of his book is the inevitability of the destruction of Jerusalem, the death of most of Judah’s inhabitants, and the scattering of the pitiful remainder. ….
But from the time God tells Ezekiel to watch for a refugee bearing the news of Jerusalem’s downfall, Ezekiel begins to prophesy against Israel’s enemies. …. While his message can never be described as comforting, Ezekiel does convey hope as he begins at this point to sketch the outlines of an Israel restored to her land with a new heart and a new spirit for the honor of her God (37:22, 26–28, 32).
Ezekiel’s final chapters, dazzling in their graphic description of the divine majesty re-establishing residence in the magnificent re-sanctified precincts of a rebuilt temple, conclude with an unmistakable allusion to fertility and abundance (47:9–12).
In notably parallel circumstances [sic], Gudea’s temple-building occurs toward the end of the seventy- or eighty-year domination of Sumer by a people known as the Gutians. …. The Gutian invasion, described in the Sumerian lament, “The Curse of Agade,” … resulted in dire famine for Sumer, with “misery, want, death and desolation thus threatening to overwhelm practically all ‘mankind fashioned by Enlil’.” ….
After these decades of oppression, the Sumerian people experience a renewal. Gudea builds a temple at the direction of the storm god Ningirsu. …. The temple’s construction and consecration represent the presence of the god’s blessings of abundance among the people … and may indeed have the same “redemptive” implications as Ezekiel’s visionary temple, that of a people rebuilt at long last after devastation by an invader and many years of foreign oppression. ….
For Gudea, the temple is a sign of the divine presence, bringing with it abundance. …. Ningirsu promises: ….
….
When to my house, the house honored in all lands,
the right arm of Lagash,
the thunderbird roaring on the horizon—
Eninnu, my kingly house,
O able shepherd Gudea, you put effectively the hand for me,
I shall call up a rain …
that from above it bring for you abundance;
and the people may spread hands with you on the abundance.
May with the laying of the foundations of my house abundance come! ….
It is interesting that in both texts at least part of the promised abundance takes the metaphoric form of being showered from above. In fact, an important parallel between the two works is the repetition of all types of water images, many associated with fertility, and some—notably thunderstorms and water flowing from the earth— also associated with the appearance of the divinity.
In the Sumerian hymn, water images abound. The overflow of the river signals to Gudea that the god wants something of him. …. Gudea floats down the river in a barge, seeking the clarifying oracle and stopping at different stages on the way to appease the tutelary gods with bread and libations of clear water. …. The clan (area) of the goddess Nanshe, another divinity invoked in Gudea’s dream, is described as “superabundant waters spreading abundance,” i7-mah a-diri hé-gál-bi pàr-pàr. …. Repeatedly, the heart of a god is referred to as a flood, or as a river overflowing. …. And the god Ningirsu, himself the personification of the thundercloud and the overflowing river, is invoked with unmistakable references to waters of fertility. ….
In the final chapters of Ezekiel, YHWH, too, partakes of this image of divine abundance associated with water, though to be sure the associations are attenuated and not always clear-cut. For example, in Ezekiel’s second vision of theophany, the sound of God’s voice is compared to the sound of “the voice of mighty waters,” … (43:2). Ezekiel compares this theophany to his first experience many years before, both specifically located by the river Chebar. ….
But by far the most dramatic water image in the book of Ezekiel is manifestly associated with fertility and abundance: that of the river issuing from beneath the visionary temple in 47:1–12. Moshe Greenberg remarks that Ezekiel’s celestial architect leads Ezekiel from the modest origin of the spring and measures its growth into “an unfordable river after a 4,000-cubit flow through a desert!” …. Greenberg is impressed with the connection between this flow of water and miraculous abundance, and notes:
This vision specifically connects Temple and fertility and singles out for transformation the most barren tract of land—the wilderness of Judah—and the body of water most inhospitable to life, the Dead Sea, a dramatic exhibition of God’s beneficent presence in the temple. ….
Raphael Patai is also impressed by this association between the temple and fertility, and he was the first to make this particular connection between Ezekiel’s vision and Gudea’s temple. ….
Both Gudea and Ezekiel are deeply concerned with purification. …. All those who are “impure” … are banished from Gudea’s city, and the king consecrates the city and the ground on which he will build his temple with fire and with incense. ….
In a sense, for Ezekiel, the people will have already been purified by an ordeal by fire in the destruction and exile. Nevertheless, purification and gradations of holiness are still a major concern of Ezekiel’s, never more apparent than in this vision of the Temple rebuilt.
According to Greenberg, the very design of Ezekiel’s visionary Temple reflects the prophet’s focus upon sanctity. Greenberg comments that: ….
The Temple proper expresses gradation of holiness by the successively narrowing entrances to its inner parts. Along the border between the two courts rooms and zones are appointed for activities which if not properly contained might violate the grades of holiness.
God’s blessing follows closely upon the consecration of the temple. Once the temple is completed and the degrees of holiness are appropriately defined and contained in their designated locations within the visionary edifice, the full abundance which seems contingent on proper sanctification bursts forth in the form of the spring of water emerging from the south side of the altar. ….
Gudea’s god also makes abundance contingent upon the completion of the temple, and the Sumerians enjoy gradually increasing abundance as the temple construction progresses. For Gudea’s people, abundance begins from the moment the foundation of the temple is laid; … and, of course, when the temple is completed, abundance rains down and is also raised from the earth in the form of grain. ….
It is possible to view the gradually increasing abundance which follows the progress of building Gudea’s temple as an expression of the same idea in a different metaphor as the abundance which follows the carefully designated degrees of holiness embodied in the design of Ezekiel’s visionary temple.
The divine command in both instances is for an edifice which expresses in its design (in Ezekiel’s case) or in its process of construction (in Gudea’s case) the idea of progressive sanctification. Upon the achievement of the final sanctification in both cases, the divine blessing of abundance pours forth in the form of fertilizing water.
In addition to these two major themes of, first, associating temple with both water and abundance, and, second, preoccupation with degrees of sanctity, the structural pattern of the temple vision in Ezekiel shares much in common with the structure of the Gudea hymn. ….
Let us first summarize the common structural pattern, and then we will examine specific details. The common structural pattern consists of seven points:
annunciation to the seer in a vision or a dream of the divine desire to have a temple built; ….
a precise blueprint received in an altered state of consciousness at the hand of a divine “architectural assistant”;
concern throughout with purification, consecration, and ritual/ cultic renewal;
installation of the divine majesty into the completed edifice;
assignment of specific duties to designated temple personnel;
ultimate consecration of the temple for service to the divinity; followed, finally, by
the divine blessing in the form of abundance expressed in water imagery.
The idea of a cosmogonic pattern for temple archetypes is recurrent in the critical literature of comparative mythology … and has been seen in biblical and ancient Near Eastern literature as well. ….
Several of the points outlined in the scholarly literature as they relate to food narratives or to edifice construction in Mesopotamian and Biblical literature apply as well to the accounts we have been considering in Ezekiel and Gudea, specifically, the associations among temple, water, and abundance; the divine request for a temple as conveyed to a king or priest; the requirement for cultic purification; and the celebration of a recurring annual ritual of re-consecration. ….
Taken together with other scholarly studies on temple models of the ancient Near East reflected in Hebrew scripture … the correspondences among so many sacred constructions from so many different, though related, cultures in the ancient Near East suggest an implicit, if not explicit, paradigm for the structure and function of “Temple” that was operative over a long period and at many levels. The several biblical accounts that correspond to this hypothetical model may be adduced as evidence that Hebrew scribes and prophets were familiar with this genre and incorporated it into their writings.
Before proceeding to consideration of our third task, the examination of parallels in the details of the two texts, it is worthwhile noting that the structure and details of Gudea’s building program also bear great resemblance to other temple construction accounts in the Bible, specifically Solomon’s activity described in 1 Kgs. 5:1–9:9 and Hezekiah’s reconstruction and repair of the temple outlined in 2 Chronicles 29–31.
While a deeper analysis must wait, a summary of the parallels might be illuminating for the reader of the present paper. Parallels between Gudea’s and Solomon’s account include: … taxing the people; costly imports; divine word requiring obedience; detailed description of opulent furnishings; consecration; installation of divine majesty into temple; speech by ruler at consecration imploring divine bounty; specification of ruler’s offering; feast of seven days; and divine exhortation to moral and ethical behavior by ruler and subjects. ….
Sumerian History in Chaos:
Urukagina, first reformer, or C8th BC ruler of Jerusalem?
as Gudea, the famous ensi (governor) of Lagash, or Lakish (= Lachish).
Then we needed to slide down the artificial timeline by a further three centuries, approximately, to find King Solomon now at c. 1780 BC, as Ibal-pi-el (so-called) II, the son of Dadusha (King David), and supposed nephew of Naram-Sin (also King David). These were kings of Eshnunna, which, again, is (another name for) Lagash (Lachish).
As I have explained before, Ashdod (Ashdudda)/Lachish – is – Eshnunna/Lagash.
Another most notable historical occupant of Lagash was one Urukagina.
To find him in the text books, we need to go all the way back to the virtual beginnings of recorded history, to c. 2400 BC, approximating to the time of King Sargon of Akkad.
However, if Urukagina was in control of Lachish in SW Judah (Shephelah) – which location I believe that Lagash was – then there is every good chance, indeed, that Urukagina (just like Gudea) will have a biblical identity.
Who, then, was this Urukagina?
To find him, things now become really radical and somewhat complicated.
An Explanatory Note: My earlier effort to write this article, with Urukagina of Lagash there identified as the chief official of King Hezekiah of Judah, namely, Eliakim son of Hilkiah – whom I had further identified as the Akhimiti of Sargon II of Assyria’s Annals, to whom the Assyrians gave rulership over “Ashdod”, my Lachish (= Lagash) – began to come unstuck when I realised that Urukagina, formerly an ensi (governor), was later being referred to as Lugal, meaning “King” (literally “Big Man”).
This term was most unlikely applicable to Eliakim/Akhimiti, despite his apparent prominence.
Part One: Urukagina identified
Previously I had written:
To find Urukagina, we need to scroll down a massive (2400 – 700 =) 1700 years, approximately, to the era of Sargon II, whose era was far distant from Sargon of Akkad.
For Urukagina was, as we shall determine, a High Priest official of King Hezekiah of Judah, at the time of Sargon II/Sennacherib of Assyria (c. 700 BC, standard dating).
I propose to match Urukagina with Eliakim son of Hilkiah, generally thought to have been King Hezekiah’s Major Domo, but who was actually the High Priest.
Before we can proceed any further, though, I need to add a further crucial dimension to Eliakim son of Hilkiah from the contemporary Assyrian records.
In my university thesis (2007), I tentatively identified Eliakim with Akhimiti, whom Sargon II established at “Ashdod” (Lachish) after he had deposed the rebellious Azuri.
Akhimiti (Mitinti) of Ashdod
Here follows the dramatic sequence of events at Lachish as we learn about them in the records of the Assyrian king, Sargon II/Sennacherib, following Charles Boutflower (The Book of Isaiah, Chapters I-XXXIX, in Light of the Assyrian Monuments, London, Soc. for the Promotion of Christian Knowledge, 1930).
I wrote this in my thesis (Volume One, pp. 156-158):
Was it that Sargon II – hence, that Sennacherib – had instead referred to Lachish by the descriptive title of ‘Ashdod’, whose capture Sargon covers in detail?
Let us now follow Boutflower in his reconstruction of this somewhat complex campaign, referring to the fragment Sm. 2022 of Sargon’s Annals, which he calls “one particularly precious morsel”:[1]
The longer face [of this fragment] … has a dividing line drawn across it near the bottom. Immediately below this line, and somewhat to the left, there can be seen with the help of a magnifying-glass a group of nine cuneiform indentations arranged in three parallel horizontal rows. Even the uninitiated will easily understand that we have here a representation of the number “9”. It is this figure, then, which gives to the fragment its special interest, for it tells us, as I am about to show, “the year that the Tartan came unto Ashdod”.
Boutflower now moves on to the focal point of Assyria’s concerns: mighty ‘Ashdod’:[2]
The second difficulty in Sm. 2022 is connected with the mention of Ashdod in the part below the dividing line. According to the reckoning of time adopted on this fragment something must have happened at Ashdod at the beginning of Sargon’s ninth year, i.e. at the beginning of the tenth year, the year 712 BC, according to the better-known reckoning of the Annals. Now, when we turn to the Annals and examine the record of this tenth year, we find no mention whatever of Ashdod. Not till we come to the second and closing portion of the record for the eleventh year do we meet with the account of the famous campaign against that city.
What, then, is the solution to this second difficulty Boutflower asks? And he answers this as follows:[3]
Simply this: that the mention of Ashdod on the fragment Sm. 2022 does not refer to the siege of that town, which, as just stated, forms the second and closing event in the record of the following year, but in all probability does refer to the first of those political events which led up to the siege, viz. the coming of the Tartan to Ashdod.
To make this plain, I will now give the different accounts of the Ashdod imbroglio found in the inscriptions of Sargon, beginning with the one in the Annals (lines 215-228) already referred to, which runs thus:
“Azuri king of Ashdod, not to bring tribute his heart was set, and to the kings in his neighbourhood proposals of rebellion against Assyria he sent. Because of the evil he did, over the men of his land I changed his lordship. Akhimiti his own brother, to sovereignty over them I appointed. The Khatte [Hittites], plotting rebellion, hated his lordship; and Yatna, who had no title to the throne, who, like themselves, the reverence due to my lordship did not acknowledge, they set up over them. In the wrath of my heart, riding in my war-chariot, with my cavalry, who do not retreat from the place whither I turn my hands, to Ashdod, his royal city, I marched in haste. Ashdod, Gimtu [Gath?], Ashdudimmu … I besieged and captured. …”.
Typical Assyrian war records! Boutflower shows how they connect right through to Sargon’s Year 11, which both he and Tadmor[4] date to 711 BC:[5]
The above extract forms … the second and closing portion of the record given in the Annals under Sargon’s 11th year, 711 BC., the earlier portion of the record for that year being occupied with the account of the expedition against Mutallu of Gurgum. In the Grand Inscription of Khorsabad we meet with a very similar account, containing a few fresh particulars. The usurper Yatna, i.e. “the Cypriot”, is there styled Yamani, “the Ionian”, thus showing that he was a Greek. We are also told that he fled away to Melukhkha on the border of Egypt, but was thrown into chains by the Ethiopian king and despatched to Assyria.
….
In order to effect the deposition of the rebellious Azuri, and set his brother Akhimiti on the throne, Sargon sent forth an armed force to Ashdod. It is in all probablity the despatch of such a force, and the successful achievement of the end in view, which were recorded in the fragment Sm. 2022 below the dividing line. As Isa xx.1 informs us – and the statement, as we shall presently see, can be verified from contemporary sources – this first expedition was led by the Tartan. Possibly this may be the reason why it was not thought worthy to be recorded in the Annals under Sargon’s tenth year, 712 BC. But when we come to the eleventh year, 711 BC, and the annalist very properly and suitably records the whole series of events leading up to the siege, two things at once strike us: first, that all these events could not possibly have happened in the single year 711 BC; and secondly, as stated above, that a force must have previously been despatched at the beginning of the troubles to accomplish the deposition of Azuri and the placing of Akhimiti on the throne. On the retirement of this force sedition must again have broken out in Ashdod, for it appears that the anti-Assyrian party were able, after a longer or shorter interval, once more to get the upper hand, to expel Akhimiti, and to set up in his stead a Greek adventurer, Yatna-Yamani. The town was then strongly fortified, and surrounded by a moat.
It is at about this stage, Year 11, that Sargon was stirred into action:[6]
Meanwhile, the news of what was going on at Ashdod appears to have reached the Great King at the beginning of his eleventh year, according to the reckoning of the annalist …. So enraged was Sargon that, without waiting to collect a large force, he started off at once with a picked body of cavalry, crossed those rivers in flood, and marched with all speed to the disaffected province.
Such at least is his own account; but I shall presently adduce reasons which lead one to think that he did not reach Ashdod as speedily as we might expect from the description of his march, but stopped on his way to put down a revolt in the country of Gurgum. In thus hastening to the West Sargon tells us that he was urged on by intelligence that the whole of Southern Syria, including Judah, Edom, and Moab, as well as Philistia, was ripe for revolt, relying on ample promises of support from Pharaoh king of Egypt.
We find, as we switch to what I believe to be Sennacherib’s corresponding campaign (his Third Campaign) to discover how Assyria dealt with the Egyptian factor, that a ringleader in this sedition was king Hezekiah himself:[7]
The officials, nobles and people of Ekron, who had thrown Padi, their king, bound by (treaty to) Assyria, into fetters of iron and had given him over to Hezekiah, the Jew (Iaudai), – he kept him in confinement like an enemy, – they (lit., their heart) became afraid and called upon the Egyptian kings, the bowmen, chariots and horse of the king of Meluh-ha (Ethiopia), a countless host, and these came to their aid. In the neighborhood of the city of Altakû (Eltekeh), their ranks being drawn up before me, they offered battle. (Trusting) in the aid of Assur, my lord, I fought with them and brought about their defeat. The Egyptian charioteers and princes, together with the charioteers of the Ethiopian king, my hands took alive in the midst of the battle.
Charles Boutflower was able to deduce from the record of Sargon’s Year 10 what he considered to have been the reason why the first expedition against ‘Ashdod’ was led, not by Sargon in person, but by his ‘Turtan’.
This was because “Sargon was busy over his darling scheme, the decoration of the new palace at Dur-Sargon.
… It was with this object in view that Sargon remained “in the land”, i.e. at home, during the year 712, entrusting the first expedition to Ashdod to his Tartan, as stated in Isa xx.1”.[8]
Boutflower’s detailed chronological reconstruction of the events associated with the siege of ‘Ashdod’seems to be right in line with Tadmor’s more recent, and more clipped, reconstruction of the same events.[9] ….
[End of quotes]
This series of dramatic incidents will be what I think are right at the forefront of what we read about Urukagina and the invasions of his time (see Part Two).
Next, I attempted to identify the succession of officials at Ashdod, as named in the Annals of Sargon II, with leading figures during the reign of King Hezekiah of Judah (thesis, pp. 161-162):
Now if Sargon’s ‘Ashdod’ really were Lachish as I am proposing here, and his war were therefore being brought right into king Hezekiah’s Judaean territory, then we might even hold out some hope of being able to identify, with Hezekian officials, the succession of rulers of ‘Ashdod’ whom Sargon names. I refer to Azuri, Yatna-Yamani and Akhimiti. The first and the last of these names are Hebrew. The middle ones, Yatna-Yamani, are generally thought to be Greek-related, as we saw above; but Tadmor supports the view of Winckler and others that Yamani at least “was of local Palestinian origin”; being likely the equivalent of either Imnâ or Imna‛.[10] ….
Hezekiah had, much to Assyria’s fury, enlarged the territory of his kingdom by absorbing Philistia, and had placed captains over key cities. This would no doubt have included those governors with Jewish names in the Philistine cities. Thus Sennacherib, as we saw, refers to a Padi (Pedaiah) in Ekron and a Tsidqa (Zedekiah) in Ashkelon. As for Lachish, we could expect that the king of Jerusalem might have entrusted to only a very high official the responsibility of so important a fort. I propose to identify Sargon’s:
AzURI with the high priest URIah … most notably in the time of Hezekiah’s father, Ahaz (2 Kings 16:10-11; cf. Isaiah 8:1-4);
YatNA with the ill-fated ShebNA … of Hezekiah’s time; and
AKHI-Miti (Azuri’s brother) with Hezekiah’s chief official, EliAKIM…. Akhi-miti correspondingly appears as Mitinti (thought to be Hebrew, Mattaniah … as the ruler of ‘Ashdod’ in Sennacherib’s Third Campaign account.
[End of quote]
Here I am primarily interested in Eliakim as Akhimiti (Mitinti),and, potentially, now, as Urukagina.
The prophet Jeremiah
The final piece to be fitted into the jigsaw will be to recall my further identification of Eliakim son of Hilkiah with the great prophet Jeremiah son of Hilkiah (of numerous other alter egos as well), the latter being so vital – as I hope to show – towards the proper understanding of Urukagina of Lagash and his great teachings of reform.
For the Eliakim/Jeremiah connection, see e.g. my article:
This fusion, Eliakim/Jeremiah son of Hilkiah, can be achieved only with my radical identification of the reforming King Hezekiah of Judah with the reforming King Josiah of Judah. This connection is perhaps best explained in my article:
I hope to be able to show that Jeremiah (also Eliakim) son of Hilkiah matches very well with Urukagina of Lagash and Girsu (my Jerusalem), whose famous laws and reforms (inspiring, along with Isaiah, the great Reformation of King Hezekiah/Josiah) will be found to have been later Judean, rather than most ancient Sumerian.
While a lot of the above still holds good – for example the revised era and geography, the great Reform of the time – it now seems that Urukagina himself, though, as Lugal, “King”, is far more likely to have been the reforming King of Jerusalem at the time, rather than his reform-urging prophet and potential governor of Lachish.
Let us reconsider our main character, Urukagina, now as Lugal.
Taking the following account of Urukagina from the Sumerian Shakespeare:
A Sumerian king. There are no known images of Urukagina. This terra cotta figure is from the city of Ur and is dated in a later period. The king carries a shepherd’s flail, a symbol of authority, and he stands before an offering table. He wears a shepherd’s hat, the crown of a Sumerian king.
Mackey’s (previous) comment: Urukagina is also called ensi (governor) of the city of Lagash. Eliakim, son of Hilkiah, is wrongly thought to have been Major Domo when, in fact, he was the High Priest. This office may possibly be indicated by the symbols above, “shepherd’s flail … and he stands before an offering table”.
Urukagina reigned for seven years in the city of Lagash, sometime around 2375 B.C. (Sumerian dates are never very certain). The pronunciation of his name is Uru-ka-gina, though he is also known as Iri-ka-gina and Uru-inim-gina. His signature is shown at the bottom of the page [at the end of this article].
Mackey’s comment: “… 2375 B.C.” The era c. 2400 BC (as a round number) is more befitting of the time of the Great Genesis (Noachic) Flood.
As the ensi (ruler, governor) of the city of Lagash, he followed a long line of powerful monarchs that began with Ur-Nanshe and continued for several generations with Eannatum and Enmetena. During recent years, however, the power and prestige of Lagash seemed to be on the decline.
Mackey’s comment: The correct order, and identifications, of these governors of Lagash (if that is what they all were), Ur-Nanshe, Eannatum and Enmetana, may need now seriously to be re-assessed.
Urukagina may not have been of royal descent, since he did not assume the rulership by the normal means of royal succession and he never signed himself as dumu, “son of,” which seems to indicate his father was not a high-ranking nobleman with a title worth mentioning. ….
Mackey’s (previous) comment: If Urukagina was a High Priest, then he – while not being of the royal line – would, nonetheless, have been a man of the greatest distinction.
Urukagina’s immediate predecessor was ensi Lugalanda, who had a reputation for greed and corruption. Lugalanda seized control of the most important temples, those of the gods Ningirsu and Shulshagana and the goddess Bau. He placed them under the administration of an official that he appointed who was not, as formerly the case, a priest. Lugalanda also appointed himself, his wife Baranamtarra, and other family members, as administrators of the temples. He referred to the temples as the private property of the ensi. He no longer mentioned the names of deities in temple documents and he levied taxes on the priesthood. Lugalanda and his wife became the largest landholders in the region. His wife shared in the ensi’s power, managing her own private estates and those of the Bau temple. She sent diplomatic missions to neighboring states and she bought and sold slaves. (source: “The Creation of Patriarchy,” by Gerda Lerner)
Mackey’s (previous) comment: Lugalanda would presumably be the rebellious Azuri of the Assyrian records, who may also have been the corrupt priest, Uriah, at the time of King Ahaz of Judah. Nepotism appears to have been rife.
Mackey’s (revised) comment: Lugalanda would likely have been the corrupt and idolatrous king, Ahaz of Judah.
Tensions between the ensi and the community increased. On his foundation cones (below) Urukagina describes the prevailing conditions for the common people. Their boats were seized by the chief of the boatmen. Their sheep were appropriated by the head herdsman, and their fish stores were confiscated by the fisheries inspector. The “men of the ensi” cut down the orchards of the poor and they conscripted workers to labor in their fields. Court officials were “everywhere.” The ensi took the best land for himself and used the sacred oxen from the temples to plow his fields. The temple officials were also greedy and corrupt.
They charged excessive fees to perform their religious rituals and to bury the dead. They took bribes, levied onerous taxes which they shared with the ensi, and they likewise used the temple oxen to plow their fields. Although these conditions had existed to some degree since time immemorial (“from distant days”) they seemed to become much worse during the reign of Lugalanda.
Mackey’s (previous) comment: This is pure Jeremiah, and examples could be greatly multiplied. Here is just one relevant comment:
Jeremiah’s critique of leaders is born from his compassion for the people.
“Woe!” This passage begins with the cry that marks an oracle of destruction.
It is a hook that the audience can’t ignore.
Corrupt leadership
Jeremiah has his eye fixed in particular on the leaders: “Woe to the shepherds who destroy and scatter the sheep of my pasture!” (Jeremiah 23:1). The shepherd is a common ancient metaphor for leaders, and for kings in particular. That leaders bear more responsibility than their people for social fate and for social injustice is a view shared by the prophet Ezekiel, who employs this same metaphor to speak of the exile of Judah in Babylon (Ezekiel 34).
There is a persistent ethical thread throughout the Hebrew Bible: God requires the community to be ruled with justice and righteousness, which is manifested in the treatment of the alien, the orphan, and the widow (Jeremiah 22:3-4). But rulers who seek their own fortune, who expand their houses and enrich their coffers at the expense of the poor are in egregious violation of God’s covenant, and will be held accountable (Jeremiah 22:13-17).
In the contemporary context, political and religious leaders give us ample opportunity to consider how corruption at the highest levels leads to the increasing devastation of the poor and the marginalized. Recent White House policies aimed at deterring immigration are separating immigrant families at the United States borders. The trauma this poses for children and their families is an example of a breach of care for the alien and the poor.
In this passage, the social disintegration of the exile at the hands of the Babylonian empire is the responsibility of rulers:
“It is you [shepherds] who have scattered my flock, and have driven them away, and have not attended to them” (Jeremiah 23:2).
The prophet wrestles with the question of who is to blame for suffering and political trauma, and offers two answers: It is you [shepherds] who have driven them into exile (Jeremiah 23:2) and it is I [God] who have driven them into exile (Jeremiah 23:3). There is a poetic cadence to this repetition that on the one hand holds corrupt leadership accountable for their oppression of the poor, but also insists that it is God who is ultimately powerful. This is a tension that Jeremiah carefully holds. ….
Mackey’s (revised) comment: Urukagina would be King Hezekiah (Josiah) of Judah, whose extensive reforms were inspired by the prophets, Micah (= Zephaniah); Isaiah; and Eliakim/Jeremiah.
…. Urukagina claimed he was acting on behalf of boatmen, shepherds, fisherman and farmers, and he implied he was aided by the priests. The priesthood of Lagash had always been very influential, but if the temple officials thought they were playing the role of “king maker” by bringing Urukagina to power, they would later have cause to regret it.
Urukagina, ensi of Lagash.
The examples of cuneiform writing on this page are from tablets and from clay “tags” that were used to identify various statues.
The statues themselves were destroyed long ago in the many wars that occurred in the region.
… Urukagina soon set about making some changes. He dismissed many corrupt officials, the chief boatmen, head herdsmen and fishery inspectors who had seized private property. He confiscated the estates of the ensi and placed them under the jurisdiction of the gods (i.e., the temples). Urukagina removed many court officials, including supervisors who controlled the grain tax. He dismissed the priests who had taken bribes and the temple administrators who had shared tax revenues with the ensi.
Mackey’s comment: Ultimately, it would be the Lord himself who would set about the removal of the corrupt and the sinful ones (e.g., Jeremiah 8:1-15):
‘At that time, declares the LORD, the bones of the kings and officials of Judah, the bones of the priests and prophets, and the bones of the people of Jerusalem will be removed from their graves.
They will be exposed to the sun and the moon and all the stars of the heavens, which they have loved and served and which they have followed and consulted and worshiped. They will not be gathered up or buried, but will be like dung lying on the ground.
Wherever I banish them, all the survivors of this evil nation will prefer death to life, declares the LORD Almighty.’
Sin and Punishment
Say to them, ‘This is what the LORD says: “ ‘When people fall down, do they not get up? When someone turns away, do they not return?
Why then have these people turned away? Why does Jerusalem always turn away? They cling to deceit; they refuse to return.
I have listened attentively, but they do not say what is right. None of them repent of their wickedness, saying, “What have I done?” Each pursues their own course like a horse charging into battle.
Even the stork in the sky knows her appointed seasons, and the dove, the swift and the thrush observe the time of their migration. But my people do not know the requirements of the LORD.
‘How can you say, “We are wise, for we have the law of the LORD,” when actually the lying pen of the scribes has handled it falsely?
The wise will be put to shame; they will be dismayed and trapped. Since they have rejected the word of the LORD, what kind of wisdom do they have?
Therefore I will give their wives to other men and their fields to new owners. From the least to the greatest, all are greedy for gain; prophets and priests alike, all practice deceit.
They dress the wound of my people as though it were not serious. “Peace, peace,” they say, when there is no peace.
Are they ashamed of their detestable conduct? No, they have no shame at all; they do not even know how to blush. So they will fall among the fallen; they will be brought down when they are punished, says the LORD.
‘I will take away their harvest, declares the LORD. There will be no grapes on the vine. There will be no figs on the tree, and their leaves will wither. What I have given them will be taken from them’.
Why are we sitting here? Gather together! Let us flee to the fortified cities and perish there! For the LORD our God has doomed us to perish and given us poisoned water to drink, because we have sinned against him.
We hoped for peace but no good has come, for a time of healing but there is only terror.
Then Urukagina set limits on the amount that the priests could collect for their religious rituals and their fees for burying the dead. He cancelled debt‑slavery and declared a general amnesty for the citizens of Lagash, even for criminals, even for thieves and murderers (“their prison he cleared out”). Last but not least, he provided charity for the poor and the elderly. In all of these actions Urukagina claimed he was directed by the gods.
Mackey’s comment: “… directed by the gods”. Originally, by God.
Comparative examples of Jeremiah’s concern for the poor could be multiplied.
E.g. Jeremiah 2:26, 34-35; 5:26-31:
As a thief is disgraced when he is caught, so the people of Israel are disgraced— they, their kings and their officials, their priests and their prophets.
….
On your clothes is found the lifeblood of the innocent poor, though you did not catch them breaking in. Yet in spite of all this you say, ‘I am innocent; he is not angry with me.’
Among my people are the wicked who lie in wait like men who snare birds and like those who set traps to catch people. Like cages full of birds, their houses are full of deceit; they have become rich and powerful and have grown fat and sleek. Their evil deeds have no limit; they do not seek justice. They do not promote the case of the fatherless; they do not defend the just cause of the poor. Should I not punish them for this?” declares the Lord. “Should I not avenge myself on such a nation as this?
A horrible and shocking thing has happened in the land: The prophets prophesy lies, the priests rule by their own authority, and my people love it this way. But what will you do in the end?
Mackey’s comment: This also wonderfully reflects the sweeping religious and socio-political/economic reform of Judah’s greatest king after David, Hezekiah/Josiah:
“A son will be born to the house of David by the name of Josiah.” (1 Kings 13:2)
Josiah may not be that widely known, but along with Hezekiah, he was one of Judah’s most saintly kings. Like Christ, his birth was prophesied hundreds of years beforehand (1 Kings 13:1-2). He brought religious reform to his kingdom, restored worship at the Temple of Jerusalem, publicly read the Scriptures and defended the poor and needy (2 Chronicles 34:1-3,8, 29-33; Jeremiah 22:16).
The Second Book of Kings says: “There had never before been any king like him nor will there ever be one after him who turned to the Lord with all his heart and all his soul and all his might according to the law of Moses.” (2 Kings 23:25) He was one of the last kings to reign before Jerusalem was destroyed by the Babylonians and the people were driven into exile.
Josiah not only served God from the heart, but he also led his nation to conversion. As Scripture later says: “He followed the right course by reforming the people and eliminating loathsome and abominable practices. He kept his heart fixed on God, and in lawless times he made godliness prevail.” (Sirach 49:2-3)
All of these reforms were carefully recorded on Urukagina’s cones and tablets to ensure that “the orphan or widow to the powerful will not be subjugated.” Urukagina’s “Liberty Cones” are the world’s first documented effort to establish the basic legal rights of citizens.
Mackey’s comment: This last comment, I would suggest, is quite false.
Urukagina’s reform was simply a renewed implementation of the Mosaïc charter written almost a millennium earlier.
Some of the credit must go to Enmetena’s earlier efforts at reform (see Enmetena Translation), but Urukagina’s reforms are far more comprehensive. There’s nothing else like them in the annals of ancient history. Unfortunately, they don’t get the credit they truly deserve, even though in the evolution of human society they are just as important as the legal codes of Ur-Namma or Hammurabi, the Magna Carta, or the American Bill of Rights. (See a complete translation of the Liberty Cones, along with some explanatory comments.)
As noted earlier: The correct order, and identifications, of these governors of Lagash (if that is what they all were), Ur-Nanshe, Eannatum and Enmetana, may need now seriously to be re-assessed.
Conclusion: Urukagina was the reforming King Hezekiah/Josiah, inspired by those long-lived prophets, Isaiah and Jeremiah.
Part Two: Lugalzagesi identified
As noted in my article:
King Lugalzagesi joins the list of ‘camera-shy’ ancient potentates
“A Sumerian king. There are no known images of Lugalzagesi”.
Sumerian Shakespeare
would suggest to me that this great ruler must have had one or more other substantial alter egos.
From what we have read in Part One, it becomes fairly apparent as to who Lugalzagesi, in a revised context, must actually have been: namely, Sargon II of Assyria (who is also Sennacherib).
Once again, taking the following account from the Sumerian Shakespeare:
http://sumerianshakespeare.com/70701/77001.html I shall be adding some pertinent comments to test whether Lugalzagesi can make an adequate invading foreign ruler at the time of King Hezekiah of Judah.
One of Urukagina’s “Liberty Cones.” The cone was covered with inscriptions written to the gods, then buried near the foundations of a new temple. Some historians like to portray Urukagina as a leader of a populist revolution in which freemen battled against the aristocracy and wealthy landowners. But Urukagina’s reforms went only so far; he was merely trying to correct the worst abuses of power, he wasn’t trying to overturn the basic structures of society. Mackey’s comment: This last comment would basically sum up the situation. Other historians like to emphasize his role in transitioning the Sumerians from a “temple economy,” where the temples were the administrative centers of government, to a modern secular society based on royal power. In this regard he would be like an ancestor of Henry the VIII, in the age old struggle between church and state … Mackey’s comment: Regarding Henry the so-called VIIIth, see e.g. my recent article. Chewing over the House of Tudor(8) Chewing over the House of Tudor | Damien Mackey – Academia.edu … but Urukagina wasn’t an anti-religious revolutionary or an iconoclast. The estates that he confiscated from the ensis he gave to the temples. Still other historians point to his claim of working on behalf of the gods to right the wrongs of society as a self-justifying assertion of the divine right of kings, but this ground had already been covered by his predecessors, Eannatum and Enmetena, for instance. Although there’s no reason to doubt the sincerity of his efforts, the simple result of his reformations was more power for himself. Evidence for this is found in the second year of his reign, when Urukagina changed his title from ensi (“ruler or governor,” which the monarchs of Lagash usually called themselves) to the loftier title of lugal, meaning “king.” Mackey’s comment: Mention here of “king” stopped me right in my tracks with regard to my former effort to associate Urukagina with Eliakim/Akhimiti/ Jeremiah. A possibility is that Hezekiah was co-regent at Lachish for King Ahaz of Judah, before becoming the sole king in Jerusalem. Mackey’s further comment: Having said that about Lugal, “King”, it is most interesting to learn that: https://www.joshobrouwers.com/articles/evolution-sumerian-kingship/ “Lugal-Zagesi is said to have had no less than fifty LUGALs beneath him”. Cf. Isaiah 10:8: “Assyria [Sargon II] says, ‘Aren’t my commanders all kings? Can’t they do whatever they like?’” There has been some speculation on whether or not Urukagina enacted his reforms into law or if he was just paying lip service to social reform as a way to increase his popularity with his subjects (many kings announce high-minded reforms at the beginning of their reigns, only to proceed with “business as usual”). With Urukagina there can be little doubt as to his intentions. He repeated his reforms on other foundation cones. The reforms were the central event of his reign, and they would end up costing him dearly, as will later be shown. As for whether or not he enacted the reforms into law: Urukagina was the king, his word was law. This alone was enough to guarantee that the reforms were enacted. ….
These social reforms weren’t his only concern. He ruled during a period of political instability and civil war between the Sumerian city-states [sic]. His main antagonist was Lugalzagesi, the king of Umma who was making a bid to conquer all of Sumer and Akkad (and beyond). Mackey’s comment: The name Lugalzagesi (with various alternative spellings, such as Lugalzaggessi and Lugalzagissi), just like the name Sargon, which means “True King”, shares at least the King element. Umma is problematical. It is yet another of those supposedly Sumerian places that drops off the political map, as we read in e.g.: Prince of Lagash(8) Prince of Lagash | Damien Mackey – Academia.edu Umma may either be a well-known place in Sumer under a different name (below), or it may be the name for a place not in Sumer: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/UmmaUmma (Sumerian: 𒄑𒆵𒆠 ummaKI;[1] in modern Dhi Qar Province in Iraq, formerly also called Gishban) was an ancient city in Sumer. There is some scholarly debate about the Sumerian and Akkadian names for this site.[2] Lugalzagesi made several attacks on the kingdom of Lagash. One administrative tablet from this period is dated “the month that the man of Uruk came a third time.” It seems like Lagash was under repeated attacks from two different cities, Umma and Uruk, but in this case they are essentially the same. Mackey’s comment: “… came a third time”. Sargon II had sent his Turtan against Lachish/Ashdod (Isaiah 20:1), then the Assyrian army came again, after Iatna-Iamani had revolted. Then, as Sennacherib, Sargon II famously laid siege to the mighty fort-city, Lachish. And, as we read above, “Uruk and Umma … [may] essentially [be] the same”. Though, as we read on, the two names will now be distinguished. Although Lugalzagesi was originally the king of Umma, he had recently moved his capital to Uruk, so “the man of Umma,” as he’s called on another tablet, and “the man of Uruk,” both refer to Lugalzagesi. Umma and Uruk would be allies in the war against Urukagina, since both cities were ruled by Lugalzagesi. Three (or more) attacks on Urukagina within the span of seven years is a bit much, even by the Sumerian standards of internecine warfare. The reason for this was the long standing animosity between Umma and Lagash. They were at war for more than a century, battling for control of the Guedena, the fertile land between the two cities. Mackey’s comment: Guedena, Gu-Edin, I have identified, basically, as the ancient Eden, which became Jerusalem. Although Lugalzagesi was currently ‘the Man of Uruk’, he was born and raised as a royal prince of Umma. As such, he would have grown up hating Lagash and dreaming of the day when he could defeat it. The Sumerian Hundred Years War was about to culminate into its final battle. Urukagina was focused on his social reformations. He wasn’t interested in foreign wars abroad or Sumerian civil wars at home. Nonetheless, although social reforms were Urukagina’s primary concern, he spent most of his time defending his kingdom. Mackey’s comment: This description fits very well with phases during the reign of King Hezekiah of Judah. …. The gloominess of Urukagina’s situation can be sensed in a fragment from a heavily damaged foundation cone (CDLI P222617):
n lines missing “For my part, what did I have of it?” I said to him: “I did not do any violent act, but the dogs {the enemy} today are … my city(?)” n lines missing Girsu was surrounded by it {the enemy army}, and Urukagina exchanged blows with it with weapons. A wall of it he {Lugalzagesi} made grow there, and dogs he made live there.
He went away to his city, but a second time he came … rest of column missing
The “wall” is probably the enemy army surrounding the city, or it may be a siege wall constructed by the invaders to trap the civilians and defenders inside the city, cut off from outside food supplies, in order to starve them into submission. The prolonged siege of the city caused the enemy “dogs” (soldiers) to live there for a while. Mackey’s comment: This would be the siege of Jerusalem by Sennacherib. 2 Kings 18:13-17: In the fourteenth year of King Hezekiah’s reign, Sennacherib king of Assyria attacked all the fortified cities of Judah and captured them. So Hezekiah king of Judah sent this message to the king of Assyria at Lachish: ‘I have done wrong. Withdraw from me, and I will pay whatever you demand of me’. The king of Assyria exacted from Hezekiah king of Judah three hundred talents of silver and thirty talents of gold. So Hezekiah gave him all the silver that was found in the Temple of the Lord and in the treasuries of the royal palace. At this time Hezekiah king of Judah stripped off the gold with which he had covered the doors and doorposts of the Temple of the Lord, and gave it to the king of Assyria. Sennacherib Threatens Jerusalem The king of Assyria sent his supreme commander, his chief officer and his field commander with a large army, from Lachish to King Hezekiah at Jerusalem. They came up to Jerusalem and stopped at the aqueduct of the Upper Pool, on the road to the Washerman’s Field. …. Urukagina’s social reforms now came back to haunt him. He had thoroughly alienated the aristocracy, who highly resented any reduction of their royal prerogatives, even in the slightest degree. Throughout the ages, the aristocracy has always been the military class. They justified their privileged lifestyle by bringing their armies of peasants to the battlefield when summoned by the king, by being recklessly brave in combat, and by dying heroically in defense of the realm. Many a king in history has suffered tragedy and downfall after alienating his aristocracy. Urukagina was no exception. Now, when he needed them most, he could not rely on his lords and noblemen. Their defense of his kingdom would be lukewarm at best. They may have even refused to defend him, or with a few bribes and blandishments they could easily be persuaded to switch sides. It didn’t help matters much that Urukagina had also alienated the clergy.
Mackey’s comment: “Their defense of his kingdom would be lukewarm at best. They may have even refused to defend him …”. Indeed, there was a deep division between the reform-inspired King of Judah and his aristocracy, including certain leading priests. Thus Isaiah 30:1-5 ‘Woe to the obstinate children’, declares the Lord, ‘to those who carry out plans that are not mine, forming an alliance, but not by my Spirit, heaping sin upon sin;
who go down to Egypt without consulting me; who look for help to Pharaoh’s protection, to Egypt’s shade for refuge. But Pharaoh’s protection will be to your shame, Egypt’s shade will bring you disgrace. Though they have officials in Zoan and their envoys have arrived in Hanes, everyone will be put to shame because of a people useless to them, who bring neither help nor advantage, but only shame and disgrace’. And Isaiah 30:7-17: Therefore I call her [Egypt] Rahab the Do-Nothing. Go now, write it on a tablet for them, inscribe it on a scroll, that for the days to come it may be an everlasting witness. For these are rebellious people, deceitful children, children unwilling to listen to the Lord’s instruction. They say to the seers, ‘See no more visions!’ and to the prophets, ‘Give us no more visions of what is right! Tell us pleasant things, prophesy illusions. Leave this way, get off this path, and stop confronting us with the Holy One of Israel!’ Therefore this is what the Holy One of Israel says: ‘Because you have rejected this message, relied on oppression and depended on deceit, this sin will become for you like a high wall, cracked and bulging, that collapses suddenly, in an instant. It will break in pieces like pottery, shattered so mercilessly that among its pieces not a fragment will be found for taking coals from a hearth or scooping water out of a cistern’. This is what the Sovereign Lord, the Holy One of Israel, says: ‘In repentance and rest is your salvation, in quietness and trust is your strength, but you would have none of it. You said, ‘No, we will flee on horses.’ Therefore you will flee! You said, ‘We will ride off on swift horses.’ Therefore your pursuers will be swift! A thousand will flee at the threat of one; at the threat of five you will all flee away, till you are left like a flagstaff on a mountaintop, like a banner on a hill’. All this is proven by the fact that Lagash eventually lost the war with Umma. This had seldom happened. Mackey’s comment: True. King Hezekiah and his kingdom of Judah suffered a comprehensive defeat at the hands of King Sennacherib of Assyria during the latter’s Third Campaign. But, as Isaiah had divined, the blasphemous King of Assyria would eventually get his come-uppance big time (Isaiah 37:21-36). For, about a decade later, Sennacherib’s massive Assyrian army of 185,000 would be completely routed near Shechem (“Bethulia”), thanks to the courageous intervention of the Simeonite heroine, Judith. Through generations of conflict, under the leadership of Ur-Nanshe, Eannatum, and Enmetena, Lagash had always been the victor and Umma the vanquished. Now, under the leadership of Urukagina, bereft of effective military support from his disgruntled nobility because of his social reforms, the roles had been reversed. Lugalzagesi, “the Man of Umma,” thoroughly sacked the city of Lagash, as if to avenge a century of humiliating defeats. The savagery of the attack, especially the looting of the temples, shocked the Sumerians [sic]. Sumerian civil wars were usually a lot more “civilized.” (See “The Man of Umma” for a translation of a tablet detailing Lugalzagesi’s plundering of Lagash.)
A letter from the high priest Lu-enna addressed to the king of Lagash, believed to be Urukagina, informing him that his son had been killed in combat. Urukagina survived the sacking of Lagash and moved his capital to the smaller neighboring city of Girsu. He was still a king, but his kingdom was considerably reduced. Lugalzagesi followed him to Girsu and twice besieged the city. Soon afterward, Urukagina disappears from the historic record. Mackey’s comment: King Hezekiah was always located at Girsu, my Jerusalem. The invading king did indeed proceed from Lachish (Lagash) to Jerusalem (Girsu). The kingdom of Judah, indeed, was “considerably reduced” by the Assyrians. And little is told of Hezekiah/Josiah, even in the Scriptures, after approximately the mid-point of his reign. It’s not known for certain how he died, but the possibilities are endless. Perhaps he died of natural causes. Maybe he was captured and executed, or he killed himself rather than being taken alive. Perhaps he was murdered by an unseen assassin in a palace coup by someone trying to curry favor from Lugalzagesi. Hopefully he died in combat, in one last heroic battle, in defense of his kingdom and his vision of a better world. Mackey’s comment:Sumerian Shakespeare gets this last wish. For it may now be “known for certain how [the king] died …”. King Hezekiah/Josiah did die “in combat, in one last heroic battle, in defense of his kingdom and his vision of a better world”. Thus 2 Chronicles 35:20-27: The Death of Josiah After all this, when Josiah had set the temple in order, Necho king of Egypt went up to fight at Carchemish on the Euphrates, and Josiah marched out to meet him in battle. But Necho sent messengers to him, saying, ‘What quarrel is there, king of Judah, between you and me? It is not you I am attacking at this time, but the house with which I am at war. God has told me to hurry; so stop opposing God, who is with me, or he will destroy you’. Josiah, however, would not turn away from him, but disguised himself to engage him in battle. He would not listen to what Necho had said at God’s command but went to fight him on the plain of Megiddo. Archers shot King Josiah, and he told his officers, ‘Take me away; I am badly wounded’. So they took him out of his chariot, put him in his other chariot and brought him to Jerusalem, where he died. He was buried in the tombs of his ancestors, and all Judah and Jerusalem mourned for him. Jeremiah composed laments for Josiah, and to this day all the male and female singers commemorate Josiah in the laments. These became a tradition in Israel and are written in the Laments. The other events of Josiah’s reign and his acts of devotion in accordance with what is written in the Law of the Lord— all the events, from beginning to end, are written in the book of the kings of Israel and Judah.
“It came to pass in the days of Amraphel king of Shinar, Arioch king of Ellasar, Chedorlaomer king of Elam, and Tidal king of nations, that they made war with
Bera king of Sodom, Birsha king of Gomorrah, Shinab king of Admah,
Shemeber king of Zeboiim, and the king of Bela (that is, Zoar) ….
In the fourteenth year Chedorlaomer and the kings that were with him”.
Many scholars believe Amraphel, the leader of the alliance that fought against Abraham, was none other than Hammurabi:
Easton’s Bible Dictionary states, “It is now found that Amraphel (or Ammirapaltu) is the Khammu-rabi whose name appears on recently-discovered monuments.”[1]
The New Unger’s Bible Dictionary states, “Generally identified with Hammurabi the Great of the First Dynasty of Babylon.”[2]
The International Standard Bible Encyclopedia states, “There is no doubt that the identification of Amraphel with the Hammurabi of the Babylonian inscriptions is the best that has yet been proposed, and though there are certain difficulties therein, these may turn out to be apparent rather than real, when we know more of Babylonian history … Amraphel is mentioned first, which, if he be really the Babylonian Hammurabi, is easily comprehensible, for his renown to all appearance exceeded that of Chedorlaomer.”[3]
Easton’s Bible Dictionary describes Hammurabi [Khammu-rabi] as “The most famous king of the dynasty was Khammu-rabi, who united Babylonia under one rule, and made Babylon its capital … Khammu-rabi, whose name is also read Ammi-rapaltu or Amraphel by some scholars”[4]
Hastings’ 5 Volume Dictionary of the Bible states, “Schraeder, who suggested that the name was a corruption for Amraphi, was the first to identify this king with Khammurabi, the 6th king of the 1st dynasty of Babylon. The cuneiform inscriptions inform us that Khammurabi was king of Babylon and North Babylonia; that he rebelled against the supremacy of Elam, that he overthrew his rival Eri-aku, king of Larasa, and after conquering Sumer and Accad, was the first to make a united kingdom of Babylonia.”[5]
Nelson’s Topical Bible Index states, “identified by some as the Hammurabi of the monuments[6]
AMRAPHEL NOT HAMMURABI?
However, not all scholars link Amraphel to Hammurabi:
The International Standard Bible Encyclopedia also states, “There would therefore appear to be no sound reason for maintaining that Amraphel can be identified with Hammurabi, particularly as such a procedure is unsubstantiated by Mesopotamian archeology and history. If Hammurabi were really Amraphel, it is difficult to see why he should be occupying a subordinate position to that of Chedorlaomer, unless Hammurabi happened to be a crown prince at the time. But here it has to be recognized that the Palestinian expedition itself has not been discovered to date among the recorded campaigns of Hammurabi. The identity of Amraphel king of Shinar must therefore remain uncertain for the moment.”[7]
The New Bible Dictionary states, “The equation with Hammurapi is unlikely.”[8]
Nelson’s Illustrated Bible Dictionary states, “While some have tried to identify Amraphel with Hammurabi, founder of the first Babylonian dynasty, all efforts to identify him or pinpoint the location of Shinar have failed.”[9]
The New Unger’s Bible Dictionary states of Amraphel, “formerly generally identified with Hammurabi the Great of the First Dynasty of Babylon (c. 1728-1689). This Amraphel-Hammurabi equation always was difficult linguistically but is now also disproved chronologically.”[10]
[End of quotes]
According to my own reconstruction of history, the famous Hammurabi was far later than the time of Abram and the four kings of Genesis 14:1, later by approximately a millennium. King Hammurabi and his contemporaries belonged most definitely, I believe, to the time of the biblical King Solomon of Israel. On this, see e.g. my articles:
Thus begins the biblical tale, in chapter 14 of Genesis, of an ancient war that pitted an alliance of four kingdoms of the East against five kings in Canaan. It is a tale that has evolved some of the most intense debate among scholars, for it connects the story of Abraham, the first Hebrew Patriarch, with a specific non-Hebrew event, and thus affords objective substantiation of the biblical record of the birth of a nation.
“….For many decades the critics of the Old Testament seemed to prevail; then, as the nineteenth century was drawing to a close, the scholarly and religious worlds were astounded by the discovery of Babylonian tablets naming Khedorla’omer, Ariokh, and Tidhal in a tale not unlike the biblical one.
“The discovery was announced in a lecture by Theophilus Pinches to the Victoria Institute, London, in 1897. Having examined several tablets belonging to the Spartoli Collection in the British Museum, he found that they describe a war of wide-ranging magnitude, in which a king of Elam, Kudur-laghamar, led an alliance of rulers that included one named Eri-aku and another named Tud-ghula – names that easily could have been transformed into Hebrew as Khedor-la’omer, Ariokh, and Tidhal. Accompanying his published lecture with a painstaking transcript of the cuneiform writing and a translation thereof, Pinches could confidently claim that the biblical tale had indeed been supported by an independent Mesopotamian source.
“With justified excitement the Assyriologists of that time agreed with Pinches reading of the cuneiform names.
The tablets indeed spoke of “Kudur-Laghamar, king of the land of Elam”; all scholars agreed that it was a perfect Elamite royal name, the prefix Kudur (“Servant”) having been a component in the names of several Elamite kings, and Laghamar being the Elamite epithet-name for a certain deity. It was agreed that the second name, spelled Eri-e-a-ku in the Babylonian cuneiform script, stood for the original Sumerian ERI.AKU, meaning “Servant of the god Aku,” Aku being a variant of the name of Nannar/Sin. It is known from a number of inscriptions that Elamite rulers of Larsa bore the name “Servant of Sin,” and there was therefore little difficulty in agreeing that the biblical Eliasar, the royal city of the king Ariokh, was in fact Larsa. There was also unanimous agreement among the scholars for accepting that the Babylonian text’s Tud-ghula was the equivalent of the biblical “Tidhal, king of Go’im”; and they agreed that by Go’im the Book of Genesis referred to the “nation-hordes” whom the cuneiform tablets listed as allies of Khedorla’omer.
“Here, then, was the missing proof – not only of the veracity of the Bible and of the existence of Abraham, but also of an international event in which he had been involved! “….The second discovery was announced by Vincent Scheil, who reported that he had found among the tablets in the Imperial Ottoman Museum in Constantinople a letter from the well-known Babylonian King Hammurabi, which mentions the very same Kudur-laghamar! Because the letter was addressed to a king of Larsa, Father Scheil concluded that the three were contemporaries and thus matched three of the four biblical kings of the East – Hammurabi being none other than “Amraphael king of Shin’ar.”
“…. However, when subsequent research convinced most scholars that Hammurabi reigned much later (from 1792 to 1750 B.C., according to The Cambridge Ancient History), the synchronization seemingly achieved by Scheil fell apart, and the whole bearing of the discovered inscriptions – even those reported by Pinches – came into doubt. Ignored were the pleas of Pinches that no matter with whom the three named kings were to be identified – that even if Khedorla’omer, Ariokh, and Tidhal of the cuneiform texts were not contemporaries of Hammurabi – the text’s tale with its three
names was still “a remarkable historical coincidence, and deserves recognition as such.” In 1917, Alfred Jeremias (Die sogenanten Kedorlaomer-Texte) attempted to revive interest in the subject; but the scholarly community preferred to treat the Spartoli tablets with benign neglect.
“….Yet the scholarly consensus that the biblical tale and the Babylonian texts drew on a much earlier, common source impels us to revive the plea of Pinches and his central argument: How can cuneiform texts, affirming the biblical background of a major war and naming three of the biblical kings, be ignored? Should the evidence – crucial, as we shall show, to the understanding of fateful years – be discarded simply because Amraphel was not Hammurabi?
“The answer is that the Hammurabi letter found by Scheil should not have sidetracked the discovery reported by Pinches, because Scheil misread the letter. According to his rendition, Hammurabi promised a reward to Sin-Idinna, the king of Larsa, for his “heroism on the day of Khedorla’omer.” This implied that the two were allies in a war against Khedorla’omer and thus contemporaries of that king of Elam.
It was on this point that Scheil’s find was discredited, for it contradicted both the biblical assertion that the three kings were allies and known historical facts: Hammurabi treated Larsa not as an ally but as an adversary, boasting that he “overthrew Larsa in battle,” and attacked its sacred precinct “with the mighty weapon which the gods had given him.”
“A close examination of the actual text of Hammurabi’s letter reveals that in his eagerness to prove the Hammurabi-Amraphel identification, Father Scheil reversed the letter’s meaning: Hammurabi was not offering as a reward to return certain goddesses to the sacred precinct (the Emutbal) of Larsa; rather, he was demanding their return to Babylon from Larsa.
“….The incident of the abduction of the goddesses had thus occurred in earlier times; they were held captive in the Emutbal “from the days of Khedorla’omer”; and Hammurabi was now demanding their return to Babylon, from where Khedorla’omer had taken them captive. This can only mean that Khedorla’omer’s days were long before Hammurabi’s time.
“Supporting our reading of the Hammurabi letter found by Father Scheil in the Constantinople Museum is the fact that Hammurabi repeated the demand for the return of the goddesses to Babylon in yet another stiff message to Sin-Idinna, this time sending it by the hand of high military officers. This second letter is in the British Museum (No. 23,131) and its text was published by L.W. King in The Letters and Inscriptions of Hammurabi.
“….That the goddesses were to be returned from Larsa to Babylon is made clear in the letter’s further instructions.
“….It is thus clear from these letters that Hammurabi – a foe, not an ally, of Larsa – was seeking restitution for events that had happened long before his time, in the days of Kudur-Laghamar, the Elamite regent of Larsa. The texts of the Hammurabi letters thus affirm the existence of Khedorla-omer and of Elamite reign in Larsa (“Ellasar”) and thus of key elements in the biblical tale. ….
[End of quotes]
Amraphel can be Nimrod, not Hammurabi
“Thus, scholars identify Hammurabi with Amraphel, and the sages identify
Amraphel with Nimrod. This leads us to the conclusion that, based on
midrashic tradition, Amraphel, Nimrod and Hammurabi are all the same person”.
David S. Farkas
King Hammurabi of Babylon (c. 1810 – c. 1750 BC, conventional dating), whose memorable Law Code – or however historians would choose to describe the document – is thought to have influenced Mosaïc Law itself, is the sort of king for whom historians go searching in the Bible.
Thus David S. Farkas has written just such a paper:
The problem with an effort like Farkas’ is that, with King Hammurabi so seriously mis-dated, as he has been, a historian will always be looking at a biblical phase almost a millennium of centuries too early for King Hammurabi of Babylon.
I have often quoted Dr. Donovan Courville’s wonderful description of the conventional Hammurabi, as “floating about in a liquid chronology of Chaldea”. See e.g. my article:
“Mention of “Jabin of Hazor” in one of the Mari letters has led even some
astute revisionists, such as Drs. Courville and Osgood, seeking more solid ground
for the Hammurabic era, to bind Hammurabi and Zimri-Lim to the era of Joshua
and his foe, Jabin of Hazor”.
While David S. Farkas may be right on track when linking Amraphel with Nimrod, his further push for a trifecta (Amraphel = Nimrod = Hammurabi) is a chronological ‘bridge too far’.
Farkas has written, adhering to the old view that biblical “Shinar” was Sumer:
AND IT CAME TO PASS IN THE DAYS OF AMRAPHEL KING OF SHINAR,
ARIOCH KING OF ELLASAR, CHEDORLAOMER KING OF ELAM…
In Genesis we learn of a major battle that took place near the Dead Sea.
The first of the kings mentioned is Amraphel, king of Shinar. Who exactly was this king? Ever since the days of the famed Assyriologist, Eberhard Schrader (1836-1908), scholars have identified this king with none other than Hammurabi. Many points have been observed in support of this. The assonance of names, for example, is striking. According to many scholars the two names are extremely close phonetically, if not actually identical. …. The connection between the two names becomes clearer when we consider that the familiar English spellings of the names as we know them are really approximations of Ammi-rabi or Ammurapi or Hammum-rabi, some of which are close to Amraphel. Moreover, Amraphel’s kingdom, Shinar, has long been identified with the Sumerian/ Babylonian Empire where Hammurabi held sway. …. Thus, there is some degree of evidence that enables us to identify one with the other. ….
This alone, then, might appear to have resolved our question. Hammurabi is mentioned in the Bible, only he is mentioned by the name of Amraphel. Yet this answer, by itself, is unsatisfying. For we know Hammurabi to have been a famous potentate, one of the first great rulers of recorded civilization.
Amraphel, by contrast, is barely known today outside of the Bible, if at all.
It seems very unusual that the great and mighty Hammurabi should be identified
with so anonymous a figure as Amraphel.
Here is where the rabbinic sages enter the picture. According to our sages, as shown below, Amraphel is none other than the famous Nimrod. Nimrod, of course, was hardly a run-of-the-mill ruler. Genesis describes him as the first man to amass power. …. There are many extant rabbinical legends and traditions concerning Nimrod. Perhaps the most famous speaks of him having Abraham thrown into a fiery furnace in Ur Kasdim. …. Another legend holds that Nimrod came into possession of Adam’s hunting garments (which gave him control over the wild beasts) until it was forcefully wrested away from him by Esau. ….
The description of him as a “powerful” ruler, and the legends that sprang up around him, show that he was seen already in ancient times as an important figure.
These legends are critically important to our investigation. Nimrod, our sages say, is named such because he brought “rebellion” to the world against God, a play on the word mered which forms the root of the name Nimrod. ….
Nimrod is identified with Amraphel, because he told (amar) Abraham to fall ([na]fal) into the furnace, in the above-mentioned legendary incident in Ur Kasdim. …. Still another midrash holds that Nimrod is also called Amraphel because his words caused “darkness”, a notarikon-type play on the words amarah (“statement”) and afelah (“darkness”). ….
Thus, scholars identify Hammurabi with Amraphel, and the sages identify Amraphel with Nimrod. This leads us to the conclusion that, based on midrashic tradition, Amraphel, Nimrod and Hammurabi are all the same person. Indeed, the name Hammurabi might actually mean “Ham the Great”, for Nimrod was the grandson of Ham, son of Noah. Thus, Hammurabi is indeed mentioned in the Torah. The same man portrayed in the Bible as the mighty king Nimrod is known today to the world at large as the mighty king Hammurabi.
While the Midrash is not an historical source, this identification fits both the biblical narrative and what we know of the history of the ancient Near East in the relevant time frame. For in the epic Dead Sea battle described in the Bible, Amraphel is portrayed as subservient to the neighboring Elamite king, Chedorlaomer. The “five kings” of ancient Canaan rebelled against this Elamite king after twelve years of subservience, causing Chedorlaomer to take up arms to quell the rebellion. This description accords with what we know of Hammurabi’s exploits against the Elamite enemies of Babylon. ….
Yet something still nags at the reader. Why would Hammurabi, if our hypothesis is correct, be described in Genesis 10:9 as “a mighty hunter before the Lord”? This seems like a strange description for a king. Moreover, Nimrod was depicted by the sages as someone who caused the world to rebel against God. Nimrod brought “darkness” to the world. Hammurabi, on the other hand, is known to the world as a great king, as one who introduced the rule of law into an uncivilized society through his civil code.
So who was he – a despotic tyrant – or a wise leader devoted to the rule of law? Can these two diametrically opposing viewpoints be reconciled? ….
Jewish tradition holds that the ideal law is God’s law, as expressed in His Torah. Man might be obligated to establish legal codes for temporal life, codes with which man is expected to abide. But no man-made legal system could ever supplant God’s Torah as the ideal legal system. The very suggestion of it is ludicrous, in the eyes of tradition, for no mere mortal could ever match the divine wisdom contained in the Torah.
With the emergence of Hammurabi/Nimrod, though, we can imagine that men began to look at things differently. No longer was God the final arbiter on what was right or wrong. Instead, man was. The Torah had yet to be given in Nimrod’s time, but according to rabbinic tradition, the Noahide laws were already known. With the enactment and acceptance of Hammurabi’s Code, man began to emerge from his complete dependence upon God as the source of all law. Hammurabi’s Code gave mankind the gift of self-government.
Although Hammurabi pays lip service to the god of justice as the originator of the Code, and on the top of the stone stele is a carved relief of Hammurabi receiving the law from the sun god Shamash … in the preamble and epilogue he himself claims to be the wise author of the laws. …. This code taught man that God alone was no longer the source of the law. Rather, the law was to come from man, using the human faculties endowed within him. ….
[End of quote]
Far from Hammurabi having influenced Moses, the King of Babylon was heavily influenced by the culture and writings of David and Solomon (Ecclesiastes, for instance, shaping the Epilogue to the pagan Law Code).
I have previously written on this:
There are also some interesting speculations showing some parallels between the Bible and the life and laws of Hammurabi. One theme concept in both the Levitical law and the Code of Hammurabi that repeat … again and again are, namely: “eye for eye, tooth for tooth, hand for hand, foot for foot, burn for burn, wound for wound, bruise for bruise”. (Exodus 21:24-25). Although Hammurabi did not know it, the principles in his laws reflected the Biblical principle of sowing and reaping as found in Galatians 6:78 and Proverbs 22:8: “Do not be deceived, God cannot be mocked. A man reaps what he sows”. (Galatians 6:7) ….
“He who sows wickedness reaps trouble”. (Proverbs 22:8a).
Likewise we read in the Book of Ecclesiastes of king Solomon (12:9-14):
Epilogue
Besides being wise, the Teacher [Qoheleth] also taught the people knowledge, weighing and studying and arranging many proverbs. …. The Teacher sought to find pleasing words, and he wrote words of truth plainly. The sayings of the wise are like goads, and like nails firmly fixed are the collected sayings that are given by one shepherd. Of anything beyond these, my child, beware. Of making many books there is no end, and much study is a weariness of the flesh. The end of the matter: all has been heard. Fear God, and keep his commandments; for that is the whole duty of everyone. For God will bring every deed into judgment, including every secret thing, whether good or evil. ….
Now Hammurabi’s Code too, just like Solomon’s Ecclesiastes, starts with a Preface (similarly the Book of Proverbs has a Prologue) and ends with an Epilogue, in which we find an echo of many of Solomon’s above sentiments, and others, beginning with Hammurabi as wise, as a teacher, and as a protecting shepherd king. Let us consider firstly Hammurabi’s Epilogue, in relation to Solomon’s (Ecclesiastes’) Epilogue above (buzz words given in italics):
HAMMURABI’S CODE OF LAWS
Translated by L. W. King
THE EPILOGUE
LAWS of justice which Hammurabi, the wise king, established. A righteous law, and pious statute did he teach the land. Hammurabi, the protecting king am I. I have not withdrawn myself from the men, whom Bel gave to me, the rule over whom Marduk gave to me, I was not negligent, but I made them a peaceful abiding-place. I expounded all great difficulties, I made the light shine upon them. … I am the salvation-bearing shepherd .. . .
Wisdom 1:1: “Love righteousness, you rulers of the earth …”.
Ecclesiastes 9:1: “… how the righteous and the wise … are in the hand of God”.
1 Kings 4:29: “God gave Solomon very great wisdom, discernment, and breadth of understanding, as vast as the sand on the seashore”.
As we are going to find, Solomon was not shy about broadcasting his wisdom and the fact that he had exceeded all others in it.
For example (Ecclesiastes 1:16): “I said to myself, ‘I have acquired great wisdom, surpassing all who were over Jerusalem before me; and my mind has great experience of wisdom and knowledge’.”
Similarly, Knight writes of Hammurabi: “The conclusion of the inscription sounds like a hymn of high-keyed self-praise”. Indeed, that Hammurabi had no doubt in his own mind that he was the wisest of all is evident from this next statement (Epilogue): “… there is no wisdom like unto mine …”.
However, just as Solomon, in his ‘Prayer for Wisdom’ (Book of Wisdom 7:15-17), had attributed his wisdom to God:
“May God grant me to speak with judgment, and to have thoughts worthy of what I have received; for He is the guide even of wisdom and the corrector of the wise. For both we and our words are in His hand, as are all understanding and skill in crafts. For it is He who gave me unerring knowledge of what exists …”.
So did the by now polytheistic Hammurabi attribute his wisdom to the Babylonian gods (Epilogue):
“… with the keen vision with which Ea endowed me, with the wisdom that Marduk gave me, I have … subdued the earth, brought prosperity to the land, guaranteed security to the inhabitants in their homes; a disturber was not permitted. The great gods have called me …”.
“I, the Teacher, when king over Israel in Jerusalem applied my mind to seek and search out by wisdom all that is done under heaven …”. Eccl. 1:12.
“I turned my mind to know and to search out and to seek wisdom and the sum of things, and to know that wickedness is folly and that foolishness is madness”. Eccl. 7:25.
Solomon too, like Hammurabi, exhorted other kings and officials to follow his way. Compare for instance Wisdom 6:1-9:
Listen therefore, O kings, and understand; learn, O judges of the ends of the earth. Give ear you that rule over multitudes, and boast of many nations. For your dominion was given you from the Lord, and your sovereignty from the Most High; he will search out your works and inquire into your plans. Because as servants of his kingdom you did not rule rightly, or keep the law, or walk according to the purpose of God, he will come upon you terribly and swiftly, because severe judgment falls on those in high places. For the lowliest may be pardoned in mercy, but the mighty will be mightily tested. For the Lord of all will not stand in awe of anyone, or show deference to greatness; because he himself made both small and great, and he takes thought for all alike. But a strict inquiry is in store for the mighty. To you then, O monarchs, my words are directed, so that you may learn wisdom and not transgress.
with these parts of Hammurabi’s Epilogue:
In future time, through all coming generations, let the king, who may be in the land, observe the words of righteousness which I have written on my monument; let him not alter the law of the land which I have given, the edicts which I have enacted; my monument let him not mar. If such a ruler have wisdom, and be able to keep his land in order, he shall observe the words which I have written in this inscription; the rule, statute, and law of the land which I have given; the decisions which I have made will this inscription show him; let him rule his subjects accordingly, speak justice to them, give right decisions, root out the miscreants and criminals from this land, and grant prosperity to his subjects.
And, more threateningly:
If a succeeding ruler considers my words, which I have written in this my inscription, if he do not annul my law, nor corrupt my words, nor change my monument, then may Shamash lengthen that king’s reign, as he has that of me, the king of righteousness, that he may reign in righteousness over his subjects.
If this ruler do not esteem my words, which I have written in my inscription, if he despise my curses, and fear not the curse of God, if he destroy the law which I have given, corrupt my words, change my monument, efface my name, write his name there, or on account of the curses commission another so to do, that man, whether king or ruler, patesi, or commoner, no matter what he be, may the great God (Anu), the Father of the gods, who has ordered my rule, withdraw from him the glory of royalty, break his scepter, curse his destiny.
May Bel, the lord, who fixeth destiny, whose command cannot be altered, who has made my kingdom great, order a rebellion which his hand cannot control; may he let the wind of the overthrow of his habitation blow, may he ordain the years of his rule in groaning, years of scarcity, years of famine, darkness without light, death with seeing eyes be fated to him; may he (Bel) order with his potent mouth the destruction of his city, the dispersion of his subjects, the cutting off of his rule, the removal of his name and memory from the land. May Belit, the great Mother, whose command is potent in E-Kur (the Babylonian Olympus), the Mistress, who harkens graciously to my petitions, in the seat of judgment and decision (where Bel fixes destiny), turn his affairs evil before Bel, and put the devastation of his land, the destruction of his subjects, the pouring out of his life like water into the mouth of King Bel.
And in the same fashion Hammurabi goes on and on, before similarly concluding:
May he lament the loss of his life-power, and may the great gods of heaven and earth, the Anunaki, altogether inflict a curse and evil upon the confines of the temple, the walls of this E-barra (the Sun temple of Sippara), upon his dominion, his land, his warriors, his subjects, and his troops. May Bel curse him with the potent curses of his mouth that cannot be altered, and may they come upon him forthwith.
[End of quotes]
One finds, when building upon Dean Hickman’s marvellous foundational work in his article, “The Dating of Hammurabi” (Proceedings of the 3rd Seminar of Catastrophism and Ancient History, Uni. of Toronto, 1985), there arise irresistible biblico-historical correspondences.
Parallel Lives, Also BC Afterglows In AD 