We have so far taken the long age of Noah and others in the Bible at face value; but it’s worth pausing to see if we can establish real reasons to take these ages seriously. After all, we radically reduced the ages of the SKL as a scribal error; why not do the same to the “impossibly” long 900+ year ages in the Bible?

One difference is that the Bible’s pre-flood ages are consistently just over 900 years with a few exceptions probably explained by murder, accidents, etc. While extreme, this is relatively reasonable and internally consistent as compared to the Sumerians who had pre-flood reigns as low as 18,600 and as high as 43,200, with no real consistent pattern.

The haphazard numbers in the early SKL suggests there’s a big problem with how we interpret them, as we have already demonstrated. But people try to project this same uncertainty back on the Bible’s tradition, which is understandable, but which doesn’t really follow.

The very consistency of the Bible’s numbers suggests a real lifespan limit at just under 1,000 years. Today, that’s not even close to a dream; super-agers are lucky to reach 125 years, and we have every reason to believe this has been the norm throughout history. The Bible itself treats 70 as a “normal” age at death in the time of David:

Psalms 90:10 The days of our years are seventy, or even by reason of strength eighty years; yet their pride is but labour and sorrow, for it passes quickly, and we fly away.

So was the Bible really serious about these extreme ages of the patriarchs, or are they some sort of a scribal error or metaphor? Well, one thing that separates them from Sumerian writings is that the Bible makes several later references to a thousand year lifespan, confirming that this was understood by later generations as divine intent.

Ecclesiastes 6:6 Yes, though he live a thousand years twice told, and yet fails to enjoy good, don’t all go to one place?

This indirectly confirms the length of the pre-flood kings by saying that even if you live a thousand years [like they did], even if you did it twice, it would not be worthwhile if you didn’t “enjoy good.”

2 Peter 3:8 But don’t forget this one thing, beloved, that one day is with the Lord as a thousand years, and a thousand years as one day.

Psalms 90:4 For a thousand years in your sight are just like yesterday when it is past, like a watch in the night.

Job 14:5-6 Seeing his days are determined, the number of his months is with you, and you have appointed his bounds that he can’t pass; Look away from him, that he may rest, until he shall accomplish, as a hireling, his day.

Together, these verses show that metaphorically a millennium and a day are interchangeable to God. They also show that God has appointed an upper limit to the lifespan of man, “bounds that he can’t pass,” being allowed only to “accomplish, as a hireling, his day.”

That, combined with the fact that no one ever lived longer than 1,000 years, shows strongly that this is the upper limit God gave man after Eden. Which explains, in passing, how God’s words in that same garden came true…

Genesis 2:17 but of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, you shall not eat of it; for in the day that you eat of it you will surely die.

This did not happen; they ate the fruit and went on to live productive and fertile lives for 930 years afterwards. God lied? God relented? Or God did exactly what He said He would do – set an upper bound on their lifespan of one millennial day, and they died in the same thousand years in which they first sinned.

BUT HOW?

So we have established that the Bible meant for the ages to be understood as we understand them. But is an age of 1,000 years even biologically possible?

It is increasingly well known today that the process of aging is unnatural. Cells are meant to replicate when they grow old. Some have been made, in a lab, to replicate indefinitely. Other scientists have taken old cells and rejuvenated them a lab.

So there is no such thing as “death by natural causes,” because death itself is not natural. Our cells are meant to age and be replaced naturally over time, without aging the organism itself. If a cell was replaced at senescence with an exact copy, we would have eternal youth.

The body makes new cells from the DNA code of the old one; and most of the time, they are copied correctly. But occasionally, mistakes creep in; the body has ways of correcting this and replacing the damaged cell, but sometimes it doesn’t “get around to it” because it is putting out fires elsewhere.

Over time, these slightly damaged cells are themselves copied and mistakes are made in those new cells. And it gets worse over time, like making a xerox of a xerox of a xerox. Turns out they can divide about 40-60 times at their current quality of transmission before they make copies so bad as to be unusable – which is when the human body starts to fail. This is called the Hayflick limit.

The safeguard against these errors are called telomeres, a sort of safety margin on the end of DNA string; generally compared to the little plastic parts that protect the end of shoelaces. Over time, these shorten and eventually they no longer protect the code behind it.

But here’s the thing: they shorten at different speeds, and in some cases can even be lengthened, which directly lengthens the life of the organism. And what controls this process is universally agreed to be stress, in its broadest definition.

…in vitro studies have shown that telomeres accumulate damage due to oxidative stress and that oxidative stress-mediated DNA damage has a major influence on telomere shortening in vivo. There is a multitude of ways in which oxidative stress, mediated by reactive oxygen species (ROS), can lead to DNA damage… (Wiki, Telomeres)

Oxidative stress is caused by a wide variety of things like smoking, drugs, excess sugar, all the usual things you know are bad for you; but biological aging is also caused by psychological stress:

In the past decade, the growing field of telomere science has opened exciting new avenues for understanding the cellular and molecular substrates of stress and stress-related aging processes over the lifespan. Shorter telomere length is associated with advancing chronological age and also increased disease morbidity and mortality. Emerging studies suggest that stress accelerates the erosion of telomeres from very early in life and possibly even influences the initial (newborn) setting of telomere length. In this review, we highlight recent empirical evidence linking stress and mental illnesses at various times across the lifespan with telomere erosion. (Stress and telomere biology: A lifespan perspective)

Bottom line; under ideal conditions your cells could, theoretically, divide perfectly, keeping you young forever. Which means that theoretically there is no reason a person could not live to be at least 1,000 years old.

The fact that there is zero modern (or even classical) evidence of it does not disprove this, since ideal conditions have never existed since the garden of Eden. In fact, that itself is an interesting point. God said that in the garden as long as he could eat of the tree of life, Adam was functionally immortal:

Genesis 3:22 Yahweh God said, “Behold, the man has become like one of us, knowing good and evil. Now, lest he reach out his hand, and also take of the tree of life, and eat, and live forever…”

But what’s interesting is that God never said “you will no longer live for ever.” Adam himself was never cursed. The ground was cursed because of Adam! If you read God’s words closely, the real curse was that Adam would have to be a farmer.

Genesis 3:17-19 (GWV) Then he said to the man, “You listened to your wife and ate fruit from the tree, although I commanded you, ‘You must never eat its fruit.’ The ground is cursed because of you. Through hard work you will eat food that comes from it every day of your life. The ground will grow thorns and thistles for you, and you will eat wild plants. By the sweat of your brow, you will produce food to eat until you return to the ground, because you were taken from it. You are dust, and you will return to dust.”

Notice the direct connection between Adam’s hard work, the stress of providing his own food, and his eventual death. Conditions were no longer ideal, and death was inevitable within the same 1,000 year period of his first sin.

If for some reason after the flood conditions became even less ideal, then this life span would be reduced even further, as we will explain in a moment. For now, the takeaway from this is that the Bible’s millennial lifespans could be true.

It would only be necessary that Noah’s telomeres did not shorten and his cells were copied perfectly – or at least, a lot less imperfectly than today. And while we can’t repeat this today, we can grant its theoretical possibility.

LONG LIFE

We do not rely on the Bible nor scientific speculation alone for this, but contemporary evidence from the Sumerians themselves. They had very specific, yet realistic memories of longevity in their recent past.

When in ancient days heaven was separated from earth, when in ancient days that which was fitting ……, when after the ancient harvests …… barley was eaten (?), when boundaries were laid out and borders were fixed, when boundary-stones were placed and inscribed with names, when dykes and canals were purified, when …… wells were dug straight down; when the bed of the Euphrates, the plenteous river of Unug, was opened up, when ……, when ……, when holy An removed ……, when the offices of en and king were famously exercised at Unug [the priest-king of Uruk], when the sceptre and staff of Kulaba were held high in battle – in battle, Inana’s game; when the black-headed were blessed with long life, in their settled ways and in their ……, when they presented the mountain goats with pounding hooves and the mountain stags beautiful with their antlers to Enmerkar son of Utu – (Lugalbanda and the Mountain Cave)

This story of the time of Enmerkar, the priest-king of Uruk, at the time of the division of the Earth among the nations – i.e., just after Babel – specifically mentions that at that time “the black headed,” the Sumerians, were blessed with “long life.”

Now “long life” is relative; to us, that might mean 100 years. But to Noah that wouldn’t be “long” at all. But another quote clears up what they meant; they had 100 years of youth, followed by 100 years of adulthood.

After the flood had swept over and brought about the destruction of the countries; when mankind was made to endure, and the seed of mankind was preserved and the black-headed people all rose; when An and Enlil called the name of mankind and established rulership, but kingship and the crown of the city had not yet come out from heaven [~2250 BC], and Ninĝirsu had not yet established for the multitude of well-guarded (?) people the pickaxe, the spade, the earth basket and the plough, which mean life for the Land – in those days, the carefree youth of man lasted for 100 years and, following his upbringing, he lasted for another 100 years. (Rulers of Lagash)

This specifically dates it to before the kingship of Kish, before the building of Babel or Uruk. At that time, everyone had a century of youth, followed by a century of “normal aging.” Which is not to say they spent a century as a biological teenager; the Bible records the average birth after the flood at around 30 years, meaning they were biologically adults for most of that first century.

The Bible also confirms that when people lived to be longer than a century, those added years were not spent shriveled and weak. Remember, when Sarah was in her late 60’s she was taken into Pharaoh’s harem as irresistibly beautiful, potentially worth murdering Abraham for (Genesis 12:11-14). And again when she was 89 she was taken by the king of the Philistines for the same reason. She would go on to live to be 137 years old.

Deuteronomy 34:7 Moses was one hundred twenty years old when he died: his eye was not dim, nor his natural force abated.

We can also see the youth of the super-aging patriarchs in the health of Moses; remember, Moses did not die of old age; he died because God forbade him to enter the promised land for his sin (Deuteronomy 31:14, 34:4-5). But compare the vibrant health of Moses at 120 – in particular, his eyesight – to that of Job when he was 70:

Job 17:7 My eye also is dim by reason of sorrow. All my members are as a shadow.

Job was righteous, but lacked faith and lived in fear (Job 3:25, Job 1:5, etc.). This made his eye dim, as compared to Moses. What does it say about us, today, that many people need glasses before they hit puberty?

PSYCHOLOGICAL STRESS

The reason we cannot, in practice, reach those lifespans today is that stress of every type makes the copying of DNA an imperfect process; these imperfect cells accumulate, are copied with their own errors, until at some point the cells are so bad they stop functioning altogether.

Some of this stress is dietary, like smoking or McDonald’s or lead goblets; some is environmental like volcanic eruptions or microplastics or microwave emissions; some is disease or famine or the fear of war; some is simply from a lack of exercise, which ironically causes stress on the body by denying blood flow to important organs and muscles.

Still, since no one has plausibly lived to be over 200 years in the past 4,000 years, it strongly argues that the drop in life span was not caused by fast food or wi-fi signals; which points us instead to a psychological cause, one which affected the entire world simultaneously. The Bible itself strongly suggests that the psychological stress is the most important one:

Genesis 47:9 Jacob said to Pharaoh, “The days of the years of my pilgrimage are one hundred thirty years. Few and evil have been the days of the years of my life, and they have not attained to the days of the years of the life of my fathers in the days of their pilgrimage.”

Jacob directly connected his stressful life to his “relatively” short lifespan as compared to his long-lived ancestors.

But reading his answer, we are shocked at his modesty. At 130, Jacob would have already set a new world record for longevity if he were alive today, and his total life of 147 years were double what Pharaoh could hope to achieve.

Yet he considered his days far fewer than they should have been. And he told us why: because his life had been hard. His brother wanted to kill him several times, not without reason; his uncle took advantage of him with hard work, his wives fought a lot, his favorite son he believed was murdered, the famine that led them to move to Egypt, etc.

So Jacob knew his lifespan was nothing compared to what it would have been if he hadn’t been a liar, deceiver, and thief who insisted on learning everything the hard way. And he plainly said that it was his sorrow – his stress – that caused him to age:

Genesis 42:38 He said, “My son shall not go down with you; for his brother is dead, and he only is left. If harm happens to him along the way in which you go, then you will bring down my gray hairs with sorrow to Sheol.”

A concept which doctors understand today – that stress is the cause of all aging and death – but they underestimate the potential for human lifespan if a certain kind of stress in particular were eliminated.

UTOPIA

The above quote told us that “kingship and the crown of the city had not yet come out from heaven,” and at that time “the carefree youth of man lasted for 100 years and, following his upbringing, he lasted for another 100 years.”

Since this is explicitly connected to the pre-kingship years, it is also by definition pre-Babel, and pre-Nimrod. After that time, the Sumerians believed it was only possible to live that long in Dilmun, the “land of the living:”

Pure is Dilmun land. Pure is Dilmun land. Virginal is Dilmun land. Virginal is Dilmun land. Pristine is Dilmun land … In Dilmun the raven was not yet cawing, the partridge not cackling. The lion did not slay, the wolf was not carrying off lambs, the dog had not been taught to make kids curl up, the pig had not learned that grain was to be eaten. … no eye-diseases said there: “I am the eye disease.” No headache said there: “I am the headache.” No old woman belonging to it said there: “I am an old woman.” No old man belonging to it said there: “I am an old man.” No maiden in her unwashed state …… in the city. No man dredging a river said there: “It is getting dark.” No herald made the rounds in his border district. No singer sang an elulam there. No wailings were wailed in the city’s outskirts there. (Enki and Ninhursanga).

It cannot be an accident that the place Noah and his righteous descendants dwelt was seen as a place where there was no death, no predators, no disease. In fact, it is precisely what we expected based on our knowledge of Noah from the Bible. And it must be noted that this is exactly how the Bible describes paradise over a thousand years later, down to the very same metaphors.

Isaiah 11:6-9 The wolf will live with the lamb, and the leopard will lie down with the young goat; The calf, the young lion, and the fattened calf together; and a little child will lead them. The cow and the bear will graze. Their young ones will lie down together. The lion will eat straw like the ox. The nursing child will play near a cobra’s hole, and the weaned child will put his hand on the viper’s den. They will not hurt nor destroy in all my holy mountain; for the earth will be full of the knowledge of Yahweh, as the waters cover the sea.

The cause of this non-violent utopia is given as “the Earth being full of the knowledge of the Lord.” Note also that, like the Sumerians, Isaiah said this place as being “in the holy mountain,” just as the Sumerians saw the mountain of Dilmun as paradise on Earth.

And as has been shown, the archeological record supports this, since a remarkable lack of weapons are found in IVC cities. The Sumerians noted this oddity of their pacifistic neighbors, and called it “the land of the [ever-]living” for a reason.

They also knew precisely why Dilmun was like this; the presence of Noah. Which makes sense – how else did Noah keep the animals from killing each other on the Ark, if not because “the lion did not slay?” Because “they shall not hurt nor destroy in all my holy mountain.”

As has been abundantly shown, it was this peculiarity of Noah, his longevity and that of those around him that led Gilgamesh to seek him out. Nor is it a surprise; for his name was Noah, meaning “rest, comfort”; his father named him this, saying…

Genesis 5:29 and he named him Noah, saying, “This same will comfort us in our work and in the toil of our hands, because of the ground which Yahweh has cursed.”

Apparently, this comfort extended also to the lions and wolves in the place that Noah, “a preacher of righteousness,” went to live (2 Peter 2:5). The righteousness he taught, the judgments he made, brought a safety and peace to his family which is what gave them peace, and that peace gave them long life.

THE PROTECTION OF NOAH

The flood happened in ‑2314. Babel took place less than 200 years after the flood; most people hadn’t been alive more than 100 years at that time. Which means that everyone lived in “eternal” youth until then, well on their way to living a “normal” 1,000 year pre-flood life span! Because Noah was around, and was obeyed!

During that time, all of the family was blessed with the youth of Noah. When they began to follow Nimrod instead, their normal aging processes kicked in and they lived out another 75 or 100 years after – give or take.

Which is exactly what the Sumerian legends tell us – that “in those days, the carefree youth of man lasted for 100 years and, following his upbringing, he lasted for another 100 years.” Following his upbringing… by Noah, in Gobekli Tepe.

But then men built the tower of Babel and everything changed. Which means that it was Babel itself which started their “normal” aging process, causing them to live our their lives with the normal modern lifespan of an additional 70-100 years starting from the tower of Babel.

Which allows us to explain why Shem lived to be 600, while the “black-headed” lost their youth after around 100 years; because Noah left Mesopotamia at precisely that time, taking with him his most righteous offspring!

THE STRESS OF FALSE RELIGION

This created several immediate and serious stressors; first, Nimrod had introduced an alternative religion; now we had to decide which God to serve, and how, and why; Noah was no longer around to cut through the nonsense for us.

The leaders were no longer kept in check by a righteous patriarch, but free to become more and more corrupt; this caused stress for them, their subjects, and those who wished to take their power for themselves.

It also caused a lack of fairness, and fear of death, theft, and all the other problems in a corrupt society. Which meant more weapons, more locks, more fear – and more stress.

And finally, and no less importantly, the absence of Noah’s righteous spirit meant that the animals became more of a threat; only in Dilmun would the wolf not take the lamb, meaning a great deal more stress in Sumer. Hence the need for Nimrod to be “a mighty hunter” and protect the people that way.

As a result, after the tower of Babel anyone not in the immediate proximity of Noah’s government, unless they were exceptionally righteous themselves like Abraham or Moses, died within a hundred years of Noah’s departure, and future generations didn’t enjoy a long youth, but began to age at 30 just like we do today.

The natural strength of our soul carries most of us through to our twenties in reasonable health – and when we can’t handle the stress of adulthood we immediately, and rapidly, begin to age. For it is, ironically, these fears – specifically the fear of death – which cause that same death:

Hebrews 2:15 and might deliver all of them who through fear of death were all their lifetime subject to bondage.

Logically, if we did not fear death, we would not be in bondage to death. But to do that, we would have to know we did not deserve death for our sins, which is to say we must be confident in our righteousness, which means we would have to consistently show love for our fellow man; only then can we cast out fear – and with it, death.

1 John 4:18 There is no fear in love; but perfect love casts out fear, because fear has punishment. He who fears is not made perfect in love.

The only other way is to avoid fear is the way small children do; by looking up with awe to a perfect immortal authority figure who protects you, whom you trust to provide for you and take care of your sins without reservation. And when they lost Noah, mankind lost that.

THE SHORTENING OF LIFESPANS

Contrary to popular belief, life spans were not shortened by the flood at all. Nor did they slowly change; no descendant of Noah in Abraham’s lineage died for nine generations until within a decade of his own death 350 years after the flood. Then within 78 years of his death five of those generation died, including all of the youngest ones.

Within another century, the four oldest – Shem, Arphaxad, Salah and Eber – joined them. They survived, no doubt, because they knew Noah best and were most acquainted with his righteous ways.

So this is not a slow decline of lifespans; this is a sudden decline caused by some significant event. Oddly enough, it wasn’t even the tower of Babel, which precedes the first Arphaxadite death by 200 years. Instead the defining event is clearly the absence of the patriarch who held that line of the family together and kept them connected to God.

While Noah lived, for 350 years after the flood, until just a decade before his own death, not one of his ten generations of descendants died. Yet within 182 years after his death, every member of his family for 11 generations would die!

Shem we know was righteous (Genesis 9:26), and so his own strength carried him beyond his father for a few centuries, which probably helped his descendants live as long as they did beyond Noah’s death. But Shem was not Noah.

Stress caught up with Shem at about the same time as his 11th generation descendant Ishmael. So the flood didn’t shorten lifespans; Babel shortened lifespans. Noah’s presence counteracted the effects of Babel for those who followed him, and with his death millennial ages disappeared from the world ever since.

The original author of the SKL must have had access to king lists and histories from various cities in Mesopotamia such as Uruk, Kish, Ur, and so on which he copied down and arranged in a way that made them seem as if only one king had ever ruled over Sumer at a time.

This had been done before, probably under Sargon (approximately ‑1896), but this version was much more extensive and included more cities, and since it was done centuries later, several more centuries of dynasties were added.

This was, as has been said, certainly motivated by politics, the scribe presenting his own king as the heir to an immensely long line of divinely-sanctioned rulers. This, in turn, explains the fact that significant cities such as Lagash and Larsa are not present on the list at all – they were enemies of the culture who wrote it, and were thus “illegitimate.”

Unfortunately, we don’t have the original list, only later copies from at least a few hundred years later, written on clay tablets or cylinders that are to a greater or lesser degree cracked and damaged, so we must reconstruct the list from several different versions, eliminating errors that have crept in by copyists over the centuries, in order to approximate the original form of a list which is, itself, a copy of a copy.

Despite its flaws the SKL is still an invaluable source of data, and while traditional historians are skeptical of many of the claims, a lot of the kings mentioned on it have been proven to exist by other artifacts; obviously, fewer of the older kings are attested from archeological finds, as would be expected from a less beaurocratic, less developed society. But this doesn’t imply they didn’t exist.

On the contrary, the accuracy from the parts of the list we can verify externally argues for the accuracy of those parts we cannot verify. Thus, it deserves serious study, not to be dismissed. It’s not gospel, don’t get me wrong – but it’s not meaningless either.

The list begins with pre-flood kings, listing between 8 and 10 depending on which copy you use, and goes on to describe dozens upon dozens of kings, along with the length of time that they reigned, and the dynasty they belonged to, and sometimes a few brief notes about what the king did or who his father was.

Sounds good, right? Let’s just add up the dates and see what happened! Well, unfortunately it’s not quite that easy. Because taken at face value, it makes several ridiculous claims that no historian believes – such as reigns of individual kings that lasted for 3,600 years or more. In the preflood world, it’s even more extreme with reigns up to 43,200 years long.

But these are solvable problems, and when studied carefully and taken seriously, as several respected mainstream archeologists have done, it proves itself to be a very accurate record of the Mesopotamian world, and when interpreted correctly actually proves the Biblical timeline!

The foundational work on the SKL was done by Thorkild Jacobson in 1939 and little has come to light to change most of his conclusions since then, which makes this respected work a good place to begin our study. At the end of his book, he made the accompanying (large) chart.

The vertical lines represent the rulers of individual cities, and the horizontal lines represent places where they are believed to have interacted, thus placing them contemporary with one another. The era begins at 3100 BC and this page ends at 2500 BC, although it does in fact continue over another page.

To establish these dates, Jacobson began with the final king on the list, Damiq-Ilushi, last king of Isin and who was contemporary with Hammurabi. Hammurabi was believed in Jacobson’s time to have reigned around ‑2050, so he worked backwards from there.

Today, most researchers believe Hammurabi lived around ‑1850, although they disagree by up to 100 years or so. This moves the earliest king, Etana, from ‑3100 to ‑2900. However, I will show later that Hammurabi did in fact live far later, just after the time of Moses around ‑1350. The difference is simply that the later Kassite third dynasty of Babylon was contemporary, not consecutive, with the succeeding 4th-9th dynasties of Babylon. This effectively removes almost 500 years of kings out of the list, lowering the age of everyone before it by the same amount.

Adjusting for that one change – for which we have abundant reasons, as you will see in the proper place – the SKL no longer shows the first kings living in ‑2900, but rather in ‑2400. Already, you can see we are getting very close to the flood, and very close to agreeing with the Bible’s numbers.

So we are very gratified that with only a single major change – removal of the Kassites, or rather making them parallel with existing dynasties – secular history drops very nearly into Biblical time frames without any effort whatsoever.

LONG AGES

Later kings from the time of Sargon or Hammurabi have perfectly reasonable reign lengths of 7, 25, or 10 years; and where it’s possible to check, these have been demonstrated to be pretty accurate.

Earlier kings however, like Etana and Gilgamesh, have implausibly long reigns of 1,500 years, 126 years, 324 years, etc. And the earliest kings, before the flood, have even more absurd reign lengths of 36,000 years, 43,200 years, etc. Obviously, this presents a problem, and can be approached in one of three ways.

The first, and easiest, is to simply reject the early parts of the list as pure fantasy. This is what most modern researchers do. However, that’s difficult because some of these people with absurd reigns did really exist; we’ve found artifacts from that time with their names on them.

Aga for instance is said in the SKL to have reigned for 625 years; it would be tempting to reject his historicity since his age his obviously impossible, yet almost all historians believe he did in fact exist because among other things, he is known to have lost to Gilgamesh.

This prompts many of them to choose a second method of approaching the large ages, which is to simply adjust their reigns to a random, reasonable figure like 30 years. This is what Thorkild Jacobson did in his book.

It yields reasonable results, but it is a guess, and hence by definition arbitrary. It’s also rather on the large side for average reigns throughout history, which trend towards the 15-20 range on average.

The third way is what we will be doing; try to find an actual element of truth within these huge numbers. At the very least, a relative truth. Which is to say Etana did not reign 1,500 years, nor did Aga reign 625. But Etana may have reigned more than twice as long as Aga.

If you look at the list above as cited on Wikipedia for the first dynasty of Kish, one thing you’ll immediately notice is the reigns are in round numbers; 360, 900, 840 and so on, with a few that end in 5. Of the 11 names here, not a single one ends in a number other than 0 or 5. This is odd.

The other thing you’ll notice is that many of the dates are in round numbers of multiples of sixty. Etana, for example, at 1,500 years – if we divide that by 60, we get a clean 25 years. A very plausible reign length.

Enmenuna, at 660, divides clearly into 11 years. And so on. This happens far too often in the early king list to be random – even though it does not work all the time, as with Balih, 400, which divides into 6 and some change.

Still, there has to be some truth at work here; what could that be? This correlation of the extremely high SKL reign lengths with the numbers 6, 60, or 600 has not gone unnoticed by scholars, and Kenneth Kitchen, widely respected mainstream researcher, offers a plausible solution.

In short, these [the extremely long reigns of the preflood kings] look like “real” (or realistic) reigns that have been drastically bumped up through multiplying them by 600, to give heroically long reigns for the period betweeen creation and flood. … That process can perhaps be reversed. Our scribes in 2000 B.C., faced with few kings and long periods, may have bumped up the numbers by using sexagesimal multipliers. So, at Hamazi and Uruk, reversing the process, we might take the 36,000 years of Alalgar or of Dumuzi and divide it by the factor 10 x 60 (600), which would give them each a reign of 60 years. … The more modest Ubartutu at 18,600 years comes out at 31 years, eminently reasonable. The principal works for all the preflood rulers, and no awkward fractions, etc., are left over. After the flood, reigns are still high, until suddenly Gilgamesh’s son Ur-nungal (no longer heroic) reigns only 30 years, and all his successors are modest too, except in Kish (a special center of Sumerian kingship). Most of the “heroic” post flood kings may thus have been upped by only 60 years (not by 60 x 10). Thus Lugal-banda’s 1,200 years would then have been 20 years, and Enmebaragisi’s 900 years would have been 15 years. Those with 200 years down to 100 years may have had a factor of only 10x years; but that is a baseless guess for now. (On the Reliability of the Old Testament, Kitchen)

This author has the right answer, but the wrong explanation. His premise assumes intentional deception on the part of the ancients. I prefer a solution that is more generous to our predecessors where possible, and one is readily at hand.

SEXAGESIMAL

The Sumerians did not think of numbers in base-10 decimal system, as we do, they used a base-60 or sexagesimal system.

In the decimal system, we have ten unique numbers (decimals, from the Latin word for “ten”). We write these in the first column, called the “ones,” as 0-9; when that column is filled we write “0” there, put a “1” in the column next to it.

This action expresses that the “box” of 10 numbers is full, it has been emptied and a zero placed there for refilling and we place a “one” in the next column which represents “one” [box of] “ten,” so a “1” there means our total number is 10.

Base-60 is the same, only you write the numbers 0-59 in the first column, then when filled with 60, you write “1” in the column next to it and you start over again at 0 in the first column. Thus, “one” in the “sixties” column (where we put our tens) is actually meant to represent 60, not 1!

It’s a little bit more complicated than that, but that’s the basic idea. A box full of 60’s would be 60×60 and therefore where we would have our hundreds column, they would place their 3600’s column.

… The main units were at what we would designate 1, 10, 60, 360 (60 × 6), 3,600 (60 × 60), and 36,000 (60 × 60 × 10). A separate numerical sign existed for each of these numbers. This sounds confusing, but we still use it, in a way. There are 360 degrees in a circle, 60 seconds in a minute, and 60 minutes in an hour, because the Mesopotamians came up with this system and, in a long and convoluted way, we inherited it. …

The weird thing is that, in proto-cuneiform, the sexagesimal system was used for keeping track of some things—but not for everything. Some other items were counted using a bisexagesimal system, with the units at 1, 10, 60, 120 (60 × 2), 1,200 (60 × 2 × 10), and 7,200 (60 × 2 × 60), again with separate signs for each. It got even more complicated, because different signs were used depending on what type of countable object was being counted, so that thirteen different systems of counting goods and people were in use at the same time. (Weavers, scribes, and kings; Podany)

With thirteen systems of counting, working off of ancient and possibly damaged tablets, from different eras and using numbers that might be read as 1, 10, 60, 120, 360, 1,200, 3,600 or 7,200, you can readily see how a slight mistake in reading, due to a change in how things were counted over a century or two, would suddenly make perfectly normal ages become fantastic and godlike ages.

And so the reason the numbers of these reigns are so fantastic is because the earliest version of this list – which we don’t have today – recorded the numbers of real reigns, of reasonable length. But it did so in what would become an archaic script! Because it was, after all, the very first writing in human history!

A later scribe, assigned to copy this list centuries after the people involved were all dead, misunderstood the ancient character for “1” and assumed it was the character he knew as “60!” Given the complexity of the system (and the fact there were 13 different systems for counting different things), this was not only plausible, but inevitable.

Different lists, composed at different times in different cities, would be copied differently by the ancient scribes. Hence the preflood period shows huge numbers in the tens of thousands, which were confused with some large number like 36 or 60 or 600;

Meanwhile early post-flood lists like Kish I are in the hundreds or low thousands, and divide well by 60; later lists like Uruk I divide better by 6. This works about 75% of the time and generates a whole number which is realistic, with no fraction left over.

THE EXCEPTIONS

Of course, sometimes there are fractions left over; it’s not a perfect system, but it’s better than guessing “30” every time, since it preserves at least the relative length of reigns, since it is certain they didn’t all reign an equal amount of time.

Dividing the early kings of Uruk by 6, Meshkiangasher gets 54 years and Enmerkar gets 70; this last is important because we know he was king for at least 50 years when the Amorites invaded, and 70 is a good fit for the Arattan war. Gilgamesh gets 21, which is also reasonable.

However Lugalbanda’s 1,200 years are anomalous, triple the length of any other Uruk I ruler. Dividing by 6 still yields 200, far too much; so this is probably actually a scribal error. Hence, we divide instead by 60 which gives us 20, which is more reasonable. For the later kings, many are naturally divisible by 6 and yield short reigns of 1-6 years.

But then there are the non-6/60 exceptions; Dumuzi has 100 years, which isn’t divisible; many historians don’t think he actually existed, although I myself do; I favor the idea that he was leading Uruk as vizier while Enmerkar and Lugalbanda were off campaigning.

But what about 15, 9, 8 and so on? These non-divisors are so rare as to make us believe the theory; but their existence means we must modify the theory somehow to make sense of them. So here is my hypothesis:

Babylonian numbers are written somewhat like Roman numerals, using I for 1, II for 2, III for three, and so on. Then they use < for 10, << for 20, << I for 21, etc. Remembering that they use base sixty, I<< I would be 60+20+1, or 81.

In the current copies of the list, we have, in most cases, clear versions of these numbers, so modern “translations” are accurate representations of the numbers as they were understood by ancient scribes who copied our most recent copies.

However, it would be relatively easy, in this case, for the number 31, written <<< I, to be mistaken for I<< I by an ancient scribe, yielding 81 instead. Or for 126, written II IIIIII (the space meaning a line placement, hence, two sixties and six ones) to be mistaken for << IIIIII, 26.

Who knows how degraded the copies the ancient scribes used as sources were? Who knows how many times they were copied? Or the relative skill, literacy, and indeed, eyesight, of the various scribes? Indeed, we would be stunned if something like this didn’t happen. And scholars are very willing to use this argument when convenient:

Most copies of the King List give Ur-Zababa an unrealistic reign of 400 years, but one copy reading “six years” is held to be more plausible. (Wiki, Ur-Zababa)

This mention about a much later king on the SKL helps to confirm that dividing by sixty solves a lot of chronological problems; rather than the implausible 400 recorded on one list, 6 is recorded on another version.

But what’s interesting is that 6 is not random; if you divided 400 by 60, it would yield 6, with 40 left over. Since Babylonians counted by 60’s and also had a sign for 10’s and 1’s, then we could surmise the original text said “Ur-Zababa reigned 6 years, 4 months.”

This was misunderstood by the scribe as 60 years + 40 years, the months being misinterpreted as 10’s. While this cannot be proven, it gives us a plausible way to deal with the few numbers that aren’t divisible – the excess was simply months. And there is reason to believe this.

One post-flood but pre-Etana king (more likely the head of one of the twelve tribes) was called En-tarah-ana, and the SKL records his reign as “420 years, 3 months, and 3 and a half days.” Wikipedia comments “Why the reign length is so specific is unknown.”

This is unique in that it is the only reign given in months and days as well as years. But that alone makes us suspicious; this data clearly existed at one point, probably for all the kings. It was edited out or lost on other entries for some reason. Where did it go?

Most likely, it was absorbed into the year itself, with the months mistaken for years as in the case of Ur-Zababa. Perhaps the full entry once said “6 years, 4 months, 10 days,” which was lumped together as 6×60+4×10, or 400.

Teasing the full truth out of the SKL is basically impossible at this point, but if we can get close with the divide-by-6 treatment, we’re happy enough to let the months and days be part of the remainder.

This is what I meant when I said at the beginning we will make sense of the sources without dismissing them, but reading them as they, themselves, were meant to be understood. If we do this, Lugalbanda reigned, not 1,200, but a quite reasonable 20 years; Etana ruled, not 1,500, but a quite plausible 25 years. And so on.

Thus, when the ancient scribe copied down the list, he was, in effect, accidentally multiplying all reigns by the number 60, producing absurdly long reigns that are obviously not true. And yet, they do record a truth – if you trust your source enough to look for it!

These things cannot, by their nature, be proven unless the original tablets are found which is highly unlikely to ever happen. I am simply seeking to find a plausible explanation that allows us to believe in the fundamental integrity of the SKL, a way to reduce the reigns to reasonable numbers that would be expected to fall in the 5-30 year mark in most cases, based on historical precedent; and to do so without simply guessing or arbitrarily assigning dates.

This way assumes the intelligence and good intentions of all involved, and postulates one simple error, easily explainable by the evolution of writing over a few centuries which we know happened in that timeframe.

This one assumption easily makes sense of all the excessively large reigns, reducing them, without exception, into the sorts of reigns normal humans would have.

And that, together with the removal of the Kassites from the chronology, makes Sumerian history as understood by historians completely compatible with the chronology of the Bible!

How cool is that?

Abraham left Egypt a rich man and went back to Canaan, the land God had promised to give his heirs one day. Upon arriving, he and Lot divided the grazing land among them, and Lot chose the plains of Sodom and Gomorrah (Genesis 13:10-11), which were across the Jordan River from Israel and thus are called the Transjordanian cities.

Lot settled there in the city of Sodom, and things seem to have been peaceful for a time, until he was kidnapped by Chedorlaomer (Genesis 14). Before we get into that story, let’s jump ahead and work backward, so we can date Lot’s kidnapping precisely, as it’s crucial to our timeline.

In Genesis 15 God appeared to Abraham and promised him a son; as a direct result of this, Abraham had a child by Hagar (incorrectly thinking that’s how God meant for it to happen), and Ishmael was born when Abraham was 86. Therefore, God appeared to him when he was 85 years old (‑1937).

Narratively connected to these events (Genesis 15:1), Melchizedek appeared to Abraham (Genesis 14:17-20) – therefore, also when he was 85. This is important, because Melchizedek appeared to Abraham while he was returning from warring with a group of Mesopotamian kings who had kidnapped Lot, a battle which we can now confidently date to ‑1937.

Genesis 14:1-3 It happened in the days of Amraphel, king of Shinar, Arioch, king of Ellasar, Chedorlaomer, king of Elam, and Tidal, king of Goiim, that they made war with [five kings of Sodom, Gomorrah, etc]. All these joined together in the valley of Siddim (the same is the Salt Sea).

Casually reading Genesis 14, you might get the impression that there were two incursions by these four kings; a first one to establish dominance, and a second trip 14 years later, to restore control after the Canaanites rebelled; but that’s actually not what is recorded in Genesis 14; there certainly was an earlier mission to establish dominance, but not necessarily by all of these same kings. But there was only one battle of Siddim, in the 14th year.

Genesis 14:4-5 Twelve years they [had] served Chedorlaomer, and in the thirteenth year, they rebelled. In the fourteenth year Chedorlaomer came, and the kings who were with him…

The Mesopotamian kings fought many other kingdoms on their way to the Transjordan; so although the Bible focuses on the narrative involving these five kings, they were only a small part of a much larger rebellion of the entire territory from Syria to Arabia.

When they arrived, the kings of the cities of the plain of Sodom and Gomorrah – across the Jordan River from Israel – came out to meet them and battle against them. Given that this was a fight for survival, we would expect that all the able-bodied men of the five cities in the Transjordan would be conscripted, thus the armies should have numbered in the thousands, perhaps ten-thousands. And yet they still lost. So this was no mere “policing” operation from Mesopotamia, this was a significant army.

Verses 10-12 Now the valley of Siddim was full of tar pits; and the kings of Sodom and Gomorrah fled, and they fell there, and those who remained fled to the hills. They took all the goods of Sodom and Gomorrah, and all their food, and went their way. They took Lot, Abram’s brother’s son, who lived in Sodom, and his goods, and departed.

Verses 14-15 When Abram heard that his relative was taken captive, he led out his trained men, born in his house, three hundred and eighteen, and pursued as far as Dan. He divided himself against them by night, he and his servants, and struck them, and pursued them to Hobah, which is on the left hand of Damascus.

This is quite plausible, even if the invasion force numbered in the thousands – the element of surprise counts for a lot against a drunken, sleepy enemy. Regardless, it seems like all of the kings of Mesopotamia were killed.

Verse 17 The king of Sodom went out to meet [Abraham], after his return from the slaughter of Chedorlaomer and the kings who were with him, at the valley of Shaveh (that is, the King’s Valley).

However – and this becomes important later – the text does permit us to surmise that one king might have survived the “slaughter of Chedorlaomer and the kings with him,” plural, means that Chedorlaomer and two kings could be killed and one of the four might have escaped.

We do know for a fact that some men escaped, because after Abraham “struck them,” he pursued them to Hobah – where no further slaughter is mentioned, which implies Abraham felt they’d not be a problem again after that and let them go.

We glean some key facts from this story; most interesting is that in Genesis 14:4 the kings of the Transjordan were already paying tribute to Mesopotamia before Abraham ever set foot in Canaan. Since the battle of Siddim is dated to Abraham’s 85th year or so, and the kings came in the 14th year to collect tribute, it means that the Transjordan had been paying tribute since Abraham’s 71st year or so, or about ‑1951, while he was still in Haran – or possibly even still in Ur.

And at that point, Sumerian cities were able to project enough power to conquer every Canaanite city over 1,000 miles away from home – and enough fear to collect tribute for over a decade. A mighty empire indeed. There’s just one problem; according to historians, it never happened.

But before we join them in denouncing the Bible as mythical, let’s hear all the evidence.

SUMERIAN CONTROL OF JORDAN

Most historians, if they believe in the historicity of Abraham at all, tend to put him roughly contemporary with Hammurabi; since they know that Hammurabi did not have an empire which stretched as far as Sodom and Gomorrah, therefore the story in Genesis is utter fantasy.

However, their dates for Hammurabi are off by 500 years, which means we can look in a completely different section of history for connections to Abraham. The SKL tells us that during the time of Abraham the city-states in southern Sumer kept growing, bickering, warring, and occasionally one would become dominant over another.

Yet most historians would tell you that Mesopotamians continued this bickering amongst themselves without major foreign intervention, nor with any empire-building that could possibly have stretched as far as the Mediterranean, let alone all the way to the Transjordan, until the time of Sargon (‑1900). But Sargon’s empire existed too late to be Abraham’s foe.

Sargon the Great, was the first ruler of the Akkadian Empire, known for his conquests of the Sumerian city-states in the 24th to 23rd centuries BC [‑1897 to ‑1841 by our dating, at least 50 years after Abraham first entered Canaan]. He is sometimes identified as the first person in recorded history to rule over an empire. (Wiki, Sargon of Akkad)

Notice their claim that he is the first person to rule over an empire. Thing is, their own evidence shows this isn’t true. Sargon was not the first person to unite the city-states. A generation earlier, Lugal-zage-si (whom Sargon is said to have conquered) claimed to have conquered the world as far as the Mediterranean…

“Enlil gave to him “all the lands between the upper and the lower seas,” that is, between the Mediterranean Sea and the Persian Gulf … Although his incursion to the Mediterranean was, in the eyes of some modern scholars, not much more than “a successful raiding party,” the inscription “marks the first time that a Sumerian prince claimed to have reached what was, for them, the western edge of the world.” (Wiki, Lugal-zage-si)

Note the dismissive tone by the some modern scholars; “he wasn’t really king over that region, he simply led a raiding party.” That may perhaps be true, but they have no way of knowing that for certain. But the fact is, this most certainly is not “the first time that a Sumerian prince claimed to have reached what was, for them, the western edge of the world,” and they know that. Wikipedia goes on to say…

Historical accounts from much later tablets asserted that Lugal-Anne-Mundu of Adab, a slightly earlier king, had also conquered as far as the Mediterranean and the Taurus mountains, but contemporary records for the entire period before Sargon are still far too sketchy to permit scholars to reconstruct actual events with great confidence. (Ibid)

Note their statement: “records… are far too sketchy to permit scholars to reconstruct actual events with great confidence.” And yet somehow, they are able to confidently state that the records they DO have are not true…? That this king did not, in fact, rule as far as the Mediterranean?

They tell us that Sumerian kings never projected power that far into Canaan at this point in history; and if they had been there, it would have been a mere raiding party, not a proper army with the personal presence of the kings of Sumer. But by claiming that, they disagree with their only sources of information!

One king of Adab, Lugal-Anne-Mundu, appearing in the Sumerian King List, is mentioned in few contemporary inscriptions; some that are much later copies claim that he established a vast, but brief empire stretching from Elam all the way to Lebanon and the Amorite territories along the Jordan. (Wikipedia, Adab)

The Amorite territories along the Jordan are the cities of Sodom and Gomorrah! What a shocking coincidence, that the SKL records a Sumerian presence in Israel precisely when and where Abraham encountered them!

LITERARY FICTION

You will run across the phrase “literary” often when reading ancient history, which is basically a way historians say “fictional.” They apply this label to anything they can’t understand or explain; if it doesn’t fit what they already believe, it must have been a fantasy novel. It’s a very easy way to dismiss an idea, and it’s used all the time to avoid considering ancient texts as actual history.

The idea of a king of Sumer ruling as far as the Jordanian plain, this far back – around ‑1950 in our chronology, but roughly ‑2500 in their chronology – is unacceptable to historians. And so, in response to that quote above describing a Sumerian empire in precisely the place Abraham encountered it, this is what historians say…

In this connection, one might also mention the figure of Lugal-anemunDU [Lugal-Anne-Mundu above], … Lugal-anemunDU is also the subject of an Old Babylonian literary composition (Güterbock 1934: 40–47), which ascribes to him the creation of an empire, extending from the Mediterranean to the Iranian plateau, and embracing within its scope the lands of Elam and Marhashi (the latter ruled by a governor named Migir-Enlil). But since the existence of such an Adab ruler finds no corroboration in any other data, one may confidently conclude that both Lugal-anemunDU and his alleged exploits are poetic inventions which were perpetrated sometime in Old Babylonian times (for reasons that completely escape us). (The Birth of Elam in History, Piotr Steinkeller)

So because there is no corroboration for this story, they are certain it didn’t happen. Only… there IS corroboration! Genesis 14 corroborates this data! Firmly establishing that, at roughly this point in history, Sumerian forces extracted tribute from the tribes along the Jordan for over a decade!

Yet historians stubbornly refuse to accept the Bible as a source, even when it agrees with their other sources. So instead, Steinkeller believes that a Babylonian scribe thought it would be fun to make up a story about an obscure king (Lugal-Anne-Mundu) who lived almost a millennium earlier in a city-state that no one cared about (Adab), and ascribe to him a world-ruling kingdom that just happens to confirm Abraham’s story.

Really?

Don’t get me wrong, Sumerians made stuff up all the time. But they did so with a purpose; they did so to deify the ancestors of their kings, to praise their gods, to try and show the primacy of their own town or deities. If this were fabricated, then as Steinkeller admitted, it was “for reasons that completely escape us”; because it makes no sense why they would have made up such a story!

And yet, having conceded that, he is still arrogant enough to state, simply because they have no corroboration yet, at least nothing that they will accept, that “we can confidently conclude… his alleged exploits are poetic inventions.”

But, logically, the absence of corroboration doesn’t allow you to confidently conclude anything. Right? Back me up here.

And yet somehow they feel confident in telling us that one day a priest was suddenly inspired to invent an awesome fan-fiction about a man from a minor city-state who was not worshipped, not deified, not the ancestor of any important king – and, if the historians are right, wasn’t even powerful and probably did not even exist!

And get this – the priest would have been writing this fantasy story… for the benefit of a population that could not read! And who would never even hear it read to them! Because the historian’s belief is that these documents were only circulated within the inner circle of priests.

So we can see why Steinkeller says this was done “for reasons that completely escape us.” Because it’s an absolutely absurd theory. Literally any alternative theory would be better. And so when Genesis firmly corroborates the existence of such an empire, at precisely the era of Lugal-Anne-Mundu, we are happy to believe it.

But there is also a third witness to this story.

THE SPARTOLI TABLETS

Genesis 14 gives us four names of kings, and the region they ruled over, which should make our job easy. Unfortunately, they don’t match up with any contemporary kings of Sumer; at least, not at first – but then again, we had that problem with Enmerkar/Nimrod and Utu/Shamash/Ham didn’t we? So this is solvable.

The name “Chedorlaomer” has long been the subject of controversy, that has increased, rather than diminished, since the discovery of native Elamite and Babylonian documents. The first clue to an identification of the name is found in the fact, everywhere now regarded as established, that the name is a correct Elamite compound. Its first half, “Chedor” (= “Kudur,” “servant of,” or “worshiper of”), is found frequently in Elamite proper names, such as “Kudur-nanḥundi” (“naḥunte” in Susian or Elamite) and “Kudurmabuk.” The latter half of the name, “la’omer,” (= “lagamaru”), is the name of an Elamite deity, mentioned by Assurbanipal. (Jewish Encyclopedia, “Chedorlaomer”)

So the first take-away is that whoever wrote the Bible – Moses, in our view – either they were telling the truth, or else they were skilled enough at Elamite, a language quite different from Hebrew spoken over a thousand miles away, to concoct a plausible fake name using elements of well-attested Elamite names.

Which is more probable? Fake or fact? Any objective scientist would say that it is implausible that it was faked; every historian says it was faked, a “literary composition.” Think about that.

The precise name Chedorlaomer or Kudur-Lagamaru is not attested in any contemporary, ~2000 BC source. And yet… the name is attested in a much later copy, in exactly this form, as an Elamite and in connection with the names of Arioch and Tidal!

In the so-called “Chedorlaomer Tablets,” from the Spartoli tablets collection in the British Museum, a “king of Elam” called Kudur-Laḫgumal is mentioned as defeating “Dur-ṣil-ilani, son of Eri-e-Aku” and “Tudḫula, son of Gazza-X.” These tablets, written sometime between the 7th and 2nd centuries BC… (Wiki, Battle of Siddim).

Statistically, it’s quite possible to find similar names in ancient history that may be connected; Medai, Medes, Mitanni, and so on may all derive from one source – or be completely unconnected, their similarities coincidental. So it’s not too persuasive to find the name Kudur-lahgumal on a tablet; the formula “servant + deity” is common.

So it is interesting that the Spartoli tablets mentions a person with the same name as Chedorlaomer of Genesis 14. It may or may not be the same person. However, when you find three out of the four names in the same place, there is absolutely a connection.

Random chance cannot place kings named Arioch, Tidal, and Chedorlaomer at the same place and time without there being a connection – especially when it says that Kudur-Lahgumal was a king of Elam! So late Babylonian fantasy or not, this tablet directly connects four facts in one place, precisely as the Bible arranges them; Kudur-Laḫgumal the Elamite, Arioch, and Tidal.

Surely no reasonable person can deny that there has to be some connection between these names and the ones mentioned in Genesis 14.Of course, critics find a way. Their theory is that this was an allegory written in the ‑3rd century about Elamite kings from the ‑12th century. A sort of political satire lampooning Elamite invaders.

But let’s think about that. They’re saying that one day in the ‑3^rd century a scribe wanted to bash some long-dead kings from Elam, a nation that no longer existed. Weird in its own right, but let’s give them the benefit of the doubt.

Thing is, having decided to write a tale about these long dead kings, he for some incomprehensible reason changed their names. And then he just happened to use names from Genesis 14 instead. Does that make sense to you? Really?

First, what possible reason could they have to write about these kings from an extinct nation at all, 900 years after the fact? Ancient history wasn’t very important in ancient times, except as it affected deities or royal legitimacy.

And if they did write such a fantasy, why hide it in metaphor by alluding to these ‑12th century kings with random names? Why not just use the names of the people you’re talking about?? Were they worried about hurting the feelings of these long-dead kings?

And finally, granting that they decided to choose random names to hide their identities… why choose names which just happen to match the names of ‑20th century kings the Bible says invaded the Transjordan??

I mean… is the historian’s theory really more likely than a gap in historians’ understanding of 2000 BC Mesopotamian political intrigue?

Really?

I think not, particularly since they admit they don’t know enough about the era to draw firm conclusions even though they constantly do it anyway!

It’s times like this that cause me to say that historians must bend over backwards to dismiss the facts of history; because it takes effort to get around these facts. It is easier to believe that the Bible is recording an accurate record of events than to believe that the Spartoli tablets are a fiction.

We have the moral high ground here, and we should act like it. Therefore, we will treat these tablets as history, not fantasy – because that simply makes more sense.

CHEDORLAOMER

One reason no researcher has ever reliably proven this connection is that they are, without exception, looking five centuries too late, in the wrong era of history altogether. They start with the present, work backwards trusting the chronological opinions of modern historians, and invariably have dynasties ruling Egypt and Mesopotamia centuries before the Bible states the flood happened.

By starting with the flood, the sons of Noah, and moving forward, not arbitrarily trying to connect 2000 Bible history to what historians think the ‑2000 Sumerian political situation looked like (they’re off by about 500 years at this point), and instead using the Bible’s firm chronology as our anchor point, we are looking at history very differently – and that opens up possibilities to us that no other historian would see.

So to that end, we begin by looking for Chedorlaomer, or more properly, Kudur-Laḫgumal, about two centuries forward from Babel and Enmerkar, since that’s how long after Nimrod Abraham lived. This part of the SKL is actually reasonably agreed upon by historians, as much as they agree on anything, so we know roughly when to look for possible matches, either in name or in deed.

One of the quirks of the SKL is that it presents a long list of sequential dynasties which were not in fact sequential; however, the dynasties are broken up into pieces, at the end of each something is said like “Then Kish was defeated and the kingship was taken to E-anna [the temple at Uruk].”

This generally, if not always, reflects the fact that at this point in the dynasty it was conquered; thus Aga or Aka king of Kish was the last king of the first dynasty of Kish (Kish I) before it was conquered by Uruk.

However remember that the SKL had a political motivation to present these dynasties as sequential; because of this, it invariably misrepresents the conqueror as the first king of the succeeding dynasty, when we know for a fact that in this case it was Gilgamesh, 5th king of Uruk I, who conquered Aka.

This means that the earlier rulers of Uruk extended back from that point, overlapping with the latter kings of Kish. We cannot prove this relationship for every dynasty, but we will take it as true in general – in agreement with Thorkild Jacobson.

In our chronology, Kish I ended around ‑2023, Uruk I ended around ‑2012, and Ur I ended around ‑1936. These dates are not reliable enough to be perfect yet, but are probably accurate to within 20-30 years at least.

Which means we would expect, based on this pattern alone, and how it matches with the expected dates of Abraham’s battle in Jordan with an Elamite empire, to find the 4th dynasty in just about the right chronological place around ‑2000‑1900.

And what do you know? Following Ur, the SKL says “kingship was taken to Awan.” And Awan was a city of Elam! Thus, the fourth dynasty was an Elamite kingdom! This is an amazing coincidence, for now we have proved that it was at least possible for an Elamite to invade Jordan, because an Elamite dynasty was leading Mesopotamia just when Abraham rescued Lot!

Unfortunately the names on this part of the SKL are badly preserved; the first name is gone, the second name is just “…lu,” and all we can make out of the third king is that he reigned for 36 years, and the first part of his name…

Sumerian: 𒆪𒌌, romanized: ku-ul-x; transliterated: ku.ul.x; anglicized: Ku-u [l – . . . ]; also: Kul[…]; alternatively: Kur-Ishshak. (Sjöberg, Leichty & Tinney 2024) (Wiki, Kur-Ishshak)

Linguistically, the part of the name least likely to change is the consonants, and particularly the first consonants of the name. Thus, the third and final king of the dynasty starting with a Ku – sound, just as Kudur-Laḫgumal does, is encouraging.

Now these are Elamite, not Akkadian or Sumerian names, and in Elam, no name is attested to have begun with Ku-ul. However Ku-du is another possible way of reading the second cuneiform sign, and that is a highly popular Elamite name element, usually in the form of Kudur or Kutur, meaning “servant of…” and followed by the name of a deity.

On the SKL, there are traces which suggest the third sign is an “L.” Thus, we have Kudur-L…; and there is only one Elamite deity that I can find which begins with L, a very common one named Lagamal or Lagamar.

So then the only name this could be, is Kudur-Laḫgumal meaning “Servant of Lagamar” – precisely the name from the Spartoli tablets!

Then just take all the vowels away, and spell it in Hebrew, add vowels back in and translate it into English and you have Chedor-laomer, king of Elam, final king of the first dynasty of Awan! Final, because Abraham killed him, plunging Sumer into anarchy! But more on that later.

TIDAL, KING OF NATIONS

The Bible mentions four names, Amraphel of Shinar, Chedorlaomer of Elam, Arioch of Ellasar, and Tidal “king of nations.” This last title is a very generic term – king of which nations? Clearly not Sumerian nations, for we already have a king of Sumer (Amraphel of Shinar).

This is where we have the advantage over historians, for we have confidence that the Bible meant for us to understand this. Remember, Moses wrote this for his Israelite audience – he wanted them to understand it. So what would they have understood by “the nations?”

Deuteronomy 7:1 When Yahweh your God shall bring you into the land where you go to possess it, and shall cast out many nations before you, the Hittite, and the Girgashite, and the Amorite, and the Canaanite, and the Perizzite, and the Hivite, and the Jebusite, seven nations greater and mightier than you;

While the word “nations” (goyim in Hebrew) refers to any nation, by far the most frequent use of the term in the books of Moses is to refer to the Canaanite tribes. Thus, this is what Moses’ audience most likely understood. So Tidal, therefore, was king over these nations, at the time of Abraham.

Note also that the first nation Moses mentioned was the Hittites. And as it happens the name Tudḫaliya – which in the Hebrew-English transmission would become Tidal – is a very common Hittite royal name, with no less than eight Wikipedia entries for different Hittite kings bearing that name over the course of a thousand years.

“Tudḫaliya (sometimes called Tudḫaliya I) is deduced from his early placement in a later offering list as a hypothetical pre-Empire king who might have reigned in the early 17th century BC. (Wiki, Tudhaliya, disambiguation)

Basically, that means he was worshipped as a deity by later kings, and that he existed before any of the other kings by that name; perhaps the 17th century BC, perhaps later, they really don’t know. Which means my guess is as good as theirs.

The point is Tudhaliya, in Hittite, would be spelled Tidal in Hebrew – and he was king of the (Canaanite) nations, specifically of the Hittites. Thus, although we cannot date Tudhaliya I, he is an attested ancient person and is almost certainly the Tidal whom Abraham fought.

THE HITTITE CONQUEST OF CANAAN

When you think about it, this identity makes a lot of sense; for the Sumerians to come this far west, they would have to make some agreement with the Hittite tribes who dominated this region; so either by conquest or treaty, the Hittites would have had to be involved in any military action in Canaan.

It’s also interesting that Jordan and Canaan were inhabited, at that time, primarily by Amorites – not Hittites; for when God promised the land he stood on to Abraham, he specifically mentioned the Amorites’ lack of sin (Genesis 15:16).

At the same time, God did promise him the land of a variety of tribes – specifically including Hittites and Amorites – which stretched from the Euphrates in Syria to the Nile in Egypt (Genesis 15:18-20). But the place he was, apparently, belonged to the Amorites.

Abraham dwelt by the oaks belonging to Mamre, the Amorite (Genesis 14:13), who was an ally of Abraham. Why did Abraham need allies? Against whom? Hittites, whom he had fought in the previous chapter!

And yet when Sarah died and Abraham buried her in the cave of Machpelah (Sarah died at 127, Abraham was 137 at the time, hence in the year ‑1885), we find Hittites living there, not Amorites. Something happened between these two events to change the ethnicity of Canaan.

Genesis 23:10, 18 And Ephron dwelt among the children of Heth: and Ephron the Hittite answered Abraham in the audience of the children of Heth, even of all that went in at the gate of his city, saying [and he sold it]… Unto Abraham for a possession in the presence of the children of Heth, before all that went in at the gate of his city.

So this city was clearly possessed by Hittites now, but 66 years earlier it was an Amorite city. What had happened? It had been conquered by Hittites in the intervening 66 years, no doubt started by the raids with the Mesopotamian confederacy! Because if you read closely, you’ll notice no Hittites were attacked by the Mesopotamians when they came to conquer the Transjordan:

Genesis 14:5-7 And in the fourteenth year came Chedorlaomer, and the kings that were with him, and smote the Rephaims in Ashteroth Karnaim, and the Zuzims in Ham, and the Emims in Shaveh Kiriathaim, And the Horites in their mount Seir, unto Elparan, which is by the wilderness. And they returned, and came to Enmishpat, which is Kadesh, and smote all the country of the Amalekites, and also the Amorites, that dwelt in Hazezontamar.

No Hittites were harmed during the raids because Hittites were the aggressors! Whereas no reference to Hittite inhabitants exist from the time of Abraham’s first decade in Canaan, because at that time there weren’t any!

Which suggests how the Mesopotamians had such power so far from home; because they allied with a powerful, much closer, tribe – the Hittites. And it suggests why the Hittites accepted the agreement – it would provide them with new land to settle cities in. And we can support this in an unexpected way:

Ezekiel 16:2-3 …Thus says the Lord Yahweh to Jerusalem: your birth and your birth is of the land of the Canaanite; the Amorite was your father, and your mother was a Hittite.

Thinking of this in a metaphorical sense, as God clearly meant it, a city was “founded” by its father; he planted the seed that became the city. In this case, the Amorites founded Salem. Then a Hittite “nurtured” it, and made it larger, playing the role of a mother.

This tells us that first the Amorites were in the regions around Salem, built the city, and that later it was invaded and occupied by Hittites who expanded upon it. And now we know that this happened in the time of Tidal, king of nations!

TERAH THE PIONEER

Knowing that this was the political situation around ‑1950, with Sumer recently having conquered Canaan and extracting tribute from it, we can now finally explain Terah’s move from Ur and his stopping at Haran without actually going to Canaan.

Terah was an Arphaxadite, and could have gone in literally any direction. For some reason – probably family drama – he chose not to go east to the Indus, preferring instead to strike out on his own in the west. But why Canaan, specifically?

Why travel 1,000 miles with everything you own to a land you’ve never seen, full of hostile foreigners whose language you don’t speak? He must have had reasons to think this was a good place to go. Historically, settlers trying to escape religious oppression head to the newest frontier on the edge of civilization.

And this tells us that when Terah chose to go to Canaan, it was because it had recently been conquered by Sumer, and he could expect a Sumerian military presence to help him settle and keep him safe until he had made local contacts.

But the inherent instability in newly subjugated lands suggests a reason why Terah didn’t, in the end, make it to Canaan – because Haran was, at the time, on the border between the relatively civilized Euphrates valley and the tribes of Canaan who probably weren’t that excited about paying tribute to Mesopotamia.

So Terah, arriving at the border of Canaan, must have heard rumbles of dissatisfaction from the subjugated natives that made him afraid to keep going, so he decided to stay in friendly territory and make a home there. In other words, he chickened out at the last minute.

Abraham, having more faith, and with a direct commandment from God, decided to travel there anyway (Psalms 105:9-15). God protected them, but it was still hostile territory; Jacob claimed to have carved out his inheritance in Canaan with his sword and bow from the Amorites (Genesis 48:22).

This just goes to show you that you can’t really understand the Bible without knowing the historical perspective in which it took place… but you also can’t understand that history without the Bible.

ARIOCH OF ELLASAR

Although there is some room for debate, Ellasar, if you remove the vowels which are absent in Hebrew, would be L-S-R. If the letters were swapped in transcription, it’s quite easy to get to L-R-S, which could spell Larsa – a well-known city in southern Sumer, which was powerful – although its heyday was much later, around ‑1600‑1400, little is known about it from this period.

Now if the name Arioch were written in Sumerian, it would most likely be rendered as Eri-aku, which means “servant of the moon.” This name, translated literally into Akkadian, would be rendered as Warad-sin.

There is no known historical person by this name at the right place in history (‑1937), but there is no information about most of the cities in Sumer for this time, even though we know most had kings. But much later there is a person by the name Warad-sin on the SKL, one of the final kings of Larsa (approximately ‑1375).

Most people, since they are heavily guided by traditional history and are all too willing to dismiss the Bible, try to connect Abraham to this Warad-sin/Eri-aku/Arioch anyway; by moving Abraham too late (~1800 BC) and Warad-sin far too early to match (~1800 BC).

But that’s totally unnecessary and frankly, wrong. We know quite a bit about the life and times of Warad-sin of Larsa ‑1375; and the events of the Spartoli tablets did not happen in his lifetime. These are the well-documented times of Hammurabi, and there was no Elamite king dominating all of Sumer, nor did Warad-sin die in Canaan.

We have enough information about the period to be confident that we would know if Kudur-Laḫgumal had an empire as far as the Mediterranean in that era. Thus, the Warad-sin of Hammurabi’s era is certainly not Abraham’s adversary… but he might be his namesake!

As we see with Tudaliya, Ramses, Henry, and Popes named John, there is a strong tendency to recycle old names of powerful kings and use them for your own regnal name. Larsa had been a significant city dating back the earliest times in Sumer, and had been ruled over by kings or at least governors for most of the time.

Unfortunately we do not have any records of the kings of Larsa going back to the time of Abraham. But since kings almost always choose names from kings of their own nation, the fact that there is an Arioch of Ellasar in the ‑14th century tells us there probably was also an Arioch of Ellasar in the ‑20th century! One who was a confederate or vassal of Kudur-Laḫgumal!

THE STORY OF CHEDORLAOMER

Having identified the timeframe and most of our key players, it’s finally time to read the only story that tells the history of Kudur-Laḫgumal from the perspective of his Babylonian subjects, which is recorded in the Spartoli tablets.

Note that in the following quotes, his name is spelled Kudur-KUKUmal; the KU-KU represents the name of the sign used to spell the name, not how it was pronounced. No one is quite sure what these symbols sounded like (there are several possibilities, reading cuneiform is complicated). But La-Ga-Mal is definitely possible.

Also, like most ancient tablets from this part of the world, there are missing pieces and so it is sometimes necessary to add words in [brackets] with suggested words to fill gaps or unclear parts in the text. The following bracketed words are supplied by the translators, not me.

With their firm counsel, they [the gods] established, Kudur-KUKUmal; king of Elam. Now, one who is pleasing to them [-] will exercise kingship in Babylon, the city of Babylonia (…) What king of Elam is there who provided for Esagila and … ? The Babylonians… and their message: “(As for) [the wo]rds that you wrote: ‘I am a king, son of king, of [royal seed e]ternal, [indeed] the son of a king’s daughter who sat upon the royal throne.” (Wiki, Chedorlaomer)

The tablets are fragmented, and it’s not clear precisely what is happening. But it seems that the gods legitimately gave the kingdom to the Elamites, Kudur-Laḫgumal in particular, because he responded that he was “king, son of a king, of royal seed eternal.” And yet despite that, the Babylonians were unhappy with his rule. The tablet continues…

[As for] Dur-ṣil-ilani son of Eri-e[A]ku, who [carried off] plunder of [-], he sat on the royal throne… [-] [As for] us, let a king come whose [lineage is] firmly founded from ancient days, he should be called lord of Babylon … (Ibid)

This seems to be the people complaining to Kudur-Laḫgumal about Dur-sil-ilani, son of Eri-aku (Arioch) who sat on the throne of Babylon, and had plundered something – in context, perhaps a temple?

Clearly the people of Babylon did not consider Dur-sil-ilani as a legitimate king and wanted to replace him with someone “whose lineage is firmly founded from ancient days.” Since the scribe is telling this story after the fact, this means that after the dust settles, we will expect to find a king on the throne that can trace his dynasty back to a proper royal house – Kish, Ur, Uruk or some such.

So it’s interesting that in the SKL, the next king to rule over Ur and Uruk (and many other cities besides) after the Awan I dynasty dies with Kudur-Laḫgumal is Lugal-Kinishi-Dudu (also spelled Lugal-Kiginne-dudu), who was a king of Kish, Ur, and governor of Uruk; all of them the most royal of royal houses!

“For An, king of all the lands, and for Inanna, mistress of Eanna. Lugalkiginnedudu, the king of Kish. When Inana gave to Lugalkiginnedudu en-ship in addition to kingship, she allowed him to exercise en-ship in Uruk, and she allowed him to exercise kingship in Ur.” — Inscription of Lugal-kinishe-dudu. (Wiki, Lugal-kinishe-dudu)

Back to the Spartoli tablets; the sin of Dur-sil-ilani, and probably that of Kudur-Laḫgumal as well, was stealing from the temple, particularly the temple of Enlil, chief of the gods.

The Elamite hastened to evil deeds, for the Lord devised evil for Babylon. When the protective genius of justice stood aside, the protective spirit of Esharra, temple of all the gods, was frightened away. The Elamite enemy took away his possessions, Enlil, who dwelt therein, became furious. (Wiki, Chedorlaomer, quoting the spartoli tablets)

This seems like the Elamite dynasty was in trouble. At first, he was deemed “legitimate” and then he, or his governors, began to rob the temples; that’s typically only done when you are having a money crisis and need to bribe armies or kings (compare to 2 Kings 18:16).

This, in turn, typically happens because you need loyal manpower to crush local rebellions; no one liked having an Elamite king, obviously. And as a result of this sacrilege, Enlil – chief of the gods – called the Umman-manda and Enlil, not Kudur-Laḫgumal, laid waste to Sumer at their side.

[The god had] become furious: he commanded for Sumer the smashing of En[lil]’s land. Which one is Kudur – KUKU[mal], the evil doer? He called therefore the Umman-man (da he level) led the land of Enlil, he laid waste (?) [-] at their side. (Ibid)

Umman-manda seems to have been a generic term for “barbarian horde.” Most people believe it was the Gutians, a barbarian tribe from the north-east of Sumer, modern Iran, who may have been early Medes – possibly related to the Indus people, in my opinion.

These Gutians were about to be a major player in Sumer, inhabiting, and then dominating, Mesopotamia for over a century. And this is quite possible; Gutians and Elamites were neighbors, who had a shared hatred of Sumerians, and naturally would form alliances.

But Umman-manda applies to any barbaric race in Sumerian; which, in this context, makes it also quite likely that it meant Hittites. Who were also, by Sumerian standards, a savage race. And of course, it’s also quite possible that the word “barbarians” was used precisely because both Gutians and Hittites were invited into Sumer by the Elamite.

The Elamite [enemy] sent forth his chariotry, he headed downstream toward Borsippa. He came down the dark way, he entered Borsippa. The vile Elamite toppled its sanctuary, he slew the nobles of … with weapons, he plundered all the temples. He took their possessions and carried them off to Elam. He destroyed its wall, he filled the land [with weeping …] (…) an improvident sovereign [-] he felled with weapons Dur-ṣil-ilani son of Eri-[e]Aku, he plundered [-] water over Babylon and Esagila, he slaughtered its [-] with his own weapon like sheep, [-] he burned with fire, old and young, [-] with weapons, [-] he cut down young and old. (Ibid)

Most people read this unnamed “Elamite” as the same earlier king Kudur-Laḫgumal, but he is not mentioned by name. According to this story, Kudur-Laḫgumal was a good king at first. Furthermore, why would Kudur-Laḫgumal kill the son and heir of his ally Arioch?

Historians struggle to make sense of this narrative precisely because they’ve made the assumption that Kudur-Laḫgumal is “the vile Elamite.” But when you think about it, Kudur-Laḫgumal doesn’t appear in this narrative at all, except in the beginning as a background figure.

Nor do the Sumerians complain about Kudur-Laḫgumal. He was the legitimate king who was appointed which is why he appears on the SKL, a list of legitimate kings! The only negative is his temple robbing, making him “an evil doer.”

Still, the body of the complaint is about Dur-sil-ilani. Why? Because he is the only king actually present in Sumer. Where is his father Arioch in all of this? Clearly, it’s his lineage as a king of Ellasar (Larsa) that gives Dur-sil-ilani what legitimacy he does have; yet Arioch is not a part of the story.

Again, why? Because both Arioch and Chedorlaomer had gone to Canaan, and were already dead when these events happened! In fact, it was the power vacuum caused by the loss of four great kings of Sumer that so weakened the country that “the gods,” specifically Enlil, sent the barbarians to Sumer.

This was rationalized by the later Sumerians as due to Kudur-Laḫgumal’s sins against the gods (compare Jeremiah 44:18-19). As for the identity of the unnamed Elamite who sacked Sumer… we’ll come back to him a bit later.

THE BARBARIANS INVADE

Abraham killed Kudur-Laḫgumal and at least some of the “kings” who were with him; but there was one king who must have escaped; because the Spartoli tablets tell us that Tudhula – Tudḫaliya, Tidal king of nations – took the opportunity to invade Mesopotamia and sack the temples for plunder!

Tudḫula son of Gazza[-], plundered the [-] water over Babylon and Esagila, [-] his son smote his pate with his own weapon. [-] his lordship to the [rites] of Annunit[um] [king of] Elam [-] plundered the great …, [-] he sent like the deluge, all the cult centers of Akkad and their sanctuaries he burned [with fi]re Kudur-KU[KU]mal his son c[ut?] his middle and his heart with an iron dagger, [-] his enemy he took and sought out (?). The wicked kings, criminals, [-] captured. The king of the gods, Marduk, became angry at them (…) [The doer] of evil to him [-] his heart [-] the doer of sin must not [-] (Ibid)

It’s a bit hard to read this part, as you can see from all the missing words. But what is clear is that this Tudhula is the king who is doing the plundering – the leader of the Umman-manda, the barbarian horde whom Enlil had called to punish Sumer for Kudur-Laḫgumal’s sins.

But now we can fill in the real story, because it was Kudur-Laḫgumal who had robbed the temples already to bribe the Hittites to help him conquer Canaan. Thus Kudur-Laḫgumal rightly bears the blame for opening the door to the savages because he invited them, as mercenaries, into a confederacy with Sumer… but with Kudur-Laḫgumal dead, there was no one to control the Hittites.

And there’s a very odd phrase here at the end; “Kudur-KU[KU]mal his son c[ut?] his middle and his heart with an iron dagger.” Who is Kudur-Laḫgumal the son of here? Or is it speaking of Kudur-lagamar’s own son? Historians are divided, but we have a leg up because we know what happened in Canaan – Kudur-Laḫgumal is already dead.

Which means this passage must refer to the son of Kudur-Laḫgumal, the “vile Elamite” who stayed behind to mind the fort in Sumer, and mounted an insufficient defense against Tidal’s fury – who, after conquering him, made sure the dynasty ended with him.

Thus, the reading should be “Tudhula killed Kudur-lagamar’s son and cut out his genitals and his heart with an iron dagger.” This makes sense because it’s standard practice; when you invade a country, you castrate and/or kill the royal house to avoid any focal points for rebellion later (compare Jeremiah 52:10).

There is no logical reason to introduce the word “son” in this context, unless it is to show how the wicked dynasty of Elam, who did not properly worship the gods, saw their just and fitting end at the hand of barbarians they allied themselves with.

And so the Babylonians must have loved the poetic justice that these same barbarians whom Kudur-Laḫgumal hired to control them and expand his empire wound up murdering his son and extinguishing his dynasty.

Whereas from Tidal’s point of view, he was the sole surviving king from the battle of Siddim and was just collecting the payment he was promised for his services to the king of Elam. He didn’t stay to rule Sumer because he didn’t want to; he came for gold, and he got it, and went home to begin what would one day become the Hittite empire, for which he would later be deified by his descendants, many of whom would take his name.

Without knowing about Abraham’s involvement, none of this makes sense. With it, all the pieces fall into place without even trying.

It is clear that God told Abraham to leave his home country and his father’s house, and that was the reason he left Haran (Genesis 12:1). Yet Genesis 11:31 tells us that “Terah took Abram his son, … They went from Ur of the Chaldees.”

This tells us that Terah was the driving force behind the first move, not Abraham. It also makes it clear that Haran died in Ur, before they left. Since the Bible says nothing without a reason, that this fact is mentioned at all suggests that Haran’s death inspired their move to Canaan.

Given that the place they moved to was also called “Haran,” certainly after their dead relative, it suggests that Haran’s death had a large impact on the family. Also, we know that Abraham effectively adopted Haran’s son Lot, bringing him along as they left Haran and sharing the best of the land of Canaan with him.

Together these things suggest that Haran died a hero. Which in turn suggests that, after a century or two of diplomatic relations with Ur, something happened to make it not a good place to be for descendants of Arphaxad.

In all fairness, they may have left simply because God said “move”; but God tends to work through “the rod of men” whenever possible (2 Samuel 7:14). In other words, God makes a place unsafe and hostile and his people leave. Consider Lot in Sodom, for example (Genesis 19).

It’s worth noting in passing that Haran is only a few dozen miles from the site of Gobleki Tepe where the family of man first settled. Abraham certainly visited the site during his time in Haran, for whatever that’s worth.

Moving on, the first dynasty of Ur, according to the SKL, was fairly short; adjusting for implausibly long reigns suspiciously divisible by 6, the dynasty may have only been a century or so, which accords well with the findings in the royal tombs of Ur with their rich burials contemporary with the IVC residents.

After that, IVC presence drops precipitously and this suggests Ur was conquered by some other power, whether militarily or diplomatically. Such a change could have made it an exceptionally good time for the foreign interlopers from Aratta to leave Ur. Particularly if Abraham was a troublemaker…

Now Abram…was a person of great sagacity… for he was the first that ventured to publish this notion, that there was but one God, the Creator of the universe; and that, as to other [gods], if they contributed any thing to the happiness of men, that each of them afforded it only according to his appointment, and not by their own power. This his opinion was derived from the irregular phenomena that were visible both at land and sea, as well as those that happen to the sun, and moon, and all the heavenly bodies, thus: “If [said he] these bodies had power of their own, they would certainly take care of their own regular motions; but since they do not preserve such regularity, they make it plain, that in so far as they co-operate to our advantage, they do it not of their own abilities, but as they are subservient to Him that commands them, to whom alone we ought justly to offer our honor and thanksgiving.” (Antiquities of the Jews, 1.7.154)

Abraham’s conclusion, to sum that up, was that if the stars were gods, they could do whatever they wanted, and flit willy-nilly across the sky like birds. But since they moved in orbits, they were bound by rules. And someone, therefore, had to have given them those rules.

And since every visible heavenly body was subject to rules, paths from which they couldn’t deviate even a little bit, then the true God who gave them those rules must be invisible to us. And it was only that God who acted independently, and only He who deserved our worship.

Good stuff – except that Uruk would have despised it. Abraham was discovering that the entire Sumerian religious system was flawed, and that idolatry itself was not only a sin, it was irrational and illogical; given my own experience arguing with religious types, I cannot imagine that was received warmly (compare to Acts 19:24-41).

Putting this together, it seems likely that the move was not entirely voluntary; but was a matter of self-preservation. The death of Haran was likely a martyrdom which led to Terah deciding it was an unhealthy place to live – even though Terah himself was an idolator (Joshua 24:2), a tradition which his family in Haran continued (Genesis 31:19). Which is why God needed Abraham to keep moving, to not be in the company of his idolatrous father’s house…

Genesis 12:1-4 Now Yahweh said to Abram, “Get out of your country, and from your relatives, and from your father’s house, to the land that I will show you. I will make of you a great nation. I will bless you and make your name great. … So Abram went, as Yahweh had spoken to him. Lot went with him. Abram was seventy-five years old when he departed out of Haran.

We can securely date this departure to Canaan as ‑1947. Soon after arriving, there was a famine in Canaan so he continued on to Egypt; afterwards, he returned to Canaan as a rich man (Genesis 13:1-2). But the story of what happened while he was in Egypt… that’s a tale worth telling.

JOSEPHUS’S CREDIBILITY

For what happened in Egypt, beyond the bare-bones account of Abraham’s wife being briefly taken into Pharaoh’s harem, we must rely on other sources. Fortunately, we have more than you might expect; chief among them the Jewish historian Josephus, whom I’ve referenced many times in this book and will return to many more.

When the temple was destroyed by the Romans in 70 AD, the Roman collaborator Josephus requested and was given the holy books of the temple by soon-to-be emperor Titus Caesar, which he then used as the basis for his history (Life of Josephus, 414). So he had access to a lot of documents, likely including at least some of the lost books of the Bible such as the Wars of the Lord, the books of Iddo, Nathan, Ahijah, and many others referenced in the Bible which don’t exist today (Numbers 21:14, 2 Chronicles 9:29).

Of course, he also had access to a lot of books we consider apocryphal, uninspired books full of Jewish fables which he probably also borrowed from – fables which Paul warned us about (Titus 1:14). And yet the New Testament writers did quote from books we don’t have.

For instance, Paul refers to Melchizedek as being “Without father, without mother, without descent, having neither beginning of days, nor end of life” (Hebrews 7:3). What’s important is that he isn’t teaching this, he is using this as an accepted fact which he then uses to prove that Melchizedek must be the Person who became Jesus.

Yet Genesis 14 says nothing about Melchizedek’s birth, or lack thereof. So what were Paul and his Hebrew audience reading? Likewise, Paul references “Jannes and Jambres,” the Egyptian magicians who withstood Moses (2 Timothy 3:8). And while the event is in our Bibles, there is no mention of their names (Exodus 7:11).

Yet there is an abundance of contemporary Hebrew stories – some obviously fantastical and absurd – which speak of these magicians by name. Honestly, I’d be inclined to dismiss them all as nonsense, but for the fact that their names were included in the inspired scriptures, which means there must be some truth to some of the Jewish fables of that time – those same fables Paul told us not to put faith in!

Similarly, Jude refers to Michael disputing with the devil over Moses’ body – which is not in our Bibles. And note, again, that Jude considered this a fact his audience already knew, which he was using to prove a different point.

But while the story isn’t in our Bibles, we do know that Moses was buried using supernatural methods (Deuteronomy 34:5-6). We know the Lord doesn’t generally do things Himself, but sends angels to do it for Him; and given Moses’ importance, we could guess He would probably send the highest ranking angel – which we know to be Michael, the “Archangel,” which literally means “chief angel.”

Given that, we could easily have guessed that the devil would have resisted – based on his behavior in Daniel and with Jesus. And finally, we could infer that since Michael was doing the Lord’s business, he wouldn’t need to fight the devil, simply rebuking him was enough.

And since we know him as a righteous angel, we can further conclude that he wouldn’t choose to curse the devil out since it wasn’t the right thing to do. Hence, we have reason to believe the words of Jude – besides faith in the inspiration of our Bibles – since they basically flesh out a story we could have inferred from the facts we do know.

But this in turn means that Jude was reading some book that told this true story we don’t have access to today! There are many other examples, but suffice it to say that Josephus had sources for facts about Abraham we simply don’t have. Indeed, it’s impossible that he didn’t have access to more things than we do, since NT writers reference them.

So while his story about Abraham may not be true, it might easily be based on facts. The only way to decide is to find more witnesses to confirm his words with archeology and history. And even though it was 4,000 years ago, there’s a lot more of them than you might think.

In the interest of being objective, we must concede that Josephus, writing around 90 AD from Rome, trying to convince a Greco-Roman audience of the antiquity and nobility of the Jewish nation, had reasons to embellish the Biblical narrative a bit.

Likewise we, as Christians, have a desire to write our heroes into the stories of great civilizations; to speculate that perhaps Samson inspired Hercules, or that Job built the great pyramid, or that Plato’s wisdom was acquired from Solomon’s writings. Some of these kinds of things are certainly not true. Most such things are highly speculative, at best.

So we need to keep a healthy dose of skepticism about any claims made by writers like Josephus; but that being said, Josephus was very conscientious for an ancient historian, and – by ancient standards – fairly rigorous in citing proof that his contemporaries were able to check, even though we may not have access to his sources today; for example:

Berosus mentions our father Abram without naming him, when he says thus: ‘In the tenth generation after the Flood, there was among the Chaldeans a man righteous and great, and skillful in the celestial science.’ (Antiquities 1:7:2)

This is the ancient equivalent of a modern scientific paper citing a reference known to his audience to bolster his claims. It was certainly not invented nonsense; Berossus may have himself been wrong, but Josephus would not have misquoted him in a day and age when it could easily be checked.

So with that survey of Josephus’ reliability, we proceed with what he said about Abraham.

FROM UR TO EGYPT

Berossus above told us that this man, whom Josephus connected to Abraham, was “skilled in the celestial sciences.” He goes on to be more explicit about Abraham’s wisdom:

[Abraham] introduced [the Egyptians] to arithmetic and transmitted to them the laws of astronomy. For before the coming of Abraham the Egyptians were ignorant of these sciences, which thus travelled from the Chaldeans into Egypt, whence they passed to the Greeks. (Josephus, Jewish Antiquities, 1.8.2)

It’s difficult to overstate the importance of this quote; if true, it means that the Egyptians did not know arithmetic and astronomy before Abraham visited them around ‑1947‑1937; it also means that these sciences came from the Chaldeans, whom Josephus believes were Arphaxadites, but whom we know to be the IVC culture.

And these sciences were absolutely essential to the construction of the pyramids and temples of ancient Egypt. Which means, if this one statement were true, all of ancient history is turned on its head, for it means that the pyramids were built after Abraham – and thus are far younger than historians would have us believe.

Of course, this is an extraordinary claim, for which we need more than the word of an ancient Jewish historian writing 2,000 years after the fact. It requires extraordinary evidence, which I intend to provide.

Beginning with the things we know for certain; Abraham came from Ur, then went to Haran, and later passed through Canaan, into Egypt, and back again. So he could have been the conduit for the transmission of knowledge.

His family’s presence at Ur we have already associated with a rapid advance in technology, due to the much higher technological sciences evident at the Indus Valley which were transmitted to Ur. Thus, he and his family were certainly potentially able to teach the Egyptians.

Further, it seems that the Egyptians had some mathematical and astronomical help to build the pyramids; for there is a rapid leap in technology associated with the building of the first pyramid in Egypt, that built by Djoser. A pyramid which was, in fact, not a true pyramid at all – but a ziggurat.

Before this time, the highest advancement in buildings was the low bench-like mastaba; then suddenly, a pyramid, with no antecedents in Egypt – yet eerily like those of Mesopotamia which we know for a fact existed in this time.

(The pyramid of Djoser (top) compared to an earlier tomb, called “mastabas” (bottom). )

So impressive and novel was this pyramidal structure to the Egyptians that the man who designed it, Imhotep, was later deified and worshipped for his immense contributions to the wisdom of Egypt.

Imhotep was an ancient Egyptian genius – a brilliant architect, mathematician, physician, astrologer, poet, priest, and Chief Minister to Pharaoh Djoser. Imhotep’s name means “the One Who Comes in Peace.” Although he was born a commoner, Imhotep rose to become King Djoser’s vizier and was in charge of building Djoser’s tomb at Saqqara (egyptianmuseum.org/explore/old-kingdom-architects-imhotep).

It’s worth mentioning that Imhotep means “he who comes in peace” – as in, a stranger who came to Egypt from somewhere else. Also it’s worth noting that Imhotep’s skills correspond closely to what Josephus said about Abraham.

The time of Djoser began the third dynasty and with it the Old Kingdom which was Egypt’s first and arguably greatest golden age. The pyramid of Djoser was probably the tallest man-made structure in the world until the great pyramid surpassed it about a century later, becoming definitely the tallest structure in the world – a record it would hold at least 3,000 years, until 1311 AD!

What’s more, there are a truly astounding number of ways that the pyramids are aligned with stellar events and phenomena, either along their various axes or as seen from Heliopolis, the most holy temple in the area, literally “the city of the sun.” Something not possible without advanced (for the time) geometry.

The base of the Great Pyramid is nearly a perfect square, with only a 5.5-inch difference between the western and eastern sides, an astonishing 0.01 percent difference. Which for a structure of this magnitude and age is unbelievable. And the space between blocks is 1/50th of an inch (less than half a millimeter).

The Great Pyramid covers 13 acres but is level to within just over 3/4 of an inch (2.1 centimeters); the average deviation of the sides from true north is 3′6″ of arc; for comparison, that’s an error of about three times the apparent width of the planet Jupiter in the sky, as seen with the naked eye. So… really close.

So close it’s impossible that it was not based on extensive observations of the motions of the heavens over decades, if not centuries. And, if the written histories are correct, it was built in only 20-30 years… meaning that 2.3 million blocks of stone were placed, with one being cut, transported, and perfectly fit… every 3 minutes.

So where did they figure out how to do that? Yes, it is possible they gave birth to their own Newton or Da Vinci – but unlikely considering the knowledge of how to do these things already existed on the other side of the known world… in Abraham’s hometown!

OLDER PYRAMIDS

The tower of Babel – which predated Abraham by a few hundred years – was the first attempt to create a pyramidal structure, consciously imitating the mountains of Ararat where the family of man had recently left, from which God spoke to them.

The technology and science involved in creating this tower would have created a template for later efforts at pyramid building worldwide, from the Americas to Asia, after the nations were dispersed by God. Because they had all been there.

There are ruins of a massive pyramid at Babel, and several historical references to what it looked like; though to be fair it was rebuilt several times, most notably by Nebuchadnezzar who also enlarged it significantly.

According to ancient Babylonian records it was about 200ʹ tall – the same as the pyramid of Djoser, give or take. Based on ancient descriptions, it would have looked something like the picture at rightabove.

And contrary to what most people assume, the Bible doesn’t say it was entirely destroyed – simply that the people “left off to build the city” (Genesis 11:8). On the contrary, it seems they went on and built towers in every town in the area. Most importantly for our purposes… in Ur of the Chaldees.

Ur was the center of worship for Sin, the moon god who was, at times, considered to be the king of the gods and father of all things (Figure 1: Ziggurat of Ur) (at earlier times he was a lesser god, son of Enlil and Ninlin, grandson of Anu, father of the gods). At rightAbove is a computer reconstruction of the ziggurat of Ur as it was originally built by Ur-nammu and Shulgi in the Ur III period in the early ‑1600s (my dating). So after Abraham’s time, but certainly built on earlier templates, most likely rebuilt on top of earlier pyramids on the same site.

But what’s interesting about Ur and Sin is that the worship of Sin involved extensive astronomical observations for which they used the pyramids! For these were not used merely as temples, or houses for the god, but as astronomical observatories to keep track of celestial motions!

During the period that Ur exercised its supremacy over the Euphrates valley, the Moon-God became the head of the local pantheon, so he was designated as “father of the gods,” “creator of all things,” and so on. He was also the “wisdom” personified, imagined as “an expression of the science of astronomy or of the practice of astrology, in which the observation of the moon’s phases is an important factor.”

In fact, in the astronomical knowledge, the people of Mesopotamia surpassed the other ancient civilizations, even the Egyptians. They confined their observations to the Moon, instead of the Sun… They had built observatories, or watch-towers, called Ziggurats… From these towers the priests/astronomers had the possibility to observe the rising and setting of moon, sun, planets and stars on a free horizon. They recorded data and had tables from which they were able to predict the positions of celestial bodies… In this manner, the Babylonian astronomy discovered the main periods of the Moon’s motion and used data analysis to build lunar calendars based on the Metonic cycle. (Sparavigna, Amelia Carolina, A Ziggurat and the Moon. Philica. 2016).

So not only was the science of pyramid building very advanced in Ur, but the pyramid itself was one of the tools used to do the observations! Which is why it was aligned so closely to the cardinal directions – that was vital for its primary function as it must have been vital to the original, primary function of the pyramids of Egypt!

SIN AND INDUS

We know almost nothing about the Indus culture’s belief system; but we can say without hesitation that their favorite motif was the bull. It is found on most of their seals, usually with a bit of script which is speculated to be the owner’s name.

Even their leaders/deities are associated with a bull, through their horns. One of the famous works of Indus art is the Pashupati seal, found in Mohenjo-Daro (at rightabove), which shows a leader of some kind holding off other animals wearing a bull’s horn crown. This suggests that the bull or buffalo occupied a major place in their theology.

Now back in Mesopotamia, the image of the bull and of the moon god Sin were strongly associated;

Inscriptions from the Old Babylonian Period inform us that the crescent moon was identified with the Moon God Sin… The horns of the bull came to signify the crescent of the moon, which lies almost horizontally, like the horns of the bull, in the skies of Mesopotamia … The bull, the crescent moon, and the Moon God therefore became associated with each other. In Sumerian the Moon God was known as Nanna, Suen, or sometimes as Nanna-Suen. In Akkadian he was called Sin. … Not only was this god likened to a bull calf, in literary works he was commonly portrayed as one … A hymn to Sin begins, “Proud bull calf with thick horns and perfect proportions, with a lapis beard, full of virility and abundance.” (Mesopotamian Gods and the Bull, van Dijk-Coombes)

It’s intuitive; bulls have horns; the moon looks like horns. Ergo bull=moon. Why this is important to us is that the most significant iconography from the Indus is the bull; we can, therefore, infer that the moon probably played a significant role in their belief system.

It’s also worth noting that the cultural transfer was overwhelming from the Indus to Sumer, not the other way around; arguing that the association of the moon and the bull began in Indus, and was taught to the Sumerians; this would also explain why, at some periods, Sin was considered father of all the gods while other periods he is in a lower place in the pantheon.

That, in turn, is important because the center of the worship of the moon god Sin was Ur; precisely where the Indus outpost was. Abraham’s hometown.

HOW TO SIN

But the worship of Sin speaks to Abraham’s potential qualifications as a scientist because his worship involved intricate measurements of the moon’s rising, setting, phases, eclipses, and so on – which is how they developed such an advanced astronomical science.

In order to develop a proper calendar, you have to take systematic measurements, night after night, of certain stars, the moon, and so on. And to do that, you need a flat, level, square surface to sight along to take your measurements.

In the absence of handy mountain peaks (not really a thing in Mesopotamia or Egypt), the best thing to do is to make a massive, flat, surface of stone or brick and use it as a giant sight. The bigger it is… the more accurate the measurement. Which is why it was important that they be as enormous as possible!

In addition, having steps along the pyramid at particular angles, or unnecessary-seeming staircases that point to where important events in the lunar cycle occur, is also handy.

In late Babylonian times it is likely that instead of, or in addition to, their original function as temple towers, the ziggurats were employed as astronomical observatory posts. (Black and Green 1998, 189; Fletcher 1996; Tiede 2011; Nadali and Polcaro 2016; cf. Parrot 1955, 58-64; Shepperson 2012)

Vance Tiede did an excellent study of Babylonian-area ziggurats concluding that all of them are aligned with at least one major celestial event – the solstices, the equinoxes, the highest point Venus reaches in the sky, etc.

But most importantly for our purposes, the ziggurat of Ur – Abraham’s home temple, at least as rebuilt by Ur-Nammu – was aligned with the full moon rise at the lunar standstill.

Explaining that is complicated, but suffice it to say that the lunar standstill is to the moon what the solstice is to the sun, hence it’s also called a lunistice. It is a key event in the lunar cycle that happens every 18.6 years and requires precise observation – such as a tall staircase which looks directly at the place in the sky where it will happen!

These observations allow for very accurate prediction of eclipses, which always happen near certain points in this lunar cycle. And since eclipses were considered bad luck in most societies, often seen as foretelling the death of the king, it was very important to predict them, so that measures could be taken to get out in front of the bad luck with extra sacrifices, or by getting a fake king for a day who could get the bad luck instead of the real king, that sort of thing.

(Figure 2 From Ziggurats: An Astro-Archaeological Analysis, Vance Tiede)But back to the ziggurat of Ur; its dimensions were built using the Pythagorean theorem of a² + b² = c² (see the green right triangle in the picture at rightabove). This speaks to an advanced (for the time) knowledge of geometry which would have been required to build structures such as the Great Pyramid.

And here’s something really interesting; ancient structures were nearly always built in round, whole numbers in their own local units; just as we typically aim to make things like buildings or bike tires a whole number of feet or inches or meters across, since it’s an arbitrary size anyway.

And most of the ziggurats around Babel were done in, predictably, round numbers of Babylonian cubits. The thing is, this pyramid in Ur wasn’t built in Babylonian cubits… but in round numbers of Egyptian cubits. Which further strengthens the connection that the Egyptians learned about pyramid building specifically from someone who had come from Ur! Because the Egyptian cubit was the same as the Urite cubit!

We know the ancient Egyptian royal cubit was 7 hands, each hand of 4 fingers width – exactly as the cubit of the Bible. God told Ezekiel, exiled in Babylon, that the Biblical cubit was not the Babylonian cubit of 6 hands, it was “one [Babylonian] cubit, plus a handbreadth” (Ezekiel 43:13). Thus, seven handbreadths. So why did the Egyptians have the same cubit as the Bible?

…the reason why Egyptians chose to divide a cubit into 7 parts might be quite hard to trace. It would seem to go back long before the construction of the Great Pyramid, at least to the time of Imhotep. (https://sites.math.washington.edu/~greenber/PiPyr.html)

The earliest attested standard measure is from the Old Kingdom pyramids of Egypt. It was the royal cubit (mahe). The royal cubit was… subdivided into 7 palms of 4 digits each, for a 28-part measure in total. The royal cubit is known from Old Kingdom architecture dating from at least as early as the construction of the Step Pyramid of Djoser around 2,700 BCE. (Mark H. Stone, The Cubit: A History and Measurement Commentary)

Note the association with the step pyramid of Djoser as one of the earliest certain uses of this unit of measurement! It’s hard to trace the origin of the cubit in Egypt before then… quite simply because it didn’t originate in Egypt but in Ur! Imhotep was the one who introduced it, “he who came in peace” from Ur.

Further, the Ur ziggurat’s area was one Egyptian setat or acre, as defined in the old kingdom – i.e, Abraham’s era. Which means that the Egyptian cubit and acre must have been learned from someone who brought it to them, not merely from Mesopotamia, but specifically from Ur!

The unexpected discovery of Egyptian setat in Babylonian ziggurat architecture may be ‘evidence of the transmission of mathematics’. (Neugebauer 1957, 1)

The conclusion that can be drawn from the existence of so many parallels of a non-trivial nature between hieratic and cuneiform mathematical texts is that Middle Egyptian and OB [Old Babylonian] mathematics must have influenced each other…. (Friberg 2005, 103; both as cited in Tiede’s paper above)

Or, as Josephus said… Abraham from Ur taught mathematics to the Egyptians!

Remember, Josephus couldn’t have guessed that Ur’s measurements were the same as ancient Egyptian measurements; he couldn’t have known that the Indus bull, and therefore the god Sin, were brought to Ur by Abraham’s ancestors.

Which means the existence of this legend that Abraham was involved just became a lot more credible.

THE OTHER TEMPLE OF SIN

We’ve proven Abraham had the opportunity to bring science to the Egyptians – we can place him at both places. We’ve also proven that there was motive – that Ur had better science than the Egyptians had, and we know that Abraham profited extensively by his time in Egypt – perhaps as a reward for this knowledge (Genesis 13:1-2).

But as early 2000’s police procedural shows taught us, we need motive, opportunity, and means. So did Abraham, personally, have the means? Could we show that he, personally, knew these facts beyond a reasonable doubt? That’s for you to judge.

As we’ve shown, Abraham came from Ur, the first known center of Sin’s worship in the ancient world. But what you don’t know is that the only other center of Sin’s worship was Haran – the same city where Abraham’s family went immediately after leaving Ur!

These cities are 600 miles (1,000 km) apart, so this was no casual transference. What’s more, we know that Abraham’s father Terah served other gods (Joshua 24:2), and since Sin was the patron deity of Ur, his erstwhile hometown, then Terah almost certainly served Sin!

Therefore when Terah left Sin’s temple in Ur he would have carried his images with him, and reestablished that worship in Haran – where, generations later, Abraham’s relatives still worshipped the images (Genesis 31:19, 34).

This is strong evidence that Terah’s family was involved in the worship of Sin; involved enough to bring it with them and reestablish it at their new home. Yet this would be impossible unless a highly educated priest of Sin was among them.

Because remember – Ur’s worship of Sin didn’t just involve prayers and bowing down in front of idols. It involved complex measurements of the heavens – not something your average farmer could have brought with him from Ur to Haran!

And yet this fact, that knowledge of the heavenly bodies was necessary to the ancestral worship of Abraham’s house, could not have been known to Josephus – it being 2,000 years before his time, when Sin was no longer worshipped by that name. Which gives us cause to believe him when he tells us that Abraham was a learned astronomer!

Remember, Josephus told us that Abraham was the first to realize there was one God; and says that this conclusion was formed “from the irregular phenomena that were visible both at land and sea, as well as those that happen to the sun, and moon, and all the heavenly bodies.”

But Abraham could not have formed these opinions without being intimately involved in the observation of those heavenly bodies; without observing the orbits of the moon and planets for himself. Something which required spending extensive time at a large astronomical observatory built to align itself with celestial events!

For only by sighting down various straight lines on the ziggurats and recording which stars appeared where on each day could you observe the regular cycles of the heavens. And that’s all well and good… except it means there is only one possible conclusion, and you might not like it.

Being an astronomer in a non-religious sense did not exist in the ancient world. Regular people didn’t learn to read, do math, or chart the skies. Only priests did.

And since Terah worshipped Sin, and was likely a priest of Sin; and since families always raise their children in their religion if they can, and since the office of priest is often hereditary…

…Then if Abraham was, indeed, an astronomer…

…it can only mean that Abraham must have been a priest of the temple of Sin in Ur, before he was called by the true God!

The role of priest is clearly being performed by Abraham in Genesis 15, where he prepares sacrifices. As it was by Noah in Genesis 8, Job in Job 1-2, and so on. The job of sacrificing to God fell to the firstborn until the time of Moses when God replaced the firstborn with the Levites (Numbers 3:12-13).

Therefore it makes perfect sense that the lineage of Abraham, firstborns of firstborns, would be actively involved in the priesthood and leadership capacities wherever they dwelt, including at Ur.

And since priests and royals were pretty much the only educated people in the ancient world, it means Abraham had means, motive, and opportunity to transfer the knowledge of the Chaldeans to the Egyptians.

That is enough for a conviction in a court; but it still doesn’t prove he actually did it. It isn’t quite a smoking gun. However… I think we can find that too.

THE CALENDAR

There are three ways to make a calendar; a solar calendar, where you start the year at a given point in the solar cycle – let’s say, the spring equinox – and between there and the next you have one year of either 365 of 366 days (since the true year is about 365.25 days long).

This keeps the years consistent, because it’s hot at the same time of year, rains at the same time of year, and so on. But, it doesn’t break up into smaller units well, that can be tracked by people who don’t have cell phones and calendars in their pockets. So months are really handy.

However, months don’t divide up into a solar year very well. In a year, you’ll have twelve complete lunar cycles – months – and then you’ll have about 11 days left over. The moon keeps moving, but they’re not really part of a “month” in the literal sense.

So you could just ignore the solar year, and have a lunar year. This means your year is 12 lunar cycles, then another year is 12 more lunar cycles. This is easy. HOWEVER… it means that over time, your months drift through the solar seasons.

So let’s say you start your first year with a new moon on the spring equinox, just in time for planting. So you call this month “planting month.” Next year, the first day of “planting month” falls 11 days before the equinox; and within 8 years, planting month falls in midwinter, by which time you’re wondering if “planting month” is really the best name for this month…

Now, there’s nothing technically wrong with this, unless you have your months tied to specific seasons like planting, harvest, or celebrating solar events like the winter solstice – which ancient cultures overwhelmingly did. In which case, the names you have given the months make less sense over time.

We’ve solved this in our modern calendars by having “months” that have no actual connection to the moon at all. They’re 28, 30, or 31 days – and every so often, one is 29 – which lets us have pretend months and yet not have the seasons drift.

But that’s a tricky solution to keep track of for peasants in a pre-industrial society. Without clocks and personal calendars, people just look at the moon to see roughly how much time has passed. So one solution to these problems is a lunisolar calendar, which involves adding an extra month back to the calendar every so often. This is called the Metonic cycle.

It works like this; you pick a point to start the year – let’s say the spring equinox. And let’s pick a year where the new moon is on that same day. This is day 1, month 1, year 1. You then count twelve months, and your next year starts 11 days before the equinox; that’s a bit off from last year, but it’s not a huge deal as long as it doesn’t keep going farther back next year.

Count twelve more months of year 2, and the new year would start 22 days before the equinox. Since the goal is to keep the calendar anchored to the equinox, you can actually start the new year closer to the equinox by adding a thirteenth month, called an “intercalary month.”

This month would mean that the next new year would start 8 days after the equinox, after the 13th month, and then another 12 months brings you back around and the fourth new year starts on the new moon that happens three days before the equinox.

In this way, no matter how many years pass, the seasons will never be more than about two weeks out of alignment with any other year, which means the month of “planting” might be off by a few days, but at least half of it will always fall in planting time!

THE UR CALENDAR

Why is this important in an article about Abraham? Because Babylonians, specifically at Ur, had discovered this calendar by the time of Abraham.

The Babylonian year of 360 days… was primarily based on the moon. They recognized months of 29 and 30 days… The average length of twelve lunar months (354 days) is too short for a solar year, while that of thirteen months (384 days) is too long. In order to harmonize the lunar and solar cycles the Babylonians used twelve months but intercalated a thirteenth one when necessary. This must have been done very early, [before] the third century at Ur (2294-2187)… (Vance Tiede, Ziggurats of Mesopotamia: An Astro-Archaeological Analysis)

In our chronology, the era he is talking about would be “before ‑1850 or so.” In other words, in Abraham’s time. But here’s the coolest part… the oldest of the Egyptian calendars, the sacred calendar, used the exact same method!

The Egyptian lunar calendar, the older of the two systems, consisted of twelve months whose duration differed according to the length of a full lunar cycle (normally 29 or 30 days). Each lunar month began with the new moon—reckoned from the first morning after the waning crescent had become invisible—and was named after the major festival celebrated within it. Since the lunar calendar was 10 or 11 days shorter than the solar year, a 13th month (called Thoth) was intercalated every several years to keep the lunar calendar in rough correspondence with the agricultural seasons and their feasts. New Year’s Day was signaled by the annual heliacal rising of the star Sothis (Sirius), when it could be observed on the eastern horizon just before dawn in midsummer; the timing of this observation would determine whether or not the intercalary month would be employed. (britannica.com/science/Egyptian-calendar)

The Egyptians, rather than using a solar event like an equinox, used the first time Sirius can be seen (a regular, yearly celestial event in mid-summer, around the time the Nile floods) as their anchor – which was a better fit to their agricultural cycle, which is very different from Mesopotamia.

Regardless, this proves that the Egyptians used the same method of counting their years as Abraham would have done in Ur! Something which, as a priest, he would certainly have been involved in! And therefore would have been one of the “laws of astronomy” he taught to them, according to Josephus!

Other civilizations found many different solutions to the calendar; later Egyptians used a strict 365 day year, which drifted slowly through the seasons. Other Sumerians used calendars that were very different. So what are the odds that at Ur and Egypt we find yet another connection – unless Josephus was right?

THE BIBLE’S CALENDAR

This, as a quick aside, solves a nagging question: Why doesn’t the Bible record anything about how to calculate the year? There are a few hints here and there, but nothing substantial. Really, God just acts like we already know how to count it. The only instructions God gave Moses about calculating the calendar was…

Exodus 12:1-2 And the LORD spake unto Moses and Aaron in the land of Egypt, saying, This month shall be unto you the beginning of months: it shall be the first month of the year to you.

The Bible does not directly mention intercalary months, precisely when the month begins, or where to calculate it from. (Sighting a new moon over Jerusalem will often be a day off from a month begun by a new moon sighted over Hawaii. And if that new moon causes an intercalary month to be added, it can make the year off by 30 days.)

So despite what calendar obsessives would tell you, there is no way, using the Bible alone, to conclusively prove how to calculate the calendar. So why wouldn’t God say more about it? Because He didn’t have to!

Moses already KNEW how to calculate the calendar! God assumed he already knew how to count it because he did know – the Egyptians had already taught him!!!

Acts 7:21-22 …Pharaoh’s daughter took him up, and nourished him for her own son. And Moses was learned in all the wisdom of the Egyptians, and was mighty in words and in deeds.

Moses was educated in all their wisdom, specifically involving “words.” Which means he knew writing, he knew math, and he would have known all about the calculation of the calendar! Because he was being raised as heir to Pharaoh, and these are things pharaohs, conduits of the divine, had to know!

Which is why when Moses was being led by God out of Egypt, God didn’t need to teach him how to calculate it! Because the sacred calendar the Egyptians used was the same one God had given to the Egyptians… through Abraham!

Which is why the only thing God ever told Moses about the calendar was “today is the first day of the first month of the year.” Because that one phrase fixed everything that the Egyptians did wrong with the calendar!

Moses called the first day of that month Abib, after the stage that the barley plants are at during that season – which tells us that the anchor of the Bible’s year must be the spring equinox – the only major solar event that happens around the time the barley is harvested. Which is exactly how they calculated the first day of the year at Ur!

The first month of the civil calendar during the Ur III and Old Babylonian periods was Šekinku (Akk. Addaru), or the month of barley harvesting, and it aligned with the vernal equinox. (Wikipedia, “Babylonian Calendar”)

Notice that! The calendar of Ur and the calendar of Moses both began the year at the same time and for the exact same agricultural reason! Because God was correcting the biggest thing the Egyptians had broken about the calendar He used Abraham to teach them!

Another thing Egyptians did wrong was they started their months at the first day the moon wasn’t visible, after the last visible crescent; one or at most two days before the Urites did, which is the first observable crescent as the Jews do to this day.

Finally, the last thing they did wrong was to start their days at dawn, instead of dusk. Which is why God said, in effect, “this exact moment – just after dusk, on the evening when the moon was first visible, in the springtime during the barley harvest, this moment begins the year.”

Exodus 12:2 This month shall be to you the beginning of months. It shall be the first month of the year to you.

Because with that one phrase, said at that exact moment, God corrected all three errors – the start of the day, the start of the month, and the start of the year. The rest was exactly what Abraham had taught them!

All of which adds to the evidence that Abraham brought the calendar to the Egyptians; who used its principles, but moved the alignment to fit the floods of the Nile, which is why all God had to tell Moses was “hey, you know that calendar I inspired the Egyptians to teach you? Move the start of the first of the first month of the first year to this exact moment and it’ll be right again.”

WISDOM

But how did he have an opportunity in Egypt to teach these things? Remember, Pharaoh was king. And Abraham was a herdsman. Rich, to be sure, but not a king – at least, not yet. A herdsman didn’t just pop into the palace of Pharaoh for a visit, nor hang out with priests and debate them without some sort of permission. Yet Josephus claims he did exactly that.

Now, after this, when a famine had invaded the land of Canaan, and Abram had discovered that the Egyptians were in a flourishing condition, he was disposed to go down to them, both to partake of the plenty they enjoyed, and to become an auditor of their priests, and to know what they said concerning the gods; designing either to follow them, if they had better notions than he, or to convert them into a better way, if his own notions proved the truest… [then after the truth about Sarah came out, Pharaoh] … gave him leave to enter into conversation with the most learned among the Egyptians; from which conversation his virtue and his reputation became more conspicuous than they had been before. (Josephus, Antiquities, 1.161-7)

As I said at the first, it’s tempting to assign to familiar Biblical characters all sorts of great attributes and treat mythology as a sort of fan-fiction for Biblical characters. I mean, the apocryphal books are full of just such flights of fancy.

And so we should be skeptical when Josephus claims Abraham was a brilliant debater and the wisest of men – because Josephus was trying to sell the Greeks on how cool the Jews were, and so telling them that Abraham was everything the Greeks looked for in a philosopher might just be telling them what they wanted to hear.

And yet, we can conclusively prove that Abraham was indeed among the wisest of men; for Abraham is one of the few men – Moses being the other in Exodus 32:9-14 – who is recorded as having debated God and actually changed God’s mind (Genesis 19:29). What greater proof of wisdom is there, than that? (Genesis 18:23-33, particularly verse 25). And it was his destiny to share this wisdom with all nations (Genesis 26:4-5).

For whereas the Egyptians were formerly addicted to different customs, and despised one another’s sacred and accustomed rites, and were very angry one with another on that account, Abram conferred with each of them, and, confuting the reasonings they made use of, every one for their own practices, demonstrated that such reasonings were vain and void of truth: whereupon he was admired by them in those conferences as a very wise man, and one of great sagacity, when he discoursed on any subject he undertook; and this not only in understanding it, but in persuading other men also to assent to him. (Ibid)

If this is true, it means that – rather than denouncing the Egyptians as heathens and idolators, he went to them with reason and convinced many of them that their own ideas about God were false. It means that he unified their religion, and consolidated a lot of their customs into one larger religion. Teaching them the truth as best he could… Something that we know happened around the time of Djoser!

THE AFTERLIFE

It’s well known that about the time when Abraham would have visited – the early third dynasty, beginning of the Old Kingdom period of Egypt – Egypt underwent major changes in religion and science.

Up until the third dynasty, the dead were buried in mastabas, short, flat-topped tombs. While the bodies often were buried facing in a particular, ritually significant direction, they were not mummified or embalmed.

Many of the earliest burials were in, or at least with, boats – reflecting the worldwide fear of another flood, with the idea that the flood was a symbol of death, and therefore to survive it one needed a boat as Noah had. Something which, being only a few centuries after the Flood, certainly was alive in the cultural memory. (Shem was still alive, after all, and Noah had only just died.)

They believed in an afterlife, but the preservation of the physical body didn’t seem to play as large a part in it as it did later. All of this changed at the beginning of the third dynasty. Suddenly, everyone who was anyone had to be mummified. So why the sudden change? And why the obsession with the physical body?

We know that Abraham “saw Jesus’ day, and was glad” (John 8:51-56) – a reference to the resurrection. We know that Abraham knew the gospel of the salvation of Christ (Galatians 3, particularly verses 8, 16-18, 29, etc.). Because the Being who became Christ, the Lord God, told him! Told him the same things He was telling the Pharisees.

And so when Abraham went to debate with the Egyptian priests, he did so armed with much of the same understanding we have – that after death there is a resurrection, and that God will return to judge all nations in a literal, physical sense.

Remember, literally every culture had some idea of an afterlife. Yet the vast majority of these did not require a physical body; various cultures burned their dead, turning them into literal spirit – for that is the meaning of air, or smoke – so that they could reunite with the Spirit of God.

But to the Egyptians, this was one of the greatest curses, for without their physical bodies they would experience permadeath. Why the obsession unless someone told them about the resurrection of the dead – one of the first things Paul tended to tell pagans?

Acts 17:18 Some of the Epicurean and Stoic philosophers also were conversing with him. Some said, “What does this babbler want to say?” Others said, “He seems to be advocating foreign deities,” because he preached Jesus and the resurrection.

So the Egyptians must, in the early days, have believed that their body was essential to the process of eternal life. Which is not actually true, but you can see how the Egyptians got there. In Ezekiel 37:1-11, we are told clearly that God will gather the bones and rebuild the bodies from the ground up.

But the Egyptians may not have known this… or believed it, even if they were taught it. So to them, mummification became absolutely necessary to guarantee resurrection, and the subsequent judgment of the dead.

TRUTH IN EGYPTIAN RELIGION

And that is something that the Egyptians very much believed in; that at death, their deeds were judged, as good or evil. If they failed the test, they were devoured by a monster; but if they passed, then they would join one of the “immortal stars” at the north pole (the ones which never set below the horizon; for setting symbolizes death). Isn’t that what we believe, in a way?

Daniel 12:3 Those who are wise shall shine as the brightness of the expanse; and those who turn many to righteousness as the stars forever and ever.

Isaiah 14:13 You said in your heart, “I will ascend into heaven! I will exalt my throne above the stars of God! I will sit on the mountain of assembly, in the far north!”

Another idea the Egyptians had is that they would go back to the original mound of creation, their version of the garden of Eden. Which isn’t that different from one symbol we believe in…

Isaiah 51:3 For Yahweh has comforted Zion; he has comforted all her waste places, and has made her wilderness like Eden, and her desert like the garden of Yahweh; joy and gladness shall be found therein, thanksgiving, and the voice of melody.

Since Zion is used a symbol of the resurrected saints, there’s definitely some common imagery here. They also believed they would, at death, be freed from their body to wander around haunting things in the daytime, often in bird form. We don’t believe that, because this is something they probably believed in before Abraham that was blended with their new beliefs.

From about 2000 BCE [-1500] onward it was believed that every man, not just the deceased kings, became associated with Osiris at death. (Encyclopaedia Britannica, “Osiris”)

But probably their primary belief was that after death, if they were judged worthy they would become one with Ra and/or Osiris, both solar deities, and pass through the heavenly circuit with Him on His solar boat. Now… is that really so different than what we believe?

John 17:21 that they may all be one; even as you, Father, are in me, and I in you, that they also may be one in us; that the world may believe that you sent me.

Psalms 89:36 His [David’s] seed [Jesus] will endure forever, his throne like the sun before me.

Revelation 3:21 To him that overcometh will I grant to sit with me in my throne, even as I also overcame, and am set down with my Father in his throne.

These verses, taken literally, mean that Jesus’ throne is like the sun, we will sit with Him in His sun-throne and we will be one with Him. Which is, after all, the whole point of joining the church – the body of Christ, thus in a very real sense being the same person as Him in death (Romans 6:6-11).

So really, the Egyptians weren’t that far from what we believe… albeit mixed with a lot of idolatry and misunderstandings. You can see how what Abraham would have certainly told them about God could have led to these misunderstandings, when mixed with their preconceptions and preexisting superstitions.

But what would you expect? Christianity today is what Jesus and the apostles said, mixed with a lot of misunderstandings. Why would Egypt in the time of the patriarchs be any different? They were curious about the God of Abraham; they were curious about the God of Joseph, who clearly had amazing power, more than their other gods.

Genesis 41:38-39 Pharaoh said to his servants, “Can we find such a one as this, a man in whom is the Spirit of God?” Pharaoh said to Joseph, “Because God has shown you all of this, there is none so discreet and wise as you.”

So they certainly would have asked them about what this God expected from them. And just as certainly, they wouldn’t have understood; and they would have tried to fuse the God of Abraham with the gods they already knew. Just like people have always done to the God of the Bible.

But most importantly to our story today… this finally explains why mummification became such a national obsession. Because the faith in the resurrection was based on the misunderstanding that God actually NEEDED your old body in as good a condition as possible!

Now we know why pyramids needed to be as secure and immense as possible, so that God could find your body, and no one else would disturb it. (Of course, burying themselves with gold had the opposite effect, guaranteeing grave robbers would indeed disturb it… but when has a religion ever thought things through?)

PORK

Egyptian religion has several curious customs that have led skeptics to believe that Moses’ religion was simply adopted from the Egyptians with the idolatry cut out. And there is evidence for that – only, they’ve got it backwards. Moses didn’t learn it from the Egyptians… the Egyptians learned it from Abraham.

A shocking number of Egyptian religious ideas can be traced to something Abraham would have believed. For example, Herodotus tells us “swine are held by the Egyptians to be unclean beasts. In the first place, if an Egyptian touches a hog in passing, he goes to the river and dips himself in it, clothed as he is” (Histories, 2:47). Now that’s odd, isn’t it? Because not eating pigs is a very expensive taboo:

Over a lifetime a pig can convert 35% of the energy in its feed to meat compared with 13% for sheep and a mere 6.5% for cattle. A piglet can gain a pound for every three to five pounds it eats while a calf needs to eat ten pounds to gain one. A cow needs nine months to drop a single calf, and under modem conditions the calf needs another four months to reach four hundred pounds. But less than four months after insemination, a single sow can give birth to eight or more piglets, each of which after six months can weigh over four hundred pounds. (Harris 1985:67)

Which is a long way of saying, pigs get fatter faster, on less food, than any other domesticated animal by a wide margin. Plus, pigs can eat almost anything, as opposed to the relatively picky diets of sheep and cattle. Not to mention that they apparently taste awesome.

Hence, there must be some powerful motivation to persuade a people to avoid eating them. It seems that the Egyptians, over the centuries, did have periods where they ate them but they are never depicted in temples or tombs as food, unlike cows, fish, ducks, and so on. Why not? Because “the [Egyptian] priests were forbidden to eat pork” (Alcock 2006).

According to Grivetti, before 3200 B.C. Egypt consisted of two distinctive geographical-cultural entities: a pork-consuming north or Lower Egypt, and a pork-avoiding south or Upper Egypt. Shortly after 3200 B.C., both regions were united politically when the Southerners invaded and conquered the north. One result of this conquest was the institution of broadly based pork avoidance throughout the Egyptian Nile valley and delta that pre-dates the Jewish pork prohibition by more than two thousand years. (Grivetti, L.E., Food prejudices and Taboos)

While I don’t agree with the dating methods, nor necessarily with their conclusions of how it happened – which are little more than guesses – it doesn’t matter, for there is no argument that this predates Jewish food taboos.

So why would the Egyptians have such an expensive taboo against pork? Very few ancient societies did. Except… you guessed it… Abraham’s hometown!

Pork was eaten in Ur in pre-Dynastic times…. After 2400 B.C., however, pork evidently became taboo and was no longer eaten. (Marvin Harris, Cannibals and Kings)

2400 BC – their dates – corresponds to the time of the Royal Burials at Ur, and the presence of the IVC in Ur, approximately ‑2050. As mentioned above, avoiding pork is an expensive and impractical taboo; plus, you know, bacon tastes awesome. So… why did it become taboo?

I think you know.

This is one more direct link tying Ur, Abraham, and Egypt together.

THE SIGN OF THE PRIEST

But still, there were many thousands of people in Ur who could have taught Egypt math, science, the calendar, and not to eat pork. So while we have a mountain of circumstantial evidence that Abraham was involved, we still don’t have a smoking gun.

For that, we need something that only one man, ONLY Abraham could have taught them. And as it happens… we have that too. Because you see, Egyptians practiced one particular custom that they could only have learned from Abraham. Something that the Urites did not do, which only Abraham did…

Circumcision.

The Egyptian priests were required to be circumcised, and many Pharaohs were as well. This proves that it was seen as a religious practice, and not a merely hygienic one. The common people do not seem to have been circumcised as a rule. Then again, in early times common people weren’t mummified either.

Yet circumcision was not practiced in Mesopotamia, nor in Syria, else Eliezar of Damascus wouldn’t have needed to circumcised (Genesis 17:23). Nor was it practiced anywhere else in that part of the world until Abraham was told to do it.

Therefore, the Egyptians learned it from Abraham.

Smoking gun found.

An astute reader will notice that Abraham received the sign of circumcision from God in Genesis 17, probably 20ish years after Abraham’s sojourn in Egypt in Genesis 13, and therefore argue that Abraham couldn’t have taught the Egyptians circumcision.

But first, if not Abraham, then who taught them? And second, Egypt was close, Abraham was respected, and it’s difficult to believe that having done so much for the Egyptians, they didn’t seek his advice more.

After all, Abraham would go on to live for another 75 years – so it’s plausible, even probable, that he maintained communication with Egypt and even visited it again, which would be when the knowledge of circumcision was passed on.)

A very well informed reader will note that circumcision was practiced in ancient Saudi Arabia; and rather than contradict, this strengthens the case – because Ishmael, the first person Abraham ever circumcised, went to live in Paran, which adjoins Midian, in Arabia.

ABRAHAM THE GOD

Which means we finally have conclusive proof; that math, science, unclean meats, circumcision, the calendar, the resurrection and redemption from sins and final judgment were learned by the Egyptians from Abraham, and further taught by his descendants, Joseph in particular.

That means that Abraham was either directly involved in, or at the very least responsible for the knowledge whereby the first pyramids were constructed; involved in the creation of their calendar, at the very least inspired the science of mummification and the other medical knowledge they possessed, and who knows what else.

And since the Greeks learned geometry and many other sciences from the Greeks – Pythagoras, Plato, and many other famous Greeks visited Egypt to study – it means Abraham is indirectly responsible for Greek wisdom, and therefore, in a very roundabout way, the ancestor of all our modern sciences.

Given his immense impact on their history, it would be odd if the Egyptians, given their worldview, didn’t see Abraham as a god-like figure. And of course, they did. It’s finally time to revisit this quote from earlier:

Imhotep was an ancient Egyptian genius – a brilliant architect, mathematician, physician, astrologer, poet, priest, and Chief Minister to Pharaoh Djoser. Imhotep’s name means “the One Who Comes in Peace.” Although he was born a commoner, Imhotep rose to become King Djoser’s vizier and was in charge of building Djoser’s tomb at Saqqara. (egyptianmuseum.org/explore/old-kingdom-architects-imhotep).

As I said earlier, Imhotep was eventually deified thousands of years after he lived. Some of those later legends are certainly embellished, to say the least; but even in his life he was immensely respected. And all of those things above are things that we have established Abraham either did, or directly inspired to be done.

The name of Imhotep is associated in Egyptological literature with the first pyramid, the famed stepped tomb of king Netjerkhet, later known as Djoser “the holy one.” Knowledge of both historical figures is shrouded in legend because only a few sources from their time have been found. In the case of Imhotep, contemporary references are limited to two inscriptions mentioning his name and titles in connection with Djoser and his successor Sekhemkhet, both of the 3rd dynasty in the Old Kingdom (2686–2613 BCE). These titles call Imhotep the royal seal bearer and great of seers (priest of the temple of Heliopolis), as well as overseer of sculptors. There is no explicit mention of his role as architect of Djoser’s pyramid complex. Nevertheless, the presence of his name and titles on the base of a statue of this king is evidence of his elevated position in the royal court. The original location of this statue in the funerary complex of the king, plus the titles related to building and sculpture, point to a historic role as designer of Egypt’s first monumental structure in stone. (Imhotep: A Sage between Fiction and Reality, Escolano-Poveda)

It’s interesting that Djoser changed his name; if indeed this was a Pharaoh who was converted to Abraham’s religion, it makes sense that he would change his name – as changing religions often causes that. I mean, Abram himself did it.

And if indeed Abraham convinced many priests as well, then “great of seers” would be the title he naturally bore. I mean, we know that was true – for Abraham did have visions from the true God recorded in the Bible on several occasions.

And calling him “overseer of sculptors” makes perfect sense if he was the one who taught them how to build pyramids based on his own ziggurat at Ur. Which, given Abraham’s conversion, was probably not intended by him to be a temple or tomb, but as an observatory to help them observe the motions of the heavens to set the calendar, as he had done in Ur.

There are several other episodes of Imhotep’s life that suggest Abraham; a much later text relates a legend about “his divine father Ptah, his mother Khereduankh, and his sister Renpetneferet, sometimes also referred to as his wife. Imhotep is depicted as a powerful magician in Djoser’s royal court.” (Marina Escolano-Poveda, Imhotep: A Sage between Fiction and Reality)

His sister was sometimes referred to as his wife. That’s hardly unknown in Egypt, but incest in Egypt was greatly frowned upon for non-royals, and Imhotep was known to be a commoner. But we know for a fact that Abraham did have a sister-wife – indeed, it’s how Abraham met Pharaoh in the first place!

And Imhotep’s father was said to be the God Ptah – one of the oldest all-powerful creator gods, and the oldest all-powerful creator God is indeed Abraham’s “Father” as He is of all the faithful sons of Abraham.

Egyptologists assume, and much later legends state, that Imhotep was an Egyptian – but there are no contemporary facts about his life whatsoever, except the royal titles cited above and his name – a name which implies “coming,” i.e. from somewhere else.

And so I consider it proven that Abraham was Imhotep. Which is why, despite extensive searching, Imhotep’s grave has never been found – which is odd, because considering his status, it should have been lavish and prominent, and near Djoser’s tomb.

But it’s never been found… because Imhotep was buried in the cave of Machpelah, in Canaan, by his sons Isaac and Ishmael (Genesis 25:9).

ABRAHAM OR JOSEPH?

Josephus and the Bible both mention a famine in the days of Abraham, which was the reason he went to Egypt in the first place. What’s interesting is that there is, to this day, a rock carved with a story that says that in the time of Djoser, there was a famine of seven years, and it was after consulting with the priest Imhotep, who then prayed to Khnum who promised to lift the famine.

Granting that this was carved 2,000 years later, and a lot of embellishments might have happened between those two events, it once again connects Imhotep to an event in Abraham’s life – specifically, a severe famine which Imhotep is credited with lifting – something God would certainly have done for him.

However, based largely on this stela, many armchair archeologists with a Biblical axe to grind (like me) have concluded that Djoser’s famine was in the time of Joseph, because of the obvious seven-year connection.

And that’s reasonable, but this was time of frequent famine – Abraham went to Egypt because of an extreme famine, and Isaac went to the Philistines a generation later for a separate famine (Genesis 26:1), both different from the one of Joseph. So while I admit the seven-year connection is valid, it’s not conclusive.

On the other hand, the evidence connecting Djoser to Urite measurements and technological advances that Joseph would not have known is overwhelming. Remember, divinely inspired genius or not, Joseph was a mere 17 years old when he went to Egypt.

He could not have taught them the astronomy and measurements and temple-construction techniques of Ur, since he had never been there. Because genius or not, Joseph hadn’t spent the better part of a 75 year life as an astronomer-priest of Ur like Abraham had!

There’s a LOT more to say about Joseph, but I don’t want to get off-topic. Suffice it to say, Joseph could not have taught the customs from a city to which he’d never been to the Egyptians. Imhotep did, and therefore Imhotep was Abraham.

THE PRIEST OF ON

Above we cited a quote which connected Imhotep with the priesthood of Heliopolis; now that sounds bad, until you realize that Joseph married the daughter of Potiphar, a priest of On (Genesis 41:45). So clearly that wasn’t as bad as it sounds, especially in the patriarchal age before the name of the true God was known (Exodus 6:3). How can that be?

Well, interestingly, On is the Hebrew spelling of the Egyptian word for the holy city of Ianu – which is the original name of the Greek Heliopolis, meaning “the temple of the sun.” But Ianu does not mean any god’s name, which is a bit unusual for a holy site; instead, it derives from the Egyptian word meaning “the pillars.”

Pillars were generally set up as sights to do astronomical observations; and in Ianu, the earliest God associated with the city was not Ra, but Atum “the primordial God in Egyptian mythology from whom all else arose” (Wiki, Atum).

Its association with the primordial creator God, whatever his name might be, would not necessarily be problematic for Abraham and Joseph who likewise worshipped “the most high God,” even though they did not know his name. Provided the idolatry was kept out of it, of course.

All of the temples and pyramids on the Giza steppe are aligned with Ianu which suggests that originally this wasn’t a solar temple at all, but the focal point of an observatory. It may even have been begun by Abraham, or greatly improved with information provided by Abraham.

Obviously, the line between astronomy and astrology was blurry, so this would have inevitably been a temple of the almighty God. To the Egyptians of that place and time, this would have been Atum; but to Sumerians, his name was Anu. Which is strikingly similar to the place name Ianu.

Anu (Akkadian: 𒀭𒀀𒉡 ANU, from 𒀭 an “Sky,” “Heaven”) or Anum, originally An (Sumerian: 𒀭 An), was the divine personification of the sky, king of the gods, and ancestor of many of the deities in ancient Mesopotamian religion. He was regarded as a source of both divine and human kingship, and opens the enumerations of deities in many Mesopotamian texts. At the same time, his role was largely passive, and he was not commonly worshipped. (Wiki, Anu)

The heavenly deity in Sumer, Anu, with whom Abraham was most certainly familiar. Indeed, he had grown up speaking Sumerian in Ur, and that was literally the word for “sky.” So if this was a sky observatory… the name Ianu may derive from the place.

If that’s the case, it’s possible that the word isn’t named Ianu after the pillars there; but rather the pillars there were named Ianu after the Sumerian word for the heavens they were meant to chart. Later the site was taken over by the solar deities Atum and Ra.

This last section is more speculative than most, in all fairness, and if it’s wrong doesn’t really affect the overall theory; but Abraham’s and Joseph’s association with the Egyptian priesthood needs to be explained and put in context, and this is one way it would make sense.

ABRAHAM’S CONVERSION

It’s worth noting that Terah had idols, as did his great-great-granddaughter Rachel. Jacob, while in Haran, clearly tolerated idols among his men and family (Genesis 35:1-4). Up until this point, Jacob had not committed himself to the God of Abraham, pending the Lord’s fulfillment of the deal Jacob made at the pillar (Genesis 28:16-22).

What’s interesting about Abraham is he had realized, ON HIS OWN, that it was foolish to worship the created thing rather than the Creator! Long before he made a covenant with God and was required to get rid of his idols, he stopped doing it because he thought it was foolish. That’s why he was greater than Jacob.

Because through Abraham’s observations of the heavens in the course of his duties as priest, he came to realize that the moon could not be a god, since it was a slave to laws that Abraham discovered bound it to regular cycles!

And if the moon couldn’t free itself from the cycles of fate, how foolish was it to pray to the moon to free us from the cycles of fate?

Romans 1:20-25 For the invisible things of him from the creation of the world are clearly seen, being understood by the things that are made, even his eternal power and Godhead; so that they are without excuse: Because that, when they knew God, they glorified him not as God… Who changed the truth of God into a lie, and worshipped and served the creature more than the Creator, who is blessed for ever. Amen.

So Abraham had done exactly what Paul had said we should do; learned, by the thing created, what the nature of the Godhead was; and realized that it was foolish to worship the thing that was created instead of the Creator!

A truth which he told his fellow priests of Sin, and when they didn’t listen, his fellow citizens of Ur; who reacted with predictable violence and chased him out of the city, probably killing his brother Haran in the process (see my article, “Haran the Hero”).

For which doctrines, when the Chaldeans, and other people of Mesopotamia, raised a tumult against him, he thought fit to leave that country; and at the command and by the assistance of God, he came and lived in the land of Canaan. And when he was there settled, he built an altar, and performed a sacrifice to God. (Josephus, Antiquities)

But his discovery of this truth greatly impressed God; for this man, through love of truth alone, came to believe that all of the gods men worshipped were only servants of the true God and as such deserved no worship!

This was the first man to overcome the deception of the world; the first man to pierce beyond the veil of the angels, just as some few saw beyond the veil of Moses (2 Corinthians 3:12-18), and see the truth God really wanted – that God is a spirit, and must be worshipped in spirit, and in truth (John 4:23-24).

And it was that which impressed God, who appeared to Abraham, led him out of Ur and then out of Haran, where Terah’s idolatry continued; and then to distance him from that environment, God led him towards God’s own country, the small portion of the Earth that the Lord reserved for Himself.

And when he arrived, God appeared to him and promised that land to Abraham; and knowing Abraham’s background as an astronomer, it puts a whole new slant on…

Genesis 15:4-6 After these things the word of the LORD came unto Abram in a vision, saying, Fear not, Abram: I am thy shield, and thy exceeding great reward… . And he brought him forth abroad, and said, Look now toward heaven, and tell the stars, if thou be able to number them: and he said unto him, So shall thy seed be. And he believed in the LORD; and he counted it to him for righteousness.

God didn’t need to take him out of the tent to look at the stars; I mean, everyone knows there are a lot of stars! After all, God didn’t take him to a beach to show him how many grains of sand there are – despite using the exact same metaphor in Genesis 22:17. So why make him look at the stars?

Because Abraham was an astronomer, and as such Abraham would have a special appreciation of the size of this job of “numbering the heavens.” I mean, it was his job back in Ur! Knowing this, we can now hear the sarcasm in God’s voice when He says “count them… if you are able!”

This obvious belittling of him and his former job as priest of Sin was God making the point that Abraham’s former style of worship – knowing God by studying the stars – would no longer be necessary with the new covenant God would be making with him.

And, incidentally, also was a way of pointing out that Abraham’s own children would judge the world one day. For they would be as those stars, replacing those angels. For God had finally found a man who was capable of commanding his family after him, a man capable of having Seed who would actually bring light to the world.

Quite a while ago now, I raised the question we are now finally prepared to answer: how did Abraham find himself in Ur, when his family’s inheritance was the Indus Valley? Since the Bible doesn’t say, we will never know the details for sure. But we know more than you might think.

Genesis 11:25-28 Nahor lived one hundred nineteen years after he became the father of Terah, and became the father of sons and daughters. Terah lived seventy years, and became the father of Abram, Nahor, and Haran. Now this is the history of the generations of Terah. Terah became the father of Abram, Nahor, and Haran. Haran became the father of Lot. Haran died before his father Terah in the land of his birth, in Ur of the Chaldees.

Nahor, after giving birth to his firstborn Terah, “became the father of sons and daughters.” These are not mentioned anywhere in the genealogy, and it allows us to infer that his ancestors like Serug and Peleg also had more than just the one son named in the Bible, as we would expect.

With Terah, for the first time since Arphaxad, we are informed of three sons. One was Abram whom God later renamed Abraham, which is the name I’ll use throughout for simplicity. The others were Haran and Nahor.

The Bible tells us that Haran was born in Ur, and that he died there; this strongly argues that Terah and Abraham weren’t simply passing through, but were residents of Ur for a lengthy period of time:

Acts 7:2-4 He said, “Brothers and fathers, listen. The God of glory appeared to our father Abraham, when he was in Mesopotamia, before he lived in Haran, and said to him, ‘Get out of your land, and from your relatives, and come into a land which I will show you.’ Then he came out of the land of the Chaldaeans, and lived in Haran….”

But Stephen here adds important information; that when Abraham was in Mesopotamia, before he left for Haran, God said at that time that Abraham should “leave his land, and his relatives.” Which means that Ur was Abraham’s home country.

Yet we know that land was solidly Sumerian, Cushite, and certainly not Arphaxadite. How then, was it considered Abraham’s own country?

UR OF THE CHALDEES

I am not the first to notice this problem; many commentators get around it by saying that “Ur of the Chaldees” was not the Ur in southern Sumer, but another town named Urfa in eastern Turkey. This is still debated by scholars today, but ancient sources like Josephus clearly placed Ur in southern Sumer.

Still, rather than attack the concept of a northern Ur on textual or linguistic merits, let’s just use common sense by thinking about the purpose of Terah’s journey with his family; it was his intention to go “to the land of Canaan.”

Genesis 11:26-31 Terah took Abram his son… They went from Ur of the Chaldees, to go into the land of Canaan. They came to Haran and lived there. The days of Terah were two hundred five years. Terah died in Haran.

Note the clear point was to leave Ur, and go to Canaan. Yet for some reason, he journeyed from Ur as far as Haran and decided that was good enough. But that wasn’t the land of Canaan! It was barely 30 miles from Urfa!

Now I can see how, after a journey of almost eight HUNDRED miles from the southern Ur, Terah might be tempted to call the journey “good enough,” particularly if political conditions were unexpectedly unfavorable at the time in Canaan.

But to quit after thirty miles when leaving from the northern Ur is ridiculous. Why leave Ur at all, just to go a stone’s throw away in what was literally the same country?

Thus, I’m confident that “Ur of the Chaldees” must have been Ur in southern Iraq. And this is setting aside the fact that the only certain home the Chaldeans ever had was in southern Iraq, where Nebuchadnezzar the Chaldean was from.

Still, it is odd that the Bible is so specific in saying Ur “of the Chaldees.” The Hebrew term is Kasdim, identical with later usages for Nebuchadnezzar’s race. The Chaldean Babylonians called themselves Kaldu, and Mesopotamian records have no information about them before the 10th century BC or so.

Which begs the question – why did Moses refer to a Chaldean Ur in ‑1450, which was supposedly already in existence in ‑2050 or so… when it wouldn’t exist until ‑1000 or so? Clearly there is a story here.

We’ll have to come back to that.

INDUS-SUMER TRADE

Sumer had very little to offer the Indus in trade; the Indus could grow their own food, build their own pots, mine their own gold, silver, gems; the Sumerians were poor in almost everything by comparison, except food and sheep.

Furthermore, trade between the Indus and Mesopotamia has always seemed unbalanced, the Indus receiving nothing obvious in return for its exports. If, however, the Harappans did not themselves produce wool, the woollen textiles that Mesopotamia produced on an industrial scale and exported widely may well have been a commodity that was highly prized by and valuable to the Harappans. (Ancient Indus Valley New Perspectives; McIntosh)

This is hypothetical, but perhaps true. They certainly got something. But it’s hard to imagine the value of the gemstones alone being balanced by wool, much less the many other known imports to Sumer such as wood and metal.

Overall, the flow of culture and objects seems to have been overwhelmingly from Indus to Sumer, not the other way around. Very, very little from Sumer has ever been found in the Indus; by contrast, quite a few Indus artifacts have been found in Sumer.

Not a single confirmed example of cuneiform has ever been found in the Indus Valley; odd, since the Indus script has been found in Sumer on various seals originally used to seal goods shipped from the Indus. No examples of the reverse, items sealed in cuneiform and sent to Indus, have ever been found.

This tells us that the flow of goods and merchants was mostly, if not entirely, from Indus to Mesopotamia. Few examples of cuneiform or specifically Sumerian artwork motifs have been found in the Indus; the few examples that might represent cultural transfer to the east are highly debatable. This casts the IVC in the culturally superior role.

Seagoing boats were now constructed and Indus merchants sailed through the Gulf to trade directly with the inhabitants of Oman and eventually with Bahrain and the cities of southern Mesopotamia. While there is little evidence of the ships themselves and nothing is known of their antecedents, the fact that Indus merchants are known to have traveled to Mesopotamia, while Mesopotamian ships did not venture outside the confines of the Gulf, suggests that the development of seaworthy vessels was an Indus innovation.

…But while the Mesopotamian texts attest to the importation of a range of Indus raw materials, and Indus beads are well known from Mesopotamian excavations, it is difficult to establish just what the Indus people obtained in exchange. (Ibid)

This is consistent with our knowledge that the IVC retained more master shipbuilders like Shem who could certainly have built a good ship, knowledge which was not necessary in Sumer and was therefore lost. This also confirms the ability of the IVC to have reached Sri Lanka (Dilmun), for if they could reach Mesopotamia they certainly could reach Sri Lanka.

Even more distant connections have been revealed by recent work. By 2000 BCE a number of African crops were being cultivated in parts of the Greater Indus region. These may have reached the Harappans via Oman, which could have acquired them by coastwise trade through southern Arabia. Or there is the intriguing possibility that the experienced sailors of the Indus had themselves reached East Africa. (Ibid)

This author hesitantly suggests a concept that we know must have been true; the IVC interacted with cultures from Africa to Sri Lanka, and given their clear nautical advantages, most likely controlled the seas in between.

This is very likely why Enmerkar chose to invade and communicate over land, since he couldn’t match the Arattan fleet. How could he hope to challenge the technology of the people who built the boat that survived the flood who were still living at the time?

There are tons of lapis lazuli in Egypt, the only source of which was Indus-controlled. Historians exclusively believe that the lapis traveled overland to Sumer, then upriver to the Mediterranean and then down through Canaan to Egypt.

But if the Indus was already trading directly with Sumer by boat, why not go a little bit farther into the Red Sea and trade directly with Egypt as well? We know for a fact that the Egyptians had trading outposts on the coast of the Red Sea; and that the IVC culture was able to reach the Arabian coast. Why wouldn’t they have gone that extra mile to save an immense amount of money on middlemen and transport coasts?

So why is the author above so hesitant to suggest this? Historians are always extremely reluctant to admit that an ancient civilization had relatively advanced technology and lost it, because they are psychologically primed to expect a steady uphill climb of man.

Yes, they will admit it (see the pyramids) when the evidence is undeniable, but it’s always a struggle because it runs contrary to the fundamental assumptions of their belief system. Historians are also by nature conservative; the absence of indisputable evidence is often subconsciously treated as evidence of absence, a logical fallacy.

No evidence of direct trade with the IVC has been found on the Red Sea; although some indisputably Indus artifacts have been found in ancient Egypt, there is no conclusive proof that they were carried there by the IVC itself.

But with the picture we’ve built so far from contemporary textual evidence, we can confidently state that the IVC turned the ocean from the tip of India to Africa into a Harappan lake. And as it happens, we do have one bit of evidence to offer that we’ll get to a little bit later.

OUTPOSTS

Historically, trade with different regions was often conducted by proxy; either with a dedicated intermediary, such as Tyre in the Mediterranean, who bought the goods and resold them locally; or with a designated foreign trade representative at the destination, who was trusted to make sure the deals done were favorable.

Craft production and the distribution of manufactured goods probably reflect several layers of organization. At the level of the individual community, many everyday commodities were locally produced and probably distributed among individuals and families by mutual exchanges of goods for goods or services. Cross-cutting this was the pattern of kinship-based exchange that had operated for millennia in this region (as in many other regions of the world in preurban times). By this means individuals and families in one community were supplied with the products of another, either of their own manufacture or obtained from other producers. Such goods changed hands in the context of such family events as marriages. The distribution of goods by such kinship-based exchanges forms an archaeologically detectable pattern. Their quantity steadily declines as the distance from their source increases. Though important in the cementing of kinship ties, such a system cannot account for the widespread distribution and universal availability of the Indus craft products. There was therefore a third layer, some mechanism that ensured the reliable and efficient supply and distribution of craft products. This seems to imply the existence of some form of bureaucracy and central control of production and distribution. (Ibid)

Historically, people have preferred doing long distance trades with members of their own family resident in the foreign land. Family provides some measure of trust in an otherwise unknown culture. And it is with this fact that we finally approach the answer to our question.

The Indus civilization has been shown to have been a major player in Gulf trade, its merchants establishing trading outposts in Mesopotamia itself. … (Ibid)

This means that in Sumer, there were IVC outposts. Nor could these have been one or two individuals; their collective presence must have been substantial, because Mesopotamian records speak of a full time Meluhhan [Indus] interpreter on staff.

Since we know the Indus was Aratta, and therefore Arphaxad, then these facts tell us that there were ethnic descendants of Arphaxad dwelling on a permanent basis in Sumer! This is an absolute fact.

It seems increasingly clear that the Indus objects found at interior sites [in Oman] are not simply the result of segmented trade of goods managed by the local communities, but they probably also testify to direct interactions with Indus traders and craftsmen and possibly even to the stable presence of small Indus groups settled in the Oman Peninsula.

Overall, this evidence, combined with other information about the organization of the Indus Civilization external trade in Middle Asia … allows proposing the possible implementation by the Indus merchants of an early prototype of coordinated «global marketing strategy», defined as an entrepreneurial strategy that takes commercial advantage from regional particularities by creating foreign subsidiaries to manufacture and distribute a product according to the local trends and/or to maximize the exploitation of strategic raw materials with high international demand … (The Indus Civilization Trade with the Oman Peninsula; Dennys Frenez)

This is based on the fact that there are many Indus-style goods found from Syria to Oman, some of which are made of local materials. Suggesting the presence of local artisans either trained by, or employed by, the Indus culture.

And certainly the largest of these Indus enclaves would have been in the port cities, chief of which was probably the port city of Ur in the century or so before Abraham.

You see where I’m going with this?

UR, OF THE CHALDEES

In a place like Ur, where would these Indus expats have dwelt? Based on examples elsewhere in history (British in Hong Kong, Chinese in Los Angeles, Indians in London, etc.), these emigrants would have tended to gather in one section of the city. And that city almost always takes their name; Chinatown, Little Italy, etc.

I said above there were two possible reasons that Moses went out of his way to clarify “Ur of the Chaldees”; historians universally focus on the first one, that it was differentiating between two cities known as Ur.

But the other possibility is differentiating between two regions within the city of Ur itself. We know for a fact that Uruk was divided into Unug and Kulaba, even though effectively it was one city. Thus, it is entirely possible that “Ur of the Chaldees” was meant to differentiate it from the main city, “Ur of the Sumerian Cushites.”

What we do know for certain is that there were ethnic IVC people – and therefore ethnic Arphaxadites – dwelling full-time in various important cities throughout the known world, which would certainly have included Ur. And along with this transfer of people inevitably comes transfer of ideas and technology.

In the course of the following Early Dynastic IIIA period, however, one stage of which is attested in the Royal Tombs of Ur, ca. 2400-2300 B.C., large quantities of metals and stone beads were imported, and many of the latter may have derived from the Indus. At Ur there seems to have been rapid technological advance, as craftsmen first learnt how to work gold and silver, and then how to use these materials economically. One possibility is that Ur owed its political importance in this period to wealth acquired as a result of its position as an entrepôt on the Gulf. (The Indus-Mesopotamia Relationship Reconsidered; Reade)

Note the association of Indus imports and a simultaneous burst in technology and wealth and political imports. These are not coincidental. We already know that the Indus had superior technology and wealth; their presence would have naturally spilled some of that bounty onto the city they lived in.

For example, Ur in precisely this period is the site of the most stunning imports from the IVC; its royal burials provided the most spectacular collections of Indus jewelry ever found in all of Sumer.

Ur also was the site of a “rapid technological advance,” otherwise unexplained. But we know that the IVC had precisely these skills; they are even mentioned in the Enmerkar cycle, where Inanna tells Enmerkar regarding Aratta…

“If he carries off from the city its worked metal and smiths, if he carries off its worked stones and its stonemasons, if he renews the city and settles it, all the moulds of Aratta will be his.” (LAB)

AboveAt right you see the headset of Queen Puabi, which was filled with what was, at that time, a kings’ ransom in jewels from the Indus. Though dating on this period is debated by scholars, they suggest she might have been the wife of Meskalamdug, whom I place broadly contemporary with, probably a generation or two before, Abraham.

The beads of her “necklace” are worth far more than the gold; because making beads with a hole in them was extremely time-consuming with bronze-age tools (no drill bits that are harder than rock!). Not to mention the price of the gems themselves. To understand the Mesopotamian perspective, just imagine she was wearing diamonds and emeralds and rubies (which, oddly enough, were not highly valued in ancient history).

So clearly, there was a massive influx of IVC material into Ur; given that there were resident merchants of the IVC in Ur, the fact that Ur is the obvious choice for the greatest contact with the IVC, and the evidence of rapid advances in the generation or two before Abraham…

All together this strongly suggests that there was an Arphaxadite delegation sent from the Indus who dwelt in Ur, interacted with the royal houses of Ur, and managed the Arattan interests in Sumer. This is all provable without using the Bible at all.

But without the Bible, we could not know who they were: Abraham’s ancestors.

ABRAHAM, THE HEBREW

Genesis 14:13 And there came one that had escaped, and told Abram the Hebrew…

Knowing this, we can solve another seemingly unrelated mystery. Why is Abraham called “the Hebrew?” It is obviously derived from his ancestor Eber, but… why? Why him?

Abraham is the 9th generation from Arphaxad. But in that lineage, Eber is not the first nor the last, nor the greatest as far as we know. In fact, we know precisely zero about the man Eber. So it’s strange that his name survived to this day.

Even someone who had never heard of Arphaxad, or even Shem, knows of the Hebrews. Why? Why not call him “Abraham, the Terahite,” after his father? Or Abraham the Arphaxadite, after his family’s inheritance? Or just, you know… Abraham?

Bible commentators have tried to answer this one of two ways; one way is to speculate that Eber was more righteous than the rest in his lineage. Which is impossible to prove, and frankly not that likely.

The other way is they connect “Hebrew” not to Eber, the ancestor, but to the etymology of the name itself, which means “beyond,” suggesting “beyond the river,” i.e. referring to Abraham’s homeland of Haran before emigrating to Canaan. I never found this very convincing.

However, we now have a new approach; family groups are generally called after the last ancestor common to that group. Thus, the tribes in the northern part of Mesopotamia are called Semites, because the last common ancestor is Shem.

The Israelites are called that because their last common ancestor was Israel; this excludes the Edomites, descended from Esau, brother of Israel. It excludes the Ishmaelites, son of the brother of Isaac. It excludes all the other sons of Abraham. And so on.

So we would expect that, at some point, Eber was the last common ancestor of a given group of which Abraham formed a part. And that, finally, allows us to answer our question; Eber must have been the head of the delegation from the Indus Valley that settled in Sumer.

It fits everything; when Abraham was born, Eber was not yet half-way through his 464 year long life; as grandson of Arphaxad, he was well placed to have been witness to the events of Enmerkar, and to thoroughly understand the political situation.

He was also old enough to be respected by both sides, and highly enough placed on the family tree to be able to speak authoritatively on matters pertaining to the relationships between the two groups, many of whom were his own offspring.

And don’t misunderstand; I am not saying that Eber was a mere traveling merchant; more like a high ranking ambassador, a prince sent to live in another country to represent the interests of the parent civilization.

And based on the archaeological evidence above, that included a significant amount of global trade and factories, with Indus sharing – or selling – its technology across the known world. Which, of course, would include trade as a part of the job.

THE STORY

Enmerkar’s reign began between ‑2200-2150; more likely later than earlier in that window. The Uruk-Aratta war took place at least 50, possibly 70 years later at the end of his reign; so approximately ‑2100.

This coincides closely with Terah’s birth in ‑2092. That’s relevant because Terah’s father and son were named Nahor; this pattern is unique in the entire lineage. Clearly, Terah named his son after his father. Why?

One explanation that comes to mind is that people tend to name things after what they miss; towns are often named after a homeland, towns and children are often named for a dead relative that is missed, and so on.

But that can’t fit here, because the elder Nahor’s life overlapped that of Nahor Junior by 50 years. But that doesn’t mean he was around. If Nahor had stayed in the Indus while Terah moved to Ur with Eber, it would explain why he named his son after his absent father.

This (admittedly) speculative line of thought would argue that Eber took his youngest mature descendant with him to find adventure “way out west”; meaning that the delegate left for Sumer around ‑2050, when Terah was around 30.

This may also explain why Terah was the first person since Shem to have his first child at 70; all his ancestors having them in their upper 20’s, low 30’s. It’s hard to settle down and have kids when you’re making your fortune in the west.

If true, then the IVC delegation settled in Ur in ‑2050, around 50 years after the war, well after the death of Enmerkar and Lugalbanda, both of whom were strong rulers of Uruk. At this point Gilgamesh, who was a complicated ruler – strong early in life, increasingly tormented later – was probably still alive and ruling Uruk, albeit some of that time was spent wandering to Dilmun.

But now we add another fact into the mix; well, more myth than fact. The SKL, for what it’s worth, tells us that Ur conquered Uruk at some point; and it records a dramatic shortening of reign lengths after Gilgamesh, which is usually associated with vassalage or political instability.

This suggests that something changed in Uruk around that time, possibly the conquest of Uruk by Ur, roughly ‑2030-2000 – around the time Abraham was born in ‑2022, and corresponding to the period of the obscenely rich burials at Ur.

And now we can offer one hypothesis on what the IVC got in return for their trade goods; military support against Uruk. Ur certainly benefited technologically by the presence of the Indus merchants, and profited handsomely as well.

So perhaps Ur was simply bribed by Aratta to destabilize Uruk sometime after Gilgamesh. They certainly had strong diplomatic links, given the jewels – something almost always given between kings to earn favor.

This would also finally explain how “Enmerkar destroyed the people of Uruk,” in the Babylonian legends of the Wiedner Chronicle. By picking a fight with Aratta which he could not win, he set into motion a series of events that led to their conquest by Ur at the behest of the Arattans a generation or two later.

Because despite the propaganda in the story of Enmerkar, Aratta definitely seems to have come out on top and navally was never challenged in the first place. Uruk, on the other hand, soon went into decline.

And in the aftermath, Aratta likely felt that having a presence in Ur to manage affairs in Sumer, and prevent a new Enmerkar from arising, would be a worthwhile investment. So Eber may or may not have stayed there permanently; but Terah certainly did, and had children there who grew up in Ur; “in their own country, among their own people from the Indus valley.”

They would have dwelt in their own section of the city, which to this day is largely unexcavated, known to them as “Ur, of the Chaldeans”; the Hebrew Ur Kasdim which, according to Josephus, is a corruption of the name Arpa-khesed, which you know as Arphaxad.

Moses went out of his way to specify which Ur so that no one would think that Abraham was an ethnic Sumerian; this attempt at avoiding confusion, ironically but as so often happens… caused confusion.

HEBREW MERCHANTS

But that allows us to finally answer another question: why did the Egyptians hate Hebrews?

Genesis 43:32 They served him [Joseph] by himself, and them [his brothers] by themselves, and the Egyptians, that ate with him, by themselves, because the Egyptians don’t eat bread with the Hebrews, for that is an abomination to the Egyptians.

At the time of Joseph, Abraham and his family were called Hebrews (Genesis 14:13, 40:15). And the Hebrews were well enough known in Egypt that the Egyptians had prejudices against them. But that’s weird… because there were literally only seventy of them, most of them children (Genesis 46:26).

How could the Egyptians possibly have prejudices against the Hebrews if they were literally the only ones? Even if we include the offspring of Abraham’s other children, and of Esau’s, there could only have been a few hundredby this time. Hardly enough to form prejudices.

Besides, Abraham spent time in Egypt and, as you will soon learn, was highly respected, even deified in later times. Where, then, did the Egyptian hatred from Hebrews come from? They must have interacted with someone else who was also descended from Eber!

Who, then, were these Hebrews? Terah’s family, back in Haran? Thousands of miles away in a place where the Egyptians almost certainly did not roam in those days? Hardly likely that Laban was hated by the Egyptians.

No, there were some other Hebrews that the Egyptians knew, and for some reason considered them unfit to eat with. And the obvious answer is Eber’s family from Ur.

Remember, we last left Eber as a merchant/ambassador resident in Ur. From there, Eber managed a vast trading empire around the Indian Ocean, as archeologists attest, finding evidence of the IVC across Arabia and the Iranian coast. No one knows the full extent of this trade, but it was certainly nautical and far ranging.

The ‘etched’ bead from tomb 197 is certainly not evidence for any direct trade between Egypt and the Indus Valley. In case the bead was really produced in the Indus Valley it was most likely brought to Egypt via various intermediate traders, in places such as Ur and Byblos. The only other material reaching Egypt from such a distance was lapis lazuli. Lapis lazuli was brought to Mesopotamia from Afghanistan. Lapis lazuli is a material frequently used in Ancient Egypt but it is not found there .(Tomb 197 at Abydos, further evidence for long distance trade in the middle kingdom; Grajetzki)

This historian believes that the trade was entirely overland through intermediaries, as most do. However earlier, we read where a different historian tentatively suggested the possibility of direct Indus-Egypt trade routes.

For sailors whom we know had trading posts with resident Arattans living along the coast of Saudi Arabia, there was surely no difficulty sailing a little farther up the Red Sea to one of the Egyptian coastal ports we know they had.

This is the only conceivable way that the Egyptians could have had significant contact with Hebrews. And something about them – their dress, their speech, their gods – offended the Egyptians. They would buy their lapis – but they would not eat with them.

WHO KNEW?

Moses grew up in Egypt, educated in the wisdom of the Egyptians. When he wrote the Bible, he no doubt learned many things from his direct ancestors, knowledge about the times of Ur and Babel passed down to him from Abraham.

But one thing he could not have learned are things that Abraham did not know. He would not, for example, have known that Noah died at 950 years old if he hadn’t had someone in contact with Dilmun tell him.

He certainly could not have known when Shem, Eber, and several other patriarchs died…since he died before they did! So how did Moses learn about that? As far as we know, Isaac and Jacob never went farther east than Haran; So who was in contact with the IVC to tell Moses what happened to the patriarchs? We find a clue…

Interestingly, lapis lazuli is common in the Predynastic Period when there are many attestations of Mesopotamian objects in Egypt, whereas there are very few occurrences in the early Old Kingdom, a time which corresponds to its disappearance in Mesopotamia. There was evidently a break in the trade routes around 2700 BC.

In the Middle Kingdom, lapis lazuli is again well attested in Egypt suggesting that supply routes were open again. It seems that after about 1750 BC the trade routes were again interrupted. That might relate to the end of the Indus trade. Like the bead, lapis lazuli reached Egypt most likely via Mesopotamia. (Tomb 197 at Abydos, further evidence for long distance trade in the middle kingdom; Grajetzki)

Note the time frames; it was common in the predynastic period – this would correspond to the early post-Babel years and the time of Sumer’s wars with Aratta, before the IVC put an outpost in Ur. During this time, trade with the IVC must have been brisk enough to make lapis “common.”

Then for some reason, the lapis trade stopped throughout the Old Kingdom period (Abraham’s timeframe), only to start up again in the Middle Kingdom (Joseph’s and Moses’ timeframe, as you’ll learn in time).

This can be explained in various ways, one possibility is that due to events in Sumer the IVC had to leave and lost their trade hub; it taking them some centuries to reconnect directly to Egypt. This diplomatic problem would explain why both Egypt and Sumer lost their lapis at the same time.

Another possibility is that the Egyptians and the Hebrews had a trade dispute of some kind – the Egyptians didn’t pay, the Hebrews raised their prices, whatever – and so Eber simply stopped sending ships.

After he died, right about the time Joseph went to Egypt, his descendants decided to reopen the trade routes bringing much news from the far east along with them. Either way, it was this information that Moses must have had access to in the Egyptian vaults, information which was likely well known to every Hebrew in Egypt.

Which, by the way, might explain why they are overwhelmingly called Hebrews in Egypt; they were rarely called Israelites until later. Probably because they were identified with the larger and better known group of Hebrews from the east.

HEBREW LONGEVITY

And one last thing; Pharaoh seems to have been familiar not only with the Hebrews, but with their longevity as well, which he was fascinated by.

Genesis 47:7-8 Joseph brought in Jacob, his father, and set him before Pharaoh, and Jacob blessed Pharaoh. Pharaoh said to Jacob, “How many are the days of the years of your life?”

Why that question out of the blue? Age is not something that was mentioned much in the Bible. In fact, I can’t think of a single example where anyone was ever asked their age, and if it was mentioned at all, it was in condescending ways like John 8:57.

So first, why did Pharaoh care; and second, why did Jacob then make excuses for “only” being twice as old as Pharaoh would ever get?

Genesis 47:9 Jacob said to Pharaoh, “The days of the years of my pilgrimage are one hundred thirty years. Few and evil have been the days of the years of my life, and they have not attained to the days of the years of the life of my fathers in the days of their pilgrimage.”

Reading that, we naturally assume Jacob meant his father and grandfather. But GWV translates it: “the years of my life have been few and difficult, fewer than my ancestors’ years.” Abraham (175) and Isaac (180) didn’t live much longer than he himself would go on to live (147).

So why did Jacob say this? Because while Jacob himself might not live an absurdly long time, Jacob’s ancestors had; in particular, his ancestor Eber, who had only just died 50 years or so before, at 464 years old.

Jacob’s days were at least roughly comparable to the days of his father and grandfather; but no, they didn’t hold a candle to the days of Eber! So it was to Eber and others that Jacob compared his “few and evil years.”

Now if Pharaoh knew of the Eber-ites (Hebrews), it’s highly unlikely he didn’t also know of their namesake Eber! That’s why Pharaoh’s first question was “how old are you?” Because Pharaoh must have heard of Hebrews with impossibly long ages and he wanted to know just how old this old man really was because he couldn’t tell by looking at him!

And that in turn is why Jacob said “I’m sorry to disappoint you, but I’m only a little bit older than normal, not absurdly old like my great-great-great-great-great-great-grandfather Eber!”

All of which only makes sense if Pharaoh was familiar with the legendary ages of the Hebrews which makes sense only if he had direct trade contacts with them.

So we’ve talked a lot about Noah’s sons, but what about Noah himself? He simply disappears from the Bible’s record, never mentioned alive again after that embarrassing wine incident. Yet he continued to live for 350 years after the flood.

Surely, had he been present at Babel, it would never have happened. Hence he was somewhere else, but where? But the Bible is utterly silent about his whereabouts, and offers no information about any of his descendants until, inexplicably, we find Abraham and his father Terah at Ur.

Fortunately, the Sumerians talked about him quite a bit – including where he went to live. In the Akkadian versions of the flood stories, the man who was saved from the flood – Noah – is called Utnapishtim, literally “he who found life.”

This probably isn’t meant to be a translation of the name Noah, but rather a description of him; there was often a superstition regarding using the names of powerful people, especially ones seen as divine or semi-divine, so it’s likely they consciously avoided using his name.

The Sumerian version of his name is Ziusudra – various transliterations of this exist, but we’ll stick to this one for consistency. The Greek historians, retelling Babylonian history, spelled the name as Xisuthros.

Using these three sources, we can provide quite a lot of information on what happened to Noah that is not found in the Bible. Some of it is wrong, of course, but we can generally tell what that is by context. For example, one version tells us…

After the flood had been upon the earth, and was in time abated, Xisuthrus … made an opening in the vessel, and upon looking out found that it was stranded upon the side of some mountain; upon which he immediately quitted it with his wife, his daughter, and the pilot. Xisuthrus then paid his adoration to the earth: and having constructed an altar, offered sacrifices to the gods, and, with those who had come out of the vessel with him, disappeared.

They, who remained within, finding that their companions did not return, quitted the vessel with many lamentations, and called continually on the name of Xisuthrus. Him they saw no more; but they could distinguish his voice in the air, and could hear him admonish them to pay due regard to religion; and likewise informed them that it was upon account of his piety that he was translated to live with the gods; that his wife and daughter, and the pilot, had obtained the same honour. … (Berossus, as quoted in Alexander Polyhistor)

So examining this for facts, we see immediately that it cannot be entirely true; Noah and his sons are seen interacting in Genesis 9 what must be at least a few years later, more likely decades. He cannot have been spirited away directly from Mt. Ararat.

Yet rather than utterly discard the information, let’s try and harmonize it. We know that by the time of Babel, Noah was absent; so it’s likely there was a point when Noah did leave, never to be seen again. This story, therefore, may have had the facts right, but the timing wrong.

More interestingly, this legend suggests that he did not go alone, but went with his wife (of course), and “his daughter, and the pilot.” There is no mention of a pilot in the Bible, but given that the only inhabitants of the ark were his sons, it must be one of them; given that his oldest – or at least his birthright son – was Shem, the pilot can only be Shem.

Telling us, therefore, that when Noah left, Shem and his wife went with him. As we would have expected anyway. This doesn’t mean they didn’t part ways later, but at the very least they probably went in the same direction away from Sumer when they did leave.

TO DILMUN

The passage above tells us that Noah (and the others) received “the reward of his piety in being taken up to dwell henceforth among the gods.” We argue that this was true, but that it happened perhaps a century or two after Ararat, not immediately. The Sumerians add:

The Epic of Ziusudra adds an element at lines 258–261 not found in other versions, that after the flood “king Ziusudra … they caused to dwell in the KUR Dilmun, the place where the sun rises.” The Sumerian word “KUR” is an ambiguous word. Samuel Noah Kramer states that “its primary meanings is ‘mountain’ is attested by the fact that the sign used for it is actually a pictograph representing a mountain. From the meaning ‘mountain’ developed that of ‘foreign land,’ since the mountainous countries bordering Sumer were a constant menace to its people. Kur also came to mean ‘land’ in general.’” The last sentence can be translated as “In the mountain of crossing, the mountain of Dilmun, the place where the sun rises.” (Wiki, Ziusudra)

Scholars mostly say Dilmun was modern day Bahrain in the Persian Gulf. This fits well with later descriptions of Dilmun from the time of the Assyrians ‑700, but it fits quite poorly with earlier descriptions from the time of Nimrod (-2100).

There are two other place names that seem to have “moved” from the time of ancient Sumer to the time of Assyria, named Magan and Meluhha; ancient texts seem to refer to somewhere near the Indus valley, but later Assyrian texts place these locations in Egypt, far to the west.

Scholars have no idea why this is, but I see no reason why Dilmun could not, likewise, have moved west somehow. Perhaps simply because a settler thought it would be fun to name a new colony after an even older, more honorable one – maybe where he himself had come from (New York, New Zealand, etc).

Regardless, you’ll notice in that above quote that Dilmun is called “the mountain of crossing, the mountain of Dilmun.” The article rushes to explain that KUR, mountain, also has the meanings of “land in general” in later texts.

But not in early texts – I mean, the cuneiform sign KUR, “mountain,” is literally a picture of a mountain. And Dilmun is old. Any reference to Dilmun’s mountainous state would predate those later corruptions and certainly preserve the original meaning of “mountain.”

Before the land of Dilmun yet existed, the E-ana of Unug Kulaba was well founded, and the holy jipar of Inana in brick-built Kulaba shone forth like the silver in the lode. Before …… carried ……, before ……, before …… carried ……, before the commerce was practiced; before gold, silver, copper, tin, blocks of lapis lazuli, and mountain stones were brought down together from their mountains, before …… bathed for the festival, ……, …… time passed. (ELA)

Proverbially placing the founding of Uruk before the existence of Dilmun demonstrates that Dilmun was seen as very ancient even then. So this story sets Uruk’s founding before the existence of mining of lapis (and therefore the settling of Aratta) and before the existence of commerce between them.

Nor do we disagree with this timeline; Nimrod no doubt moved on to start Uruk right away after Babel; even as the boats carrying Arphaxad were plying east to settle the Indus Valley. Meanwhile, Noah was heading towards Dilmun.

Because in spite of the Sumerian propaganda about Uruk’s primacy, they never lost the idea of Dilmun as a perfect paradise, superior even to Uruk. In fact, some Sumerian stories placed it as the site of the creation of the first man.

While we don’t believe that is true literally – Adam having been created before the flood – as the post-flood home of Noah, the father of mankind, it could easily be confused with Eden. It certainly possessed all the hallmarks of Eden in the Sumerian imagination…

In Sumerian mythology, Dilmun is depicted as a pristine paradise, a “land of the living” free from sickness, aging, or death, prominently featured in myths such as Enki and Ninhursag—where it is portrayed as a pure, virginal land created by the gods—and the Epic of Gilgamesh, where the hero seeks eternal life there. (Grokipedia, Dilmun)

This describes Dilmun as a land where no one dies; and if that is indeed where the patriarchs of Abraham’s line went – none of whom died for around 350 years after the flood – it would certainly have gained a reputation for eternal youth, earning it the synonym “the land of the living.”

WHERE IS IT?

Scholars today are reasonably convinced it is located in modern Bahrain; and while that does check some boxes, especially based on later sources from the Ur III period (-1600) onward, it completely fails on other grounds.

First of all, it is portrayed on the far side of the world, after many journeys through mountains and deserts in many stories; it’s so hard to reach Noah, that Utnapishtim has the epithet “the faraway.” Bahrain… isn’t that far away.

To maintain legendary and mythical status, a place must be remote; Shangri-la, Timbuktu, Cusco; not Cleveland. And Bahrain-Dilmun was just a short safe boat ride away from Sumer. Also, as has been mentioned, Bahrain is not mountainous, over mountains, or in any way associated with mountains.

Further, it’s portrayed as “where the sun rises,” and while Bahrain is faintly east from Uruk, it’s so slight that I doubt that ancient mariners could have even told for sure (longitude is hard to figure when sailing).

Take a look at “Dilmun,” marked over Bahrain, on the map below from Wikipedia. You can see that this location certainly doesn’t scream “so far east, it’s where the sun comes from!”

Particularly when we know that the Sumerians interacted with the Indus Valley from the earliest times (marked Meluhha, probably correctly) on the map below. That was much farther east, yet they were never identified with sunrise!

These, and other flaws with the consensus on Dilmun led one of the most eminent scholars on the subject to search for it farther east in the 1960’s, in a place familiar to us by now… the Indus Valley.

In another Sumerian text, Dilmun is described as a blessed, prosperous land dotted with “great dwellings,” to which the countries of the entire civilized world known to the Sumerians, brought their goods and wares. A number of cuneiform economic documents excavated by the late Leonard Woolley at Ur–Biblical Ur of the Chaldees–one of the most important cities of Sumer, speak of ivory, and objects made of ivory, as being imported from Dilmun to Ur. The only rich, important land east of Sumer which could be the source of ivory, was that of the ancient Indus civilization, hence it seems not unreasonable to infer that the latter must be identical with Dilmun. (The Indus Civilization and Dilmun, the Sumerian Paradise Land; Kramer)

Bahrain, while developed in antiquity, hardly seems to have had “great dwellings”; Harappa, on the other hand, or Mohenjo-Daro, would certainly have justified the term. Furthermore, Dilmun was a source of ivory; which only comes from Africa or India. Only one of which is east.

Historians tend to get around this by envisioning Bahrain-Dilmun as a trading post where everyone brought their wares, and the Sumerians bought them second hand. But the most ancient texts don’t really suggest that Dilmun was a trading post; they’re described as the source of these objects.

Besides, looking at the geography, why would you go to the trouble of sailing from the Indus up into the Persian Gulf, and not go on up to trade with Ur in person – which was a coastal port city in ancient times? You’re definitely going to lose a significant chunk of money to the middleman. But there are other connections between Dilmun and the Indus culture…

[given the amount of baths and wells] it is not unreasonable to assume therefore … that the Indus people had developed a water cult of deep religious import centering about a water god and featured by sundry rites concerned with lustration and purification. All of which seems to fit in rather surprisingly well with the Dilmun-Indus land equation. For the god most intimately related to Dilmun is Enki, the Sumerian Poseidon, the great Sumerian Dilmun-myth which tells the following story:

Dilmun, a land described as “pure,” “clean,” and “bright,” a land which knows neither sickness nor death, had been lacking originally in fresh, life-giving water. The tutelary goddess of Dilmun, Ninsikilla by name, therefore pleaded with Enki, who is both her husband and father, and the latter orders the sun-god Utu to fill Dilmun with sweet water brought up from the earth’s watersources; Dilmun is thus turned into a divine garden green with grain-yielding fields and acres. (Ibid)

In case you’re interested, I’ll tell the first part of the myth in the Sumerian’s own words; note how holy, clean, and pure Dilmun was in comparison with all other cities. Which can only be the result of Noah’s presence there – or at the very least, Noah-following cultures.

The holy cities–present them to him (Enkil?)[sic; probably meant to suggest Enlil],
The land Dilmun is holy,
Holy Sumer–present it to him,
The land Dilmun is holy.
The land Dilmun is holy, the land Dilmun is pure,
The land Dilmun is clean, the land Dilmun is holy;
…That place is clean, that place is most bright.

We already know that Aratta was ruled by “the lord of purification,” and that the Indus was full of baths and wells. This interest with cleanliness certainly fits what we know about them.

In Dilmun the raven utters no cry,
The wild hen utters not the cry of the wild hen,
The lion kills not,
The wolf snatches not the lamb,
Unknown is the kid-devouring wild dog,
Unknown is the grain-devouring boar,
The malt which the widow spreads on the roof–
The birds of heaven do not eat up that malt,
The dove droops not the head,
The sick-eyed says not “I am sick-eyed,”
The “sick-headed” says not “I am sick-headed,”
Its old woman says not “I am an old woman,”
Its old man says not “I am an old man,”
Unwashed is the maid, no water is poured in the city,
Who crosses the river (of the Nether World) utters no groan (?),
The wailing priest walks not round about him,
The singer utters no wail,
By the side of the city he utters no lament. (Ibid)

No one would have invented such a myth about a place as close as Bahrain, knowing it could easily be tested by any sailor. So either it was literally true of Bahrain, which no historian believes… or else it was a land so far away that no one knew anyone who had ever been there.

We also know that the patriarchs lived abnormally long lives, and many of them probably almost certainly lived in the Indus Valley – Arphaxad for near-certain. And the Indus is, indeed, due east of Sumer “where the sun rises.” The poem above continues

For Dilmun, the land of my lady’s heart, I will create long waterways, rivers and canals, whereby water will flow to quench the thirst of all beings and bring abundance to all that lives.

This describes a river valley, with “long waterways” and “canals.” There are not many places that could have described at the time; definitely not Bahrain. perhaps Egypt, far to the west; Sumer proper, which no one believes it was; or else the Indus Valley, which the Sumerians themselves said was filled with ditches and irrigated for grain growing when they besieged Aratta.

THE EPIC OF GILGAMESH

In the Epic of Gilgamesh, the hero sets out to find the secret of immortality from the man who had the secret, Utnapishtim; upon finally finding him, Utnapishtim relates the story of the flood in his own words, then says that after the flood and the sacrifice after it…

Then Enlil went up into the boat, he took me by the hand and my wife and made us enter the boat and kneel down on either side, he standing between us. He touched our foreheads to bless us saying, “In time past Utnapishtim was a mortal man; henceforth he and his wife shall live in the distance at the mouth of the rivers.” Thus it was that the gods took me and placed me here to live in the distance, at the mouth of the rivers. (Epic of Gilgamesh [EOG])

“Mouth of the rivers” is not here defined, but in Babylonian contexts this would generally be understood as the Tigris and Euphrates. It is not, however, strictly necessary that it be there – and a location at the river mouth of the Tigris/Euphrates would be quite impossible based on the rest of the description in the epic.

Still, most scholars leaning heavily on the “mouth of the rivers” idea and the belief that at the time of Gilgamesh world trade was in its infancy, concluded that Dilmun must be very close to the delta, leading them to Bahrain.

Besides that one point, Bahrain does not fit the narrative of Gilgamesh at all. Because the epic makes it clear, Gilgamesh had to travel an extreme distance to get to Utnapishtim, “whom they call the faraway.”

‘Because I am afraid of death I will go as best I can to find Utnapishtim whom they call the Faraway, for he has entered the assembly of the gods.’ So Gilgamesh travelled over the wilderness, he wandered over the grasslands, a long journey, in search of Utnapishtim, whom the gods took after the deluge; and they set him to live in the land of Dilmun, in the garden of the sun; and to him alone of men they gave everlasting life. (EOG)

And the fact is, even by 3rd millennium BC standards, Bahrain wasn’t that far away. A quick float down the river, a coast-hugging voyage, and you’re there. But Gilgamesh faced desert, grasslands, and even immense mountains – which do not exist in that part of the world. This alone completely excludes any possibility of Bahrain, which will not be mentioned again.

So at length Gilgamesh came to Mashu, the great mountains about which he had heard many things, which guard the rising and the setting sun. Its twin peaks are as high as the wall of heaven and its paps reach down to the underworld. At its gate the Scorpions stand guard, half man and half dragon; their glory is terrifying, their stare strikes death into men, their shimmering halo sweeps the mountains that guard the rising sun. (EOG)

These “great mountains” are a truly impressive mountain range which “guard the rising and the setting sun.” Since those events happen on the opposite sides of the sky, that must be a matter of perspective; for one group of people, these mountains are the eastern barrier; for another, they are the western barrier.

To Gilgamesh, coming from the west, he sees “a shimmering halo sweep the mountains that guard the rising sun.” Most scholars place these mountains far to the west, in Lebanon. But that’s simply wrong. Because these mountains, as he approached them, guard the rising sun. Which is… east.

But you may recall that the Lord of Aratta describes the mountain range to his west:

The mountain range is a warrior, …… high, like Utu going to his abode at twilight, like one from whose face blood drips; or like Nanna, who is majestic in the high heavens, like him whose countenance shines with radiance, who …… is like the woods in the mountains. (ELA)

Utu/Shamash goes to his abode at twilight when the sun sets; hence, these mountains were to the west of him at the time from the Indus Valley. These same mountains which Gilgamesh had to cross towards the rising of Shamash!

Mountains which Gilgamesh had heard of from his father/grandfather Lugalbanda (there’s some discussion here), because Lugalbanda had crossed them to invade Aratta! We will note, in passing, that these mountains are called “Mashu,” here. That will be useful at the conclusion of this article.

THROUGH THE MOUNTAIN

Meanwhile Gilgamesh talks to the scorpion men; certainly guards posted by the Arattans to control the passes. Their weapons and armor must have given the impression of a scorpion from a distance. He tells them…

‘… I have travelled here in search of Utnapishtim my father; for men say he has entered the assembly of the gods, and has found everlasting life: I have a desire to question him, concerning the living and the dead.’ The Man-Scorpion opened his mouth and said, speaking to Gilgamesh, ‘No man born of woman has done what you have asked, no mortal man has gone into the mountain; the length of it is twelve leagues of darkness; in it there is no light, but the heart is oppressed with darkness. From the rising of the sun to the setting of the sun there is no light.’

Gilgamesh said, ‘Although I should go in sorrow and in pain, with sighing and with weeping, still I must go. Open the gate of the mountain.’ And the Man-Scorpion said, Go, Gilgamesh, I permit you to pass through the mountain of Mashu and through the high ranges; may your feet carry you safely home. The gate of the mountain is open.’ When Gilgamesh heard this he did as the Man-Scorpion had said, he followed the sun’s road to his rising, through the mountain. (EOG)

Historians typically picture this as a magical tunnel; but I doubt that’s what the ancient writer meant. If I told you that you were permitted to “pass through the mountain,” you would not assume tunnel, you would assume… a pass through the mountains. Duh.

Thus, this is an unusually long, narrow, and difficult mountain pass where little light enters. A “gate of the mountain,” which was barred “as if with a great door” by Aratta. And this particular gate was a pass which runs east-west, for he is said to “follow the sun’s road to his rising, through the mountain” – thus Gilgamesh is traveling, as always, east.

Remember, he’s looking for Utnapishtim who dwells in Dilmun “where the sun rises.” It never ceases to amaze me that scholars, knowing this, insist on placing this in the far west in Lebanon or south in Bahrain. He describes the crossing…

When Gilgamesh heard this he did as the Man-Scorpion had said, he followed the sun’s road to his rising, through the mountain. When he had gone one league the darkness became thick around him, for there was no light, he could see nothing ahead and nothing behind him. After two leagues the darkness was thick and there was no light [you get the idea] ….

When he had gone eight leagues Gilgamesh gave a great cry, for the darkness was thick and he could see nothing ahead and nothing behind him. After nine leagues he felt the north-wind on his face … After ten leagues the end was near: After eleven leagues the dawn light appeared. At the end of twelve leagues the sun streamed out. (EOG)

“League” is a poor translation of a Sumerian word meaning “a double-hour distance.” So basically, twelve leagues is 24 hours. He clearly started at dawn, “following the sun’s road to his rising”; and 22 hours later “the dawn light appeared.”

16 hours into the journey, he “gave a great cry, for the darkness was thick.” So at this point, something must have somehow gotten worse; of course, because the sun set. Before he only thought it was dark, now it got truly dark. This confirms, as if we needed it, that this was a real mountain pass, not a tunnel.

But which one? The usual suspects, far to the west, have no pass through them that could even remotely fit the description we have here; but there is one such pass in the great mountains of the Hindu Kush, which from Uruk is found far to the east, across “wilderness” and “grassland.”

It’s called the Khyber pass, the gateway to Afghanistan and the northwesternmost pass in the Indus Valley. Listening to the following description by 19th century British soldiers, can we blame Gilgamesh for his exaggeration, if even the stolid Brits felt this way about it?

On May 2, 1879, eight hundred and four stalwart Royal Irishmen found themselves at the foot of the great wall of rock which forbids access to Afghanistan from the plains of India. This natural rampart is pierced by the Khyber Pass—a dark and gloomy gorge, winding its way between high mountains which so nearly approach each other that in places their rugged sides are only ten or twelve feet apart. Through this defile, one of the most difficult in the world, runs the track which for centuries has been the highway of commerce between Central Asia and Hindustan. (The Campaigns and History of the Royal Irish Regiment from 1684 to 1902; Gretton)

It is described as “a narrow defile winding between cliffs of shale and limestone 600 to 1000 ft. high, stretching up to more lofty mountains behind” (Encyclopedia Brittanica 1911); so we can easily imagine a valley-dweller from Uruk intimidated by the massive gorge, so much that even a mighty hero screamed in fear when the sun went down.

What’s more, the roughest part of the pass measures 25-30 miles (40–53 km), depending on exactly where you count from; given typical walking distances through such terrain, that would have taken just about one 24 hour period; precisely as Gilgamesh tells us.

I think we’ve found “mount Mashu.” But there’s more!

After eleven leagues the dawn light appeared. At the end of twelve leagues the sun streamed out. There was the garden of the gods; all round him stood bushes bearing gems. Seeing it he went down at once, for there was fruit of carnelian with the vine hanging from it, beautiful to look at; lapis lazuli leaves hung thick with fruit, sweet to see. For thorns and thistles there were hematite and rare stones, agate, and pearls from out of the sea. (EOG)

Beneath the hyperbole, we are told that in this land gems were so abundant they seem to grow on trees; not that far from the truth, considering how gem-wealthy the Indus Valley was particularly in the north, just to the east of the Khyber pass!

The fact that his mythical trees contained lapis and carnelian confirms that he was in the Indus Valley, the only ancient source of these gems. The Indus, then, was the “garden of the gods,” the land of the living, to which Gilgamesh came – the last place Noah had been seen, according to the Sumerian legends!

This cannot be Lebanon, nor an island in the Persian Gulf. It can only be a slightly exaggerated version of the Indus Valley. The only other option is to discard the story as an utterly fabricated fantasy – but if that were all it were… why does it match the route to Indus so well?

THE GOMAL PASS

There are three passes through these mountains; the Khyber, Bolan, and Gomal. Enmerkar and Lugalbanda almost certainly passed through either the Bolan or the Gomal to invade Aratta a few generations earlier, which are much easier to cross and closer to Uruk.

Which explains why, when Gilgamesh was crossing the Khyber, the scorpion guard said… “no mortal has done this…”; meaning he was first Urukian to ever pass through this particular pass in the mountains.

This part is actually really important, because it tells us that it was certainly Gilgamesh’s first time in this part of the mountains, but he himself tells us it was not his first time in the region; just before arriving in Mashu, the mountain pass, Gilgamesh said:

At night when he came to the mountain passes Gilgamesh prayed: ‘In these mountain passes long ago I saw lions, I was afraid and I lifted my eyes to the moon; I prayed and my prayers went up to the gods, so now, O moon god Sin, protect me.’ (EOG)

That is a reference to the first adventure he had with Enkidu, erstwhile wild man and best friend and co-hero, whose death he sought to reverse by finding Utnapishtim. And before we get to the end of the search for Utnapishtim, we need to back up and tell the story of Gilgamesh’s first adventure in the region, when he and Enkidu journeyed to a faraway cedar forest to kill the beast Humbaba.

His words above “in these mountain passes long ago,” mean that he was in these passes during that first journey as well, but clearly not in this pass. Thus, at the same mountain chain, but at one of the easier, lower passes like the Gomal or Bolan.

I stress this, because the first adventure (and therefore this second one as well) are almost unanimously believed to be a reference to Lebanon, the only place cedars grew in the ancient world.

…or was it?

THE CEDAR FOREST

In the earliest versions of Gilgamesh, the first adventure takes place in the “cedar mountain.” No place names are given, although there are directions to point where it was (which we’ll get to in a moment).

Later Assyrian copyists (circa ‑800) inserted the name of Lebanon in their copies, the identity of the only source of cedar trees they knew of by that time. But by doing so, they made the story incomprehensible; because nothing about this story matches Lebanon except the cedars.

It was then that the lord Gilgamesh turned his thoughts to the Country of the Living; on the Land of Cedars the lord Gilgamesh reflected. He said to his servant Enkidu, ‘I have not established my name stamped on bricks as my destiny decreed; therefore I will go to the country where the cedar is felled. I will set up my name in the place where the names of famous men are written, and where no man’s name is written yet I will raise a monument to the gods. Because o£ the evil that is in the land, we will go to the forest and destroy the evil; for in the forest lives Humbaba whose name is “Hugeness,”” a ferocious giant.’ (EOG)

Notice here, early in the book, that the “country of the living” is synonymous with “the land of cedars.” No such tradition exists for the region around Lebanon as far as I know; but we have shown repeatedly why the Indus Valley would deserve such a name, and it’s repeatedly associated with Dilmun as well.

But Gilgamesh makes it clear he is heading to the cedar forest, and everyone knows that the only cedar forests are in Lebanon… right? Well… guess where else they grow!

Aren’t we lucky! Precisely where we expected Gilgamesh to be based on other factors, we find him also in cedar mountains in the western Indus Valley! And while later cultures seemed to have looked farther west for their cedar, we know that Enmerkar was in contact with Aratta, also described as having cedars!

Now Aratta’s battlements are of green lapis lazuli, its walls and its towering brickwork are bright red, their brick clay is made of tinstone dug out in the mountains where the cypress grows. (LAB)

You don’t see cedars in that quote? Well, you should. Look at that word “cypress” there. The original Sumerian word, here rendered cypress, is in fact GIŠ.ERIN, where GIŠ means the following word is a type of wood, and ERIN is the species. Since I don’t speak Sumerian, I asked ChatGPT what this word means:

In Sumerian lexical lists and literary texts, GIŠ.ERIN refers to a coniferous timber tree. It is commonly glossed in Akkadian as erēnu …In Akkadian, erēnu is conventionally translated as “cedar.”

In fact, in most Akkadian contexts (especially royal inscriptions), erēnu clearly refers to the Lebanon cedar (Cedrus libani) or at least a prestigious mountain conifer used in monumental construction.

So translating this as “cypress” is a frankly dishonest translation, based on the belief by scholars that Aratta could not possibly be where the cedars were. But what Lugalbanda’s story actually said is that Aratta’s bricks were made of “tinstone dug out in the mountains where the Cedars grow.”

But translating this way, scholars faced an impossibility; they were convinced that the only cedars the Sumerians could have known about were in Lebanon; but they can’t place this story in Lebanon… because there are no tin sources in Lebanon!

Which means there must be a separate site in the ancient world with both mountains, tin, and cedars. We already saw that cedars have a very small range; where, then, do we find tin? It is no surprise, I’m sure, that there is tin in the Indus mountains.

Looking at this map from Wikipedia of ancient tin sources, red represents deposits of tin and green represents the discovery of objects made from tin. I’m sure I don’t have to point out that deposit #42 perfectly overlays the range of the Cedrus Deodora or Himalayan cedar!

You see, if you listen to ancient sources, there is literally only one possibility; tin + cedar + mountains = the Hindu Kush, whose stones had been brought down to the Indus Valley to build their bricks by the sons of Arphaxad, known to Sumer as Aratta.

THE FIRST QUEST

Being freed from the requirement that cedars = Lebanon, Gilgamesh makes a lot more sense. Being blessed by his mother, a goddess, before leaving Uruk, Gilgamesh is told:

May he [Shamash] open the mountains for your crossing, and may the nighttime bring you the blessings of night, and Lugulbanda, your guardian god, stand beside you for victory. May you have victory in the battle as though you fought with a child. Wash your feet in the river of Humbaba to which you are journeying; in the evening dig a well, and let there always be pure water in your water-skin. Offer cold water to Shamash and do not forget Lugulbanda. (EOG)

This tells us their destination requires Shamash to “open the mountains”; remember, Shamash is the sun god. The sun melts snow to open mountain passes. Thus, this is not mere hyperbole or mysticism; Shamash really needed to open the mountain passes, after which they would “wash their feet in the river of Humbaba,” which can only mean the Indus.

Not to beat a dead horse, but Lebanon isn’t really across mountains, it is mountains – although not worthy of the word when compared to those in Pakistan. Also note that Humbaba has his own river – meaning not the Euphrates, the river of Uruk, nor the tiny rivers in Lebanon.

Note also the spiritual presence of Lugalbanda, whom we’ve met many times, always in the context of an invasion of Aratta – the Indus Valley. So besides being his ancestor, it makes sense his spiritual guidance would be important on this particular journey.

After twenty leagues they broke their fast; after another thirty leagues they stopped for the night. Fifty leagues they walked in one day; in three days they had walked as much as a journey of a month and two weeks. They crossed seven mountains before they came to the gate of the forest. (EOG)

Hero-speed notwithstanding, it’s a very long journey to get to their destination, across seven mountains. You may recall that’s the same number of mountains Lugalbanda had to cross to get to Aratta.

Together they went down into the forest and they came to the green mountain. There they stood still, they were struck dumb; they stood still and gazed at the forest.(EOG)

The “green mountain” is notable; from a Sumerian standpoint, mountains were not usually green, but brown. Compare to Lugalbanda’s description of Aratta as “Now Aratta’s battlements are of green lapis lazuli”; not literally, but poetically; for as blue lapis reflects light with gold specks, so might a cedar mountain reflect the sun and give the impression of lapis lazuli.

They saw the height of the cedar, they saw the way into the forest and the track where Humbaba was used to walk. The way was broad and the going was good. They gazed at the mountain of cedars, the dwelling-place of the gods and the throne of Ishtar. The hugeness of the cedar rose in front of the mountain, its shade was beautiful, full of comfort; mountain and glade were green with brushwood. (EOG)

This “throne of Ishtar” is almost certainly a reference to Aratta, where Ishtar/Inanna dwelt in the times of Enmerkar. Meaning that this is literally the same mountain as Enmerkar saw. And note the cedars growing on the banks of the mountain, called “dwelling-place of the gods.” Compare to the botanical name for the cedars that are found in Pakistan today…

The botanical name, which is also the English common name, is derived from the Sanskrit term devadāru, which means “wood of the gods,” a compound of deva “god” and dāru “wood and tree.” (Wiki, Cedrus Deodora)

Whaddaya know.

And now that we know that there were two known and acknowledged sources of cedar in the ancient world, we can understand what the sorcerer told the lord of Aratta in a whole new light.

“I will make Unug [Uruk] dig canals. I will make Unug submit to the shrine of Aratta. After the word of Unug ……, I will make the territories from below to above, from the sea to the cedar mountain, from above to the mountain of the aromatic cedars, submit to my great army. Let Unug bring its own goods by boat, let it tie up boats as a transport flotilla towards the E-zagin of Aratta.” (EE)

Notice that cedar mountain is mentioned twice, but not in exactly the same way. The “cedar mountain,” Lebanon, is mentioned separately from “the mountain of aromatic cedars.” Between the two species, the Himalayan cedar has a significantly stronger scent.

Which means that, as we would expect, the sorcerer is promising the lord of Aratta a territory mapped out by waypoints; “from the sea to the cedar mountain” is a common Sumerian phrase meaning “from the Persian Gulf to Lebanon.” Then “from above to the mountain of the aromatic cedars” would be from the upper Euphrates valley to the Khyber pass; and finally, the first one, fills in the gap in the triangle; “from below to above” – from the Indian Ocean to the Himalayas.

Most people don’t see this, because they think the sorcerer just stuttered, saying “cedar mountain” twice, for poetic effect. They know too much to learn the truth – we have literal, textual evidence that there are two sources of cedar precisely as science tells us.

HUMBABA

The goal of Gilgamesh and Enkidu was to kill the monster Humbaba, whose name is “hugeness.” People generally consider this entirely fictional, but knowing that we are now in Pakistan, and not in Lebanon, we are free to consider other real-world possibilities for the identity of the monster Humbaba… if we just listen to his description with an open mind.

Then Enkidu, the faithful companion, pleaded, answering him, “O my lord, you do not know this monster and that is the reason you are not afraid. I who know him, I am terrified. His teeth are dragon’s fangs, his countenance is like a lion, his charge is the rushing of the flood, with his look he crushes alike the trees of the forest and reeds in the swamp.” (EOG)

Think for a moment, about a creature one might encounter in Pakistan “whose name is huge” with “teeth as dragons’ fangs,” who “crushes alike the trees of the forest and reeds in the swamp,” whose path through the forest is “wide.”

…they saw the way into the forest and the track where Humbaba was used to walk. The way was broad and the going was good. (EOG)

Naturally it was a wide, easy path… Because it was an elephant’s path. Think about it; the Sumerians had never seen one before, to be sure. Giant tusks would certainly be equivalent to “dragon’s fangs.”

Crushing trees as if they were reeds is something only one animal on Earth does. They don’t even have to have a reason – sometimes elephants will level forests because they’re in a bad mood. Certainly to a Sumerian seeing them for the first time, it is a fitting description of a bull elephant. Gilgamesh proceeds to describe his attack:

Like a raging wild bull he snuffed the ground; the watchman of the woods turned full of threatenings, he cried out. Humbaba came from his strong house of cedar. He nodded his head and shook it, menacing Gilgamesh; and on him he fastened his eye, the eye of death. (EOG)

The text references seven magical defenses the beast supposedly had, and an urgency to attack him before he was able to put on (like weapons) the other six “splendors.” For now, he was only able to “blaze out,” almost certainly a reference to the trumpeting of an elephant.

So he felled the first cedar and they cut the branches and laid them at the foot of the mountain. At the first stroke Humbaba blazed out, but still they advanced. They felled seven cedars and cut and bound the branches and laid them at the foot of the mountain, and seven times Humbaba loosed his glory on them. As the seventh blaze died out they reached his lair. He slapped his thigh in scorn. He approached like a noble wild bull roped on the mountain, a warrior whose elbows are bound together. (EOG)

After this, Humbaba surrenders, and begins speaking as a human, begging for life. This anthropomorphized version may refer to the elephants’ keeper or rider. Regardless, Gilgamesh is inclined to spare him and put him to work, but Enkidu insists in killing it, which they do.

There are many versions of the story, and later copies from the first millennium BC certainly believed the cedar forest to have been in Lebanon, naming it in the text; but in the oldest versions, this is absent because it took place in the mountains of Pakistan, not of Lebanon.

The death of Humbaba, “whose name is hugeness,” was clearly a record of two men killing an elephant with hand weapons – a heroic feet indeed, killing the largest land animal in the world. One which only existed in the Indus Valley, precisely where all the other locational clues pointed us to!

THE LAND OF THE LIVING

It’s curious that, repeatedly, Gilgamesh referred to this place as the “country of the living,” i.e., the never-dying. This is consistent with how the Sumerians viewed Dilmun in general, from their earliest myths:

[a certain tablet] locates Paradise in Dilmun and apparently Tagtug the gardener [yet another name of Noah] dwelled here after the flood. Also the epical fragment of Creation and the Flood published by Dr. Poebel says that Ziudgiddu, the king who survived the deluge, received eternal life and lived in the mountain of Dilmun. (The Sumerian Epic of Paradise and the Fall of Man, Langdon)

Gilgamesh also considered this land a place unique in comparison with Sumer – better, more glorious, a place that a hero needs to have been to. This is one of the motivations for his first trip to kill Humbaba:

“Indeed I know it is so, for whoever is tallest among men cannot reach the heavens, and the greatest cannot encompass the earth. Therefore I would enter that country: because I have not established my name stamped on brick as my destiny decreed, I will go to the country where the cedar is cut. I will set up my name where the names of famous men are written; and where no man’s name is written I will raise a monument to the gods.” (EOG)

What famous men was he referring to? The people famous to Sumer had mostly dwelt in Uruk or Kish, and certainly did not require an adventure to a far-away land. There was no one of particular fame in Lebanon, then or ever. Clearly, Gilgamesh set his sights on another land – which we have proven in a myriad ways must be the Indus Valley, or someplace even beyond it.

That, then, is “where the names of famous men are written.” It’s worth noting, in passing, that the name “Shem,” whom we are confident went to “the land of the living,” literally means fame in Hebrew. So it was to his homeland that Gilgamesh wanted to go.

And he went twice, actually; the first time with Enkidu, it seems like they took a southerly route, as no “twelve leagues of darkness” was required to get to Humbaba. When Gilgamesh returned, he said he had been to these passes before, not necessarily to this particular pass.

And yet when Gilgamesh did finally pass through the mountains for what was apparently the first time any man [from Uruk] had ever done it, and encountered the land where gems grew on trees, he still did not find Noah.

We are quite certain that the second time he entered from the Khyber pass; what is strange about the story is that immediately after he finds the gems growing on trees, we find him on the sea coast, a minimum of hundreds of miles away, and he seems vastly more weary that he had been when he entered the mountain pass:

There was the garden of the gods; all round him stood bushes bearing gems. Seeing it he went down at once, for there was fruit of carnelian with the vine hanging from it, beautiful to look at; lapis lazuli leaves hung thick with fruit, sweet to see. For thorns and thistles there were hematite and rare stones, agate, and pearls from out of the sea.

Gilgamesh walked in the garden by the edge of the sea Shamash saw him, and he saw that he was dressed in the skins of animals and ate their flesh. He was distressed, and he spoke and said, “No mortal man has gone this way before, nor will, as long as the winds drive over the sea.” And to Gilgamesh he said, “You will never find the life for which you are searching.” (EOG)

Since this is quite impossible – mountain passes and seashores are never adjacent – and yet in both cases, Gilgamesh was “in the garden of the gods,” we must assume that to the storyteller, the entire Indus region qualified as “the garden of the gods,” “land of the [ever-]living.”

We must therefore conclude that part of the story was skipped over; since he began at one end of the Indus territory, and we find him at the sea, he must be on the opposite end of the Indus territory. Thus, he searched for Noah from one end to the other, “from the mountain of the aromatic cedars to the sea.” But which sea? Where?

NO TURNING BACK

Shamash’s attempt to discourage him was doomed to failure, obviously, and Gilgamesh naturally responded to Shamash with words to the effect of “I’ve come too far to go back now.” The story continues…

Beside the sea she lives, the woman of the vine, the maker, of wine; Siduri sits in the garden at the edge of the sea, with the golden bowl and the golden vats that the gods gave her. She is covered with a veil; and where she sits she sees Gilgamesh coming towards her, wearing skins, the flesh of the gods in his body, but despair in his heart, and his face like the face of one who has made a long journey. (EOG)

The woman at first fears him, asks who he is and what he wants, then – like everybody else – tells him he’s wasting his time and should give up:

But Gilgamesh said to Siduri, the young woman, ‘How can I be silent, how can I rest, when Enkidu whom I love is dust, and I too shall die and be laid in the earth. You live by the sea-shore and look into the heart of it; young woman, tell me now, which is the way to Utnapishtim, the son of Ubara-Tutu? What directions are there for the passage; give me, oh, give me directions. I will cross the Ocean if it is possible; if it is not I will wander still farther in the wilderness.’

The wine-maker said to him, ‘Gilgamesh, there is no crossing the Ocean; whoever has come, since the days of old, has not been able to pass that sea. The Sun in his glory crosses the Ocean, but who beside Shamash has ever crossed it? The place and the passage are difficult, and the waters of death are deep which flow between. Gilgamesh, how will you cross the Ocean? When you come to the waters of death what will you do? But Gilgamesh, down in the woods you will find Urshanabi, the ferryman of Utnapishtim; with him are the holy things, the things of stone. He is fashioning the serpent prow of the boat. Look at him well, and if it is possible, perhaps you will cross the waters with him; but if it is not possible, then you must go back.’ (EOG)

This cannot be a reference to the island which I promised not to mention again in the Persian Gulf, which was well known and in shallow, calm seas. It is also a poor fit to the coast of Pakistan, which has no major islands, none of them mountainous as Dilmun is said to be.

Given that Gilgamesh clearly was going from one end to the other of the “land of the living,” i.e., land of Shem/Arphaxad, and that he started in the extreme NW we would expect him to be somewhere in the extreme SE.

This means that he was probably, but not necessarily, at the SE of the IVC lands; though since the IVC was Aratta, Arphaxad in particular, it’s possible that he passed through all the settled lands divided among Arphaxad’s descendants in the east – i.e., all along the west coast of India.

So if we expand our search farther than the IVC, we would be looking for an island, relatively close to land, with a direct east-west passage between them; remember, Shamash – the sun – crosses this passage daily, so it must be east-west.

And remember, Dilmun is repeatedly said to be the place where the sun rises, so the island must be directly east from the nearest vantage point.

So from wherever Gilgamesh was standing at that very moment in the story, Dilmun must be due east from him! But this excludes any location in Pakistan or on the west coast of India, for they all would travel west from the coast to find any island!

But as it happens… there is a place that checks every single box.

SERENDIP (ITY)

Remember, this island was remote. It was at the literal edge of the world to the Sumerians. They traded with the Indus Valley, so it had to be even more remote than the Indus from Uruk, otherwise the story makes no sense; Gilgamesh would be heroically trekking to a land sailors went to every year!

If our understanding of Gilgamesh is correct, then to find Utnapishtim, he traveled farther than any man from Sumer had ever gone before, to where Noah was dwelling. This means it was beyond Aratta, where both Enmerkar and Lugalbanda had gone, in a place still connected to the IVC but far beyond the realm of Sumer.

So the real Dilmun where Noah settled must be some other island, even farther east from Uruk. One with mountains, one with rivers, not too far from the mainland and due east of it, with a dangerous crossing. One that is a source of ivory and copper, both of which the Sumerians said came from there.

And guess what – we just described Sri Lanka.

Unlike all the other candidates, Sri Lanka is quite dangerous to reach due to currents, shallows, reefs, and large swells. In the photo above you’ll see a narrow reef, almost a bridge, connecting it to the mainland; it runs almost due east-west, precisely as we would expect. This, then, would be the route Gilgamesh traveled.

Unlike other candidates, Sri Lanka has respectable mountains reaching 2,524 metres (8,281 ft) above sea level. Sri Lanka is also a source of copper which was mined in prehistoric times. And of course, elephants.

It has fresh water, irrigated valleys, and other things we saw that Dilmun must have. And while Sri Lanka is far beyond the cultural horizon of the Harappan civilization… it was nonetheless connected to it:

Megalithic markings, Megalithic graffiti marks, Megalithic symbols or Non-Brahmi symbols are terms used to describe markings found on mostly potsherds found in Central India, South India and Sri Lanka during the Megalithic Iron Age period. They are usually found in burial sites but are also found in habitation sites as well. They are tentatively dated from 1000 BCE to 300 CE marking the transition of the proto-historic period into the historic period of the Indian subcontinent…

In 1960, archaeologist B. B. Lal found that 89% of the surveyed megalithic symbols had their counterparts amongst the Indus script. He concluded that there was a commonness of culture between the Indus Valley Civilisation and the later megalithic period. In 2019, archaeologists in Tamil Nadu excavated further potsherds at Keeladi with graffiti closely resembling symbols of the Indus script. (Wiki, Megalithic Graffiti Symbols)

It’s as if the IVC stopped half-way down the west coast of India, but here was an outpost in the farthest-flung corner of the world that still retained IVC symbols. Which is precisely where we would expect to find Dilmun – at the end of the world.

So in pretty much every way, Sri Lanka is a perfect fit. And for what it’s worth, remember how the Sumerians considered Dilmun the site of creation of man? And we explained that was because Noah lived there?

Well, the Arabs considered Sri Lanka to be the place Adam landed upon his expulsion from paradise. Speaking of that near-land-bridge you saw in the photo above, Wikipedia has this to say…

Ibn Khordadbeh’s Kitāb al-Masālik wa-l-Mamālik (c. 850) refers to the structure as Set Bandhai (lit. Bridge of the Sea). The name Adam’s Bridge appeared probably around the time of Al-Biruni (c. 1030). This appears to have been premised on the Islamic belief that Adam’s Peak — where the biblical Adam fell to earth — is located in Sri Lanka, and that Adam crossed over to peninsular India via the bridge after his expulsion from the Garden of Eden. (Wiki, Adam’s Bridge)

A legend from 3,000 years later is hardly convincing, but the fact that Dilmun is described as paradise, as is Sri Lanka, is an interesting connection. Of all the places to pick, why did the Muslims pick the very one that Gilgamesh also led us to, calling it “the garden of the gods?”

ARRIVING IN PARADISE

Gilgamesh leaves the wine-making woman and heads to the boatman; apparently he was hangry, for he set about breaking all the tackle on the boat he needed to ferry him to the island. Finally he calms down, the boatman asks him his story, and on the conclusion tells him that he would have taken him to the island… if he hadn’t just wrecked their boat! But after some thought, the boatman comes up with another idea.

When Gilgamesh heard this he went into the forest, he cut poles one hundred and twenty; he cut them sixty cubits long, he painted them with bitumen, he set on them ferrules, and he brought them to Urshanabi. Then they boarded the boat, Gilgamesh and Urshanabi together, launching it out on the waves of Ocean. For three days they ran on as it were a journey of a month and fifteen days, and at last Urshanabi brought the boat to the waters of death: Then Urshanabi said to Gilgamesh, Press on, take a pole and thrust it in, but do not let your hands touch the waters. Gilgamesh, take a second pole, take a third… [etc]… After one hundred and twenty thrusts Gilgamesh had used the last pole. Then he stripped himself, he held up his arms for a mast and his covering for a sail. So Urshanabi the ferryman brought Gilgamesh to Utnapishtim, whom they call the Faraway, who lives in Dilmun at the place of the sun’s transit, eastward of the mountain. To him alone of men the gods had given everlasting life. (EOG)

We see that this was a distance over clean waters, then a distance of swampy or marshy terrain requiring poling. Some danger was in the water – arguably chemical, or possibly animal. Either way, for the poles to work the water must be relatively shallow.

And we see, as always, Dilmun placed at the extremity of the world, “at the place of the sun’s transit,” specifically to a site “eastward of the mountain.” In context, that might mean eastward of the mountain on the island of Sri Lanka, which would direct us towards the large irrigated river valley on the east.

MEETING NOAH

Utnapishtim recognizes from far away that Gilgamesh is not from around there, and when he arrives asks the same old question:

So Utnapishtim looked at him and said, “What is your name, you who come here wearing the skins of beasts, with your cheeks starved and your face drawn? Where are you hurrying to now? For what reason have you made this great journey, crossing “the seas whose passage is difficult?” Tell me the reason for your coming.” (EOG)

Gilgamesh recaps his adventures, then concludes…

It is to see Utnapishtim whom we call the Faraway that I have come this journey. For this I have wandered over the world, I have crossed many difficult ranges, I have crossed the seas, I have wearied myself with travelling; my joints are aching, and I have lost acquaintance with sleep which is sweet. My clothes were worn out before I came to the house of Siduri. I have killed the bear and hyena, the lion and panther, the tiger, the stag and the ibex, all sorts of wild game and the small creatures of the pastures. (EOG)

He proceeds to ask Noah to tell him the secret of how he obtained eternal life, and Noah tells him the story of the flood, concluding with…

Then Enlil went up into the boat, he took me by the hand and my wife and made us enter the boat and kneel down on either side, he standing between us. He touched our foreheads to bless us saying, “In time past Utnapishtim was a mortal man; henceforth he and his wife shall live in the distance at the mouth of the rivers.” Thus it was that the gods took me and placed me here to live in the distance, at the mouth of the rivers. (EOG)

Most people interpret “the mouth of the rivers” as a reference to the Euphrates, which is understandable but contradictory; you don’t need to cross “many difficult mountain ranges” to find a place that’s at the mouth of the rivers in the Persian Gulf. So that conclusion is as impossible as it is easy.

Others try to argue that he meant the source of the rivers, not their mouth; the evidence for that seems weak to me. Given our location at the end of the world, we must look for some such place near Sri Lanka; referring to the image above, there are two large rivers on Sri Lanka, on the east side just as we would expect.

Anyway, Utnapishtim tells Gilgamesh, in effect, that if he can stay awake for a week, the gods might grant him eternal life; he of course falls asleep immediately and sleeps for the week instead.

To provide proof that he was asleep, Utnapishtim instructs his wife to bake a loaf of bread and lay it beside him each day, before finally waking him the seventh day and showing him the moldy, stale loaves.

Then Utnapishtim spoke to Urshanabi the ferryman: “Woe to you Urshanabi, now and for ever more you have become hateful to this harbourage; it is not for you, nor for you are the crossings of this sea. Go now, banished from the shore. But this man before whom you walked, bringing him here, whose body is covered with foulness and the grace of whose limbs has been spoiled by wild skins, take him to the washing-place. There he shall wash his long hair clean as snow in the water, he shall throve off his skins and let the sea carry them away, and the beauty of his body shall be shown, the fillet on his forehead shall be renewed, and he shall be given clothes to cover his nakedness. Till he reaches his own city and his journey is accomplished, these clothes will show no sign of age, they will wear like a new garment.” (EOG)

So the ferryman who brought Gilgamesh is exiled, who returns to Uruk with Gilgamesh. It should be noted, in passing, that the last part is strikingly reminiscent of something Moses said…

Deuteronomy 29:5 I have led you forty years in the wilderness: your clothes have not grown old on you, and your shoes have not grown old on your feet.

So after dressing him and sending him on his way, Utnapishtim’s wife prevails upon him to give Gilgamesh something so he doesn’t go home empty. So he tells him of a secret plant that restores youth…

Gilgamesh, you came here a man wearied out, you have worn yourself out; what shall I give you to carry you back to your own country? Gilgamesh, I shall reveal a secret thing, it is a mystery of the gods that I am telling you. There is a plant that grows under the water, it has a prickle like a thorn, like a rose; it will wound your hands, but if you succeed in taking it, then your hands will hold that which restores his lost youth to a man. (EOG)

Gilgamesh free-dives, finds it, brings it up, and then happily sails home to Uruk intending to gift it to all the old men of the city to make them young again, giving the plant the imaginative name “The Old Men Are Young Again.” But on the way back he went for a swim in a deep pool and a serpent saw the plant, ate it, shed its skin, and ran away.

And that, boys and girls, is why snakes shed their skin.

SOOOOO….

As I said at the beginning, the Bible says nothing of Noah after the incident with the wine, which probably took place in the region around Gobelki Tepe. But knowing all that we now know, we can tell a story that makes sense of a lot of things.

Because in a way, the Bible does mention Noah again. See we have inferred that Noah stayed behind in Gobekli Tepe while the rest of the family was sent south to scatter abroad and replenish the Earth. Well, they got sidetracked in Sumer and built the tower of Babel instead.

Communication would have been possible, certainly, but may not have been regular. It’s likely that Noah was consulted before Etana became king of Kish, for instance – who would, as Samuel did, have consulted God in turn.

But then time passed, the people bickered, and Nimrod started a second city in opposition to Kish; so at this point, someone must have tattled to Noah about the tower of Babel, and then Noah came down to see for himself.

Genesis 10:5-6 Yahweh came down to see the city and the tower, which the children of men built. Yahweh said, “Behold, they are one people, and they have all one language, and this is what they begin to do. Now nothing will be withheld from them, which they intend to do.”

This has always been read as if the Lord suddenly heard about Babel and decided to come check it out. But in many, if not most, examples, the Lord did so with a human present. Compare Abraham looking out over Sodom and Gomorrah, for example, with the Lord (Genesis 18:16-22).

Or consider Moses up on the mountain while the people made the golden calf (Exodus 32), who, coming down, got angry and whereupon God cursed the people. God knew about it the whole time, but it wasn’t until Moses came down that people started dying (verses 27-29).

So then, what Genesis may have left out, since it is so hyper-condensed, is the fact that Noah came down to see the city and the tower, and the Lord, working with and through Noah, cursed the people who built it!

If he started in the north and wound up far in the east, he had to have passed by Babel sooner or later. It makes sense that the righteous sons of Noah would have complained to him, and that he would have come down, knocked some heads together, and forced people to dispersed like they were supposed to in the first place.

It was Noah, then, who oversaw the assignment of land – just as Moses and Joshua did much later. Noah said “Elam, go that way, Cush – get a boat and go where it takes you, Lud, you’re up there…” etc.

It also makes sense that Noah, who certainly knew how to build an ocean-worthy boat, would have personally escorted the tribes destined for the far east with him, dropping Arphaxad’s line off at the Indus and various other places along the upper west coast of India with instructions on where to go.

And finally, that he got off himself at Sri Lanka, leaving Japheth’s family with instructions to go east and don’t look back – remember Lot’s wife. Sri Lanka forms a natural divide between east and west, it always has.

No evidence of cuneiform or the IVC script has ever been found east of there, and no evidence of Chinese writing or culture has ever crossed west of there. It’s as if a wall were built. Ethnically, linguistically, and culturally India represents the barrier between east and west.

FROM MESHA

And interestingly, the Bible did tell us this – although we can be forgiven for not understanding it the first time. Though it lists the sons of Shem down many generations, it only lists one per generation down to the time of Peleg and Joktan, the last generation before Babel. Joktan’s 13 sons are listed – these would be the tribes of Arphaxad, the tribes of Aratta – excepting the one tribe of Peleg which has Abraham’s ancestry. The Bible concludes that the other thirteen tribes…

Genesis 10:30 Their dwelling was from Mesha, as you go toward Sephar, the mountain of the east.

Most Bible maps will tell you that these tribes all settled in Arabia, and they offer some linguistic connections to place names there, not bad connections, but nothing ironclad. But first, in the Bible, “to the east” never meant Arabia.

Second, the Bible clearly felt the need to explain where “Sephar” was, clarifying it was “the mountain of the east,” as if their audience wouldn’t understand it. Odd, since it was written by Moses… in Arabia!

Third, Shem was the birthright son, entitled to the very best; the line of Abraham was the firstborn of firstborns of firstborns. Which means these 13 sons of Joktan deserved, by right, the best of the best, a land flowing with milk and honey where gems grew on trees. Not the rock and sand of Arabia.

Fourth, we’ve observed before that Shem’s lands were a group to the north and east, one continuous group divided more or less by the Mesopotamian rivers. To the south and west of there across Africa and so on was all Ham. So it would be very weird, in the middle of Ham’s territory, to have the bulk of Shem’s birthright line all by themselves!

Fifth, it’s a very small and poor region for any thirteen sons. For comparison, the eleven tribes of Canaan inherited a vast land on the eastern Mediterranean stretching from Turkey to the border of Arabia. And they were a cursed lineage!

But enough about where they weren’t. We have established already that they must be in the Iran-Pakistan-western Indian region. And fortunately, when we look there, we find that these place names… actually make sense!

Remember earlier, that when Gilgamesh entered the upper Indus Valley, he did so through a mountain he called “Mashu?” Well, Hebrew doesn’t record vowels. So Mashu = Mesha. And this fits exceptionally well, since we know it was the extreme NW end of the Indus Valley Civilization Territory!

So then, we would read this as “from the Khyber pass to Sephar, a mountain of the east.” Since we know we’re looking for the SE border of the IVC culture and/or the SE border of the Aryan language/ethnic culture in history, let’s narrow our location with this map.

You see that the SE extremity of the IVC falls around the Gulf of Khambhat, although it’s known that they traded for gold from Karnataka, quite a bit farther south. The Aravalli range falls perfectly in the right location; and although we have no strong reason to believe the name is connected to Sephar, we could still stop our work right here and call it a job well done.

However, if we want to insist on a recognizable ancient name connected to Sephar, look at this map constructed based on detailed descriptions in a book called the “Periplus of the Eastern Sea.” And notice just where that bay is at the extreme edge of the IVC culture, you’ll find a city known by the name Sopara or Suppala in Roman times.

Linguistically, this is effectively identical with the Hebrew Sephar. Now one of the sons of Joktan was named “Ophir.” This Hebrew name is rendered into Greek in various ways:

In the Septuagint, other variants of the name are mentioned: Ōpheír, Sōphír, Sōpheír and Souphír. (Wiki, Ophir)

Thus it stands to reason that the name Sephar was actually a variant of the name of the son of Joktan who settled there, Ophir. When translated into other languages, particularly Greek as in the Periplus, that name becomes souphir or some other variant. Hence, Ophir = Sephar = Sopara.

Sopara (by some identified with the Ophir mentioned in the Hebrew texts) was an ancient port town and the capital of the ancient Aparanta. The ancient port of Sopara was the most important port in western India after the celebrated port of Cambay. The site of this ancient town is located near the present-day Nala Sopara. In ancient times, it was the largest township on India’s west coast, trading with Mesopotamia, Egypt, Cochin, Arabia and Eastern Africa. (Wiki, Nallasopara)

So this large, well-known city, with contacts to Mesopotamia and Egypt in particular, would have been an excellent reference point for the highly educated Moses to use; the Sumerians called the Khyber pass as Mt. Mashu, and the ancient Egyptians must have also known of the trading post Sopara; So Moses told us “from Mt. Mashu, as you go towards Sephar, the sons of Arphaxad settled.”

And what about the “mountain of the east” part? Well, as you go south down the west cost of India, this city is at the site of the first mountain range visible from the sea! Sephar, at the first mountain range east of the Indus!

And with that we consider the matter settled.

(Yes, I am aware we have just located king Solomon’s gold-rich region of Ophir, and we will talk much more about that in the proper place.)

In the next chapter of the Enmerkar-Aratta saga, which scholars call Enmerkar and Ensuhkeshdanna, we find Aratta not only unsubmissive, but actively demanding that Uruk submit to it! Ensuhkeshdanna is apparently overconfident and demands that Enmerkar submit to Aratta. Naturally, Enmerkar refuses and makes threats, which makes Aratta have second thoughts.

Again, this was a Sumerian story. I’d love to hear the Arattan version because I’m quite sure these facts have been through the spin factory, but this is all we have. Anyway, the Lord of Aratta’s counselors tell him he bit off more than he can chew, and just when he’s starting to really worry, a sorcerer comes and offers to make Uruk [Unug] submit for him:

I will make Unug dig canals. I will make Unug submit to the shrine of Aratta. After the word of Unug ……, I will make the territories from below to above, from the sea to the cedar mountain, from above to the mountain of the aromatic cedars, submit to my great army. Let Unug bring its own goods by boat, let it tie up boats as a transport flotilla towards the E‑zagin of Aratta. (EE)

What’s particularly interesting for us, trying to locate Aratta, is that we now know goods can be transported entirely by boat from Uruk to Aratta. This completely eliminates all of the options of historians, since there’s no way to get to Afghanistan or central Iran or Armenia, or anywhere in between, with a merchant ship. You can’t even get close. There is literally only one place…

1. Across seven mountain chains in the direction of Susa and Anshan (east)
2. The lapis mines in Afghanistan are within its territory, along with many other precious metals and jewels
3. On the far side of mountain passes, which it controls
4. And it’s also reachable entirely by boat

It’s time for another map.

So you see, there is a perfectly natural way to reach there – by boat from Uruk, out the Persian Gulf, and up the Indus River. Precisely how we know for a fact the Harappans traded with Uruk!

It seems, however, that Harappan participation in the trading networks right across the Iranian plateau, which depended on the use of pack animals, virtually ceased, and was replaced by trade using water transport. Though not without its risks, such as storms and perhaps pirates, this was generally an easier and more efficient means of transporting goods, particularly bulky or heavy materials. Direct seaborne communications through the Gulf were now established between the Indus civilization and Mesopotamia, the main Near Eastern consumer of imported raw materials. This link enabled the Harappans to conduct direct commercial relations with Mesopotamia, giving them direct control over the management of their trade rather than depending on intermediaries (as the land traffic had) and thereby improving both their returns on their exports and their ability to control the supply of imports. Sea trade also gave the Harappans access to the resources and markets of the cultures in the Gulf. The establishment of new Harappan settlements along the Makran coast reflected the development of this maritime trade (Ancient Indus Valley New Perspectives, McIntosh).

The existence of these “intermediaries” is, as far as I can tell, purely hypothetical; no particular accumulation of Harappan goods has ever been found in the parts of Iran where such intermediaries would have lived. They are figments of the imaginations of historians, in direct contradiction to contemporary records.

There almost certainly existed two separate, independent routes – one by land, one by sea – probably from the very beginning. Each had their own advantages and disadvantages, as shown by the fact in the Enmerkar cycle that both land messengers/land invasions as well as sea trade are depicted.

THE STORY CONTINUES

Anyway, the sorcerer having been sent to Uruk, he curses the dairy cows; fortunately, Uruk finds its own sorcerer, who wins several challenges and in the end kills the first sorcerer. The conclusion is clear:

Having heard this matter, En-suhgir-ana sent a man to Enmerkar: “You are the beloved lord of Inana, you alone are exalted. Inana has truly chosen you for her holy lap, you are her beloved. From the south to the highlands, you are the great lord, and I am only second to you; from the moment of conception I was not your equal, you are the older brother. I cannot match you ever.” In the contest between Enmerkar and En-suhgir-ana, Enmerkar proved superior to En-suhgir-ana. Nisaba, be praised! (Enmerkar and En-suhgir-ana)

The acknowledgment as “the older brother,” as a sign of respect, arguably suggests the reverse was the real truth; that Enmerkar was younger than the Lord of Aratta, consistent with him being Shem or Arphaxad or even Salah, and possibly Eber; whoever it was, he was abasing himself before his junior.

Again, that’s how the Sumerians told it; I’m skeptical that it went down this way since in the next installment, called Lugalbanda and the Mountain Cave (LMC), Enmerkar has launched a full scale land invasion containing as many as 200,000 men. So maybe Enmerkar exaggerated his success a bit in the previous chapter?

…now at that time the king set his mace towards the city, Enmerkar the son of Utu prepared an …… expedition against Aratta, the mountain of the holy divine powers. He was going to set off to destroy the rebel land; the lord began a mobilization of his city. The herald made the horn signal sound in all the lands. (LMC)

Note the curious contradiction here; Aratta is called “the rebel land,” and yet is simultaneously seen as “the mountain of the holy divine powers.” An odd mix of reverence and scorn. But precisely what we would expect Enmerkar to tell his people.

Remember, he was trying to justify challenging the people everyone knew had been appointed to rule; casting them as the rebels was impossible unless he could prove that they had been rebellious against the gods. Hence the repeated mentions of how “Inanna likes me best.”

Now levied Unug took the field with the wise king, indeed levied Kulaba followed Enmerkar. Unug’s levy was a flood, Kulaba’s levy was a clouded sky. As they covered the ground like heavy fogs, the dense dust whirled up by them reached up to heaven. As if to rooks on the best seed, rising up, he called to the people. Each one gave his fellow the sign.

At that time there were seven … They were heroes, living in Sumer, they were princely in their prime. They had been brought up eating at the god An’s table. These seven were … overseers of 300 men, 300 men each; they were captains of 600 men, 600 men each; they were generals of 7 car (25,200) of soldiers, 25,200 soldiers each. They stood at the service of the lord as his élite troops. (LMC)

Granting that this might well be an exaggeration, nonetheless no amount of boats could realistically transport an army of that scale. Hence, a land invasion through one of the passes. The 1200 mile journey was not trivial, but if the land was wetter at the time – and scientists believe that it was – it would be quite doable.

Interestingly, propaganda or no, the invasion was not depicted as successful, and the hero of these stories is about to shift to Lugalbanda, Enmerkar’s immediate successor as king of Uruk in the SKL – and very likely the messenger of the first two books. Here, when we meet him by name for the first time, he is the 8th general in his elite troops…

Lugalbanda, the eighth of them, …… was washed in water. In awed silence he went forward, …… he marched with the troops. When they had covered half the way, covered half the way, a sickness befell him there, ‘head sickness’ befell him. (LMC)

The story largely focuses on his being left in a cave to recover or die by his comrades, being healed and having a vision and a dream, making some sacrifices, then a long description of evil spirits and their ways, then concluding with some poetic stuff about the gods and their role in warfare on the side of the good guys. The end of the tablet is badly damaged so it’s hard to know for sure what the point was.

LUGALBANDA AND THE ANZUD BIRD (LAB)

The fourth story seems to be a continuation of the third, and begins with Lugalbanda alone in the wilderness; it seems he’s lost, and wants to reconnect with the army of Uruk, his brothers, and see what happened to them. To do so, he concocts a plan to do a favor for a magical Anzud-bird; capable of carrying an entire bull in its claws, with teeth like a shark’s.

When the bird has drunk the beer and is happy, when Anzud has drunk the beer and is happy, he can help me find the place to which the troops of Unug [Uruk] are going, Anzud can put me on the track of my brothers. (LAB)

Long story short, he is nice to the Anzud bird’s chick, and when the great bird arrives home after a day hunting cattle, he at first is worried that the chick doesn’t answer, then relieved to see that Lugalbanda has taken such good care of his nest. The bird says…

The bird is exultant, Anzud is exultant: “I am the prince who decides the destiny of rolling rivers. I keep on the straight and narrow path the righteous who follow Enlil’s counsel. My father Enlil brought me here. He let me bar the entrance to the mountains as if with a great door. If I fix a fate, who shall alter it? If I but say the word, who shall change it? Whoever has done this to my nest, if you are a god, I will speak with you, indeed I will befriend you. If you are a man, I will fix your fate. I shall not let you have any opponents in the mountains. You shall be ‘Hero-fortified-by-Anzud.’” (LAB)

Lugalbanda, in typical hero fashion says he was just trying to be nice, and doesn’t want a reward. The bird offers him various typical reward stuff; money, power, you know the drill. Lugalbanda politely declines; finally the bird demands that he tell him what he wants. He asks for physical endurance, of all things.

Holy Lugalbanda answers him: “Let the power of running be in my thighs, let me never grow tired! Let there be strength in my arms, let me stretch my arms wide, let my arms never become weak! Moving like the sunlight, like Inana,” … (LAB)

He goes on like that for awhile. Considering how much work it took to write a tablet, ancient stories were really repetitive sometimes. Anyway, he is of course granted his wish and sets off to join the troops of Uruk. They are excited to see him, wanting to know what happened, but the Anzud-bird swore him to secrecy so he is evasive. Our part of the story continues…

Then the men of Unug followed them as one man; they wound their way through the hills like a snake over a grain-pile. When the city was only a double-hour distant, the armies of Unug and Kulaba encamped by the posts and ditches that surrounded Aratta. From the city it rained down javelins as if from the clouds, slingstones numerous as the raindrops falling in a whole year whizzed down loudly from Aratta’s walls. The days passed, the months became long, the year turned full circle. A yellow harvest grew beneath the sky. (LAB)

These clues tell us that the battle lasted at least a year; which also tells us, in turn, this battle was not confined to the mountain passes, where no army could have held siege through the winter. So this must have taken place somewhere in the cities of the Indus Valley, where “a yellow harvest” (some form of grain) grew, where “ditches” were dug (for irrigation).

My best guess is Mehrgarh, according to archaeologists, the oldest of the cities; if they’re right, then it’s probably Aratta, but that’s just a slightly educated guess. It fits many of the themes – near the mountain passes, in a valley with irrigation, closest to Uruk by land than any other Indus city, with pottery and technology definitively tied to Mesopotamian:

Mehrgarh is one of the earliest known sites in the Indian subcontinent showing evidence of farming and herding. It was influenced by the Neolithic culture of the Near East, with similarities between “domesticated wheat varieties, early phases of farming, pottery, other archaeological artifacts, some domesticated plants and herd animals.” According to Asko Parpola, the culture migrated into the Indus Valley and became the Indus Valley Civilisation of the Bronze Age. (Wiki, Mehrgarh)

So it’s a good fit, but it’s by no means conclusive. It could have been any of the five great cities of the Indus Valley, none of whose original names we know. If it isn’t Mehrgarh, my best pick would be Harappa itself. Regardless, returning to the tale of the siege, we find it not going well;

They looked askance at the fields. Unease came over them. Slingstones numerous as the raindrops falling in a whole year landed on the road. They were hemmed in by the barrier of mountain thornbushes thronged with dragons. (LAB)

The presence of “mountain” bushes suggests a mountain location; the reference to dragons is interesting, keep that in mind for when we discuss Humbaba and Gilgamesh in the next chapter. Meanwhile Enmerkar – mentioned for the first time in almost two whole “chapters” – is in a state of despair:

No one knew how to go back to the city, no was rushing to go back to Kulaba. In their midst Enmerkar son of Utu was afraid, was troubled, was disturbed by this upset. He sought someone whom he could send back to the city, he sought someone whom he could send back to Kulaba. No one said to him “I will go to the city.” No one said to him “I will go to Kulaba.” He went out to the foreign host. No one said to him “I will go to the city.” No one said to him “I will go to Kulaba.” He stood before the élite troops. No one said to him “I will go to the city.” No one said to him “I will go to Kulaba.” (LAB)

Basically, since he had spent a year failing to conquer a city that Inanna had sent him to conquer, he was starting to question her wishes; indeed, questioning her good faith – she was worshiped, but not always trustworthy, this goddess. And no one felt like volunteering for an extremely dangerous journey like that.

Naturally, Lugalbanda with his gift of endurance volunteered to go, and to go alone at that. After the expected hemming and hawing, Enmerkar agrees – he is desperate, after all; and gives him the following message:

After he had stood before the summoned assembly, within the palace that rests on earth like a great mountain Enmerkar son of Utu berated Inana: “Once upon a time my princely sister holy Inana summoned me in her holy heart from the bright mountains, had me enter brick-built Kulaba. Where there was a marsh then in Unug, it was full of water. Where there was any dry land, Euphrates poplars grew there. Where there were reed thickets, old reeds and young reeds grew there. Divine Enki who is king in Eridu tore up for me the old reeds, drained off the water completely. For fifty years I built, for fifty years I was successful. Then the Martu peoples, who know no agriculture, arose in all Sumer and Akkad. But the wall of Unug extended out across the desert like a bird net. Yet now, here in this place, my attractiveness to her has dwindled. My troops are bound to me as a cow is bound to its calf; but like a son who, hating his mother, leaves his city, my princely sister holy Inana has run away from me back to brick-built Kulaba. If she loves her city and hates me, why does she bind the city to me? If she hates the city and yet loves me, why does she bind me to the city? If the mistress removes herself from me to her holy chamber, and abandons me like an Anzud chick, then may she at least bring me home to brick-built Kulaba: on that day my spear shall be laid aside. On that day she may shatter my shield. Speak thus to my princely sister, holy Inana.” (LAB)

This gives us several interesting bits of information about the Biblical Nimrod; he plainly says that he built Uruk, that before him it was just a marsh, when Inanna “summoned” him “from the bright mountains.” Presumably, this is how Nimrod understood the migration from Gobekli Tepe to Babel.

Nimrod also looks back on a successful career which lasted over 50 years – presumably not counting that awkward Babel fiasco. Then, it says, the Martu people rebelled; these were also called the Amurru, or the Biblical Amorites, who dwelt far to the west in the area of Canaan.

It’s worth noting that they are recorded in the Sumerian Kinglist as the Dynasty of Mari, which probably relates to the time of this war. It is certain that the Mari were a powerful kingdom at this time in history, close enough to and capable of attacking Sumer.

Uruk was able to withstand this attack thanks to a large wall Enmerkar had built. But now, after all this success – while attempting to force Aratta to provide her with goods for her temple, no less – now Inanna has given up on him, he laments, leaving him to die in Aratta. If that’s the case, he says, he’ll gladly retire – just bring him home.

Laden with this message, Lugalbanda makes it home in record time, sees Inanna who it seems immediately falls in love with him, laying the groundwork for him being the next king (which he was); then Inanna tells Lugalbanda to tell Enmerkar that if he cuts a certain tamarisk growing in a marsh by itself, then catches and sacrifices a certain fish…

…then his troops will have success for him; then he will have brought to an end that which in the subterranean waters provides the life-strength of Aratta.” “If he carries off from the city its worked metal and smiths, if he carries off its worked stones and its stonemasons, if he renews the city and settles it, all the moulds of Aratta will be his.” Now Aratta’s battlements are of green lapis lazuli, its walls and its towering brickwork are bright red, their brick clay is made of tinstone dug out in the mountains where the cypress grows. Praise be to holy Lugalbanda. (LAB)

The story ends there; we don’t know if that worked or not; what we do know is that Lugalbanda, not the aging Enmerkar, is clearly the subject of the story by the end; in fact, we can see the entire saga as slowly building up to legitimize Lugalbanda in favor of Enmerkar.

That’s why the final conclusion is “praise be to holy Lugalbanda,” a title never accorded to Enmerkar in these stories. Given the way that the Enmerkar cycle ended, and how Lugalbanda replaced him, we might speculate that Enmerkar did not follow Inanna’s instructions properly and failed to take Aratta – in fact, it seems likely that Enmerkar never returned from Aratta:

The author chose the only Sumerian cultural hero, whose activities are recorded only by three tales. Otherwise Enmerkar does not appear in inscriptions or god lists. The paucity of material is incompatible with his status as a king in the Sumerian tales. Moreover, Enmerkar was not deified like his successors Lugalbanda and Gilgameš despite his proclaimed divine ancestry. Since the Babylonians believed that the dead ancestor turns into a personal god by force of a proper funerary ritual, not being deified would suggest to them that he did not even have the traditional cult of the ancestors. A Babylonian would then conclude that either Enmerkar died in the wilderness or on the battlefield. Both cases would be regarded as a punishment. Death on the battlefield, however, would mean that he ignored the will of the gods, which is revealed in divination. (Ups and downs in the career of Enmerkar, Dina Katz)

The gods clearly favored Lugalbanda more than Enmerkar by the end of the stories; needing to explain why Enmerkar did not return from Aratta would be very important to the Sumerian worldview. Hence his replacement with Lugalbanda, who was “brought up eating at the god An’s table… Lugalbanda, the eighth of them, …… was washed in water.”

Being “washed in water” is certainly a purification ritual akin to Christian baptism, and most likely this means he was raised in the temple as a priest, a position which overlapped heavily with that of king in those days, and thus was set up to be taken as consort of Inanna and become the rightful ruler of Uruk.

THE SIN OF ENMERKAR

In later Babylonian mythology Enmerkar is seen as something of a failure – despite his status as first king of Uruk. Historians are unable to explain this. The actual text is as follows…

Whoever sins against the gods of that city, his star shall not stand in the sky, his kingship will end, his scepter will be taken away, his treasury will become a heap of ruins […]. And the king of heaven and earth said thus: “The gods of heaven and earth […] the behavior of each former king of which I hear to […]. Akka, son of […] Enmerkar, king of Uruk, destroyed the people […]. The sage Adapa, son of […] heard in his holy sanctuary and cursed Enmerkar.” (Weidner Chronicle)

This chronicle dates to the Isin dynasty, probably 500-700 years after these events. Among other things, it makes a list of proverbial sinners and failures, and includes Enmerkar as one who “destroyed the people” in some undefined way, but clearly by “sinning against the gods.” One scholar explains this passage as follows…

The bad reputation of Enmerkar followed him to the Weidner Chronicle. Unfortunately the passage in the chronicle that refers to him is fragmentary. It is clear that Enmerkar committed a sin, but its nature unknown. The Chronicle is about the cult of Marduk in Esagila which means that the offense took place in Babylon. The remains of the text indicate that he was cursed by Adapa. I cannot explain how these two characters could meet outside the bookshelves. The one is an antediluvian character, and the other postdiluvian. The location in Babylon is anachronistic, far detached from the Sumerian literary landscape, as if the dimensions of time and place shrank. Is it possible that the chronicle is based on an unknown old tradition that considered Enmerkar as a contemporary of Adapa, but went out of hand? (Ups and downs in the career of Enmerkar, Dina Katz)

This scholar is rightly confused why Enmerkar has a bad reputation; why he was never deified in Sumer even though he was the grandson of a god, especially when his successors were.

They are especially confused as to why he is connected to Babylon which – according to them – would not even be founded for hundreds of years after he died. Only if one believes the Bible can we make sense of this, for the offense of Enmerkar/Nimrod did indeed take place at Babylon and later generations remembered it!

BACK TO THE POINT

Having fleshed out the story of Enmerkar and located Aratta, we are now finally ready to bring the point home; Aratta is the civilization of the Indus Valley. It checks literally every box, and everyone would know this if their chronology was not off by upwards of a thousand years. That is literally the only obstacle – hence my focus on chronology.

And as final proof that Aratta is indeed the civilization of the Indus Valley, I call as witness not one, but two utterly unrelated sources, untouched by any sort of Babylonian or Biblical narrative; first we call their neighbors to the south of the Indus region, the Hindus.

Aratta (आरट्ट) is an ancient tribe and janapada mentioned in Mahabharata, Mahavansha, Vedas, Ashtadhyayi of Panini etc. This is a Prakrit form of the Sanskrit Arashtra (आराष्ट्र). Aratta is a land that appears in Vedas. (JatlandWiki.com, “Aratta”)

It is agreed by all, based on internal evidence in the ancient Indian books, to be in the Punjab region, which is to say, in the upper Indus Valley. Historians reject the connection with the Aratta of Sumer out of hand; with simple dismissal, not even worthy of argument:

By 1973, archaeologists were noting that there was no archaeological record of Aratta’s existence outside of myth, and in 1978 Hansman cautions against over-speculation. Writers in other fields have continued to hypothesize potential Aratta locations. A “possible reflex” has been suggested in Sanskrit Āraṭṭa or Arāṭṭa mentioned in the Mahabharata and other texts. (Wiki, Aratta)

A reflex, in this sense, means a linguistic carry-over through the ages; in other words, a name used by one civilization that was continued to be used by the one that replaced it. To historians, the simple coincidence of two places with the same name doesn’t mean much; and that’s fair, on its own.

To them, these civilizations are separated by thousands of years, and they don’t believe Aratta could be that far away in the first place. But since we’ve already proven, in half a dozen ways, that Aratta must be the Indus… it then becomes a valid confirmation that their Indian neighbors to the south likewise remembered the name.

Our second witness is the Greeks; in a document called the Periplus of the Erythraean Sea, a map-like handbook text for Roman/Greek traders in the first century plying the Arabian and Indian waters.

…As the people of Aratta fetched the lapis out of their highlands, we may further suggest that in part, Aratta was identified with areas of Afghanistan. This point, perhaps, gains further support from a passage in the Periplus of the Erythraean Sea where it is stated that the Arattii people live in regions where the Arochosii are also to be found [see picture at rightabove, just to the right of “PERSIA”]. Now the Arochosii people are known to have occupied the country around the modern town of Kandahar in eastern Afghanistan and in this context of usage we may consider that the Arattii lived near the Arochosii and that this first name given a Greek ending in a Greek text attests a people who resided in the ancient land of Aratta. If this is correct, we may then suggest that Aratta was indeed, in part, to be found in the vicinity of Shahr-i Sokhta, which lies in Iran near the western border of Afghanistan. (The Question of Aratta, Hansman)

This author comes close to guessing the right answer but, guided by scholarly consensus, places the Aratti on the wrong side of the Arachosii; they were not to the west of them in Afghanistan or Iran, but to the east of them in Pakistan, precisely where the Hindu sacred texts place them.

ARYANS

Nor is that all; although this next part is particularly contentious. The NW part of India and Pakistan is known to have a strong Indo-European connection; linguistically, culturally, and ethnically the ancient peoples of Iran and Pakistan were connected.

The Indo-Aryan migrations were the migrations into the Indian subcontinent of Indo-Aryan peoples, an ethnolinguistic group that spoke Indo-Aryan languages. These are the predominant languages of today’s Bangladesh, Maldives, Nepal, North India, Pakistan, and Sri Lanka.

Indo-Aryan migration into the region, from Central Asia, is considered to have started after 2000 BCE as a slow diffusion during the Late Harappan period and led to a language shift in the northern Indian subcontinent. Several hundred years later, the Iranian languages were brought into the Iranian plateau by the Iranians, who were closely related to the Indo-Aryans. (Wiki, Aryans)

This is very politically charged due to the impact it has on the claims of India and Pakistan to the rights of certain regions in the area; and because the Indians would prefer to believe that the Europeans came from India, while the Europeans would prefer to believe that the Indians came from Europe (or rather, a common center in Turkey).

Also, obviously, the term Aryan is tainted because the Nazis used this theory to claim that they were in fact the Aryans, born to rule the world as a master race. Both of which are immaterial to the facts here, but which make it hard to talk about – and hard to know whose opinion to trust.

These Indo-Aryan speaking people were united by shared cultural norms and language, referred to as ārya, “noble.” Diffusion of this culture and language took place by patron-client systems, which allowed for the absorption and acculturation of other groups into this culture, and explains the strong influence on other cultures with which it interacted. (Ibid)

Note that their language/culture was Arya, which meant “noble.” Now you may recall that Aratta was used as a substitute noun meaning “splendid, important,” etc. And for Aratta to be corrupted or translated into Arya is very easy to imagine.

Once again, linguistic similarities alone are not convincing; but when we already know that Arattans were there, at the right place at the right time, just before the Aryans began migrating… we have strong reason to suspect that the Aryans are the Arattans.

That in turn is also interesting because the name “Iran” literally means Aryan. It’s the same word spelled differently.

The word ērān [Iran] is first attested in the inscriptions that accompany the investiture relief of Ardashir I (r. 224–242) at Naqsh-e Rustam.[1] In this bilingual inscription, the king calls himself “Ardashir, king of kings of the Aryans” …The Middle Iranian ērān/aryān are oblique plural forms of gentilic ēr – (Middle Persian) and ary – (Parthian), which in turn both derive from Old Iranian *arya-, meaning “‘Aryan,’ i.e., ‘of the Iranians.’” This Old Iranian *arya – is attested as an ethnic designator in Achaemenid inscriptions as Old Persian ariya-, and in Zoroastrianism’s Avesta tradition as Avestan airiia-/airya, etc. It is “very likely” that Ardashir I’s use of Middle Iranian ērān/aryān still retained the same meaning as did in Old Iranian, i.e. denoting the genitive case of the ethnonym rather than a proper toponym. (Wiki Iran [Name]).

We can then begin to tell a story, a far better one than historians tell, of how the IVC Arattans, whose civilization for some reason suddenly collapsed, fled; perhaps because of war, famine, or climate change (see, I can call up the usual suspects as well).

They went elsewhere; probably under pressure from tribes to the south, the northerly tribes fled into Iran; where else were they to go? History and archaeology remembers this as the Aryan migration, although they usually have the story backwards. These people came into Iran, not out of it.

While there, they split into a multitude of tribes, probably reflecting their origin cities or family tribes, known to history as the Medes, Persians, and Parthians. But more on that in its proper place. Meaning that these peoples would claim descent from the eldest son of Shem, Arphaxad.

Meaning that if this is true, Arphaxad wound up just on the eastern border of his brother Elam; precisely as we would expect based on the sequence of Lud-Aram-Assur-Elam-Arphaxad. Shem’s territories were, therefore, contiguous from the very beginning, just as Ham’s were to the west.

Precisely as you’d expect.

THE PRIEST-KING

To put a bow on this, let’s connect the nature of Arphaxad’s known descendants, the Hebrews, to the known practices of Arattans and the IVC. In the Enmerkar story, his nemesis the Lord of Aratta doesn’t really mean “lord” in the sense we understand it, but more like priest-king. The primary scholar who translated the text says…

As for Aratta’s political organization, we note its head and ruler was the en, “lord,” or perhaps “high-priest” (the title “king” seems to be unknown in Aratta, and it is noteworthy that Enmerkar, too, was known primarily by the title en, although he is described as lugal, “king,” several times in our poem (see lines 306, 311, 316, etc.). (ELA commentary, Samuel Kramer)

How fitting for a culture with no visible rulers, no palace and no evident temple, to not have a king! This is an extremely solid connection between the IVC, Aratta, and the way we would expect the original Hebrew, Eber,to organize his government; just like the Hebrews did in Canaan.

In Canaan, for around four centuries, the Hebrews had no king, no palace; only a system of judges and elders. A king speaks for himself, and rules in his own name. A priest-king speaks for his god, and rules – theoretically at least – in the name of his god.

1 Samuel 12:12 … ye said unto me [Samuel], Nay; but a king shall reign over us: when the LORD your God was your king.

Moses was clearly a priest of sorts – he was free to enter the temple at will – but he was also the leader of the people. As were Joshua, Gideon, and so on. The last of these judges was Samuel; all of these were the undeniable leaders of Israel, but none were seen as doing this on their own authority, but as a mouthpiece for God. So if we characterize Moses and Samuel as priest-kings, we cannot be far wrong.

I say all this because when Enmerkar addresses the leader of Aratta as “the en of Aratta,” he is addressing him as a fellow priest-king. No, as an elder priest-king, the rightful priest-king seated “in the mountain of holy powers.”

But Enmerkar characterizes the lord of Aratta as a priest-king who is not beloved by his goddess, making himself the only true priest, and therefore rightful king. While I’m not convinced that the Arattans actually worshiped Inanna, it is clear that Nimrod was casting down a challenge of divine approval, just like the rebels in the wilderness did with Moses:

Numbers 16:2-3 [Korah and other Levites] … rose up before Moses, with certain of the children of Israel … and they assembled themselves together against Moses and against Aaron, and said to them, “You take too much on yourself, since all the congregation are holy, everyone of them, and Yahweh is among them: why then lift yourselves up above the assembly of Yahweh?”

Moses proceeded to ask God to choose between them, and make it clear which leader He wanted:

Numbers 16:5-7 and he spoke to Korah and to all his company, saying, “In the morning Yahweh will show who are his, and who is holy, and will cause him to come near to him: … and it shall be that the man whom Yahweh chooses, he shall be holy. You have gone too far, you sons of Levi!”

Thus even if we accept that the names of the deities may have been changed/inserted later by Sumerians (Yahweh replaced with Inanna, perhaps), it’s still clearly a younger would-be religious leader challenging the established prophet; just like Moses and Korah, Michael and the Devil, and so on. Precisely as we would expect Nimrod to do to Shem.

Which is perhaps why the Bible refers to him as “a mighty hunter before the Lord,” which most commentators read as in front of, as in eclipsing, the Lord. But I’ve never really been convinced of that, although I am guilty of repeating it from time to time.

Because it’s interesting that the Bible never calls out his idolatry, though he certainly was guilty of it; the Bible chooses instead to condemn him for being “before the Lord”; what’s odd about that is it was generally a good thing to be “before the Lord”; compare to Exodus 28:30, Genesis 19:27; but not for those who don’t belong there:

Leviticus 10:1-2 Nadab and Abihu, the sons of Aaron, each took his censer, and put fire in it, and laid incense on it, and offered strange fire before Yahweh, which he had not commanded them. And fire came forth from before Yahweh, and devoured them, and they died before Yahweh.

Thus, commentators are wrong to try to force “before the lord” to mean eclipsing; that wasn’t the problem at all. The problem was a “mighty hunter” who had no business trying to be the priest-king in the first place!

That job was reserved, until the time of Moses, for the firstborn sons (at which point the Levites became the substitute firstborn sons). And Nimrod was very clearly not a firstborn (Genesis 10:7-8); it reads like he is the youngest, actually.

As is clearly exhibited in the text, this upstart believed himself better qualified to lead the human race than the appointed Lord of Aratta. This, above all, was Nimrod’s sin. And by doing this, the Weidner Chronicle tells us, Enmerkar destroyed the people of Uruk.

ARCHAEOLOGICALLY INVISIBLE

This means that the famous “priest-king of Uruk,” whom we met a few chapters ago, did not invent the post; he was usurping the post, trying to transfer it from the Indus to Uruk. Which is why he conducted such a world-wide publicity campaign underlining his shepherd-like characteristics and the awesomeness of Uruk. Which mostly worked.

But the idea of a shepherd-ruler, a priest-king, was not invented by the Sumerians, much later to inspire captive Jews in Babylon, then to ultimately be appropriated by Jesus to become the “good shepherd,” as many scholars would have us believe.

On the contrary, the imagery of a shepherd certainly was embodied by Noah and the righteous leaders after the flood; the first king of the Sumerians explicitly was given that title by “the assembly of the gods,” for we find Etana called in the SKL “the shepherd, who ascended to heaven and consolidated all the foreign countries.”

Presumably, when Shem (or whomever) told Etana he could lead Kish, he was given a speech that went something like the speech Jesus gave the disciples; which became the pattern for the “archaeologically invisible” rulers of Aratta:

Luke 22:25-26 He said to them, “The kings of the nations lord it over them, and those who have authority over them are called ‘benefactors.’ But not so with you. But one who is the greater among you, let him become as the younger, and one who is governing, as one who serves.”

It’s worth mentioning that Etana is likewise “archaeologically invisible,” as were most of his successors in Kish down to nearly the time of Enmerkar. That might be because they are just so far back in time… or it might be that they just didn’t exploit the people in the same way as later kings who were shepherds in name only.

So when Enmerkar came along, he consciously copied the form of priest-king from the legitimate rulers of the human race, Noah, Shem and Arphaxad; they were not kings, but elders, ancestors of all mankind who led by right of primogeniture (firstborn-ness).

But Nimrod was not a firstborn, yet felt himself entitled to rule. He therefore had to conduct a campaign to delegitimize his elders by casting himself as the favorite of a lovely new goddess whose temple he built – Inanna. He was her firstborn, her chosen husband.

Once in power, Enmerkar blurred the line between the priest-king and an actual king, being called Lugal, king, several times in the saga of Aratta. And when he eventually lost her favor and died in battle, Lugalbanda replaced him as king – the first known king to have “lugal,” king, in his name.

The first of many “kings of the gentiles.”

RIGHTEOUS PRIEST-KINGS

We can see a common thread in the government of the early NT Church, the Hebrews of Canaan and the Arattans of Indus; for we see in each the identical form of rule-by-elders who are leading-as-a-shepherd, serving the people, not being served by them.

1 Peter 2:9 But you are a chosen race, a royal priesthood, a holy nation …

Revelation 5:10 and made us kings and priests to our God, and we will reign on earth.

Most people read over these and miss the obvious fact that the promise to the saints is to become priest-kings in precisely the same way as Noah was. To be shepherds over the people in precisely the way Shem appointed Etana to be. Because that is, and always has been, God’s ideal.

Which is why Samuel did not waste time and money on ego projects to have massive vases carved of precious materials with his exploits on them. Nor did David; Saul did, after conquering the Amalekites and taking the forbidden spoils, and it was that act – the creation of a monument to his victory – which immediately preceded his rejection by God as king:

1 Samuel 15:12 Samuel rose early to meet Saul in the morning; and it was told Samuel, saying, “Saul came to Carmel, and behold, he set up a monument for himself, and turned, and passed on, and went down to Gilgal.”

This monument has never been found; perhaps it was destroyed by Samuel, who knows; but it shows that righteous leaders will be difficult to find in the archaeological record; whereas we find evidence for the priest-king of Uruk from Egypt to Turkey to Iran. So Enmerkar was “visible,” and Samuel, David, and Moses… weren’t.

Just as it was in the first century church; there are no giant stone monuments to Paul, Jesus, or Peter; (not in their lifetimes, anyway). Little to prove that they even existed, except the writings that were preserved by their followers, giving room for skeptics to doubt that there were any such people as Jesus and the apostles.

When we first find archaeological proof of early Christian individuals, it is when the church has already become so unrighteous as to be unrecognizable as compared to the Bible – because those men who left us monuments were, by definition, not good shepherds.

Likewise most historians believe David did not exist, and that there certainly were not judges for 450 years after Joshua. The only clear mention of David by name that has been found in the archaeological record was a monument put up by Moabites, an enemy nation, about him.

So we would expect there to be little about the shepherd-king David, because he was expected to be, as Saul, “little in his own sight” (1 Samuel 15:17). And men who think little of themselves do not leave an archaeological footprint like the leaders of pagan cultures who believe themselves to be gods.

Which brings us full circle to the invisible leaders of the Indus, who nonetheless must have existed simply because no society could possibly be so coordinated, so well planned, without a strong and organized governmental structure at the helm.

And yet we find no ego-buildings in the Indus, only public works, public baths, public roads and other things for the betterment of society. Proving that the leaders of the Indus, almost alone in all of history, actually treated that leadership as a responsibility to serve, they didn’t just say that on their monuments and Twitter accounts.

Thus, the Indus Valley leaders were shepherds of their people, leaders who guided in what they believed was the way God wanted them to go. It is clear from the civilization that the people were put before the elders, as the head of any house places his family’s welfare before his own.

And these were literally the ancestors of all their citizens.

So the only archaeologically visible sign of Arphaxad you will probably ever find, is his family; the name “Iran” on the world map – Iran, Aryan, Arattan, Arphaxad.

One last fun fact: the Hindu word Aratta is related to Arasthra which means “without a king.”

JUST WEIGHTS AND THE NEED FOR WRITING

If the Indus people were indeed the ancestors of the Hebrews of the Bible, it stands to reason they shared many of their values, not only about leadership; so Shem, whose God was Yahweh, would have valued a standardized system of weights across his family’s inheritance:

Deuteronomy 25:13-15 You shall not have in your bag diverse weights, a great and a small. You shall not have in your house diverse measures, a great and a small. You shall have a perfect and just weight. You shall have a perfect and just measure, that your days may be long in the land which Yahweh your God gives you.

Thus, the consistency and standardization of the weights in the IVC culture makes perfect sense; as does their consternation at how long they remained the same, literally hundreds of years unchanged. Not surprising, since Shem lived 500 years after the flood to keep things standardized.

In Mesopotamia, comparable standardized systems of weights and measures, on a different standard, were in use by the twenty-third century BCE. These were the result of the standardization of a number of different preexisting systems by the newly unified Akkadian state, and further official standardization was required under the Ur III dynasty after a period of political disintegration had undermined the application of an official standardized system. In contrast, the Indus system of weights and measures was apparently standardized from the start, again suggesting the unity of the Indus state and the existence of a central authority. (Ancient Indus Valley New Perspectives, McIntosh)

Furthermore, unlike other cultures, the Harappans do not seem to have “evolved” their measuring system from more primitive forbears; because they had a preexisting system of weights and measures that they brought over with them from the flood… they measured the Ark in cubits, after all.

Which oddly enough helps to explain one of the great mysteries of the Indus civilization; the relative absence of written language. They have their own unique script, apparently unrelated to the Sumerian cuneiform; but they did not seem compelled to right down stories, histories – not even taxes and contracts.

One of the reasons their script has never been translated is precisely because there are so few inscriptions, and the ones we have are quite short – the longest is about 20 characters. So why, in comparison with the contemporary Babylonians, did they write so little?

It’s not like they didn’t have regular contact with the Sumerians, who explicitly introduced them to their cuneiform writing in ELA, as we have already seen. So they knew how to write, but they simply didn’t see the point? Why?

Well, think about it. All scholars agree that writing was developed in order to keep track of the flow of goods, taxes, and boundaries. The earliest examples we have are of bullae, lists of goods sealed inside of a clay ball, stamped outside; literally a bill of lading, to prevent any disagreements, theft, or outright fraud between shipment and delivery. And that’s all well and good… if it’s necessary.

But what if it wasn’t?

Leviticus 19:35 You shall do no unrighteousness in judgment, in measures of length, of weight, or of quantity.

What if merchants weren’t trying to cheat their customers, employees weren’t stealing out of the order, and customers weren’t trying to claim fraud to get a better deal? If a handshake was good enough, and righteous judges were on hand to resolve disputes fairly… writing would only be necessary when dealing with outsiders.

Hence… the Indus would not have needed writing hardly at all, compared to the clearly untrustworthy and fraudulent Sumerians like Ea-nasir, the sketchy copper seller with bad reviews who most people are familiar with from his going viral on Instagram a few years back.

As for the other uses of writing, for recording history and storytelling, if the Bible’s claims about the longevity of this particular lineage are true then writing would not be needed to preserve information, since the guy living for 500 years could simply tell you himself. Indeed, the Bible explicitly connects just weights and measures to long life as quoted in Deuteronomy 25:15 above.

So the very fact that writing existed, yet never developed despite contact with Sumer and exposure to its potential uses, by itself proves it was not desirable on a large scale. And the simplest explanation for that is… the sons of Arphaxad were more righteous than the sons of Cush. Which we already know to be true.

Looked at in this light, the shocking oddities of the culture of the Indus valley, with its lack of monuments, temples, palaces, writing, warfare – all are exactly what we would expect the culture of the Arphaxadites would have been. And which happens to likewise agree with what we see the Arattans doing.

And as one last proof; the lineage of Abraham was composed of the firstborn sons of the firstborn sons of the firstborn sons; with the attendant expectations of being blessed with the best of the best. And the Indus Valley is exactly that.

It is a land that the Sumerians described as having gems literally growing on trees, with leaves made of lapis lazuli. Wealthy beyond compare in the ancient world.

Nor is it only mineral wealth; the Indus Valley floods are far less dangerous than in Sumer, and far more predictable; in fact, they flood not once, but twice a year – giving two harvests compared to Sumer’s one.

The weather is milder, more kinds of crops grow, and resources of all kinds are better. On this criteria alone there cannot be any other possibilities for the inheritance of the righteous firstborn of Noah and his offspring.

Araphaxad settled in the Indus Valley because it was the only place good enough for the firstborn son of the firstborn son of Noah.

One of the many mysteries about ancient Sumer is the identity of their mortal enemy known “Aratta.” It is mentioned frequently in Sumerian texts, where it appears as a holy place, a trading partner, a military adversary, and many other things.

Knowing the real answer of who it was will flesh out the story of the Bible, and doing that will allow us to answer many great mysteries about the ancient world that historians cannot answer. Because not only can we identify them, they are one of the most important peoples in the ancient world – all the more so, since no one knows them.

We know they were not located in Sumer, or anywhere in Mesopotamia. What’s so important for our purposes is the respect with which they were held; so let’s review some mentions of Aratta in various Sumerian texts, as cited in Wikipedia “Aratta:”

Praise Poem of Shulgi (Shulgi Y): “I filled it with treasures like those of holy Aratta.”

Shulgi and Ninlil’s barge: “Aratta, full-laden with treasures”

Proverbs: “When the authorities are wise, and the poor are loyal, it is the effect of the blessing of Aratta.”

The building of Ninngirsu’s temple (Gudea cylinder): “pure like Kesh and Aratta”

Tigi to Suen (Nanna I): “the shrine of my heart which I (Nanna) have founded in joy like Aratta”

Inana and Ibeh: “the inaccessible mountain range Aratta”

Gilgamesh and Huwawa (Version B): “they know the way even to Aratta”

Temple Hymns: Aratta is “respected”

The Kesh Temple Hymn: Aratta is “important”

Lament for Ur: Aratta is “weighty (counsel)”

Taking these together, we see that Aratta is “pure,” “respected,” “important,” and “weighty”; it was held a unique place of esteem in Sumer, so that good times are deemed to be the “effect of the blessing of Aratta.” In fact, the word “Aratta” is sometimes used as an adjective, as it was in the Kish temple hymn above, to mean “important, exalted, splendid, precious,” i.e., to say something was worthy of Aratta.

Its esteem is placed on par with Kish, if not greater than it. Since Kish was associated with kingly legitimacy for over a thousand years after its founding, Aratta must be even more so. How could that be? Well, if Kish was where kingship first started in Sumer… then Aratta must be where the men lived who gave even Kish its legitimacy. In one story, Aratta responds disdainfully to Enmerkar, saying…

Tell your King that the God of all heavenly laws has sent me to Aratta, the land of heavenly laws, to reinforce the gates of the mountains. (Enmerkar and the Lord of Aratta, Majedzadeh 2019)

Combining that with our knowledge of the Bible, we can draw only one conclusion; that the rightful leaders of the human race dwelt in Aratta. Which is to say, the elders of the elders; which is to say… Noah, Shem, and Arphaxad.

BUT WHERE IS IT?

According to those citations we saw above, it was clearly far away, in a location not known to all in later times; in an “inaccessible mountain range”; but although it took on Shangri-la-like dimensions, it was beyond a doubt a real place because we have directions to find it!

The messenger [of Uruk] gave heed to the words of his king [Enmerkar]. He journeyed by the starry night, and by day he travelled with Utu of heaven. Where and to whom will he carry the important message of Inana with its stinging tone? He brought it up into the Zubi mountains, he descended with it from the Zubi mountains. Susa and the land of Anšan humbly saluted Inana like tiny mice. In the great mountain ranges, the teeming multitudes grovelled in the dust for her. He traversed five mountains, six mountains, seven mountains. He lifted his eyes as he approached Aratta. He stepped joyfully into the courtyard of Aratta, he made known the authority of his king. (Enmerkar and the Lord of Aratta, ELA henceforth)

Using these clues, finding where and who Aratta was is very easy – but only if you actually trust these clues, which unfortunately historians won’t do. Their beliefs make them blind to the obvious conclusion staring them in the face; consider this map from Wikipedia, which says “Aratta; possibly fictional; also conjectured to be anywhere in a wide area ranging from Armenia to Afghanistan.”

It’s absurd that there are so many theories, because the main place that talks about it all points to the exact same direction: due east. Not north, not northeast; because you certainly don’t need to go through Anshan (southeast) to get to Armenia (north)!

Enmerkar’s messenger shows us that to get to Aratta you must go up into the Zubi mountains (probably the Zagros), descend, go through Susa and Anshan, and then you find yourself “in the great mountain ranges,” then you must still traverse “five, six, seven” mountain ranges until finally arriving in Aratta. So when we actually follow the clues we have, we learn that the route to Aratta lies due east, across seven mountain ranges; if we put that on a map and try to follow the instructions we have, it would take us… to Pakistan.

Starting at Uruk and going to Susa and Anshan is clearly heading east; after that we find, right on schedule, a very rugged highland area – “the great mountain ranges”; followed by several more mountain ranges – “five, six, seven,” – culminating in the Sulaiman mountains, one of the chains that forms the SW part of the Himalaya system.

Note that this is not wishful thinking, this is simply following the precise directions given on the tablet. Heading east through these waypoints suggests you’re going to continue east; crossing seven mountain ranges is what would necessarily happen if you did that; as you can see from this topographical map, it’s not clear how to count them, but there are a lot of mountains to cross.

The only logical destination beyond them for a great civilization is the Indus River valley, a powerful civilization contemporary with Sumer, a civilization that in almost every way surpassed Sumer, and with whom we know for an absolute fact they traded!

For those who don’t know just how awesome the Indus Civilization was, it’s worth a quick detour before we continue.

INDUS VALLEY CIVILIZATION

Indus civilization, the earliest known urban culture of the Indian subcontinent. The nuclear dates of the civilization appear to be about 2600–1900 bce, although the southern sites may have lasted later into the 2nd millennium bce. Among the world’s three earliest civilizations – the other two are those of Mesopotamia and Egypt – the Indus civilization was the most extensive. (Brittanica.com, Indus)

A sophisticated and technologically advanced urban culture is evident in the Indus Valley Civilisation, making them the first urban centre in the region. The high degree of forward-looking urban planning demonstrates the existence of well-organised local governments capable of formulating and executing a large-scale forward-looking development program, and which placed a high value on public health and hygiene, or, alternatively, accessibility to the means of religious ritual.

As seen in Harappa, Mohenjo-daro … this urban plan included the world’s first known city sanitation systems. Within the city, individual homes or groups of homes obtained water from wells. From a room that appears to have been set aside for bathing, waste water was directed to covered drains, which lined the major streets. Houses opened only to inner courtyards and smaller lanes … The Indus Valley cities developed elaborate drainage and sewerage systems, described by archaeologists as well-planned and advanced compared with many contemporary societies. (Wiki, Indus Valley Civilization)

It’s hard to express how cool this culture was, how exceptional among ancient civilizations. They had running water, indoor plumbing, public baths; things not seen again on this level until the time of Rome, and arguably not even then. Things that can be hard to find in that region to this day. Nor was this the extent of their awesomeness:

A prominent feature of most civilizations is evidence of a ruling elite: palatial residences, rich burials, unique luxury products, and propaganda such as monumental inscriptions and portrait statuary or reliefs. Strikingly, all of these are absent from the Indus civilization. This raises the questions of how the Indus state was organized politically, whether there were rulers, and, if so, why they are archaeologically invisible.

Another striking contrast between the Indus and other ancient civilizations is the apparent absence, in the Indus civilization, of any evidence of conflict. Although the cities were surrounded by massive walls, these appear to have functioned as defenses against flooding rather than against hostile peoples, as well as barriers to control the flow of people and goods. They were probably also designed to impress.

Weapons are absent, as are signs of violent destruction during the civilization’s heyday. An entirely peaceful state seems anomalous in the history of world civilization. (Ancient Indus Valley New Perspectives, Mcintosh)

Calling this civilization “anomalous” is a massive understatement. A civilization with indoor plumbing, no apparent weapons of war, no apparent temples or palaces is not rare, it is absolutely unique in the ancient world.

The only massive structures created were public works – no massive monuments to Ramses II, no giant palaces for Nebuchadnezzar and his ruling elite. No evidence of warfare; Indus literally breaks the mold for civilizations, ancient or modern.

Had they existed at the same time, they would have been favorably compared to Rome, but without the whole world-domination thing that the Romans suffered from. In fact, I can’t think of anything larger than a tribal culture that ever existed that didn’t have some form of palace or temple to provide government.

Yet the Indus valley was well governed, and for a long period of time. We can tell this not only by the remarkable city planning, the extensive trade and manufacturing facilities, but also by the system of weights and measures…

In Mesopotamia, comparable standardized systems of weights and measures, on a different standard, were in use by the twenty-third century BCE. These were the result of the standardization of a number of different preexisting systems by the newly unified Akkadian state, and further official standardization was required under the Ur III dynasty after a period of political disintegration had undermined the application of an official standardized system. In contrast, the Indus system of weights and measures was apparently standardized from the start, again suggesting the unity of the Indus state and the existence of a central authority. (Ancient Indus Valley New Perspectives, Mcintosh)

In fact, the uniformity is itself exceptional; what other empire keeps everything the same for so long?

What amazed all these pioneers, and what remains the distinctive characteristic of the several hundred Harappan sites now known, is their apparent similarity: “Our overwhelming impression is of cultural uniformity, both throughout the several centuries during which the Harappan civilization flourished, and over the vast area it occupied.” The ubiquitous bricks, for instance, are all of standardized dimensions, just as the stone cubes used by the Harappans to measure weights are also standard and based on the modular system. Road widths conform to a similar module; thus, streets are typically twice the width of side lanes, while the main arteries are twice or one and a half times the width of streets. Most of the streets so far excavated are straight and run either north-south or east-west. City plans therefore conform to a regular grid pattern and appear to have retained this layout through several phases of building. (India: A History, Keay)

And it was big! Larger than any other city in the world at the time, or any other single civilization.

Mohenjo-daro and Harappa very likely grew to contain between 30,000 and 60,000 individuals, and the civilisation may have contained between one and five million individuals during its florescence. (Wiki, Indus Valley Civilization)

While they did have some sort of a writing system, it has unfortunately never been deciphered; in part because we have no large inscriptions from them, the largest being about 20 characters, the vast majority being seals with 3-4 characters on it, probably names of individuals, making it difficult to decipher.

Because of this, we have no idea what they called themselves; historians call them Harappans, after one of the main cities, or just the Indus Valley Civilization (IVC) for short. But I know who they were, and what they called themselves – and before this chapter is done, I think you will be convinced as well.

LAPIS LAZULI

We can provide conclusive proof that this was, indeed, the civilization known to the Mesopotamians as Aratta by reading more of the story of Enmerkar, and comparing the description in those epics to the facts of the IVC.

In the beginning of the story, the goddess Inanna – no doubt via her high priestess – is pressuring Enmerkar to make demands of Aratta. What she demands tells us what raw materials were available to Aratta:

…let Aratta fashion gold and silver skilfully on my behalf for Unug. Let them cut the flawless lapis lazuli from the blocks, let them …… the translucence of the flawless lapis lazuli ……. …… build a holy mountain in Unug. Let Aratta build a temple brought down from heaven – your place of worship, the Shrine E-ana; let Aratta skilfully fashion the interior of the holy ĝipar, your abode; may I, the radiant youth, may I be embraced there by you. Let Aratta submit beneath the yoke for Unug on my behalf. Let the people of Aratta bring down for me the mountain stones from their mountain. (ELA)

This is clearly the place where the lapis lazuli is quarried, which was highly prized in ancient times – more valuable than gold. And lapis only exists in a very few places in the world, and the only one accessible to Sumerians was in Shortugai, in the Kerano-Munjan district of Afghanistan:

Lapis lazuli was one of the commodities in greatest demand for the decoration of temples and for personal adornment. In the Old World it is found in abundance on the southern shores of Lake Baikal and in the Kerano-Munjan district of Afghanistan. The metamorphic structure of the lapis lazuli found in Sumerian sites in Mesopotamia seems to indicate that it came from Afghan­istan, over more than 1200 miles of rugged mountains and extensive desert areas.

As the Sumerians had no political control over either the production centers or the intermediate Iranian plateau, for a good half of the 3rd millennium B.C. these more or less constant supplies were guaranteed by inde­pendent centers situated on the plateau, which acted as middlemen in the trade. (Lithic Technology Behind the Ancient Lapis Lazuli Trade; Tosi, Piperno)

First, note that the lapis at Shortugai is the same lapis as the gems that were imported to Mesopotamia. So the fact that somehow, someway, Mesopotamians came this far afield is a scientific fact, not a guess. And based on that lapis mine alone, we can conclusively settle the question by asking “what civilization mined lapis there?”

Shortugai … was a trading colony of the Indus Valley Civilization (or Harappan Civilization) established around 2000 BC on the Oxus river (Amu Darya) near the lapis lazuli mines. It is considered to be the northernmost settlement of the Indus Valley Civilization. (Wiki, Shortugai)

At the top of this picture near the center, you will see that Shortugai is correctly included as part of the IVC, as was everything that could possibly have been in the direction traveled by Enmerkar’s messengers. Anything past the 6th mountain range or so would have been Indus, which is to say Arattan, territory.

Historians know that the Sumerians acquired these stones from Afghanistan, but postulate imaginary “intermediaries.” But textual evidence from Sumer directly contradicts this; remember, Inanna demanded that that Aratta should “bring down the stones from their mountains.”

They were not intermediaries; they mined the stones in their own mountains, worked them in their own factories, and sold them directly to Sumer. Because some of the richest and most diverse deposits of gems and metals in the world is in northern Pakistan. So clearly these were seen to be in the territory of Aratta.

In the same text, Enmerkar demands of the Lord of Aratta “Let him snap off a splinter from it [my scepter] and hold that in his hand; let him hold it in his hand like a string of cornelian beads, a string of lapis lazuli beads. Let the lord of Aratta bring that before me. So say to him.”

It is well agreed by everyone that cornelian stones and the beads made from them in particular were imported to Mesopotamia from the Indus Valley. Once again, we see the association between Aratta and the Indus.

So why don’t the historians already know this? Simply because they are caged by their assumptions regarding the relative ages of these cultures. They date Sumerian culture far too old, for reasons we will explain in another chapter.

They place Enmerkar, if they accept that he really existed at all, around ‑3100-3400. Obviously, therefore, the Sumerians cannot have traded with a culture that reached its peak in ‑2600, nor with a gem mine established in ‑2000. So they are thus prevented from seeing an obvious, conclusive connection which would fix their dating errors.

Because if Enmerkar actually did live around ‑2200-2100 BC, as we know he did since that’s when Nimrod lived, then the problem mostly disappears; because whether or not the Shortugai site is dated correctly, we know for a fact that Sumerians traded lapis mined at this site. And we know for a fact that Indus people were mining it in those days!

The IVC site at Shortugai was a trading post of Harappan times and it seems to be connected with lapis lazuli mines located in the surrounding area. … typical finds of the Indus Valley Civilization include one seal with a short inscription and a rhinoceros motif, clay models of cattle with carts and painted pottery. Pottery with Harappan design, jars, beakers, bronze objects, gold pieces, lapis lazuli beads, other types of beads, drill heads, shell bangles etc. are other findings. Square seals with animal motifs and script confirms this as a site belonging to Indus Valley Civilisation (not just having contact with IVC). Bricks had typical Harappan measurements. (Ibid)

Fact: Sumer traded Lapis from Aratta.

Fact: Lapis came from “their mountains.”

Fact: That lapis has been matched with the Lapis in Shortugai.

Therefore, therefore Aratta also controlled this site.

Fact: Shortugai was owned by the Indus Valley Civilization.

Therefore: Aratta is the Indus Valley Civilization.

We have much more proof incoming, this is just a start.

THE LORD OF PURIFICATION

Back in Uruk, Innana’s demands for Aratta continued…

Let Aratta pack nuggets of gold in leather sacks, placing alongside it the kugmea ore; package up precious metals, and load the packs on the donkeys of the mountains; and then may the Junior Enlil of Sumer have them build for me, the lord whom Nudimmud has chosen in his sacred heart, a mountain of a shining me; (ELA)

This reflects Enmerkar’s desire to build a “mountain,” i.e., a ziggurat, to honor Inanna, and to do so at the expense of Aratta. But remember, Aratta already is a “mountain of the shining mes,” the mountain of holy gifts; suggesting that, even as they try to topple it, the Sumerians acknowledge that Aratta is their superior!

Who could Nimrod possibly have acknowledged as superior, even as he struggled against them? It must have been those whom everyone knew were the rightful authority of the human race. And in what was certainly a patriarchal society, that could only have been Noah, Shem, and Arphaxad, or at the very least, one of their appointed heirs or rulers.

And so the Lord of Aratta, who is never named in this story, was not intimidated by Enmerkar’s threats, and replied from a position of conscious authority (this passage is worth quoting again):

“Messenger, speak to your king, the lord of Kulaba, and say to him: “It is I, the lord suited to purification, I whom the huge heavenly neck-stock, the queen of heaven and earth, the goddess of the numerous me, holy Inana, has brought to Aratta, the mountain of the shining me, I whom she has let bar the entrance of the mountains as if with a great door. How then shall Aratta submit to Unug? Aratta’s submission to Unug is out of the question!” Say this to him.”… (ELA)

Many interesting things here, but for now let’s talk about the fact that the very first thing the Lord of Aratta identifies himself as is “the lord of purification”; suggesting that to him, that was his most important title. So can it be a coincidence that the most famous feature of the Harappan civilization is called “the great bath,” a massive public bath with no apparent purpose?

The Great Bath of Mohenjo-Daro is called the “earliest public water tank of the ancient world.” 12 metres (40 ft) by 7 metres (23 ft), with a maximum depth of 2.4 metres (8 ft). Two wide staircases, one from the north and one from the south, served as the entry to the structure. (Wiki, great bath)

Most scholars agree that this tank would have been used for special religious functions where water was used to purify and renew the well being of the bathers. This indicates the importance attached to ceremonial bathing in sacred tanks, pools and rivers since time immemorial. (J. M. Kenoyer)

Clearly this is of great ritual significance, built at the same time Enmerkar would have been ruling in Uruk, so clearly “the lord of purification” meant something to people there at the time. And it was lined with bitumen (oil tar), which likely came from Mesopotamia, where it was abundant.

Archaeology has shown us that the IVC culture put baths in nearly every single house; furthermore, there were an astonishing number of private wells, as many as one for every three houses. Clearly this was a culture obsessed with purification. Just like Aratta. It’s worth pointing out the Bible’s concern with purification as well:

Exodus 30:20-21 When they go into the Tent of Meeting, they shall wash with water, that they not die; or when they come near to the altar to minister, to burn an offering made by fire to Yahweh. So they shall wash their hands and their feet, that they not die: and it shall be a statute forever to them, even to him and to his descendants throughout their generations.

MOUNTAIN PASSES

Earlier, the Lord of Aratta boasted “I whom she has let bar the entrance of the mountains as if with a great door.” Taken literally, this means that Aratta controlled the mountain passes, meaning there were narrow ways to get to Aratta from Uruk, and that Aratta controlled the access “as if with a great door.”

This immediately excludes all the scholarly proposals, most of which are somewhere in Iran; because in all of them, if an army were blocked then it could simply approach from a different angle. But the boast of Aratta requires us to look for it behind huge natural barrier.

The best possible candidate is the mountain range that runs from the Arabian Sea to the Hindu Kush, forming a nearly impenetrable barrier to the Indus Valley, known as the Sulaiman mountains. There are, to this day, only a few realistic ways to get through those mountains.

From north to south, the passes are called the Khyber, Gomal, and Bolan passes. Which one is specifically meant here is arguable; in practice, the IVC probably controlled all three. Aratta would certainly have had to control the Khyber pass in order to access the lapis lazuli.

The Khyber Pass has historically been a gateway for invasions of the Indian subcontinent from the northwest. Indeed, few passes have had such continuing strategic importance or so many historic associations. Through it have passed Persians, Greeks, Mughals, and Afghans as well as the British, for whom it was the key point for controlling the Afghan border. In the 5th century bce Darius I of Persia conquered the country around what is now Kabul and marched through the Khyber Pass to the Indus River. Two centuries later Hephaestion and Perdiccas, generals of Alexander the Great, probably used the pass. (Britannica, Khyber Pass)

This is one of the few passes through the forbidding mountains that block Pakistan off from the west, and by far the most famous. However, it is unnecessarily far north to continue the line from Susa-Anshan-east. Making the one meant more likely to be the Gomal or Bolan; and for both of these we have clear evidence of IVC fortifications. Controlling the Gomal, we have Rehman Dheri:

Since the earliest occupation, except for the extension outside the city in the south, the entire habitation area was enclosed by a massive wall, built from dressed blocks made from clay slabs. The low rectangular mound is covering about 22 hectares and standing 4.5 meters above the surrounding field.

In the middle of the third millennium BC, at the beginning of the mature Indus phase, the site was abandoned. There was limited reoccupation. … The inscribed seals and sherds of Tochi-Gomal phase may have contributed significantly to the development of the writing system of the mature Indus Civilization. The animals and the symbols depicted on the earliest seal found at Rehman Dheri remind us of the animals and symbols as were portrayed later during the Mature Indus Civilization. (Wiki, Rehman Dheri)

The fact that it was fortified at the very the beginning of the civilization is consistent with a planned defense for invasions from the west, no doubt specifically thinking of Uruk; this attack is actually described later on in the Enmerkar-Arrata stories. But it would do no good to bar one door without the other pass; and for that we have Mehrgarh.

Mehrgarh is a Neolithic archaeological site … located near the Bolan Pass… Mehrgarh is one of the earliest known sites in the Indian subcontinent showing evidence of farming and herding. It was influenced by the Neolithic culture of the Near East, with similarities between “domesticated wheat varieties, early phases of farming, pottery, other archaeological artifacts, some domesticated plants and herd animals.” According to Asko Parpola, the culture migrated into the Indus Valley and became the Indus Valley Civilisation of the Bronze Age.

Jean-Francois Jarrige argues for an independent origin of Mehrgarh. Jarrige notes “the assumption that farming economy was introduced full-fledged from Near-East to South Asia,” and the similarities between Neolithic sites from eastern Mesopotamia and the western Indus Valley, which are evidence of a “cultural continuum” between those sites. However, given the originality of Mehrgarh, Jarrige concludes that Mehrgarh has an “earlier local background,” and is not a “‘backwater’ of the Neolithic culture of the Near East.” (Wiki, Mehrgarh)

This is considered to be the oldest site in the Indus Valley, analogous to Kortik Tepe which we discussed earlier; depending on how early in the settlement of the Indus that Enmerkar attacked (and assuming archaeologists are correct that it is the oldest site), then it’s possible this was Aratta itself, although I would personally favor a more northerly site.

Regardless, what is important is that these two cities effectively bar the gates of the mountains, something that the Lord of Aratta certainly controlled; proving once more that Aratta and Indus were, in the time of Enmerkar, synonymous.

THE BARRIER OF INANNA

Back to the story, the messenger responds that Inanna has told his master that Aratta shall certainly submit, which makes the Lord of Aratta pause for a moment – apparently, they are suffering from a drought and consequent famine at the time, so maybe he has angered the gods? So he responds by saying that, first of all, conquest is impossible; Aratta cannot be beaten militarily:

“Messenger! Speak to your king, the lord of Kulaba, and say to him: “This great mountain range is a meš tree grown high to the sky; its roots form a net, and its branches are a snare. It may be a sparrow but it has the talons of an Anzud bird or of an eagle. The barrier of Inana is perfectly made and is impenetrable (?).”” (ELA)

This fits well with the Hindu Kush and the Sulaiman mountain range, but not to the mountains nearer to Sumer or in the Iranian highlands where most historians would place this. None of them constitute a “perfectly made … impenetrable” barrier. They are, in fact, quite porous, albeit rugged in spots.

But the Pakistani/Iranian border does make just such a barrier, and we can prove that Indus/Aratta controlled the passes and the lapis mines beyond. So knowing this, the Lord of Aratta is quite confident he cannot be beaten unless the gods do it, in which case he shouldn’t fight them.

So the Lord of Aratta says that if Enmerkar can prove that Inanna is with him, he will submit; so he devises a test, asking for grain to be sent to Aratta in fishing nets; obviously, this is impossible, so he thinks himself quite clever. Enmerkar then sprouts some grain first, using the grass that grows from the grain to hold in the rest of the grain in the sacks.

Despite his brilliance, Aratta still refuses to submit and makes two more challenges, each of which is handled by Enmerkar. The story is fragmented at the end; some readings seem to have Aratta submitting, some have Enmerkar admitting failure after losing the final challenge, but regardless it is clear that Aratta sent a significant amount of gems and valuables, whether as tribute or in trade.

THE LORD OF ARATTA

The “matter of Aratta” consists of a total of four separate episodes, and as we move to the second one, we find the Lord of Aratta finally has a name; hence this book is called Enmerkar and Ensuhkeshdanna (which we’ll cite as EE).

This name doesn’t match anyone in the Bible, unfortunately, but we can indirectly confirm it must be a very high ranking son of Noah, perhaps Shem, himself – because like many ancient “names,” it’s not a name as we understand the term, but a title. The name breaks down as follows

𒂗 𒋗𒆠𒊺 𒁕 𒀭𒀀𒈾

en – šuh – kiš – da – an – na

You may notice that third element is “kish,” just like the city, “pure like Kish and Aratta.” The generally agreed translation is “The lord who is purified in Kish, by (the authority of) An (u).” However, ancient languages and grammar being what it is, and given the fact that Aratta seems to be even more holy than Kish, I would suggest the following reading:

“The lord who purified Kish, by (the authority of) An (u)”

This puts an entirely new slant on the name; because the Lord of Aratta clearly considers the idea of submitting to Uruk laughable; because even Kish existed only because the Lord of Aratta blessed the kingship of Etana.

I struggle to believe that, even in the face of famines and such, Enmerkar could have intimidated Noah; however, I can more easily believe that Shem was swayed by his chest-thumping. Further, Kish was an ethnically Semite, not Sumerian, city.

… Enmerkar ruled after the long and eminent Semitic dynasty of Kiš, after Enmebaragsi and Akka. (Ups and downs in the career of Enmerkar, Dina Katz)

Shem, as the leader of the three brothers, would naturally be the one who had to sign off on the building of the first city; the appointment of the non-Semite Etana as the first king doesn’t necessarily contradict that fact since it was a city for the whole family of man.

After the division of languages, however, Sumerians (Cushites) went south, and Shemites went north; making Kish forever after a Semite city. If, as we believe, Shem went with his firstborn Arphaxad to the Indus valley, then Shem could legitimately be titled “The lord who purified Kish, by (the authority of) An (u).”

After all, Shem means “name,” in the sense of fame or authority. Who better could be said to have the “name,” than he “whom the huge heavenly neck-stock, the queen of heaven and earth, the goddess of the numerous me, holy Inana, has brought to Aratta.”

Obviously, we find his reverence of Inanna problematic, if we identify him as righteous; but there are two options; this was, after all, a Babylonian story. They may have simply placed reverence for the queen of heaven in his mouth when telling the story back home. He may have literally said “I whom the almighty God has brought to Aratta,” and Enmerkar edited it back home.

We can support this with two pieces of evidence; first, in the opening lines of ELA, Inanna complains

The lord of Aratta placed on his head the golden crown for Inana. But he did not please her like the lord of Kulaba. Aratta did not build for holy Inana – unlike the Shrine E-ana, the jipar, the holy place, unlike brick-built Kulaba. (ELA)

We know the Indus Valley lacked temples; the lack of a temple to Inanna would argue that Aratta was less idolatrous, despite the fact that Inanna is mentioned reverently many times later in these stories, that might have been the Babylonians inserting that praise into their “rebellious” rivals’ mouths.

Another ancient story about Aratta has her attacking a mountain/god called “Ebih”; most scholars place this in northern Iraq, but as far as I can tell they have no clear reason to place the mountain there… Particularly when they conveniently ignore that the target of her anger was Aratta.

When I, the goddess, was walking around in heaven, walking around on earth, when I, Inana, was walking around in heaven, walking around on earth, when I was walking around in Elam and Subir, when I was walking around in the Lulubi mountains, when I turned towards the centre of the mountains, as I, the goddess, approached the mountain it showed me no respect, as I, Inana, approached the mountain it showed me no respect, as I approached the mountain range of Ebiḫ it showed me no respect.

Since they did not act appropriately on their own initiative, since they did not put their noses to the ground for me, since they did not rub their lips in the dust for me, I shall fill my hand with the soaring mountain range and let it learn fear of me.

Against its magnificent sides I shall place magnificent battering-rams, against its small sides I shall place small battering-rams. I shall storm it and start the ‘game’ of holy Inana. In the mountain range I shall start battles and prepare conflicts.

I shall prepare arrows in the quiver. I shall …… slingstones with the rope. I shall begin the polishing of my lance. I shall prepare the throw-stick and the shield. I shall set fire to its thick forests. I shall take an axe to its evil-doing. I shall make Gibil, the purifier, do his work at its watercourses. I shall spread this terror through the inaccessible mountain range Aratta.

Inanna reaches Biblical levels of fury for their lack of idolatry to her. And whether or not her direct target is Aratta, they are clearly lumped in with these disrespectful rebels who “showed me no respect,” who “did not put their noses to the ground for me, since they did not rub their lips in the dust for me.”

This suggests that Aratta was not an Inanna worshiper, regardless of what the stories have the Lord of Aratta saying. Then again, it’s certainly possible that Shem may have been deceived, to a point; how many “righteous kings” of Israel served Yahweh, yet did not remove the high places? Jehoshaphat, for instance, of whom many good things were said; yet…

1 Kings 22:43 He walked in all the way of Asa his father; he didn’t turn aside from it, doing that which was right in the eyes of Yahweh: however the high places were not taken away; the people still sacrificed and burnt incense in the high places.

God can overlook a lot, when things are done in ignorance (Acts 17:30). Regardless, we have plausible reason to connect Shem to Aratta, precisely where we expected to find him. And if not Shem, we can easily believe this might be Arphaxad; after all…

Aratta might actually be his name.

Even today, when a name passes from one language to another, it changes. George becomes Jorge, Ekaterina becomes Catherine, etc. Generally because the target language has no sound like the origin language, so it makes the closest approximation it can; and sometimes just because the target language is lazy; which is how Moskva became Moscow and Napoli became Naples.

And the name Arpakhshad, as it’s more literally rendered from Hebrew, presents nothing but problems for Sumerian, which lacks many of the basic sounds of Hebrew; it would have been literally impossible to spell the name Arpakhshad in Sumerian and have it sound anything like the original name.

First of all, there is no “p” or “kh” sound in Sumerian; they not do have consonant clusters like khsh; and the final closed syllable (-ad) would probably have been dropped or changed, as we already saw with the name Nimrod (the hunter) which became Enmer (kar).

Thus, Sumerian scribes would have been forced to greatly simplify the name into their language, meaning it would have gone through an evolution as follows: Arpaḵšad → Arakad → Aratad → Aratta.

Which means if we assume that the enemy’s name was indeed Arphaxad, Enmerkar would have had no choice but to write it down in a greatly changed form which would very likely have been… Aratta.

Surprisingly little is said in the Bible about Noah and his three sons; after the sacrifice outside the ark, the only time we hear of any of the four men is when Noah got drunk, presumably at Gobekli Tepe, perhaps 40 years later – which proves they were still together at that time. After that, not one word from any of them.

This is surprising, considering Noah lived 350 years after the flood, and Shem lived 500 year after the flood. It’s likely that Ham and Japheth lived, if not equally long, then at least longer than what is normal today. So what were they doing? Why is their history nowhere to be found?

Perhaps it is misfiled under another name – somewhere no one would think to look.

What we do know is that God loved Noah; and we know that Shem was also favored, since he received the blessing of God, when Noah said “Blessed be Yahweh, the God of Shem” (Genesis 9:26). This argues that Shem, and not necessarily his brothers, followed Noah’s beliefs closely.

We would expect to find Shem, wherever he went, more closely aligned to the ways of Noah than his brothers; now in a patriarchal society, the oldest – or at least, the one who gets the birthright – tends to stay with his father and take over the bulk of the inheritance over those who “are scattered abroad.”

Luke 15:29-31 And he answering said to his father, Lo, these many years do I serve thee, neither transgressed I at any time thy commandment … And he said unto him, Son, thou art ever with me, and all that I have is thine.

This suggests that Shem would have stayed with Noah, and Arphaxad would have gone with him, and so on, throughout the lineage. All things being equal, of course. And while Shem would certainly teach all of his sons his ways the others who went their own separate ways probably wound up differing more than those who stayed with Noah and Shem.

So wherever the lineage of Shem and Arphaxad wound up, we would expect to find a reasonably righteous culture that in some ways resembles the ways of the Biblical Hebrews of Moses’ time. Much more on that later.

Next, two different descendants of Ham, Etana and Nimrod, were kings in Sumer. We need not elaborate how God felt about Nimrod, nor stress that He dislikes human kingship in principle (1 Samuel 12:12, Luke 22:15). This suggests that God and Ham were not close.

This much we can learn from the Bible, and not much more without some help. Fortunately, the Sumerians have a lot to contribute here. We will start with Ham, by working backwards from Nimrod/Enmerkar, a solid point of connection between the Bible and Sumer.

In the Bible, Nimrod is the son of Cush, himself son of Ham. In Sumer, the name of Nimrod is Enmerkar, who is the son of Meshkiangasher. Therefore, Meshkiangasher must be Cush. Why the difference in name? Babel.

Remember, the Bible is written in Hebrew, a Semitic language; but Sumerian was an unrelated language which wound up being quite different after Babel. So most, if not all, names are different between the two languages.

Cush/Meshkiangasher, the SKL notes, was the “son of Utu,” the Sumerian sun god. Now if we take this literally, as scientists are loath to do, it means that Cush’s father was the Sumerian god of the sun. That’s absurd, of course.

…But what if it was true?

Obviously, I don’t believe in the divinity of Nimrod’s grandfather, but I do believe the entire human race might have. Why? Because he was one of only three brothers who survived the flood! Because if Enmerkar is Nimrod, then Meshkianggasher is Cush; which in turn means Utu must be Ham!

Furthermore we have reason to believe that Utu was, at one time, a literal person; because all the Sumerian people considered themselves his descendants, not only Meshkiangasher:

“Utu, shepherd of the land, father of the black-headed, when you go to sleep, the people go to sleep with you.” (Lugalbanda in the Mountain Cave)

The “black headed” people is a reference to the Sumerian people, their name for themselves. Which is exactly what we would expect – that the father of Cush, ancestor of the undeniably black-skinned Ethiopians, would have all the genes necessary to create black-headed people.

Whether this simply means black-haired or actually black-skinned is debated, and debatable, and frankly not important. The monuments do suggest curly hair, at the very least. But the existence of such a physical descriptor to differentiate the Sumerians from the Shemites proves there was a difference. Why else name themselves black-headed unless the other people weren’t?

But our main point is… the entire Sumerian population considered him their literal ancestor, and if he was Ham, then he literally was!

SHAMASH

Obviously, once he was no longer around, the Sumerians quickly mythologized this person into abstraction, but in these early myths – dating from within a few centuries after Babel – they still remembered that they descended from a man/god named Utu, the sun-god – whom we must identify as Ham.

But this is where it gets interesting. There were two main languages in Mesopotamia, Sumerian and Akkadian; Akkadian evolved into Assyrian and is relatively close to Hebrew linguistically, since both are Semitic languages – languages of the sons of Shem.

And fascinatingly, the name for the sun-god in Akkadian, synonymous with Utu, was Shamash. We have already proven that if the genealogy is taken seriously, Shamash must correspond with the Biblical Ham, spelled Cham in Hebrew.

Thus, Shamash is literally Cham-ash!

From time to time, I may be accused of making up things and seeing connections that aren’t there. And that’s probably fair – but we must agree that I’m immensely lucky to be able to connect the Hebrew name of Enmerkar to Nimrod, and also to connect the name of his grandfather Shamash to Ham!

Why connect Ham to the sun? I’m glad you asked. In Hebrew, Ham means hot. It’s no great stretch to get from “hot” to “sun.” Another meaning, or at least a closely related word in Hebrew, is “servant.” And interestingly, the word Shamash is also derived from the word “servant.”

This etymology of Ham’s name is probably why Noah cursed Ham’s son Canaan by making him a servant to his brethren.

Genesis 9:25 And he said, Cursed be Canaan; a servant of servants shall he be unto his brethren.

This episode has always been very strange, for Canaan is cursed for something that apparently Ham did. Josephus explains this saying that Noah was reluctant to curse someone so near of kin to him as a son; I guess grandsons were fair game.

But regardless, it strongly connects Ham, and the connected ideas of hot or servant, to Shamash and its meanings of sun and servant. Again, imagine our luck to be able to do this so easily…

THE DEIFICATION OF THE SONS OF NOAH

Now if Shamash/Ham is the father of the Sumerian people, it would stand to reason that the other brothers were likewise deified. And so we are gratified to learn that Shamash was one member of a sort of Mesopotamian trinity of Shamash, Ishtar, and Sin, or the Sumerian version Utu, Inanna, and Nanna, representing the sun, Venus, and moon, respectively.

Can we connect the other brothers to these deities? Well, the moon god usually spelled Sin in English based on a late Assyrian spelling was actually originally spelled Suen in Akkadian. A name evolving to Suen from Shem is not implausible – n to m is a common change, and both s and sh are sibilants; and variations in the form of the earliest spellings in cuneiform show that there is definitely room for it to have been a name like Shem:

Various phonetic spellings are also attested, for example sú-en, sí-in, si-in and se-en. The large variety of these variants might indicate that the first sibilant was difficult to render in cuneiform. In early Akkadian, the sound /s/ was an affricate [ts], which would explain its initial representation with Z-signs and later with S-signs. (Wikipedia, Sin_(Mythology)

And as you travel across the modern Semitic cultures in the Middle East to this day, you will find, atop every mosque, a crescent moon – a symbol whose meaning, lost in the mists of time, refers to their first ancestor Shem. Hardly conclusive, but it certainly fits.

This just leaves Japheth; if this pattern is to be believed, he must picture Venus; which is odd, since Venus was the symbol of the goddess Ishtar, and consistently seen as female. Is this the death of the theory?

Well, remember a few facts; first, that these legends were invented well after the tower of Babel, thus after Japheth was no longer around to defend himself when his brothers called him a girl. Second, the deity Ishtar is unusual in that she is both a goddess of war and of love. This causes many scholars to think she may be the result of the merging of two earlier deities:

The morning star may have been conceived as a male deity who presided over the arts of war and the evening star may have been conceived as a female deity who presided over the arts of love. Among the Akkadians, Assyrians, and Babylonians, the name of the male god eventually supplanted the name of his female counterpart, but, due to extensive syncretism with Inanna, the deity remained as female, although her name was in the masculine form. (Wikipedia, Inanna)

The name Inanna is actually a masculine name. One possible explanation for this is that both the husbands and the wives of the sons of Noah were deified, and over time merged with their husbands’ identities; in this case, the wife became more dominant, but still retained some of her husband’s traits.

The connection with Japheth and Venus does make a certain amount of sense; because where does one find Venus? Near the rising (or setting) sun. Precisely where Japheth went; and anciently identified himself as in “the land of the rising sun.”

Thus, Japheth is where the sun rises, with the sun when he rises… thus, Venus. A stretch perhaps, but it fits the pattern. And interestingly, from the lands of Ham, both Shem (the sun) and Japheth (Venus) would have been east of them.

VENUS

If Shem is any indication, the sons of Noah lived for a long time, much longer than later generations. This would have made them seem immortal, and thus divine. Hence why the Sumerians said to Utu “when you go to sleep, the people go to sleep with you” – if Ham ever died, they believed, the Sumerians would die with him.

Again, the information is there in the ancient records, and it agrees perfectly with the Bible, but you have to listen to it – pagan myth as well as the Bible. You can’t learn anything if you already know everything – which unfortunately is an affliction common to historians.

As one of the few men to survive the flood, they were the only ones who know the stories about this whole other world, with firsthand knowledge of its wisdom and technology – which again, makes them special. And finally, because people always worship their ancestors sooner or later.

Alfonso Archi, who was involved in early excavations of Ebla, assumes Ishtar was originally a goddess venerated in the Euphrates valley… He considers her, a moon god (e.g., Sin) and a sun deity of varying gender (Shamash/Shapash) to be the only deities shared between various early Semitic peoples of Mesopotamia and ancient Syria, who otherwise had different not necessarily overlapping pantheons. (Wiki, Ishtar)

I would thus argue that the three best known gods of early man, Shamash the sun, Sin the moon, and Ishtar the planet Venus were seen as representatives of the three sons of Noah, whether by their encouragement or against their will (compare to Paul and Barnabas in Acts 14:12).

While there were many gods and goddesses in the Sumerian/Akkadian religion, the most significant and present deities in people’s lives were the trinity of Shamash, Ishtar/Inanna, and Sin/Nanna; these were the ones invoked to defend boundaries, witness treaties, and so on.

This common Kudurru (boundary marker) dates to the Kassite Babylonian period – around ‑1200-800; at the top, watching over the contract are Sin, Shamash, and Inanna, left to right as the crescent moon, sun, and starburst. It was stones like these that the Bible forbade anyone moving:

Deuteronomy 19:14 You shall not remove your neighbour’s landmark, which they of old time have set, in your inheritance which you shall inherit, in the land that Yahweh your God gives you to possess it.

It makes sense, then, that the eldest patriarchs of the human race were the ones who were invoked to defend the boundaries of inheritances, and as the arbiters as justice and truth; but strangely, the Sumerians did not, as a rule, consider them the oldest or most powerful of the gods – they were all second or third generation deities!

The details changed with culture, but generally the moon was considered the father of the sun and Venus. Now since Shem’s name literally means “name,” in the sense of “his name is famous,” and since Shem clearly got the birthright of Noah since the lineage of Christ passes through him, Shem was unarguably in charge.

Thus, Shem-as-the-moon would be expected to be seen as the authority figure. And if the generations are a bit inaccurate, we must remember we are looking at them through a very many different retellings.

But you see now that the sons of Noah do not disappear from the historical record; indeed, they are arguably the most written about people in that period of history, precisely as we would expect. It’s just that their exploits are hidden in the stories of Shamash, Inanna, and Nanna.

Unfortunately, due to their deification, the actual truth must be filtered from a lot of fantastic nonsense and immense amounts of embellishment as the stories took on a life of their own. And the later the myth, the more fanciful and the less useful it is to discern the real actions of these patriarchs.

THE EXODUS OF CUSH

We know that Africa is known as the land of Ham, so he likely emigrated there at some point; I have no way to guess when or precisely where. My guess is immediately after Babel, probably with his son Cush, of whom we can say much more.

The SKL says of Enmerkar that he was “the son of Mesh-ki-ang-gasher, the king of Unug, who built Unug [Uruk].” So Enmerkar/Nimrod built Uruk, not his father Meshkiangasher/Cush – both the Bible and the SKL agree on that.

But weirdly, the SKL lists Meshkiangasher as the first king of Uruk before Enmerkar; even though the same document clearly says Enmerkar was the one who built the city. This causes many people to think he’s a later addition; but these lists were not built for our modern purposes; no one really cared who literally ruled the city, they wanted to know that the current ruler was legitimate because of his ancestry.

And so here, Enmerkar, the founder, cites his (presumably famous) father as his predecessor, who in turn was sired by the (obviously famous) sun-god. Yet Meshkiangasher never ruled Uruk; in fact, he left Sumer altogether.

The SKL tells us that “Mesh-ki-ang-gasher entered the sea and disappeared,” or another translation has it “went into the sea and came out (from it) to the mountains.” Historians express skepticism as follows:

The rendering “came out” is also supported by the fact that the journey of Mes-kiag-gasher, the “son of the sun-god,” obviously reflects the daily journey of the sun. In the evening the sun goes down into the sea in the west. During the night it travels underground, and in the morning it comes out to the mountains in the east. Crossing over them, it then appears again to the world. (Thorkild Jacobson, Sumerian King List)

This seems very plausible, and makes excellent sense, until you realize… the sun does not set in the sea in Sumer!! Nor does it set in the sea at any inhabited place for hundreds of miles in any direction! How, then, are these people expected to have developed a legend that would only make sense if you lived on the west coast of a continent??

Therefore, this was not a fictional reference to the sun’s journey into the sea at all; there is no way that the mostly landlocked Sumerians could have conceived of the sun being born in the ocean and going into it at night.

Historians refuse to take this history seriously, but we will – because we know Shamash is Ham. So imagine for a moment if I, writing from Uruk, on the banks of the Euphrates, with desert on every side, were to tell you “my dad went into the sea and disappeared,” what would you think?

You would, correctly, understand that he had gotten into a boat, floated down the river into the Persian Gulf, and never returned. And that when he did come out of the sea, he did so in a land full of mountains.

But where, exactly, did he go? This is where we have a huge advantage over the worldly scholars, for we know what happened with Nimrod’s father Cush; he settled in eastern Africa, a place known as Kush since the earliest history, mentioned repeatedly in the Bible and applied to the areas that are now Ethiopian and Sudan – and Ethiopia is by far the most mountainous country in that part of the world!

So yes, the first settler of this country would indeed have had to “disappear into the sea,” and he never returned because he “came out of the sea” and lived in the mountainous region that bears his name to this day!” Makes perfect sense, doesn’t it? But only if you use BOTH the Bible and history!

ARPHAXAD

So Japheth went out to sea with all his family, and was probably never seen again; judging by ethnicity and culture, and simply knowing what the route of least resistance would have been, some of his family got off in Malaysia, Indochina, China, and so on. These voyages may, of course, have taken several generations, but in any case they sailed off the map and disappear from our history.

Meanwhile, much closer to home, Cush went to Ethiopia, and Ham probably went with him, to better manage his children from his own continent. Early Egyptian civilization seems to have spread downriver from the direction of Ethiopia, so that fits well with archaeology – Mizraim must have gone with them as well, and just kept on going a bit farther as did Phut. Canaan on the other hand probably went upriver and west.

Simultaneously Elam was moving east, Asshur went northeast, and Aram and Lud went upriver to their old land – by now recovered from the earlier overuse. Lud kept going, possibly even ending up in Europe. But where did Arphaxad go?

This is the oddest gap in the list, since Arphaxad was the ancestor of the Hebrews. So it’s strange that the family tree with which the Bible was most concerned has the least known about it from the time of the flood until Abraham, almost four centuries later.

Jewish historian Flavius Josephus (37–c. 100) links Arpachshad and Chaldaea in his Antiquities of the Jews: “Arphaxad named the Arphaxadites, who are now called Chaldeans.” Umberto Cassuto suggests that the name “Arpachshad” (ארפכשד) may be compounded from Arapcha-Kesed [meaning the land/people of Kesed]. (Wiki, Arphaxad)

This connection is weak; why would the first child after the flood be named after the people of a given land, which was all, at that time, empty? The connection with the Chaldeans is by no means certain, although I give it some weight given the antiquity of the belief.

Regardless, the Chaldeans, as a named people, did not exist until the 10th century; they cannot, therefore, be literally the oldest tribe of man – at least, not unless they came from somewhere off the map of the known world:

In the early period, between the early 9th century and late 7th century BC, mat Kaldi [Chaldean] was the name of a small sporadically independent migrant-founded territory under the domination of the Neo-Assyrian Empire (911–605 BC) in southeastern Babylonia, extending to the western shores of the Persian Gulf.

The expression mat Bit Yâkin is also used, apparently synonymously. Bit Yâkin was the name of the largest and most powerful of the five tribes of the Chaldeans, or equivalently, their territory. The original extension of Bit Yâkin is not known precisely, but it extended from the lower Tigris into the Arabian Peninsula. Sargon II mentions it as extending as far as Dilmun or “sea-land” (littoral Eastern Arabia). “Chaldea” or mat Kaldi generally referred to the low, marshy, alluvial land around the estuaries of the Tigris and Euphrates, which at the time discharged their waters through separate mouths into the sea. (Wiki, Chaldea)

Most historians believe that the Chaldeans were originally from the land of Aram, who migrated down to southern Mesopotamia in the 10th-8th centuries. But I have not been able to find any hard evidence for that theory except their language, which is a west Semitic language – i.e., from the region of Canaan or the upper Euphrates.

It’s a reasonable assumption that they must have come from where that language was spoken; we, however, take issue with the assumption that “west Semitic” was only spoken in that region, for reasons which will become apparent over the next few chapters.

ABRAHAM’S HOMETOWN

If Arphaxad was indeed the Chaldeans, then their southern Sumerian territory is consistent with the fact that “Ur, of the Chaldees” is identified as Abraham’s hometown. But what isn’t consistent is the fact that it would not become known as Chaldean territory for a thousand years after Abraham left it.

Josephus unambiguously places Ur of the Chaldees in Mesopotamia, not in Syria as some scholars think. But scholars know that in that day and age, it was still a Sumerian city – a flourishing one at that. Why, then, were the only known Arphaxadites of that time dwelling there?

Genesis 11:27-31 …Terah became the father of Abram, Nahor, and Haran. Haran became the father of Lot. Haran died before his father Terah in the land of his birth, in Ur of the Chaldees… Terah took Abram his son, Lot the son of Haran, his son’s son, and Sarai his daughter-in-law, his son Abram’s wife. They went from Ur of the Chaldees, to go into the land of Canaan. They came to Haran and lived there.

What was Terah doing there? This was certainly not the inheritance of the Arphaxadites. So why is the most important branch of their family living there?

There’s a great story here.

To solve this particular mystery – and we will – we have to go on a very long and roundabout trip. But it’s worth it, I promise. There was, in fact, a powerful civilization who existed all of this time – known to historians, but unknown by name – who were, in fact, ancestors of the Chaldeans among many others.

But that’s another chapter.

Genesis 10:22-25 The children of Shem… Arphaxad… And Arphaxad begat Salah; and Salah begat Eber. And unto Eber were born two sons: the name of one was Peleg; for in his days was the earth divided; and his brother’s name was Joktan.

In the days of Peleg, the Earth was divided; which is why he was called Peleg, Hebrew for division. Peleg was the 4th generation after the flood, and the Bible tells us the age his father was when he was born; as it does for his father, and his, allowing us to add up 110 years from the flood to the birth of Peleg in ‑2204 (Genesis 11:10-16).

The division being spoken of can only refer to the division of languages and the resultant spread of humanity to their appointed lands, dividing the Earth as if it was an inheritance divided among heirs – as, in God’s eyes, it was.

Deuteronomy 32:8 When the Most High gave to the nations their inheritance, when he separated the children of men, he set the bounds of the peoples according to the number of the children of Israel.

That last part seems odd until you realize that there were 70 descendants of Jacob in Egypt when they moved there during the famine (Exodus 1:5). So Moses is pointing out that the number of nations divided from Noah’s sons corresponded to this number, 70 nations mentioned in Genesis 10. Paul refers to this in…

Acts 17:26 And He has made from one blood every nation of men to dwell on all the face of the earth, and has determined their preappointed times and the boundaries of their dwellings,

This “setting the bounds of the peoples” can only refer to the destinations they were guided to after Babel; hence, the naming of Peleg gives us a firm window for the aftermath of Babel. However, it doesn’t say he was born in the year of the division of language, only that it happened “in his days.”

It doesn’t say at what point during his days the division happened. Thus, the date ‑2204 sets an upper window making Babel necessarily after that. Presumably, since he was the last generation mentioned among the 70 nations in Genesis 10, he wasn’t that old, but presumably not yet old enough to name.

In many cultures, naming was an event that didn’t happen until a child was a man – something which might happen at 13, 20, your first kill, a vision quest – it varied depending on the culture. Then again, the Bible has a tendency to rename people even when they are already old – Abraham got his name at 99, Israel got his probably when he was 91. So Peleg might have been named “Ralph” until Babel happened.

So while our upper window is firm, our lower window is softer. Regardless, Babel probably happened relatively early in his life. Thus, let’s say the window is ‑2204-2174, probably towards the end of that window. That’s about 140 years after the flood – sufficient time for the population to multiply for 75 years, migrate to Mesopotamia, live in relative harmony in Kish for 60 years, and then begin to build Babel. The SKL will support this, and modify it slightly, when we get to that part of the story.

WHO WAS AT BABEL

It’s important to note that all of humanity was in Mesopotamia, probably excepting Noah and possibly a few people who stayed with him. Because humanity is very specifically said to have spread from Babel: “Yahweh scattered them abroad FROM THERE on the surface of all the earth…” (Genesis 11:6-8).

The Canaanites, for instance, are agreed by everyone to have settled in the east coast of the Mediterranean in the famous “land of Canaan.” And since that’s a lot closer to the starting point, Gobekli Tepe, than it is to Babel, it’s tempting to assume they might have already broken off and settled before arriving in Sumer; but the Bible specifically says the Canaanites were “spread abroad” afterward.

Genesis 10:18 …Afterward the families of the Canaanites were spread abroad.

Now it doesn’t say after what; but in context, it can only be after the events of Babel referenced in verse 10, which tells us that the Canaanites were at Babel. Furthermore, remember the evidence suggests that Gobekli Tepe was abandoned for some time and then resettled? This would be why it was resettled.

To be fair, it is possible the Bible is using hyperbole (it has been known to use “everyone” when it could not have literally meant that; Matthew 3:9 for instance). Still, there is no reason to believe that everyone else mentioned in Genesis 10-11 wasn’t there as well. Because remember the whole reason of going to Sumer:

Genesis 11:4 They said, “Come, let’s build ourselves a city, and a tower whose top reaches to the sky, and let’s make ourselves a name, lest we be scattered abroad on the surface of the whole earth.”

If some of them had already scattered, it would be too late for that. Plus, remember that at the time of Babel, everyone in the whole Earth spoke one language (Genesis 11:1). It was because of the events of Babel that everyone was cursed with different languages, right?

So wouldn’t it be odd if, say, Canaan or Japheth was cursed with a different language when he wasn’t even here, or involved in the building of Babel? Also, how can the Bible claim that “the whole Earth” was traveling east together to Shinar, if Canaan wasn’t there?

Ergo… humanity, including all the seventy mentioned in Genesis 10 and their descendants, were in Mesopotamia at the time of Babel, and involved in the events there to some degree, and scattered to the four winds from there.

The only exceptions are Mr. and Mrs. Noah, and possibly the lineage of Abraham; Shem, Arphaxad, Eber, etc., who may have been spared the effects of the language change and might have preserved the original language of Eden. Maybe.

THREE GROUPS OF MANKIND

The first test of the Bible’s veracity is simply common sense; looking at AfroEurAsia, it is obviously broken up into three broad categories; by land mass, by language, skin color, facial features, culture and religion, we can easily divide the world into the peoples of Europe, the peoples of Asia, and the peoples of Africa.

Genesis 9:18 The sons of Noah who went out from the ship were Shem, Ham, and Japheth. Ham is the father of Canaan. These three were the sons of Noah, and from these, the whole earth was populated.

You cannot get more different, ethnically, than a Kenyan, a Japanese, and an Englishman. This suggests, on the basis of mere common sense, that the stories of Shem, Ham, and Japheth can be used to explain the diversity of humanity that we see – the division of humanity into three broad categories.

Nor is this something that the authors of the Bible might have invented as an attempt to explain their world; as in the traditional history it is certain that their world did not include contact with the Far East. So how did they just guess that there are three broad genetic types and three major language groups?

The Bible repeatedly calls Egypt “the Land of Ham,” and we can trace the sons of Ham to regional groups who inhabited Africa since the most ancient of times. Ham is recorded having four sons; Cush, Misraim, Phut, and Canaan.

These are the easiest ethnic groups to track, because to this day, the Egyptians call their country Misr, as the Bible consistently calls Egypt. Cush has been known throughout the ages to be the lands south of Egypt.

Farther north, the Canaanites are easily located since Moses invaded Canaan; but Canaan had many tribes mentioned in the Bible, and they occupied a territory across southern Turkey, to Syria, almost to Egypt.

Several sons of Canaan are quite recognizable, such as Sidon – the ancestor of the Phoenicians, and much later, of the Carthaginians. Another son, Heth was ancestor of the Hittites who historians believed didn’t exist at all… until they discovered about 100 years ago that the Bible was right, they had once been a massive empire.

Still another son was the father of the Amorites and is well known in ancient Egyptian texts under the name Amurru and – spoiler alert – about 800 years after the flood these people would conquer Babylon and found the first Babylonian dynasty, best known for producing Hammurabi and his famous code of laws.

The last son of Ham, Phut, is generally considered to be the father of the Libyans, known to ancient authors as “Phute.”

Phut also was the founder of Libya, and called the inhabitants Phutites (Phoutes), from himself: there is also a river in the country of Moors which bears that name; whence it is that we may see the greatest part of the Grecian historiographers mention that river and the adjoining country by the appellation of Phut (Phoute): but the name it has now has been by change given it from one of the sons of Mezraim, who was called Lybyos.” Pliny the Elder and Ptolemy both place the river Phuth on the west side of Mauretania. Ptolemy also mentions a city Putea in Libya. (Josephus)

The Libyan tribe of pỉdw shows up in Egyptian records by the 22nd dynasty, while a Ptolemaic text from Edfu refers to… “the land of the Pitu.” The word was later written in Demotic as Pỉt, and as Phaiat in Coptic, a name for Libya Aegypti, northwestern Egypt. Ancient Egyptian sources also refer to an ethnic group to their west, associated with the Libyans, called Put; (Wiki, Phut)

And so you see, with no effort at all – and honestly very little room for argument, we have completely identified the first homelands of all the sons of Ham!

THE SONS OF SHEM

Shem is almost as easy; for his sons were Arphaxad, Elam, Lud, Aram, and Asshur. And one of the great things about taking the Bible as your primary source is that if you just look for these names on an ancient map, you’ll know exactly where these tribes first settled;

Looking at this map, you immediately recognize a son of Shem east of Sumer, in Elam, which dates back to the earliest part of the Sumerian history. Northwest of Elam, you find the city of Asshur, the son of Shem who built Nineveh.

Genesis 10:11 (KJV) Out of that land went forth Asshur, and builded Nineveh, and the city Rehoboth, and Calah,

In should be noted that some versions translate this passage differently, suggesting these cities were built by Nimrod; this derives from the confusion of “Asshur,” unarguably a name of an ancient city, and the son of Shem by that name.

However, I’m confident this is the correct reading, that Asshur the person built Asshur the city. Besides the obvious logic (why would Nimrod name a city after his cousin?), we can establish it using the archeological knowledge of the Uruk expansion.

We know that the kingdom of Uruk was culturally dominant across the whole Mesopotamian basin, but Nineveh was far beyond the field of direct control. So it’s far more likely that Asshur, son of Shem, went north to get away from Nimrod and start his own kingdom to the north; building Nineveh as well as a city named after his no-doubt humble self.

For our concern, all that really matters is that the Bible correctly identifies another ancient culture in the correct location, once again showing intimate knowledge of the earliest days in Mesopotamia. And of course, identifies the ancestor of this tribal group later known as Akkadians or Assyrians as descended from Asshur, grandson of Noah.

Still further to the NW, we find the civilization of Aram; this is mentioned in the Bible in the time of Abraham, approximately ‑1950, as having been located between the two rivers in the upper reaches of Mesopotamia, in what is now Syria – or between Ebla, Mari, and Nagar on the map.

Now what’s interesting is that Genesis 24:10 records Abraham’s servant returning to Haran, saying “he made his way to Aram-Naharaim, to the city of Nahor.” This literally means “Aram between-the-rivers.”

Now if you zoom in on that map above, you’ll find a suspiciously large number of commonalities between archeology and the Bible. First, in precisely the place the Bible says it should be, there is a city named “armi” – Aram. And the city and culture known as “Nagar” is very plausibly connected to “Nahor,” Abraham’s ancestor.

Despite this, historians will tell you confidently that there was no civilization known as Arameans at this point in history;

The Arameans, or Aramaeans… were a tribal Semitic people in the ancient Near East, first documented in historical sources from the late 12th century BC. Their homeland, often referred to as the land of Aram, originally covered central regions of what is now Syria. (Wiki, Arameans)

Yet that very same article contradicts this conclusion:

The toponym A-ra-mu appears in an inscription at the East Semitic-speaking kingdom of Ebla listing geographical names, and the term Armi, the Eblaite term for nearby Idlib, occurs frequently in the Ebla tablets (c. 2300 BC). One of the annals of Naram-Sin of Akkad (c. 2250 BC) mentions that he captured “Dubul, the ensí of A-ra-me” (Arame is seemingly a genitive form), in the course of a campaign against Simurrum in the northern mountains. Other early references to a place or people of “Aram” have appeared at the archives of Mari (c. 1900 BC) and at Ugarit (c. 1300 BC)… The earliest undisputed historical attestation of Arameans as a people appears much later, in the inscriptions of Tiglath Pileser I (c. 1100 BC). (Ibid)

So the name, as a place name, is found frequently in precisely the place and time we would expect it to be based on the Bible. It is not difficult to believe that the king of “A-ra-me” would call his subjects “A-ra-me-ans.” And the Bible tells us those people were descended from Aram, son of Shem.

That being said, the people later known as Arameans in the time of Tiglath-Pilesar I may have been an entirely different ethnic group; indeed, Abraham’s own brothers and father seemed to have made a huge mark on the place with names based on Nahor, Haran, and Terah all found in the region, and they were Hebrews descended from Arphaxad, not Aram.

But the regions’ earliest inhabitants, from whom it took its name, was certainly Aram, which is what the Bible continued to call it.

The next son of Shem is Lud, whom classical writers believed was connected to Lydians, in the far western part of Turkey. This is not impossible, however the Lydians don’t appear on the written historical record by that name until quite late in history – around the 7th century BC. That’s why I favor an earlier Anatolian ethnic group, the Luwians. Either way, they most likely landed in Anatolia, only to be later displaced into Europe or absorbed by the Hittites, sons of Canaan.

The final son of Shem, Arphaxad, is nowhere to be found in history; most theories link him to Syrians migrating into southern Sumer and becoming the Chaldeans of Nebuchadnezzar’s time, but these theories are believed in only because there is nothing better.

We will provide a much better alternative in a chapter soon, but for now we leave him unidentified. It’s worth the wait.

A WORD TO THE CRITIC

Before we address the final son of Noah, Japheth, let’s pause to note how easily we identified the first nine grandsons of Noah; all but a few snapped in place so easily, the Bible must have had inside knowledge of the workings of these ancient ethnic groups.

A critic would say “sure, the Jews wrote fictional origin stories and folk etymologies, a thousand years after the fact to explain the origins of these nations.” Let’s take a moment to consider how that might have gone; let’s try to imagine how these supposed Hebrew or Jewish authors would have fabricated origin stories for the world’s civilizations, which stretched from Morocco to Iran, Ethiopia to Armenia.

And then I ask the critics… how did they do such a good job?

Remember, to the critic these stories were written by some Yahweh-obsessed priests in a petty bronze age city state – to more critical critics, even later during the Babylonian captivity in the 6th century BC. And the goal of these stories, the critic believes, was to try to make their sad lot in life better by preaching the preeminence of their own cult of Yahweh.

And if that were true… how did these men do such a great job of proving it? The typical cultural horizon in the bronze age was a few hundred miles; beyond that dwelt dragons and myth. Only the most powerful civilizations – Egypt, Babylon, etc. – bothered to communicate across such immense distances – and even then only for a few centuries at a time before the next social upheaval.

To the critic, the Israelites were never a kingdom, never a powerful civilization, just a minor tribal group with delusions of grandeur. How did they even knowthere were such a people as the Libyans or Elamites?

And why did they spend so much time describing civilizations which had not been significant for centuries, even millennia – Elam and the Hittites, Akkad and Uruk? And other cities and civilizations that, to this day, no one knows if they even existed – like Calneh?

Try to put yourself in the scenarios historians believe to have been true; you’re a Jewish priest in 6th century BC Babylon or 12th century BC Palestine, either trying to explain your captivity to the Babylonians or trying to justify your colonization and genocide of the Canaanites.

If that were your purpose, you would look at a map of the known world, and identify every single political entity on that, and make origin stories for all of them, with yours, obviously, the oldest and most noble.

Yet the Genesis 10-11 list doesn’t match the world in the ‑6th century; it ignores the Urartians, for example, and the Persians, Chaldeans, Greeks, Cretans, and so on. The Egyptians had long since stopped calling themselves Mizraim, preferring instead “the people of Kemet,” the black land; so why identify them with the wrong name for that time? If we’re really inventing stuff, invent a son of Noah named Kemet!

Nor does it match the world of the ‑12th century (nor the ‑15th, for that matter); it ignores the Mitanni, the Kassites, the Myceneans and Minoans. And the Arameans aren’t where they should be. If your goal was to explain your current neighbors… why do such a bad job?

Because the fact is, no average person reading Genesis 10 in the ‑6th century would have recognized more than one or two nations by name. So it was a colossal failure as a backstory for their nations.

Nor is it just the omissions that are a problem; if you were creating a fictional origin story for nations, why mention so many people who do not correspond with any known nation? To our knowledge, there has never been a nation named Arphaxad, or Togarmah, or Joktan, for example. So why include nations which did not exist?

In fact, the vast majority of the names on the list cannot be convincingly tied to any nation, then or ever. What good was it, then, as propaganda? It is difficult to believe that a people setting out to describe the origins of their neighbors in a given bronze age/iron age context ignored so many important neighbors and invented so many others!

Thus the critics should criticize themselves; the inaccuracies mean it cannot have been meant as a contemporary commentary on any group of civilizations at any point in history. It can only be what it pretends to be: actual history.

WHAT ARE THE ODDS?

Simultaneously, it is difficult to believe anyone in a bronze age context could have been so accurate about the details of the earliest civilizations like Uruk, the Hittites, the Amurru, Akkad, and so on.

Together, these prove convincingly that the information in the Bible is rooted in an accurate record dating to the times they purport to describe. In other words – eyewitnesses to Babel and the resulting dispersal passed down records to their children, culminating in the works of Moses.

Because otherwise, how do we explain how the Hebrews provided such concrete origins for the exact names of the earliest civilizations of mankind? Not of their own contemporary civilizations – but of the oldest ones.

How could they possibly have known some of the things they clearly knew; for example, that Nimrod/Enmerkar the hunter built Uruk, millennia before? How could their records be a late forgery, and still be in such close agreement with the SKL, which they surely could neither read in the original cuneiform nor likely even acces.

How could any Hebrew writer, however late, have known that Kish was built before Babel, or that Babel had been built before Uruk? Or how could he have known that ethnically, the Elamites, Arameans, and Assyrians are so closely related when most likely, any possible author of Genesis had never even seen these people?

How could such a people have provided accurate origin stories of the earliest and most ancient Sumerian kingdoms placing them in precisely the location, priority, and ethnic arrangement we know them to have been?

And what possible reason would they have had to try to provide an origin story for an obscure country like Ethiopia or Elam or Libya with no diplomatic ties to Israel… ever?

In a world with no accurate maps – indeed, with few maps at all – in a world where people often lived and died in a 10 mile radius, how could anyone at that time possibly have possessed such a vast knowledge of geography, ethnology, and linguistics as to chart a plausible origin story for every civilization on Earth at that time?

This inclines one to believe the Bible was written by people who knew what they were talking about – people who had been there, or at least knew people who had. People who had accurately preserved written or oral histories from the very earliest times of man.

JAPHETH

As I said, the ease with which we locate Ham and Shem argue strongly for the accuracy of the Bible on this subject. Which makes us all the more confused when we find an almost total absence of Japhethite names in our map!

We have a map which has populated all of northern and eastern Africa (Ham), and all of the eastern coast of the Mediterranean and much of Turkey (also Ham). Sumer, since it was ruled over by Etana from Kish/Cush, and then by Nimrod, son of Cush, was almost certainly also a Hamitic group. Which means we can draw a rough line across the world, more or less parallel to the Euphrates and say “southwest of this line is Ham.”

Northeast of that line – generally speaking, of course – everyone was a son of Shem. God divided the people at Canaan into broad family groups, saying for instance “These are the sons of Shem, after their families, after their languages, in their lands, after their nations” (Genesis 10:31). Paul referenced this much later, saying…

Acts 17:26 (Rotherham) From one man he has made every nation of humanity to live all over the earth. He has given them the seasons of the year and the boundaries within which to live.

So we can infer from this that after Babel, for whatever practical or divine reasons, Shem went north and east and Ham went south and west. But if we have populated all of eastern/northern Africa, the eastern Mediterranean, and Anatolia with Ham, and the rest of the Middle East with Shem, we are left wondering, what happened to Japheth?

In this story there is no room for Japheth; which is odd, because his very name means “expansion” (Genesis 9:27). He must be someplace with plenty of room for him to expand; his descendants, today, must number in the billions – more than his Shemite or Hamite cousins – and yet everything within a thousand miles in any direction was owned by his brothers.

Most historians and Bible students would say that Japheth went to Europe, and settled in the Greek islands and spread to the western Mediterranean, and became the ancestor of the ancestor of the Europeans. This is based largely on the works of Josephus, Jewish historian from the 1st century.

But this fails the test of “expansion”; there are fewer Europeans than Hamites. And there’s another problem with this theory, and a much more existential one. If Ham is the African peoples, and Shem is the Middle-Eastern peoples from Iran to Turkey, both things everyone agrees upon… and if Japheth is the Europeans…

Then who is the ancestor of all the Asians?? A few straggling Shemite tribes? Why, then, do Asians appear so different in every way, genetically, linguistically, culturally, and religiously, from the Middle Eastern peoples?

We can forgive Josephus for not worrying about this question since he didn’t know of their existence! But we should be less charitable with modern Christians who could do with mixing their beliefs with a dash of reality now and then.

Josephus was simply using common sense; he looked at the world, his known world and he knew where the Shemites had been; knew where the Hamites had been. He had no idea where the Japhethites had been so he looked at the biggest dark spot on HIS ethnic map, which was Europe, and decided they must be… there.

He did his best to match cities and rivers and so on to names; but far less convincingly than he did with Ham and Shem. He introduces very little fact to back up these assertions, compared to the obvious connection between, say, Aram=Arameans, Elam=Elamites. A typical example:

For Gomer founded those whom the Greeks now call Galatians, [Galls,] but were then called Gomerites. Magog founded those that from him were named Magogites, but who are by the Greeks called Scythians… Thobel founded the Thobelites, who are now called Iberes; and the Mosocheni were founded by Mosoch; now they are Cappadocians. There is also a mark of their ancient denomination still to be shown; for there is even now among them a city called Mazaca, which may inform those that are able to understand, that so was the entire nation once called. (Josephus)

This is what we in the business call “reaching.” But we have a much better grasp of the world than he did; so our common sense should yield better results than his did. And using the same process, we would see that the ethnic blank spot on our map that needs filling is Asia.

JAPHETH AFAR OFF

(Tracking the stranded area of marine debris in Indonesian coasts…; Rizal and Gautama, et al)No matter where Japheth went from Sumer, he would have had to leapfrog his brothers; Elam, Assur, Aram, and Lud formed a solid ring north and east; and Canaan, Mizraim, and Cush formed a solid ring south and west. Where else was he to go? Where would YOU have gone? Where people almost always go – the path of least resistance.

Imagine yourself caught between your two brothers and their endless squabbles, every bit of land for a thousand miles in any direction claimed by your brothers. You find yourself on the shores of a mighty river that flows into the sea… Where would you go?

You’d build boats – it is, after all, your family’s business, with 120 years of boat building experience before the flood – and load up all your family and belongings, and float out to see and see where the current takes you. And where, exactly, would that be? It depends on the time of year!

If you leave in March/April – the time of the Biblical feast of Passover and Unleavened Bread, it should be noted – you would, by these currents, find yourself promptly carried to Africa and down the coast. Stop in some nice place – as Ham’s descendants must have done – and you need never return.

On the other hand, if you wait six months and leave in September/October – the time of the Biblical Feast of Tabernacles, it should be noted – you will float right around the coast of India, and find yourself in the vast complex of islands and isthmuses and peninsulas of southeast Asia.

Isaiah 66:19 And I will set a sign among them, and I will send those that escape of them unto the nations, to Tarshish, Pul, and Lud, that draw the bow, to Tubal, and Javan, to the isles afar off, that have not heard my fame, neither have seen my glory; and they shall declare my glory among the Gentiles.

This passage, listing some of Japheth’s descendants 1,500 years after the flood, says they are in “the isles afar off, that have not heard my fame.” Now this could, possibly, describe the Greek islands – that’s what Josephus and most people believe; but those islands are not really that far off.

The Mediterranean was a pretty small place by Isaiah’s time, and you could catch a commercial boat to Greece and be there in a matter of weeks. I mean, Jonah was more or less contemporary with Isaiah, and he caught a boat to Tarshish, probably in Spain. So it’s highly unlikely that the Greeks had never heard of the fame of Yahweh.

But if you go in the exact opposite direction, out the mouth of the Euphrates and into the vast archipelago, you will find an island that had been called Java as far back as anyone can remember. Islands truly “afar off,” so far away that they certainly never heard of the fame of the Hebrew God… and where the son of Japeth named “Javan” may have settled.

Islands where there has never been competition with Shemite or Hamite peoples which was, after all, precisely why Japheth left in the first place! There was no room for the son of Noah blessed with “expansion” to expand!

But the Far East is indeed a vast, rich land suitable for the expansion of the most populous peoples on Earth, where over half of Earth’s population dwells! And to this day, Christianity is poorly known in those countries – and remember, Isaiah was an end-time prophecy!

A COMMON LANGUAGE

One of the primary effects of Babel was the diffusion of languages among the various peoples of the world, based largely on tribal lines; this is why Japanese has almost nothing in common with Italian or Zulu, while Hebrew and Assyrian have quite a bit in common.

And science confirms that something like this must have happened; for it is well known that languages most likely evolved from a common origin; European languages have been traced back to a common hypothetical ancestor called the Proto-Indo-European group, which contains languages as different as Sanskrit, Persian, English, Greek, Russian, and so on.

All of these languages, to some extent, share common words or expressions, and are theorized to have evolved from a common origin. We don’t disagree with that at all – it’s just that instead of evolving over say 20,000 years, they did so in a much shorter time, fast enough to make the finishing of Babel impossible.

But that, in and of itself, is strange. Why would they stop building the city due to inability to communicate… only to go out and build another city, Uruk, under the same leader? One obvious answer suggests itself; that the Urukians were all related!

The languages were not broken up randomly, nor were all languages equally different from one another. After listing 70 nations, broken up broadly into the families of Shem, Ham, and Japheth, God says…

Genesis 10:31-32 …These are the sons of Shem, after their families, after their languages, in their lands, after their nations. These are the families of the sons of Noah, after their generations, in their nations. Of these were the nations divided in the earth after the flood.

Note that families and lands were a criterion for the division of language; thus, people who were more closely related and/or who were destined to dwell near each other by God would be more likely to share more words in common.

So after Babel, Nimrod and his closer relatives who could still communicate with him moved downstream and built their own cities. Meanwhile, Asshur and his relatives who could still communicate with him moved upstream, and built Nineveh, Rehoboth Calah, Resen and Assur – almost certainly Asshur, the later capital of Assyria.

Remember, God’s stated goal was to force the people to separate specifically by confusing the languages. This encouraged Shemites to move together as a group, and they went towards Assur, and away from Kish; just as it caused Hamites to move the other direction, to Uruk.

If anyone is inclined to mock this story, I would advise evolutionists not to throw rocks in this particular glass house of theirs, because the origin of language is one of the most embarrassing points in evolution theory.

I suggest you read the hypotheses listed on the Wikipedia “Origin of language” page. And once you’ve read it, I dare you to tell me with a straight face that the tower of Babel is harder to believe than some of the theories proposed there.

There are literally dozens of theories proposed on that page. So many that no one can agree because they all have huge deficiencies. Because no one can imagine how something so complex as language came to exist.

The greatest problem for evolutionary linguists is that as we go back in time, all languages get more complex, not less. It was much harder, grammatically, to speak Latin than it is Italian. Vastly harder to speak ancient Sanskrit than it is modern Hindi. The English of Shakespeare is vastly more complex, grammatically, than modern English, and Chaucer is even worse. And so on.

Thus we see, consistently, a pattern of ever-decreasing linguistic complexity, of gradually removing grammar rules to make it easier to speak; every time a new population change happens – immigration, emigration, intermarriage, conquest, etc. – the language is simplified by the new speakers to make it easier to learn.

This points to a time in the past when there was a ridiculously complex but awesomely precise language, which has been devolving into grunts and emojis ever since. So how, then, did that language become so complex if it started with an ape saying “ow” when he hit his thumb?

Evolutionists have no good answer for this. But the Bible does.

Languages are made of words, words are made of breath, and breath is made of air – or, archaically, “spirit.” So when God created Adam, He breathed into him the breath of life and gave him the gift of language, or in NT terms “the gift of tongues.”

And that language began to decay rapidly at Babel – where everyone suddenly developed a speech impediment, which rapidly evolved into different languages; which have been devolving into ever more simplistic languages ever since.

So really, rather than language evolving from apes… our language is evolving into a series of grunts like the apes!

BY THEIR LANDS

All things being equal, after Babel Eber’s sons Joktan and Peleg would have found it much easier to communicate with each other than either would have been able to communicate with, say, Cush. But all things are not quite equal.

Because the language of Akkadian (Asshur’s descendants in northern Mesopotamia), and Aramaic, the language of their cousin Aram (and incidentally, the language Jesus probably spoke in Judea) are quite closely connected – as is Hebrew, named for the answer of the Hebrews, Eber.

However, these languages are also fairly similar to Hittite, Canaanite, and Egyptian – all of them Hamite nations. By the theory of family alone this should not be; however, Genesis went on to say “after their lands” was a criteria for their division; and for reasons of His own, He wanted Assyrians to be able to communicate with Egypt with relative ease.

Given their proximity, it is also likely that these tribes intermarried significantly, explaining why they resemble each other physically as well as linguistically, as a blend or average of some the genetic traits of some of their Hamite and Shemite cousins.

We can prove this happened in the time of the patriarchs, when Esau (ultimately, an Arphaxadite) married Hittite women (Genesis 27:4), and even Abraham had a child by an Egyptian woman; even these few fusions, early on in a linguistic line, will serve to blend languages and cultures.

Plus, bear in mind that God did not divide the languages of Noah’s sons into Italian and French; these languages have evolved into separate languages in the last 1,600 years alone, without God’s help. Before that, they both spoke Latin. 2,000 years before that, Latin and Greek may well have been one language.

So the changes at Babel may have been relatively subtle; sufficient to prevent easy communication, especially between different family branches, but not so much to make communication impossible; yet set on a trajectory that would inevitably make interacting more difficult over time.

This is probably why Abraham, descendent of Eber, an Arphaxadite, is not recorded as having had any trouble communicating or needing an interpreter as he traveled from Ur to Haran which was at that time an Aramaic land, down to Canaan where he interacted with Amorites and Hittites, then to Egypt.

All of these languages would, at that time, likely have been roughly as similar as Spanish is to Italian; not mutually intelligible, but having enough cognates that it would take relatively little effort to communicate at least roughly; helped by the fact that travel between lands was, necessarily, slow, it would allow time to learn the local dialects as you entered new lands.

THE THIRD FAMILY

So back to the identity of Japheth; we have accounted for the African language groups and dark skinned tribes; we know that the languages of Europe and western Asia as far as India all share a common ancestor, strongly arguing that their peoples do as well.

We know, both from their ancient art and the features of modern inhabitants, roughly what the ancient Assyrians looked like; likewise the Arameans and Elamites. And comparing those pictures to say, a Japanese or Ugandan, there is a great and obvious difference.

However, comparing the Assyrians to a random European, they are quite similar. They may have darker skin or slightly different noses, but it cannot be argued that, if forced to choose between the native populations of each of the old world continents, the Shemites of the plains of Mesopotamia most closely resemble Europeans, identifying the population of Europe as genetically Shemites, and not Japhethites.

In every conceivable way, the Iranians are far closer to the Greeks than either are to the Japanese. This argues strongly that the Japhanese (yes, I said it) are descended from Japheth. Which, based on his departure point from the shores of the Euphrates, is the easiest place for him to have gone.

Which, again, is just plain common sense. In the broadest possible sense, there are three great ethnicities, languages, and cultures in the world; Asia, Africa, and Europe. This argues that, at an extremely early time, mankind was divided into thirds by the sons of Noah.

Even the very shape of our planet argues that there were meant to be three broad divisions among these three sons (plus the western hemisphere, which God had later plans for). And of those three continents… the “expansionist” tribe got the biggest chunk!

Nor is it an accident that his holy city happens to be at the crossroads of these contintents. Because the law was meant to go forth to all nations from that city, and so God conveniently located it between them!

Micah 4:2 Many nations will go and say, “Come, and let us go up to the mountain of Yahweh, and to the house of the God of Jacob; and he will teach us of his ways, and we will walk in his paths.” For out of Zion will go forth the law, and the word of Yahweh from Jerusalem.