While I believe in miracles, simply listening to the Bible allows us to explain most, if not all, of them with lived human experience. The miracle is nearly always in the timing, not in the event itself.

For example, “fire falling from heaven” with Elijah is simply lightning. A “pillar of cloud” is most likely a dust devil, a common sight in the desert. The river turning to blood, much like the sea turning to blood in Revelation, is almost certainly an algal bloom. And so on.

Exodus 3:2-3 The angel of Yahweh appeared to him in a flame of fire out of the midst of a bush. He looked, and behold, the bush burned with fire, and the bush was not consumed. Moses said, “I will turn aside now, and see this great sight, why the bush is not burnt.”

And so, after Moses’ nearly 40 years in Midian, when God called him out of a burning bush, I don’t rule out that this could actually be a miraculous event, but it’s also possible – and much more in keeping with how God works – that it was something which to Moses, seemed to be burning.

For reasons I discuss at length in another work, the burning bush was probably an almond tree. And when almond trees lose their leaves, they look the color of flame – and when the wind blows, they dance like flame. This has not been lost on poets of any age.

“…the maple tree is new. Come autumn and its leaves will turn to flame.” (Clive James)

So certainly a “burning bush” would be no stretch for fall colors. Yet Moses seemed genuinely surprised by this unusual event. Why would Moses be so in awe of fall colors? Well, remember, Moses was from Egypt. Almonds are not native to Egypt; indeed, in the Nile region there are no native deciduous trees, so no autumn color to be found.

They do not even have autumn, in the temperate-zone sense. So it’s entirely possible Moses had never seen a tree shedding its leaves before! Which, of course, explains why it “was not burnt.” Because it was not, in fact, on fire – it just seemed to be, from a distance.

Literally flaming bush or not, God spoke to him from the bush, Moses protested he wasn’t worthy, God got a bit testy and said “fine, let Aaron talk for you, I know he can speak!” (Exodus 4:14). God can use sarcasm in a pinch.

So he told his father in law he was leaving, and took his wife with him (verse 20). Then – very strangely – God tried (and somehow failed?) to kill Moses. Which suggests He didn’t try very hard (verses 24-26).

The Bible tells us nothing about why God was angry at Moses, but the fact that Zipporah angrily circumcised their sons suggests that God had commanded Moses to do it, Zipporah didn’t want him to, and so he had been dragging his feet about it.

Interestingly, she is not mentioned again until her father Jethro brings her to Moses from Midian after the Exodus. Which means after this event, she returned home with her children and did not go on with him to Egypt as planned; which suggests marital problems of some sort.

But the circumcision of Moses’ sons raises an interesting side point; the Bible does not record that Moses ever circumcised a single person – not even his own sons. In fact, for the entire time Moses was in charge after leaving Egypt, not one Israelite was circumcised; not until Joshua led them into the Promised Land (Joshua 5:2-7). Just a #funFact.

THE MOUNTAIN OF GOD

Back to the narrative, this took place when they were staying at their version of a Motel 6. This means they had already left Sinai, and were well on their way to Egypt. Otherwise, why stay at an inn? Clearly, they had left home – and Mt. Sinai – far behind.

Meanwhile, God told Aaron, still in Egypt all this time, to go meet Moses halfway (Exodus 4:14, 27-28). Indeed, Josephus tells this part of the story…

Now when they were near the borders [of Egypt], Aaron his brother, by the command of God, met him, to whom he declared what had befallen him at the mountain, and the commands that God had given him. But as they were going forward, the chief men among the Hebrews, having learned that they were coming, met them. (Josephus)

So Moses had nearly reached the border of Egypt; generally, this border was seen as at the “river of Egypt” between Israel and Egypt.

They had certainly left Midian; they were far enough away from home to have to stay at an inn, which they would not have found anywhere in the wilderness of Sin which was, you know… a wilderness. The same goes for the route across the Sinai, the way Moses came the first time; it was barren and desolate. And wildernesses don’t have enough traffic to support inns!

Which means their meeting – the first meeting with Aaron in 40 years, it seems – must have happened near a major trade route – inns require regular travelers. The main trade routes of the day ran across Palestine and along the sea coast, connecting Egypt with Mesopotamia.

Exodus 4:19 Yahweh said to Moses in Midian, “Go, return into Egypt”; … Moses took his wife and his sons, and set them on a donkey, and he returned to the land of Egypt. … It happened on the way at a lodging place, that Yahweh met Moses and wanted to kill him. … Yahweh said to Aaron, “Go into the wilderness to meet Moses.” He went, and met him on God’s mountain, and kissed him.

I stress this, because the Bible says something very odd in that passage I just quoted – it said that Aaron “met him in the mount of God.” This cannot be Sinai! Sinai was far, and I mean far, behind them. Every bit of evidence places them far from Sinai.

Josephus places the meeting at the border of Egypt, which agrees with the Bible’s description that Moses was returning to Egypt. And yet the Bible says Aaron met Moses “at the mount of God.” If this wasn’t Sinai – and it can’t have been – then where was it?

Remember, Sinai wasn’t the only mountain of God in the region. Abraham – as Moses and Aaron would certainly have known – nearly sacrificed Isaac on Mount Moriah, which Moses’ own pen told us was called…

Genesis 22:14 And Abraham called the name of that place Jehovahjireh: as it is said to this day, In the mount of the LORD it shall be seen.

And in Moses’ song, he made it clear that Jerusalem – the site of Mt. Moriah, where the temple was later built – was the Lord’s mountain (Exodus 15:17). Jerusalem, which was, at that time, a thriving city where one might find an inn to stay at!

Remember, they had no cell phones, no way to arrange a meeting point. Indeed, the only reason they were meeting at all is because God sent them to meet each other. God must, therefore, have arranged for them to meet at a certain place they both knew!

A place from their own ancestral history – the sacrifice of Isaac – would be a prime location, which just happens to be on well-known trade routes. Thus, it seems to me that the Bible records Aaron and Moses meeting after 40 years with great joy in the mountain of the Lord at Jerusalem.

One of them having just left Sinai, the dwelling place of the Father, the Lawgiver; and one having just left Egypt, the future high priest leaving behind the dwelling of sinners. That has to mean something.

But that’s for another day.

THE END OF THE YEAR

A few chapters ago, I showed how Moses invented the alphabet. What I didn’t mention is that we have actual glyphs which may have been written by Moses himself. How cool is that?

The earliest Proto-Sinaitic script, as Moses’ script was called, has been found in three places; Wadi el-Hol, in southern Egypt towards Thebes; in el-Lahun, unsurprisingly; and in Serabit el-Khadib, on the Exodus route towards Midian. Of these, the last are by far the most interesting.

Right [Correct], do Ba`alat’s pleasure [bring joy to Ba`alat] but there is no strength! – They deserve to die [lit: their judgment is death].” (translation following Michael Bar-Ron)

As I understand that translation, it’s basically saying “Go ahead! Serve Baal – but you will not prosper, and the judgment of such people is death.” A theme which is repeated many times in the Bible (Joshua 24:15, Judges 10:14, 1 Kings 18:21, for instance).

The one who bound [in captivity] was removed. Then the year ended, [and] ended [no more] were those who strayed to Ba`alat! (translation following Michael Bar-Ron)

It is interesting that among the first Hebrew inscriptions in the world are references to the captivity being removed – that is, after all, why they were in that exact spot at that exact time, because they had just been freed.

The inscriptions were probably there because Serabit was a very important mining colony, one known to have large numbers of Hebrew slaves. Moses stopped on the way – probably at the stop called “Succoth” – to gather them into the fold before leaving Egypt.

The second part of the inscription, which is the main content of the others I won’t quote here, is a condemnation of the worship of “Ba’alat,” a Canaanite goddess which translates as “the Lady,” i.e., the queen of heaven; the goddess whom Israel never ceased going a-whoring after.

Every inscription contains curses against those who worship “Ba’alat”; in Egypt, this Lady was identified with Hathor – represented as a golden cow, whom they would very shortly be sinning with at Sinai.

THE YEAR ENDING

But the central phrase in that last passage was “then the year ended,” which apparently resulted in the death of those who served Hathor. Which year was this which had just ended? In context, it would have to be the ten plagues. Did they really take that long?

Reading the Bible in the most conservative way possible, the plagues required no less than a few weeks, perhaps a month; and this is the way I used to read it; like I assume most casual readers did.

But in the last chapter we showed that the plagues were extreme versions of the annoyances of living on the Nile in a given year; so if these were, indeed, semi-natural events tied to the yearly flood cycle, then they would have taken about one full year.

God probably appeared to Moses in the burning bush near Sinai around the Passover season – April or so; this is consistent with when a tree would shed its leaves in Arabia, before the hot, dry season.

God routinely interacts with people around holy day seasons (for example, the fall of Babylon and Daniel’s writing on the wall on the day of Atonement; the anointing of Saul on Pentecost (the time of the wheat harvest); Abraham’s sacrifices in Genesis 15 on Passover, 430 years to the day before the Exodus (Galatians 3:16-17); etc.).

So a full year accords well with the time required to pack and leave Midian, meet Aaron, travel to Egypt, and announce the first plague of water turning to blood just before the low season of the Nile in June.

And an entire year from Moses’ call at Sinai to Moses’ stop at Serabit after the Exodus explains why Moses wrote at Serabit “the one who bound in captivity was removed, then the year ended.” Because the year that began with the burning bush (the Hebrew year begins around March/April) now ended with them leaving Egypt.

When Moses returned to Egypt, around 10 months before the Exodus happened, his first stop was to meet with the elders of Israel (Exodus 4:29-31). He would have certainly shared his new alphabet with them, which at least some of them embraced as the technological and cultural leap forward that they were.

This explains why we find an inscription at Wadi-el-hol, south towards Thebes; and at el-Lahun itself. These were pre-Exodus inscriptions, made by the Hebrews there in the months before the Exodus.

It also explains why those symbols seem cruder than the ones at Serabit; they were earlier in the formation of the script, or else being practiced by those less familiar with them. These symbols would have had the added benefit of being unknown to the Egyptians, thus a way for the slaves to communicate with each other in a literal secret language. Not only was it in a language they didn’t speak, but in a script they didn’t recognize.

While he was waiting for the Exodus, Moses must have looked up his Ethiopian wife and brought her out of Egypt with the rest of the Hebrews, since there is no indication she was in Midian all this time.

Then over the course of the next nine months various plagues came and went, culminating in the Exodus itself after the death of the firstborn in April of ‑1507. Whereupon Moses broke the Sarcophagus of Mentuhotep, leaving the other sarcophagus untouched – he wasn’t after gold, after all – in order to fulfill the promise of Joseph to “carry up his bones out of Egypt.”

CROSSING THE RED SEA

As I said before, I don’t believe I can improve upon Stephen Rudd’s well-documented research regarding the route of the Exodus found at Bible.ca (except to start it at the Fayoum instead of the delta). Suffice it to say the Israelites walked for a total of 50 days to arrive at Sinai, where they received the law on the day of Pentecost, 53 days after the Passover.

There is a massive 20 mile wide flat strip of land all along the west coast of the Sinai peninsula making it easy to lead 2 million or so people out of Egypt. They walked, miraculously apparently, day and night for at least part of the time:

Exodus 13:21 Yahweh went before them by day in a pillar of cloud, to lead them on their way, and by night in a pillar of fire, to give them light, that they might go by day and by night:

Eventually they rounded the southern tip of Sinai – atop which was an Egyptian watchtower, the Biblical “Migdol,” who reported to the Egyptians that the Israelites were fleeing the country – probably by pigeon or some such.

They then turned north along the eastern coast and found themselves trapped in a cul-de-sac of mountains, which you can see on any terrain map of the area, which area the Bible calls “Etham.” Then they “turned back,” meaning they retraced their route back to the tip of the peninsula…

Exodus 14:2 “Speak to the children of Israel, that they turn back and encamp before Pihahiroth, between Migdol and the sea, before Baal Zephon. You shall encamp opposite it by the sea.”

This is the precise area of the tourist trap known as Sharm el-Sheikh today, a large flat spot of land, just between the mountain tip behind and the island in the straits of Tiran separating Saudi Arabia (Midian) and Egypt.

This is one of the shallowest places in the Red Sea today, dotted by an abundance of tourist-attracting coral reefs. Moses’ song says “Pharaoh’s chariots and his host hath he cast into the sea: his chosen captains also are drowned in the Red Sea. The depths have covered them: they sank into the bottom as a stone” (Exodus 15:4-5). This requires a shallow area surrounded by deep water.

Exodus 14:27-28 And Moses stretched forth his hand over the sea, and the sea returned to his strength when the morning appeared; and the Egyptians fled against it; and the LORD overthrew the Egyptians in the midst of the sea. And the waters returned, and covered the chariots, and the horsemen, and all the host of Pharaoh that came into the sea after them; there remained not so much as one of them.

Traditional historians and classical Christians considered the crossing of the Red Sea to be a wading through a shallow marsh at the top of the Gulf of Suez (the first right turn below “Goshen?” on the map before this one) but the crossing site must have “depths,” of which there aren’t any, nor ever were, at that spot.

Today you could not cross the straits of Tiran at the lowest of imaginable tides; but the area is rich in coral reefs, which do provide a lot of very shallow surface to you might be able to “walk across” in the right conditions.

Thus, the story I see is that, 3,500 years ago conditions were such that coral must have grown in abundance and formed a coral/sand land bridge across the straits, visible only at the lowest of tides, and only when the wind conditions were just right – but which were uncrossable under any normal circumstances.

Crossing the Red Sea in the way the Bible describes requires a massive tide and heavy wind to push the water north up into the Gulf of Aqaba; the drowning of Pharaoh would be the reversing of that tide, with massive amounts of water released at a high current to flood the land bridge.

Thus, this very action of the super-tide of Moses likely broke parts of the reef when it returned, paving the way for its destruction over the thousands of years since, until only pieces of it remain today – but enough pieces to see a clear path that once led all the way across to Arabia.

All of the other proposed crossing sites fail to live up to the Biblical requirements; the Nuweiba beach crossing to the north isn’t really a trap and is almost half a mile deep! The Suez crossing is just embarrassing, basically calling it a “miracle” that people could wade through a marsh.

These straits of Tiran, seen in the photo above is also deep – today – but you can see the remnants of a coral bridge across it even now, which would have allowed them to “walk across the sea on dry land,” provided the coral had accumulated some sand on top, to make a road for the chariots, as reefs often do.

So Pharaoh followed them across this bridge, but once Moses had passed over, the tide turned on Pharaoh, pun intended. They turned and tried to run but the water returned too fast and the current swept them off the bridge and into the depths below.

See, when you just listen, everything fits.

AT SINAI

From there Israel went to Sinai, which is not located in the traditional place you’ll see in your Bibles, which was in those days still part of Egypt. Rather it was located – as the Bible says – across these straits in Midian, modern Saudi Arabia, almost certainly at a mountain called Jebel al-Lawz today.

There, the Israelites had various adventures you can read about yourself in the Bible; suffice it to say that there are, to this day, many of the features like the bitter waters and the 12 wells and 70 palm trees in SW Arabia, as you can see yourself on YouTube by searching “The Real Mount Sinai.”

Finally, Israel arrived on the backside of Sinai, where they were thirsty so Moses split the rock and water gushed out; to this day that rock is visible, showing signs of erosion caused by upward-flowing water.

After that, they were met by Amalek. We’ll be hearing a lot of about the armies of Amalek in the future – spoiler alert, they were the Hyksos – but for now it’s enough to say that Isreal defeated Amalek, then Moses went to Sinai, the law was given, and the old covenant was made.

While Moses was gone for 40 days and nights getting the Ten Commandment tablets from God, the people gave him up for dead and decided to “make gods” to lead them (Exodus 32:1). So Aaron made them a golden calf.

This choice of a god was not arbitrary; these people had been in Egypt for nearly two centuries. A golden calf, to them, represented Hathor, whom the Egyptians identified with the Syrian Ba’alit “lady of heaven” whom Moses had written inscriptions about at Serabit.

Hathor was the Egyptian goddess of sex, drugs, and rock and roll and was, therefore, a highly popular deity since her worship involved doing all of those things. This is why Moses descended the mountain and found them feasting (verses 5-6), singing (verses 17-18), and dancing naked (verses 19, 25).

The picture at right, from the Egyptian Museum in Cairo, shows a literal golden calf such as the Israelites might have made. They certainly were thinking of these images, for they had spent their whole lives around them.

It’s just one more way to show that the Bible makes a lot more sense when you know the historical and cultural context; and that’s only possible when you know the history of the pagans around them.

Everyone knows the story of the Exodus, the ten plagues, the parting of the Red Sea, and so on. But did it really happen? Let’s ask Wikipedia…

There is no direct evidence for any of the people or events of Exodus in non-biblical ancient texts or in archaeological remains, and this has led most scholars to omit the Exodus events from comprehensive histories of Israel. (Wiki, Exodus)

When this article is done, you will know that statement to be what it is – the reasoned, sober consensus of the most respected historians and archeologists in the world.

And one of the dumbest things historians have ever said.

Let’s start with the ten plagues. Historians would say there is no evidence they happened. But the thing is… the ten plagues (at least, the first nine) are a normal part of the lived experience of Egypt; a mild version of them happened almost every year. What was miraculous was the severity and the fact that Moses predicted the coming and going of them (Exodus 8:9-10).

The order of the plagues followed the natural sequence of seasonal troubles commonly experienced in Egypt, as has long been observed. The river turning to blood, accompanied by the death of fish, reflects the condition of the Nile at its lowest point before the annual inundation. During this time, typically in early June, the river becomes stagnant, red, and filled with microorganisms. As a result, the Egyptians often had to rely on wells and cisterns for water. (Egypt and Israel, Petrie)

This is the first plague, and so you can understand why, when Moses said “the Lord shall turn the water to blood” the Egyptians were all like “uh, yeah dude, he does that every year… so what?” And Moses was like “no, it’s gonna be, like, really bad this year” and they’re like “whatever dude.”

Still, the miracle wasn’t that unusual. It was bad, but it wasn’t unheard of. And so when Moses said “I told you so!” Pharaoh was able to say to himself “nah, it was a coincidence, he got lucky is all.” And so God sent Moses to try again. And again.

Following the inundation in July, frogs proliferated, aligning with the second plague. The subsequent plagues—insects, murrain, and boils—are characteristic of the hot summer and the damp, unhealthy conditions of the autumn. (Ibid.)

The boils were probably a form of anthrax. This is, and always has been, endemic to Egypt. Anthrax is primarily a disease of livestock that become infected by ingesting spores found in soil. Thus it’s interesting that the boils are caused by Moses tossing ashes from a furnace into the air which “shall become small dust over all the land of Egypt, and shall be a boil breaking out with boils on man and on animal.”

Hail and rain, unusual for Egypt but plausible, occurred in January. This timing is confirmed by the impact on the crops: barley would have already sprouted, while the wheat was still hidden or barely emerging. This suggests that barley was sown in early November, in ear by mid-January, and ready for harvest in early March. Flax follows a similar growth pattern, with wheat being about a month behind. (Ibid.)

Lightning was so rare in Egypt that it was considered practically apocalyptic to have a thunderstorm, much less hail. It was associated with Seth, the god of chaos – basically as close to a proper devil as ancient Egypt had.

The locusts appeared in the spring, attacking the green crops around February. Around March, sandstorms would bring a dense, tangible darkness, coinciding with the onset of the hot winds. The final plague—the death of the firstborn—occurred during the Exodus in April. (Ibid.)

So you can see… each of these plagues, except the last one, was a perfectly normal event that might have happened purely by chance. So for modern historians to say there is no evidence of the plagues is absurd, since the evidence has been experienced every year since the dawn of time (up until the damming of the Nile about 125 years ago).

And again, I’m not saying this wasn’t a miracle; it absolutely was. But not in the Harry Potter sense, in the much more down-to-earth way that it almost always is in the Bible: the miracle was that the prophet said it would happen, and it was as severe as the prophet said, and it left when he asked for it to leave.

Obviously, statistically, Moses calling it nine times out of nine would have made a non-hardened heart realize that Moses was a prophet of a powerful God. And yet you can see how, to a hardened Pharaoh, it was just possible that we had a hailstorm.

So when it said “Pharaoh hardened his heart,” what was happening was Pharoah was thinking “Yeah, but it was possible that the frogs just happened to leave when Moses said they would. It was just possible that Moses guessed there would be a worse-than-usual plague of locusts this year. We can’t be certain he’s a prophet.”

The fact is, when someone is determined not to change their mind, even raising the dead isn’t really iron-clad proof of his sainthood (Luke 16:30-31). I mean, even today, sometimes people are pronounced dead when they are really in a deep coma; who can say it was because of the prayer, or just luck? After all, it might have happened even if Jesus hadn’t said “Lazarus, come forth!” (John 11:43).

God works this way so that the stubbornly rebellious, hard-hearted skeptics would have a way to say “nah, I’ll concede you tell a good story, but I’m still not convinced there is any evidence of the Exodus, nor that Joseph and Moses lived in the time of the 12^th-13^th dynasties.”

But remember what happened to Pharaoh.

THE ROUTE OF THE EXODUS

The Bible provides considerable detail on the Exodus, which makes it surprising how much disagreement there is about the actual route taken. I mostly follow Steven Rudd’s excellent work on the Exodus route, with one major change – that Goshen is not in the northern delta, but the Fayoum.

Surprisingly enough this changes little, since either way you have to cross the top of the Red Sea before turning south towards the south end of the Sinai peninsula and crossing at the straits of Tiran into Arabia, finally finding themselves at Mt. Sinai – today known as Jebel al-Lawz.

Departing from the Fayoum would not be any farther than departing from the central delta region – since surely 2 million Israelites would have spread across the entire delta, if that were indeed Goshen.

The only difficulty in leaving from the Fayoum is crossing the main stream of the Nile river. The idea of moving 2 million people across one or more river crossings in a single day, with livestock besides, boggles the mind (there has never been a bridge over the Nile in antiquity).

Fortunately, the Israelites didn’t have to cross it on a boat. They just… walked. In Isaiah, God prophesied that in the future there would be a “highway” created in Egypt, and that men would walk across the riverbed in sandals just as they did in the days of Moses!

Isaiah 11:15 Yahweh will utterly destroy the tongue of the Egyptian sea; and with his scorching wind he will wave his hand over the River, and will split it into seven streams, and cause men to march over in sandals. There will be a highway for the remnant that is left of his people from Assyria, like there was for Israel in the day that he came up out of the land of Egypt.

Which explains why “crossing the Nile” was never mentioned as part of the Exodus narrative; it was unnecessary as God had dried it up. And although this hasn’t gotten much attention, this is a key part of the events of the Exodus.

And remember how historians claim “There is no direct evidence for any of the people or events of Exodus in non-biblical ancient texts?” Well the Egyptians did remember this exact event, one so rare that it has not happened in the last 2,000 years – and they remembered it turning to blood!

“The river is blood, yet men drink of it. Men shrink from human beings and thirst after water. Indeed, gates, columns, and walls are consumed by fire. Indeed, men cross the river on foot. The flood is none; the fields are bare of crops.” (Ipuwer Papyrus)

Remember, the river turning to “blood” was a relatively common occurrence, though not to the extreme it did with Moses; but crossing the river on foot is, as far as I can tell, an utterly unique occurrence in recorded history. And “non-Biblical ancient texts” specifically mention it!

Note that Ipuwer also complains that “the fields are bare of crops.” Because locusts, hail, and dust storms had destroyed them, of course! No historian doubts the authenticity of this document, yet they roundly reject it as proof of precisely the events the Bible describes around the exodus!

Then they arrogantly claim that there is no evidence of the Exodus.

Objective science, indeed.

Oh, but there’s tons more where that came from.

ADMONITIONS OF IPUWER

The Ipuwer Papyrus has been dated no earlier than the Nineteenth Dynasty, around 1250 BCE. but the text itself is much older, and dated back no earlier than the late Twelfth Dynasty of the Egyptian Middle Kingdom. … It is a textual lamentation, close to Sumerian City Laments and to Egyptian laments for the dead… (Wiki, Ipuwer Papyrus)

This text dates sometime after the late 12^th dynasty, using a name common from the 13^th-17^th dynasties. Since we have shown that Moses was born in the late 12^th dynasty, this is precisely where we would expect the Exodus to have happened.

Historians reject this as proof of the Exodus because it happens far too early in their timeline to be aligned with the events of Moses. They created a classic strawman fallacy; they made assumptions about the point in history where they think the Exodus might have happened (which is not when the Bible says it did);

Having made that assumption (the New Kingdom must have been the time of the Exodus), they looked only in that window for evidence; and after finding none they confidently claim they have disproved the historicity of the Exodus.

But Thutmose III and Ramses II, the conventional candidates for the Pharaoh of the Exodus if it even happened, lived 500 and 700 years, respectively, after Moses. And it’s quite hard to find proof for the Exodus when you’re looking for the evidence in dynasties who lived half a millennium after Moses.

But before saying “there is no direct evidence for any of the people or events of Exodus in non-biblical ancient texts,” an actual scientist – at least an honest and objective one – would first scan all of the non-Biblical ancient texts for direct evidence.

If they had done so, they would find an abundance of it in the 12^th and 13^th dynasties. I did. The 13^th dynasty is full of descriptions of exactly what we would expect from a country visited by the “great judgments of God” (Exodus 7:2-5).

The date and authenticity of the admonitions of Ipuwer are not disputed, but if you read the Wikipedia article you’ll see that historians try very hard to move this into the “literary” (read: fictional) realm. Why do they try so hard? Because if they are forced to take the “water turning to blood” literally, it counts as evidence for the Exodus which they do not want.

Indeed, [hearts] are violent, pestilence is throughout the land, blood is everywhere, death is not lacking, and the mummy-cloth speaks even before one comes near it. Indeed, many dead are buried in the river; the stream is a sepulcher and the place of embalmment has become a stream.

Indeed, noblemen are in distress, while the poor man is full of joy. Every town says: “Let us suppress the powerful among us.” Indeed, men are like ibises. Squalor is throughout the land, and there are none indeed whose clothes are white in these times… the poor man [complains]: “How terrible! What am I to do?” Indeed, the river is blood, yet men drink of it. Men shrink from human beings and thirst after water. Indeed, gates, columns and walls are burnt up, while the hall of the palace stands firm and endures. (The admonitions of Ipuwer)

So when historians say “there is no evidence,” that is either stupidity or fraud. This might not be proof, but to say it is not even worthy of consideration as evidence is foolish. It literally mentions the river being blood, one of the most famous plagues.

Indeed, the ship of [the southerners] has broken up; towns are destroyed and Upper Egypt has become an empty waste. Indeed, crocodiles [are glutted] with the fish they have taken, for men go to them of their own accord; it is the destruction of the land. Men say: “Do not walk here; behold, it is a net.” Behold, men tread [the water] like fishes, and the frightened man cannot distinguish it because of terror. Indeed, men are few, and he who places his brother in the ground is everywhere. When the wise man speaks, [he flees without delay]. (The admonitions of Ipuwer)

Some Christian historians, based largely on the phrase the “the river is blood,” tie this tale to the Exodus proper. But they’re wrong, and hurt their own cause among Egyptologists by their desperation in reaching for any thread they can find to prove their viewpoints.

No, most of this does not describe the Exodus at all. It was probably written between a month and a year after the Israelites had left. And seen in that light, these conditions are precisely what we would expect the plagues to have done to Egypt – making death so common that people were dumped unceremoniously in the river.

To us, that sounds bad enough; but you cannot imagine the impact such circumstances would have had on the death-obsessed Egyptians, who literally spent their lives preparing for their death. To them, this would have been the worst thing imaginable – an unceremonious burial in the river would mean their ka and ba would never be able to find rest, nor join with the gods in the afterlife.

I have separated him and his household slaves, and men will say when they hear it: “Cakes are lacking for most children; there is no food […]. What is the taste of it like today?” Indeed, magnates are hungry and perishing, followers are followed […] because of complaints. Indeed, the hot-tempered man says: “If I knew where God is, then I would serve Him.”

Amid this lengthy lament of the state of Egypt, a very interesting fact comes out; “if I knew where God was, then I would serve Him.” This is not a normal Egyptian attitude towards the Gods, plural. Gods were generally mentioned by name, or in the plural; worshipping God, singular without a named God in the context,is odd.

Furthermore, finding “God” was not hard. Gods were in every town, their temples and idols scattered throughout Egypt in easy-to-reach locations. They knew where Horus lived. They knew where Osiris was buried. But this Egyptian states that he doesn’t know where God is, so he cannot serve Him. So who is this God whom they didn’t know how to find?

Clearly, the implication is that this was a singular “God” whose name Ipuwer didn’t know and whose dwelling place he couldn’t find. So this, He cannot have been an Egyptian God… but the Hebrew God!

Exodus 7:5 The Egyptians shall know that I am Yahweh, when I stretch out my hand on Egypt, and bring out the children of Israel from among them.

If the Egyptians didn’t learn this lesson, God failed His stated goal; and here we have proof positive that some Egyptians had learned it! Knowing that, and knowing the situation of Egypt as it was, and hearing Ipuwer’s clear regret that he didn’t know where this God was to serve Him, helps to explain an otherwise inexplicable fact about the Exodus:

Exodus 12:37 The children of Israel travelled from Rameses to Succoth, about six hundred thousand on foot who were men, besides children. A mixed multitude went up also with them, with flocks, herds, and even very much livestock.

Why would a group of Hebrew slaves have groupies who followed them out of their homeland of Egypt? Reading Ipuwer’s description of the place they left behind, you can see that they had very little to lose, and much to gain, by following this new God of Israel’s out of Egypt. How much worse could life get? Better than suicide-by-crocodile.

Would that there were an end of men, without conception, without birth! Then would the land be quiet from noise and tumult be no more. Indeed, [men eat] herbage and wash [it] down with water; neither fruit nor herbage can be found [for] the birds, and […] is taken away from the mouth of the pig. No face is bright which you have […] for me through hunger. Indeed, everywhere barley has perished and men are stripped of clothes, spice, and oil; everyone says: “There is none.”The storehouse is empty and its keeper is stretched on the ground; a happy state of affairs! …Would that I had raised my voice at that moment, that it might have saved me from the pain in which I am. (Ibid.)

This is very strange; because Ipuwer seems to think that if he had spoken up at some point, he would have saved himself – not the country, but himself – from the state he finds himself. He doesn’t say what the moment to speak would have been, but there is clearly a regret for not speaking “at that moment,” which would have saved him from the pain of his current life.

Assuming the normal kinds of crisis – war, famine, plague – no one could save himself by speaking up. Which means this was no normal crisis. This was a crisis he could have personally avoided had he spoken up.

Which means Ipuwer must be lamenting the fact that he did not raise his voice “at that moment” when Moses left Egypt! He could have been part of the “mixed multitude,” but he hesitated too long. What else could it be?

BUT IT GETS WORSE

Over and above all the aforementioned calamities in Egypt, there is one more which is obvious in hindsight, even though the Bible didn’t mention it; for a devastated, depopulated Egypt would have been a ripe target for a barbarian invasion. And Ipuwer tells us this is exactly what happened…

Indeed, the desert is throughout the land, the nomes are laid waste, and barbarians from abroad have come to Egypt. Indeed, men arrive […] and indeed, there are no Egyptians anywhere…. A man regards his son as his enemy. Confusion […] another. Come and conquer; …The virtuous man goes in mourning because of what has happened in the land […] goes […] the tribes of the desert have become Egyptians everywhere.

Egypt, as a civilization, was nearly wiped out. But Egypt, as a piece of land, would recover rapidly; a few Nile floods and it would again be one of the richest pieces of real estate on the planet. A target far too tempting for their neighbors to pass up.

Indeed, the Delta in its entirety will not be hidden, and Lower Egypt puts trust in trodden roads. What can one do? No […] [Egyptians?] exist anywhere, and men say: “Perdition to the secret place!” Behold, it [the delta] is in the hands of those who do not know it like those who know it. The desert dwellers are skilled in the crafts of the Delta.

In other words, Egyptians have been completely expelled from the delta regions, in favor of barbarian tribes – desert-dwellers who don’t know the arts of farming. And these invaders put the few remaining Egyptians into bondage:

…Indeed, the builders [of pyramids have become] cultivators, and those who were in the sacred bark are now yoked [to it]. … The […] of the palace is despoiled…. Indeed, gold and lapis lazuli, silver and turquoise, carnelian and amethyst, Ibhet-stone and […] are strung on the necks of maidservants. Good things are throughout the land, (yet) housewives say: “Oh that we had something to eat!”

To what purpose is a treasury without its revenues? Happy indeed is the heart of the king when truth comes to him! And every foreign land [comes]! That is our fate and that is our happiness! What can we do about it? All is ruin!

The invasion of Asiatic tribes from the desert is particularly important here; because Manetho, a 3^rd century BC Egyptian priest and historian, who certainly qualifies as a “non-biblical ancient text,” corroborates the events of Ipuwer, in particular the Canaanite invasion.

[Pharoah] Tutimaeus. In his reign, for what cause I know not, a blast of God smote us; and unexpectedly, from the regions of the East, invaders of obscure race marched in confidence of victory against our land. By main force they easily seized it without striking a blow; and having overpowered the rulers of the land, they then burned our cities ruthlessly, razed to the ground the temples of the gods, and treated all the natives with a cruel hostility, massacring some and leading into slavery the wives and children of others. (Manetho, as quoted in Josephus)

So when historians tell you there is no evidence for the Exodus outside the Bible, they are simply refusing to believe what they read. Manetho knew that “a blast of God smote Egypt” during the reign of Tutimaeus, though he didn’t know why.

Him not knowing why isn’t surprising – the Egyptians were hardly likely to write “we oppressed God’s chosen people, and the God of the Hebrews punished us for our sins.” Following this “blast of God,” Manetho describes the invasion and brutal oppression of Egypt by Canaanite tribes whom he called the Hyksos, known to history as dynasty 15 (and possibly some parts of 14-17 as well).

This invasion was not, as Manetho and Josephus believed, the arrival of the Hebrews, but rather the opportunistic invasion of Egypt by Canaanite tribes in the power vacuum caused by their departure, which happened to leave the best of their army in the bottom of the Red Sea.

Remember, Manetho said the invasion happened “without striking a blow,” something hard to imagine; even the weakest nations manage to put up some resistance to invasion; how could they have been utterly enslaved without a single battle?

Unless the invaders found a starving, depopulated Egypt fresh off the ten plagues.

FINDINGTHE PHARAOH OF MOSES

As you saw above, Manetho identified this Pharaoh as Tutimaeus; so all we have to do is find a king by that name, and we’ll know precisely when the Exodus happened, right? Actually, yes. But before we get into that, I want to go over what we will expect from our Pharaoh when we find him.

First, he cannot be a firstborn – since all of them died in Egypt, specifically including Pharaoh’s house. Since Pharaoh survived, he himself was not a firstborn. Second, we will not find his mummy since he drowned in the Red Sea.

Third, he will have had a short reign of only a few years, following an oppressive Pharaoh who had a long reign. We infer this from the following verse…

Exodus 2:23-24 It happened in the course of those many days, that the king of Egypt died, and the children of Israel sighed because of the bondage, and they cried, and their cry came up to God because of the bondage. God heard their groaning, and God remembered his covenant with Abraham, with Isaac, and with Jacob.

This passage tells us that after “those many days” a Pharoah died – indicating a long reign for this Pharaoh – and it was at that point when God remembered His covenant and called Moses. Since the entire chain of events involving Moses’ call and return can’t have taken more than a few years, probably less, we conclude that the final Pharaoh had a short reign – 2-3 years at most.

As further evidence of the long reign of his predecessor, when God appeared to Moses, He said “Go, return into Egypt; for all the men who sought your life are dead” (Exodus 4:19). God had, apparently, been waiting nearly 40 years for this event – the death of the last Pharaoh who remembered Moses – to happen.

Fourth, we would not expect to know very much about this Pharaoh – a short reign, dominated by natural disaster, followed by a period of utter chaos, is unlikely to lend itself to monument-building or inscriptions or writing histories of the recently perished Pharoah.

These qualifications solidly exclude every single candidate ever seriously proposed in mainstream research; the world’s favorite, Ramses II reigned for 66 years, and we have his mummy. Conservative Christian favorite Thutmose III with his 54 year reign and a mummy in evidence also fails him. And so on with all the lesser candidates proposed.

Oddly enough, I don’t think anyone has ever followed the evidence objectively enough to arrive at the obvious, and I mean obvious, answer.

THE ACTUAL PHARAOH OF MOSES

Since the Hyksos invaded after the reign of Tutimaeus, then he must have been the final king of his dynasty. And Tutimaeus is a Hellenized (Greek-ized) version of the name Dedumose, and as it happens the end of the 13^th dynasty did have a king by that name.

The rulers Dedumose I, Dedumose II, Mentuemsaf, Mentuhotep (VI) Mer’ankhre’ and Senwosret IV Seneferibre’, who are documented epigraphically at Thebes but had not been positioned chronologically. However, the Dedumose kings certainly belong in Dyn. 13. (Ancient Egyptian History, Hornung)

Williams and others place Dedumose as the last king of Egypt’s 13^th Dynasty. (Wikipedia, Dedumose II)

So not one, but two Dedumoses are known to history. We expect to find little information about the final king of the Exodus, given what he went through in his short reign, and we are not disappointed – little is known of these kings.

The placement of kings in the 13^th dynasty is complicated, but some believe Dedumose to be the final king – as, of course, do we. Given this much clear evidence I am shocked that no one has put forth Dedumose as a possible candidate for the Pharaoh of the Exodus; at least, not to my knowledge.

I mean, we’re literally just listening to all the ancient sources. But as I’ve said so many times, that’s not something historians do well.

THE PHARAOH OF THE EXODUS

We know that Dedumose I and II existed, but they appear on no king lists. Given that, it’s possible they are on those lists by other names; Egyptians had five, remember. So leaving the name behind for a moment, we will look for other Pharaohs that presided over conditions like the Exodus in the spiraling state of affairs at the end of the 13^th dynasty. Not surprisingly, we immediately find a perfect fit.

Merneferre Ay is the last pharaoh of the 13^th Dynasty to be attested outside Upper Egypt. In spite of his long reign, the number of artefacts attributable to him is comparatively small. This may point to problems in Egypt at the time and indeed, by the end of his reign, “the administration [of the Egyptian state] seems to have completely collapsed.” It is possible that the capital of Egypt since the early Middle Kingdom, Itjtawy was abandoned during or shortly after Ay’s reign. For this reason, some scholars consider Merneferre Ay to be the last pharaoh of the Middle Kingdom of Egypt. (Wiki, Merneferre Ay)

Merneferre Ay was one of the final kings of the 13^th dynasty, and his reign sounds very similar to that of Manetho’s Tutimaeus, including the “complete collapse” of the administration after his reign. Yet he couldn’t have been the Pharaoh of the Exodus because he fails to meet many of our requirements.

For one thing, he reigned a long time – 23 or possibly 33 years. This means he certainly would have remembered Moses from 40 years earlier, and probably still wouldn’t have liked him. So Merneferre Ay was probably the king for whose death God was waiting before calling Moses back to Egypt.

Second, he built a pyramid – we found the capstone, although not the pyramid itself or his body. This isn’t conclusive – no body, no proof – but it makes him an unlikely candidate.

Third, despite the quote above, we have no real evidence that there were problems during his reign – but we know for sure there were after it.

All this suggests that Tutimaeus must have been the next king after Merneferre Ay. According to the king lists, that was Merhotepre Ini, who therefore would have been the Pharaoh who died in the Red Sea.

This pharaoh is positively attested only by a single seal found near the Fayoum, with a few other possible attributions that may or may not refer to this Merhotepre. The Turin king list gives him just over two years of reign – and as you’ll see later, most of that was probably spent learning to hate Moses.

All of this is precisely what we expect from our Exodus pharaoh – an utter lack of evidence due to a brief reign at the end of a collapsing dynasty followed by the collapse of the Egyptian state altogether.

DJED-MER

If we are right, then one of the Pharaohs named Dedumose was the Pharaoh of the Exodus;

But if we’re right, the Merhotepre Ini was also the Pharaoh of the Exodus.

Is there any way these were the same person? Perhaps. We can make a case for it at least; for starters, no one has ever seen them both at a party at the same time, and they appear on none of the same lists. So there is no conclusive proof they aren’t the same person.

The full prenomens and names of the two Dedumoses were Djedhotepre Dedumose I and Djedneferre Dedumose II. For reasons I’ll show in a minute I believe Egyptologists arbitrarily assigned the numbers backwards – II preceded I, so the Pharaoh who died in the Red Sea would be Djedhotepre Dedumose I.

Djedhotepre Dedumose does not appear in the Turin canon but he does appear (as Tutimaeus) in the histories of Manetho while Merhotepre Ini is in the Turin Canon but does not appear in Manetho (to be fair, neither does anyone else in the 13^th dynasty).

Tutimaeus’ position in Manetho’s narrative requires him to be the final king of the dynasty, the exact same position some historians give to Merhotepre Ini – whose name is exceptionally similar: both formed their names with hotepre, only changing the first glyph from Djed to Mer.

That may be chalked up to a coincidence; but remember, we said the pharaoh who died before Moses came back was called Merneferre Ay; compare that to Djedneferre Dedumose II; Again, the identical name element neferre, substituting only the exact same djed for a mer.

I can offer no mechanism or precedent to explain this substitution at this time; but consider what we have in these two pairs of kings; both pairs ruled at the very end of the 13^th dynasty; both pairs formed their names with identical elements;

Dedumose was certainly the last king, according to Manetho; and after the reign of Merhotepre Ini, Egypt descended into utter chaos; there may or may not have been a handful of kings with brief reigns who held on against the barbarians for a dozen years or so.

But this, too, is what you’d expect after the Exodus; not necessarily an end to the dynasty as such, but its rapid demise. And what you’d expect from barbarian invasion – a continuous retreat in the face of overwhelming odds as people argued over who was in charge of the sinking ship.

Further, we know that around the time of Merhotepre Ini the capital was moved from Ity-tawy to Thebes, much farther south. No one else can offer a good reason why they would abandon an established capital, but we can.

Because if he was the Pharaoh of the Exodus it stands to reason that the worst of the destruction would have been where he was – since the demonstration was chiefly for his benefit. His capital city, therefore, is likely to have been hit much harder than, say, Thebes. Why else would they abandon such an established and well situated city?

And of course, this dovetails perfectly with the known situation after the reign of Dedumose; the country was overrun from the northeast by Canaanites – which would certainly have forced the surviving Egyptians to retreat south to Thebes. So if these were different kings, their lives mirrored each other very closely.

Admittedly, without evidence of the Mer-Djed transformation this cannot be considered proof; but it is very strong circumstantial evidence. And since it’s better than anyone else can offer, we’re going to go with this as a fact for now. In the end, it doesn’t really matter that much – what we are certain of is that whichever king it was, it was the final king of the 13^th dynasty who ruled from Iti-tawy who faced Moses.

For now, our conclusion is that Dedumose “II” Djedneferre is Merneferre Ay, and ruled for 22 years just before Moses’ return from Midian. And Dedumose “I” Djedhotepre is Merhotepre Ini, and ruled for a little over two years and presided over the utter destruction of Egypt and the liberation of the Hebrews.

The Egyptians, duly impressed by Joseph and his God, were slow to turn on their Hebrew friends. The Bible specifically says it took the lifetime of Joseph, and the death of all those who knew him, before the Egyptians started to oppress the Hebrews.

Exodus 1:6-8 Joseph died, as did all his brothers, and all that generation. The children of Israel were fruitful, and increased abundantly, and multiplied, and grew exceedingly mighty; and the land was filled with them. Now there arose a new king over Egypt, who didn’t know Joseph.

This would have taken at least 30 years or so after the death of Joseph, more likely 50 or more. This puts the beginning of the persecution no earlier than the late 12^th dynasty, or possibly the early 13^th dynasty.

Israel was still dwelling in the Fayoum/Goshen in the time of Moses (Exodus 9:26), and Moses was regularly going back and forth between him and the elders of Israel, a journey that is not pictured as lengthy in the Bible.

This means that Pharaoh and Israel lived fairly close to each other, and since no other capital was near Goshen, Pharaoh must have still had his capital at Ity-tawy. And since no other dynasty but the 12^th was based in Ity-tawy, the Pharaoh of the Exodus had to have been one of the kings of the 13^th dynasty.

In later texts, this dynasty is usually described as an era of chaos and disorder. However, the period may have been more peaceful than was once thought since the central government in Itj-tawy near the Faiyum was sustained during most of the dynasty and the country remained relatively stable. The period was undoubtedly characterized by decline, with a large number of kings with short reigns and only a few attestations. The true chronology of this dynasty is difficult to determine as there are few monuments dating from the period. Many of the kings’ names are only known from odd fragmentary inscriptions or from scarabs. (Wiki, Dynasty 13)

Furthermore, since the events of the Exodus so badly weakened Egypt that they may not have even had a government left at all, he must have been one of the final kings of that dynasty. Regarding the transition between dynasties and the beginning of the persecution, Josephus says…

And having, in length of time, forgotten the benefits they had received from Joseph, particularly the crown being now come into another family, they became very abusive to the Israelites, and contrived many ways of afflicting them; for they enjoined them to cut a great number of channels for the river, and to build walls for their cities and ramparts, that they might restrain the river, and hinder its waters from stagnating, upon its running over its own banks: they set them also to build pyramids. (Josephus)

Between Joseph and Moses the crown “came into a different family.” So we would expect the persecution to be after the 13^th dynasty began, or at least at some point late in the 12^th where the family lineage changed. More on that later.

Josephus also says “they cut a great number of channels for the river.” Egyptologists tell us there was an immense amount of hydraulic engineering, particularly of the Fayoum, in the Middle Kingdom – which is what we would expect from people with food-security issues and an immense slave-labor source based in Goshen, the Fayoum.

By far the most interesting part of the quote says that the Israelites built the pyramids; while the Bible does not explicitly mention pyramids, although it does mention large-scale brickmaking for various projects. But if Josephus is correct here, there is only one possible dynasty for Moses’ timeframe.

The Old Kingdom pyramids (3^rd-6^th dynasties), were made of solid stone or rubble cores, not brick. These are the famous pyramids at Giza, the ones on all the postcards. But what many people don’t realize is that the later pyramids were not made of solid stone – they were a stone outer casing surrounding a brick core!

This architectural fact alone requires the Exodus to have been in the Middle Kingdom period (11^th-13^th dynasties). The vast majority were built in the 12^th dynasty, although building continued to the end of the 13^th.

These were the only large-scale pyramids ever built of brick, meaning that somewhere in this period we will find the Hebrew slaves building bricks and gathering their own straw. It certainly wasn’t any dynasty after the 13^th, because large-scale pyramids were never again built in Egypt.

And that’s not an accident – the Exodus is the reason they were never built again.

PROOF OF THE EXODUS

If you ask Wikipedia about the Exodus narrative, it will tell you the following…

There is no direct evidence for any of the people or events of Exodus in non-biblical ancient texts or in archaeological remains, and this has led most scholars to omit the Exodus events from comprehensive histories of Israel. (Wiki, Exodus)

When this article is done, you will know that statement to be what it is – the reasoned, sober consensus of the most respected historians and archeologists in the world.

And one of the dumbest things historians have ever said.

Because there is so much hard evidence, both from the ancient Egyptian historians who describe the river of blood and the chaos following the plagues, and also hard archeological evidence of specific, unique events in the Exodus narrative.

And the worst part is, archeologists have known this for over a century. Near the Fayoum, Sir Flinders Petrie excavated the town of el-Lahun, which commands the canal leading from the Nile into the Fayoum. But the town had a very unusual layout…

At el-Lahun … it was evident that the west block was a ‘barrack-like camp’ or a sort of ‘dormitory for confined people.’ … The town planning and the consequent social order at el-Lahun may have imposed a condition of coercion over the population, effectively caging people in ‘ghetto-quarters’ with the intention of centralizing the resources of thousands of individuals. … the contextual evidence from el-Lahun that seems to indicate that a punitive institution known as a xnrt (‘prison,’ ‘fortress/enclosure’ or ‘workcamp’) was in existence in the western part of the town called the Sekhem. (The Ghetto of el-Lahun, Mazzone)

This “workcamp” was a later addition to the city of el-Lahun, which was built at least as early as Sesostris II for laborers, although some researchers make a strong case it was used as early as Amenemhet I to work on building projects in the Fayoum.

Originally, these laborers were free citizens, but it was only later, probably after the time of Sesostris III – or, as I believe, even later, under Amenemhet IV – that it was turned into a concentration camp. And what was the ethnicity of these slaves?

The population of el-Lahun, composed mainly of confined men and women, often of Syrian-Palestinian origins and scarcely motivated by religious devotion to the sovereign, were most likely subject to a certain amount of coercion. Seclusion and beatings were probably common, and were most likely aimed toward subduing the foreigners. There is evidence documenting this in the historical record, in literature and in iconography. The role of foreigners within Egyptian society, a society considered by some to have been liberal in some respects, was clearly one of total subjugation. (The Ghetto of el-Lahun, Mazzone)

So the Fayoum in general, and el-Lahun in particular, had a large population of Syria-Palestinian – i.e., Hebrew – slaves forced to work on monumental projects against their will. Just to be clear, I don’t believe this town contained all the Hebrews – it was unlikely to have held more than 5,000 people.

However, the Egyptians had a complex system of forced labor required by all citizens, and there is significant evidence that this and other forced-work camps were for those who refused to voluntarily submit to the work – these, then, would have been the more stubborn Hebrews.

Slaves, especially of Levantine [i.e., Hebrew] origin were grouped in ghetto camps to perform labor for the state where they lived in harsh conditions, often including beating by their masters. The term for “male Asiatic” in ancient Egyptian language became synonymous with “slave.” (Wiki, “Slavery in ancient Egypt”)

Now Sir Flinders Petrie, when he excavated el-Lahun, was shocked to find an immense amount of valuable and useful artifacts left behind – far more than was discovered at other archeological sites. Forgive the length of the quote, but it’s worth it to see what all was left behind…

Those wooden hoes, and rakes, and grain-scoops; that curious brick-maker’s mould; those plasterer’s floats and carpenter’s tools; and, most interesting of all, that primitive wooden sickle set with flint-saws, … the ivory castanets and the painted canvas mask from the House of the Dancer, together with the grotesque little wooden figure of that long-departed ballerina. … flint and bronze tools, and … numerous forms of cups, jars, pots, ring-stands, bowls, and other domestic vessels in pottery of that remote period. That so large a number of objects, many of them at that time of considerable value, should have been left in the houses when the town was deserted is very strange, and would seem to point to some sudden panic. The women, for instance, left not only their whorls and their spindles, of which a large number were found, but also a store of dyed wool, not yet spun; the net-makers left their netting-needles, their netting, and the balls of twine which were not yet made up; the weaver left his beam and the flat sticks with which he beat up his weft; and in the shop of a metal-caster were found, not only a fine bronze hatchet ready for sale, but his whole stock-in-trade in the shape of moulds for casting chisels, knives, and hatchets. Bronze mirrors, toilet objects, children’s toys, draught-boxes, amulets, scarabaei, beads, rush-mats, baskets, brushes, and sandals, handbags made to draw with a cord, spoons, combs, and other personal possessions of these people were also found in their houses. (Kahun, Gurob, and Hawara by W. M. Flinders Petrie Review by: Amelia B. Edwards, December 1890)

Under what conceivable circumstances would an entire city of slaves leave behind their most prized possessions, their toys and tools, their wool and their metal – and even more shocking, under what possible circumstances would those artifacts be left untouched for 3,500 years??

Deuteronomy 16:3 …for you came forth out of the land of Egypt in haste: that you may remember the day when you came forth out of the land of Egypt all the days of your life.

Why, people who knew they would have no need for hoes and plows, no need for mortar-trowels and whose shoes would not age on their feet for 40 years (Deuteronomy 29:5). People whose freedom from slavery depended on leaving NOW. And in an explicit counterpart of this, Jesus warns His followers that when their own Exodus comes…

Matthew 24:16-18 then let those who are in Judea flee to the mountains. Let him who is on the housetop not go down to take out things that are in his house. Let him who is in the field not return back to get his clothes.

And if this didn’t convince you that this city housed Hebrew slaves before the Exodus, I have one last ace to play. Because there is one more thing that Petrie found at el-Lahun that conclusively proves the Exodus narrative…

Petrie found wooden boxes buried beneath the floors of many of the houses in the village that he found at Lahun (Fayoum) and dates back to the Middle kingdom. When opened, they were found to contain the skeletons of infants, sometimes two or three in a box, and aged only a few months at death. (Children’s Burials in Ancient Egypt, Magdy)

Note the agreement between the ages of the dead infants, and the story of the Exodus:

Exodus 2:1-3 …The woman [Moses’ mother] conceived, and bore a son. When she saw that he was a fine child, she hid him three months. When she could no longer hide him, she took a papyrus basket for him…

Thus, three months was as long as she could keep the baby secret; Moses managed to escape because she let him sail down the river, trusting God to save him; other parents, trusting to themselves to protect their babies, had their babies caught and killed by Pharaoh’s agents at about the same age.

‘…beneath the brick floors of the rooms were, however, the best place to search; not only for hidden things, such as a statuette of a dancer and pair of ivory castanets, but also for numerous burials of babies in wooden boxes. These boxes had been made for clothes and household use, but were used to bury infants, often accompanied by necklaces and other things…’. (Kahun, Gurob, and Hawara by Petrie)

Do I need to say it? El-Lahun was a city of Hebrew slaves, forced to build monuments for Pharaoh – yes, pyramids among them, although not the famous ones at Giza – and whose babies were murdered because of Pharaoh’s paranoia that one of them would be the downfall of Egypt.

And he managed to kill all but the most important one, apparently.

No archeological evidence of the Exodus, my foot.

THE BIRTH OF MOSES

The Bible kept track of the time between Abraham and the Exodus internally, and using that information we can attach Egyptian chronology to a more secure framework; first, we align Sesostris I’s 25^th year with the end of the 7 years’ famine and Joseph’s 45^th year.

Doing that, and using the widely-agreed chronology of the 12^th Dynasty (which for once Manetho, monuments, and most Egyptologists agree on), you find the end of the 12^th Dynasty in ‑1582.

Now the Bible places the Exodus in ‑1507, at which point Moses was 80 years old. Which means Moses was born in ‑1587 – five years before the end of the 12^th dynasty, which cannot be a coincidence. Indeed, it’s a great story.

Because when you think about it, the story of Moses is very strange. Why would Pharaoh’s daughter adopt a random Hebrew boy, particularly in a time of cruel oppression of the same Hebrews by her government?

Remember, the whole reason Moses’ mother gave him up was that Hebrew boys were to be killed on sight by drowning in the river (Exodus 1:22). Yet Pharaoh’s daughter not only didn’t kill him, she adopted him and intended to make him her heir!

Can you picture the scene? Pharaoh sends out an order to murder all Hebrew boys on sight specifically by casting them into the river. A year or so later, Pharaoh’s daughter comes into his throne room all excited “Daddy, daddy, look what I found! A pretty Hebrew boy! Oh, by the way, he’s going to rule Egypt when you’re dead!”

And then Pharaoh must have been all like “Uh, dear, the point of throwing the Hebrews in the river was to kill them. No, you can’t keep him. No! Don’t name him! OK, well, yes he is very cute dear, but the Egyptians will never accept him as king. Ok, ok, don’t cry… fine, yes you can keep him but if he makes a mess you’re cleaning it up.”

Can you picture that? Me neither. There is simply no way that the king who wanted to kill the Hebrew babies let his daughter adopt one of them and make him the heir. Nor is it possible that she would want to adopt him, if she had any other choice.

This sequence of events has never been properly explained, beyond vague gesturing towards “God’s blessing” and so on. Because it cannot be explained if you don’t know the political situation in Egypt at the time!

Oh, about that. You may he wondering who was king those last five years of the 12^th dynasty, the first five years of Moses’ life?

Well, technically no one. Because the king of Egypt wasn’t a king at all – she was a woman named Sobekneferu. And she began to reign the year after Moses was born.

Which means when she adopted Moses, she was just “Pharaoh’s daughter,” but the next year she became Pharaoh herself. How else could she have protected a hated Hebrew boy and made him heir of the throne of Egypt?

THE SUCCESSION OF AMENEMHET IV

Everyone agrees that Sobekneferu was the daughter of Amenemhet III, identified in the last chapter as the Pharaoh who began the oppression. But as said before, that oppression most likely did not single out Hebrews per se, it just included them as part of a large forced-labor gang.

After he died, and before Sobekneferu ruled, he was succeeded by Amenemhet IV. No one knows what relationship, if any, Amenemhet IV had to his predecessor but we know he wasn’t a son, because Amenemhet III had only daughters – definitely 2, possibly 5.

These daughters had been groomed to become king themselves, in a very unusual move that indicates he had no male issue. One daughter, Neferuptah, died before she could become king. No one is sure where Amenemhet IV came from or why he ruled for 9 years, but after he died Amenemhet III’s other daughter, Sobekneferu, began to reign and reigned for almost 4 years.

What’s weird is that Manetho calls Sobekneferu the sister of Amenemhet IV, even though Amenemhet III is known to have had no sons! Which means the brother of his daughter must be her husband who Amenemhet III adopted! And finally, Josephus’ statement makes sense.

And having, in length of time, forgotten the benefits they had received from Joseph, particularly the crown being now come into another family, they became very abusive to the Israelites, and contrived many ways of afflicting them. (Josephus)

Josephus says the crown “came into a different family.” This fits perfectly – since Amenemhet IV WASa different family. He was adopted into the 12^th dynasty, but was not a part of it at all. And it makes perfect sense, if you put yourself in Amenemhet III’s shoes.

You’re an aging king with no male issue, with no choice but to groom your daughters to rule. We know this happened, beyond a doubt. But your patriarchal society strongly questions the ability of your daughters to keep the country in line, so what do you do?

You would marry your eldest daughter off to a trusted general or noble, and – to make sure he continued your dynasty – you would adopt him as your stepson, whereupon he would take your throne name and become Amenemhet IV.

When he in turn died he, too, left no heirs so his wife, Pharaoh’s daughter, ruled in his stead.

SOBEK ANSWERED

But before he died, still childless, Sobekneferu went down to the river to bathe. This is a curious event, but it doesn’t jump off the page to us today because we don’t realize that princesses don’t have to take a bath in the river! She had a perfectly nice tub in the palace.

And she didn’t just happen to go for a swim; because to the Egyptians, the gods of the Nile, Hapi and/or Sobek, were the gods of life and fertility. Bathing in the Nile, then, was one of the rites a woman would perform to get pregnant.

So imagine yourself praying to God for a baby, then one floats by in a basket. You would certainly take it as a sign that your prayer had, quite literally, been answered. Now consider the following quote:

She was the first ruler to have a theophoric association with the crocodile god Sobek, whose identity appears in both her given nomen Sobekneferu and her chosen praenomen Sobekkare. (Wiki, Sobekneferu)

So she was the first ruler to ever use “Sobek” in a throne name. There has to be a reason for that. But when you realize that Sobek is the crocodile god of the Nile associated with childbirth, and that the Nile gave her the baby she prayed for… well it make sense, doesn’t it?

The origin of his name, Sbk in Egyptian, is debated among scholars, but many believe that it is derived from a causative of the verb “to impregnate.” (Wiki, Sobek)

These things, and her willingness to adopt a random boy, tell us she was barren and that she believed God had literally given her a child to answer her prayer – which in fact, He did, although it was not the God she thought it was.

THE SLAUGHTER OF BABIES

But this also tells us that when Moses was born, her husband was still alive. What’s the point of praying for fertility, if you don’t have a man to do the fertilizing? And given that he ruled for ten years, he must have been the same man who gave the following order…

Exodus 1:22 And Pharaoh charged all his people, saying, Every son that is born ye shall cast into the river, and every daughter ye shall save alive.

Pharaoh wanted to oppress the people, and reduce their population, but this is a very poor way of doing it. If you want the population to die out, you kill females, not males. So why would Pharaoh attack male infants in this way? The Bible doesn’t tell us. But Josephus does…

One of those sacred [Egyptian] scribes, who are very sagacious in foretelling future events truly, told the king, that about this time there would a child be born to the Israelites, who, if he were reared, would bring the Egyptian dominion low, and would raise the Israelites; that he would excel all men in virtue, and obtain a glory that would be remembered through all ages. Which thing was so feared by the king, that, according to this man’s opinion, he commanded that they should cast every male child, which was born to the Israelites, into the river, and destroy it; that besides this, the Egyptian midwives should watch the labors of the Hebrew women, and observe what is born, for those were the women who were enjoined to do the office of midwives to them; and by reason of their relation to the king, would not transgress his commands. He enjoined also, that if any parents should disobey him, and venture to save their male children alive, they and their families should be destroyed.

Josephus claims that Moses was prophesied by one of Amenemhet IV’s magicians to overthrow Egypt; and that was why all male Hebrew children were killed. Not as population control, but specifically to get rid of a potential competitor to the Egyptian throne!

This also explains why he turned to oppress the Hebrews, particularly; Amenemhet III had used the labor of everyone, Egyptians and Hebrew alike; but after this prophecy, Amenemhet started to fear the Hebrews and so set out to exterminate them, starting with male children.

Which, as has already been pointed out, is conclusively confirmed from archeology by an abundance of infant burials below houses in a concentration camp in precisely the area of Egypt we locate Goshen – in El-Lahun, in the Fayoum.

But why just kill the adults, when you can work them to death? Thus, we finally know why the mood shifted in Egypt. In fact, it’s exactly what happened with Herod; the wise men told Herod that Jesus would be the king of the Jews.

And as it happened, Herod was also king of the Jews – and a very paranoid one at that. So Herod commanded to kill every child that could possibly be his replacement, killing every one under 2 years old.

The fact that the Bible likes patterns, and that in a way Moses and Jesus were representative of each other as lawgivers and saviors, it stands to reason that something similar might have motivated Pharoah. That makes us inclined to believe that Josephus’ story was based in fact.

In the time of Herod, the infant Jesus escaped – oddly enough, to Egypt – where He hid for 2 years until God told Joseph in a dream that it was safe to return as “those who sought the young child’s life are dead” (Matthew 2:20).

So just to keep with the pattern, I’m going to say that this edict of Amenemhet IV to kill all the male children went forth 2 years before the birth of Moses, in ‑1589. At this point, Sobekneferu was not yet sole ruler; just a childless mother trying to perpetuate her father’s dynasty.

THE ADOPTION OF MOSES

Moses was born in ‑1587, the year before Sobekneferu became queen. This cannot be a coincidence nor did we have to fiddle with the numbers to make this fit; it’s simply a result of aligning Joseph’s famine with that of Sesostris, and following the firmly established internal chronology as established by Egyptologists for the 12^th Dynasty.

The reason that the exact date is so important is, as mentioned above, it’s impossible to imagine that Sobekneferu came in and said “Daddy, look at the cute Hebrew boy I’m adopting!” But can you POSSIBLY imagine this Pharaoh approving of one of the very babies he himself had ordered cast in the river being dragged out of it by his daughter and becoming his own heir?? I mean… he was killing them SPECIFICALLY so that wouldn’t happen!!

Josephus claimed that Pharaoh was consenting to the arrangement, but here I must disagree with him; it is unthinkable to me that the same Pharaoh who ordered this to happen tolerated Pharaoh’s daughter choosing one of these babies as his heir.

And if, as we believe, the Pharaoh at the time was her husband, not her father, as we believe, it would have gone even worse. There is no way a Pharaoh young enough to have his own children would have even considered making a random Egyptian boy his heir, much less a Hebrew whose race he was trying to exterminate.

Yet the Bible comes to the rescue with a perfectly fitting explanation; now put yourself in Sobekneferu’s shoes; you’re a young woman desperate for an heir to carry on your father’s dynasty, and you pray to Sobek for a baby and you get one. Why don’t you take him home with you on the spot??

Exodus 2:8-10 Pharaoh’s daughter said to her, “Go.” The maiden went and called the child’s mother. Pharaoh’s daughter said to her, “Take this child away, and nurse him for me, and I will give you your wages.” The woman took the child, and nursed it. The child grew, and she brought him to Pharaoh’s daughter, and he became her son. She named him Moses, and said, “Because I drew him out of the water.”

She didn’t dare bring him home with her because she knew her husband had commanded to kill all such babies on sight! Why else would she send away a child she obviously loved at first sight?

Exodus 2:6-7 …and when she saw the ark among the flags, she sent her maid to fetch it. And when she had opened it, she saw the child: and, behold, the babe wept. And she had compassion on him, and said, This is one of the Hebrews’ children.

So while her husband was still alive, Sobekneferu, barren, went to the river to pray for a child from the god Sobek. She saw Moses, loved him, and determined to make him her heir but didn’t tell her husband. She didn’t dare – she sent him off to be raised by his own parents.

Meanwhile, according to our timeline, her husband died; on her accession she chose a name honoring Sobek, the same god who had given her Moses – the first ruler of Egypt to ever do so. With her father and husband dead, she was left as sole ruler of Egypt and in a position to adopt whomever she felt like.

But not without consequences. But before we tell that story, we have to talk about the 13^th dynasty which succeeded the 12^th after the end of Sobekneferu’s reign.

THE THIRTEENTH DYNASTY

We are confident that the Exodus happened after the 12^th dynasty; most likely in the 13^th dynasty. Since the Exodus was meant to ruin Egypt, it would certainly have spelt the end of that dynasty – which means that the Pharaoh of the Exodus was almost certainly the final king of the 13^th dynasty.

But if we align the final king of the 13^th dynasty with the Exodus and counting backwards, we find the beginning of the 13^th dynasty in ‑1634. This overlaps badly with the end of the 12^th dynasty, creating a problem we must resolve. Fortunately, the solution is easy.

Stephen Quirke proposed, based on the numerosity of kingships and brevity of their rule, that a rotating succession of kings from Egypt’s most powerful families took the throne. They retained Itj-tawy as their capital through the Thirteen^th Dynasty. Their role, however, was relegated to a reduced status and power rested within the administration. It is generally accepted that Egypt remained unified until late into the dynasty. (Wiki, Sobekneferu)

Given that all of the early 13^th dynasty kings had extremely short reigns, historians have guessed that they may perhaps have been elected or chosen from among Egypt’s powerful families… and they’re almost right: they were chosen, by the Pharaohs of the 12^th dynasty… because they were vassals.

In reading what little we know of these kings, most of whom ruled less than 3 years, it frequently appears that they “had a military background.” This is because for the first 60 or so years of this dynasty, they were not Pharaohs at all, but vassals of the kings at Ity-tawy.

If our construction is right, the first of these “kings” began to “reign” in ‑1632, the 25^th year of Sesostris III. So it’s very interesting that it was just at that point that the government of Egypt was reorganized to place a powerful semi-king at Thebes!

Nevertheless, Senusret III did install other officials (based at the royal court) as governors of very large sections of the country, and in this way made a sharp break with practices of the past. Two bureaus (waret) were created, one each for the northern and southern areas of Egypt, operated by a hierarchy of officials… (Oxford history of ancient Egypt)

Note that they governed the upper and lower sections of the country – meaning one would be the extremely powerful governor of the southern areas of Egypt in Thebes, and the other would govern the north from Xois, centrally located in the delta. These are known to history as the 13^th and 14^th dynasties, respectively.

But one interesting fact is that both were based at the royal court in Ity-tawy! Egyptologists can’t explain why kings of the 13^th dynasty seemed to rule both at Ity-tawy and Thebes. But we can… they seemed to rule in both places because they did! Their capital was Thebes, but they were based at the royal court in Ity-Tawy!

Further, this explains why their reigns are so short; simply because they were appointed and replaced at the whim of the kings of the 12^th Dynasty. Many have a military background because they were chosen from the higher ranks of the army, a common source for governor appointments.

In the chart below I’ve summed the first 25 kings (who are too numerous to display on the chart), but none of whose reigns surpassed 5 years (and most were far shorter). But then, all of a sudden the reign lengths change from 1, 2, or 3 years to 11, 10, 22, etc. Why?

Well, notice that the first lengthy reign was that of Neferhotep I in ‑1583. What was happening at that time in Dynasty 12? There is a green arrow above to show the alignment with the beginning of Neferhotep I and the final ruler of the 12^th dynasty, Sobekneferu; and it shows that Neferhotep began to rule one year before the end of the dynasty in ‑1582.

It can’t be a coincidence that the end of the short “appointed” reigns starts with Neferhotep I at the exact same time as the end of the 12^th Dynasty! He was the first “Pharaoh” in this dynasty to rule longer than 5 years because he was the first person who ruled as Pharaoh at all!

The grandson of a non-royal townsman from a Theban family with a military background, Neferhotep I’s relation to his predecessor Sobekhotep III is unclear and he may have usurped the throne. (Wiki, Neferhotep)

His “military background” explains how his coup was successful, since the best coups come with an army behind them. So for the balance of the 13^th Dynasty, until Merhotepre Ini, we see more normal reign lengths, as we would expect from the dominant dynasty at the time.

After the death of Queen Neferusobek, the decision was made to move the capital to Thebes in the south, which had the effect of reducing northern control. This was the beginning of the end for the Middle Kingdom. (https://pharaoh.se/ancient-egypt/period/second-intermediate-period/)

The order of reading Egyptian hieroglyphs is tricky, it can be done forwards or backwards and in some cases even more randomly. But suffice it to say that Neferusobek is the same person as Sobekneferu. Also, there is no evidence that Sobekneferu died at this point, and we have reasons to believe otherwise as I will explain soon.

Regardless, this shows us that the capital was moved to Thebes after Sobekneferu, at the end of the 12^th dynasty. Yet we learned above that the capital was moved to Thebes at the end of the 13^th Dynasty. Both are true.

The 13^th Dynasty governors had always been based in Thebes, but when Neferhotep I conquered Ity-tawy and replaced Sobekneferu they moved to Ity-tawy, the center of the empire; when Merhotepre Ini died, they retreated to what had always been their home!

All of this lets us conclude that in ‑1582, give or take a year or two, the vassal governor of Thebes decided to rebel against his erstwhile masters in Ity-tawy. This is generally agreed upon by Egyptologists, except the identity of the rebel – they assume, with no evidence, that it was the first king of the 13^th dynasty when in fact it was Neferhotep I, the first non-puppet of the 13^th dynasty.

What’s interesting is that no Egyptologist can tell you why he rebelled in the first place… but the Bible can. Because he was rebelling for two very good reasons; the first one is obvious; Sobekneferu was a woman. One of the first to hold sole rule, and the first woman we know of to rule as a king, and not a queen (there’s a difference to the Egyptians).

And the second reason – and I think, probably even more offensive to the Theban governors of the 13^th dynasty – Sobekneferu intended to make the son of a slave the Pharaoh of Egypt. So really, the birth of Moses is to blame for independence of the 13^th dynasty.

MOSES’ STEPDAD

This allows us to finally tell the story; because a lone woman whose unpopular choice in heirs was a target too tempting for the powerful general that ruled Thebes to resist. And yet the fact that Moses was not killed in the coup strongly suggests that Sobekneferu was also not killed.

Acts 7:20-23 In which time Moses was born, and was exceeding fair, and nourished up in his father’s house three months: And when he was cast out, 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. And when he was full forty years old, it came into his heart to visit his brethren the children of Israel…

At the time of the fall of the 12^th Dynasty, Moses would have been 5 years old, and yet went on to be educated in “in all the wisdom of the Egyptians, and was mighty in words and in deeds” (Acts 7:20). Which means some royal protector kept a watch over him – and who else but Sobekneferu?

The 13^th dynasty was no friend to the Hebrews, as we see by the fact that the oppression continued throughout the entire dynasty; for if it had stopped, why would the Hebrews have needed to be rescued from their bondage?

How could such people possibly tolerate Moses’ existence, being – as he truly was – a threat to their power. He must have had a powerful patron, and that can only have been Sobekneferu who cannot therefore have been dead.

So ask yourself; you’re Neferhotep I, the de-facto king of upper Egypt, but want to be king of all Egypt. You can go to war against lower Egypt and maybe win, maybe lose. Or you could form an alliance – one that leaves you as king, yet yields some autonomy to Ity-tawy.

Then imagine yourself as Sobekneferu, an unpopular widow facing an uprising from the south. Neferhotep might not win, but you would likely die in the process. Better to sue for peace, to extract certain guarantees from the soon-to-be-Pharaoh, and give Moses a chance to grow up and one day take back the throne for your house.

And the best way to legitimize an alliance like that would be… a royal wedding.

Hence, we can conclude that Neferhotep showed up at Ity-tawy with his army behind him and told the widow-queen Sobekneferu she could marry him or there would be civil war. She agreed, but retained enough power from her loyal court to prevent Neferhotep from killing Moses or preventing his education.

As long as she lived, she protected him and made sure he knew everything he needed to be a Pharaoh; still nursing the hope that one day he would be king. Which, in a manner of speaking, he would be. Just not of the Egyptians.

Deuteronomy 33:4-5 Moses commanded us a law, An inheritance for the assembly of Jacob. He was king in Jeshurun, When the heads of the people were gathered, All the tribes of Israel together.

THE LIFE OF MOSES

We have very little information about Moses’ life. We know he was educated to be a Pharaoh, and from Egyptian history we know that would have included the ability to read and write in hieroglyphics and hieratic (let’s just say, cursive hieroglyphics) – and probably some other languages as well.

We know his education would have included a great deal of mathematics and astronomy/astrology (the division is nonexistent in ancient cultures). He would have been taught the Egyptian calendar systems, and the various mythologies and sacrificial systems of the Egyptians, since Pharaoh was expected to be a sort of high priest for the country as well, a bridge between the human and the divine.

Stephen tells us he was “mighty in word and deed,” which means he was also taught Pharaoh-like masculine skills like hunting and the various martial arts. Josephus told us that Moses was a general for the Egyptians who fought against an Ethiopian (Nubian to the Egyptians) invasion; this may or may not be true, just quoting it for what it’s worth.

Egypt was becoming weaker during this dynasty, and more susceptible to invasions from the north and the south; we do know that there were “happenings” in Nubia in this period, which led to their independence around the time of Moses’ departure from Egypt.

Nevertheless, enough evidence has survived of the reign of Sobekhotep IV [-1572-1562] to suggest that he had all the hallmarks of a strong king, and continued to hold some control over Nubia, where two of the king’s statues were found south of the third cataract (other statues of this king survived reused at Tanis). It was, however, during the reign of Sobekhotep IV that the first signs of revolt emerged in Nubia, which was eventually to slip out of Egyptian control, to be ruled instead by a line of Nubian kings based at Kerma. (Oxford History of Ancient Egypt)

Moses would have been around 25 at the time of this Pharaoh’s death. Nubia was lost by the time of the end of the 13^th Dynasty, so the idea that there was a Nubian invasion as Josephus describes isn’t impossible – it’s not like the Egyptians would have bragged about being invaded, nor would they have wanted to give Moses credit, so it might have been an event better left forgotten.

What we do know for certain is that much later in life, Aaron and Miriam complained about Moses’ Ethiopian wife. The Bible doesn’t say where she came from, but Josephus said that it was during his counter-invasion as head of the Egyptian armies that he encountered and married a princess of Ethiopia.

That might not be true, but I do know one thing; Ethiopia is not on the way between Egypt and Midian; so if that’s not how he met his Ethiopian wife, I don’t know how it would have ever happened given what we know about his life.

Since she doesn’t appear in the narrative in Midian, where Moses married another wife, it’s likely she remained behind in Egypt when he fled. This was not so uncommon; compare to David leaving behind his wives on several occasions (1 Samuel 19:11-13, 1 Samuel 30, 2 Samuel 15:16, etc.).

Josephus also said that it was Moses’ fame for delivering Egypt from Ethiopia that led the Egyptians to plot to kill him – here contradicting, or at least adding to, the Bible’s statement that it was his fear about the Egyptian he killed which Pharaoh tried to kill him for.

This Pharaoh who tried to kill Moses was probably Sobekhotep V, although possibly one king earlier or later (this part of the 13^th Dynasty is give-or-take a decade or so, as historians are very unsure of the reign lengths).

What’s strange is that the kings of Egypt had probably wanted to kill Moses his whole life. Why did this one time finally scare him into leaving? The answer is obvious; Sobekneferu must have recently died.

Consider that she was still child-bearing age when she was praying to Sobek at Moses’ birth – thus, 20-40 years old; if so, then she would be 60-80 or so when Moses fled. A normal lifespan, even a bit long for the age. And consider also what the Bible said Moses did at this time…

Acts 7:23 But when he was forty years old, it came into his heart to visit his brothers, the children of Israel

Why did it take 40 years before this “came into his heart?” Easy; what happens when you lose family? You reach out to what family you have left. Moses knew that without Sobekneferu he had no “family” among the Egyptians. He knew they were jealous of him and hated him. So he was looking for family.

This, ironically, led to him losing everything because after killing the Egyptian, he no longer had mommy to protect him from the Egyptians. So he fled to Midian, presumably without parting the Red Sea this time, and without his Ethiopian wife.

Which means he either snuck on a boat, or more likely went north across the Sinai desert (not south like the Israelites would later do); Josephus says he avoided the roads and snuck through the deserts, which is certainly what I would have done.

Arriving in Midian he did a favor for some girls at a well, whereupon their father invited him to live with them and married his daughter to him. He had two children, whose names indicate his state of mind:

Exodus 18:3-4 …The name of one son was Gershom, for Moses said, “I have lived as a foreigner in a foreign land.” The name of the other was Eliezer, for he said, “My father’s God was my help and delivered me from Pharaoh’s sword.”

These names show that, while Moses was grateful to be alive, he was homesick. Who wouldn’t be? And the next forty years passed before he knew it! Just kidding. I’m sure they seemed like… well, forty years.

FORTY BORING YEARS

We know nothing specific about what happened during Moses’ time in Midian, except that he tended sheep for his father-in-law (Exodus 3:1). But we can infer some things. Remember, Moses was a highly intelligent, highly educated, cultured individual used to the palace life. Becoming a shepherd had to be an… adjustment, to say the least.

A mind like his couldn’t have been idle; a shepherd has a lot of time to think, and his thoughts would certainly have been with his oppressed brethren back in Egypt. And as we know from every political exile in history, they spend their time in exile plotting and preparing to return and free their kinsmen.

And so what would a highly educated, motivated, intelligent, and mind-numbingly bored man of his time do? With no dancing girls, chariot races, hunting parties, musicians and feasting to keep him busy, what would he do?

You’re going to love this one.

These words you are reading are an alphabetic script in the Latin alphabet. We inherited these letters, naturally enough, from Latin. Latin learned them from Greek – with a few modifications to fit the sounds of Latin.

The Greeks learned them, again with modifications to suit Greek (including the addition of proper vowels) from the Phoenician traders who brought them from the Canaanite towns on the eastern coast of the Mediterranean.

The Phoenicians spoke Canaanite which, like Hebrew, is a Semitic language. In fact, in those days it was probably very similar, probably even mutually intelligible. And the Phoenician/Canaanite script is, as far as historians can tell, the first alphabetic script in the world.

And where do you suppose the earliest examples of this writing were discovered? Care to guess? Canaan? Nope. You’d think so, right? You’d naturally assume that Canaanite scripts came from Canaan… but nope.

Ok, fine; you guess Syria? Nope. Aram? Nope. You could guess all day, and you’ll never guess where the first examples of Semitic script – the writing system of Phoenician and Hebrew – came from.

The first alphabetic writing was developed by workers in the Sinai Peninsula to write West Semitic languages c. 1800 BC, “in the context of cultural exchanges between Semitic-speaking people from the Levant and communities in Egypt.” This earliest attested form is known as the Proto-Sinaitic script… (Wiki, history of writing)

The first examples of alphabetic writing and the Phoenician script are found, not in Canaan, but in EGYPT! There has to be a great story there. This fact deserves an explanation, and no historian can provide a better one than “miners interested in foreign cultures.”

It’s laughable ideas like this that scientists and historians have to invent to get around obvious facts that make my job so easy sometimes. Because slaves in mines have lots of free time for cultural exchanges, right? Miners are well known for attending the ballet and writing poetry, right?

Does it make sense to you that miners, slaves at that, were interested in “cultural exchanges” to the point that creating an alphabet was necessary? And that they had the education required to construct one? What possible use could a mine-slave have to write down his language??

The generic word for Aamu (‘male Asiatic’), became synonymous with ‘slave’ to indicate those condemned to live on the fringes of Egyptian society, in awful conditions, occupied in heavy labor in the mines and in the quarries of the eastern desert. The term Xsy (‘miserable,’ ‘wretched’ or ‘vile’) is often associated with it. Lorton noted that in the context of the Instruction for King Merikare this emphasizes the misery of their daily life and their hopeless situation. (The Ghetto of el-Lahun, Mazzone)

Mines have never been a joyful place to work where cultural sharing and intellectual curiosity was nurtured. These mines, in particular, were where Egypt sent people as a punishment. Do people in “the misery of their daily life” invent alphabets to improve their “hopeless situation?” Really?

The site’s name is derived from these as well, with ‘Serabit el-Khadim’ translating to “Columns of the Slave,” in reference to the tall inscribed columns that make up and surround the temple. The copper and turquoise mines at the site were in use throughout the Middle Kingdom and New Kingdom periods. The mines were worked by prisoners of war from southwest Asia who presumably spoke a Northwest Semitic language, such as the Canaanite that was ancestral to Phoenician and Hebrew. (Wiki, Serabit el-Khadim)

Again, it is merely an assumption that these were prisoners of war and not the Hebrew contemporaries of Moses which at least the majority of them in fact were. So we reject outright the idea that this was enlightened Semites who wanted to be able to record for posterity the joy of working in the mines, and look for a completely different motive for these inscriptions.

This earliest attested form is known as the Proto-Sinaitic script, and it adapted concepts and at least some of its written letterforms from Egyptian hieroglyphic writing; it adopted wholly West Semitic sound values for its letters, as opposed to adapting existing Egyptian ones. (Wiki, history of writing)

And we find our reason in the fact that the Hebrew writing system was adapted from the EGYPTIAN WRITING SYSTEM! I can’t stress this enough. The writing system of Semitic peoples was made based on Egyptian writing.

Which means that somewhere, someone who spokeboth Egyptian and Hebrew or Canaanite, and who knew how to write Egyptian, sat down one day with a stick and decided to create a way of expressing words in Hebrew in their own native script.

Starting to guess what Moses might have done for 40 years now?

And this happened, according to historians, “circa 1800 BC.” They arrived at this number based on the names of the Pharaohs who exploited these mines. This of course, means that their dates are off by several hundred years, just as their dating of those Pharaohs are off.

But guess who was, according to historians, on the throne of Egypt in 1800 BC? (You’re gonna love this!) The king of Egypt in 1800 BC according to Egyptologists was…

Drumroll please…

Sobekneferu, Moses’ stepmom! Whom we date to ‑1587. Which means the earliest examples of semitic writing systems date to roughly the time of MOSES!

MEANS, MOSES, OPPORTUNITY

So alphabetic writing was invented in the time of Moses, but was it invented by Moses? Well, we know for a fact that Moses wrote things down in a book (Deuteronomy 31:24), and he certainly didn’t do it in Egyptian. Therefore, it happened before then.

Even traditional historians agree that alphabetic writing was invented somewhere around his era (once the Pharaohs are put in their proper timeline). So if he didn’t invent it, then he certainly knew the guy who did.

We know, from Stephen, that he was “mighty in words,” skilled in “all the wisdom of the Egyptians,” which means he had the necessary ability. We know he had the time. And he lived at the right time in history.

We also know that he was a “Hebrew nationalist,” who longed to free his people from Egypt, and give them a national identity, telling the Egyptians that Yahweh had said “let my people go!” One thing that commonly happens with newborn nations is that they make a script designed for their language, and abandon the script of their colonizers.

A relatively recent example of this is Turkey under Mustafa Kamal Ataturk; having just freed themselves from the Ottomans and the British, Ataturk instituted a western alphabet to replace the Arabic one – adapting letters as necessary to express sounds that only exist in Turkish. As Ataturk’s successor described it…

The alphabet reform cannot be attributed to ease of reading and writing. That was the motive of Enver Pasha. For us, the big impact and the benefit of an alphabet reform was that it eased the way to cultural reform. We inevitably lost our connection with Arabic culture. (Wiki, Turkish alphabet)

The historian Bernard Lewis has described the introduction of the new alphabet as “not so much practical as pedagogical, as social and cultural – and Mustafa Kemal, in forcing his people to accept it, was slamming a door on the past as well as opening a door to the future” … Atatürk told his friend Falih Rıfkı Atay, who was on the government’s Language Commission, that by carrying out the reform, “we were going to cleanse the Turkish mind from its Arabic roots.” (Wiki, Turkish alphabet)

Just as we know the Israelites needed to “lose their connection to Egyptian culture.” Substitute “Israelite” for “Turkish” and “Egyptian” for “Arabic,” and you would have the exact mindset Moses (and God) would have had about the Exodus.

Leviticus 18:3 You shall not do as they do in the land of Egypt, where you lived: and you shall not do as they do in the land of Canaan, where I am bringing you; neither shall you walk in their statutes.

Thus we know that Moses would have wanted to, would have needed to, would have been able to, and had forty years of boredom in which to work out a new alphabet which would “cleanse the Hebrew mind from its Egyptian roots.”

PURIFYING THE GODS OF EGYPT

But we also have a better reason; God was about to write down words with His own finger which the people of Israel were supposed to be able to read. It makes sense that God would have wanted the letters to accurately convey precisely what He meant, the precise sound He spoke to them.

Now I don’t presume to claim that God speaks Hebrew at home – nor do I rule it out – but I do know that the Hebrew language carries a depth of meaning in some places that cannot be accidental, and which would be – is – lost in translation.

It’s also a fact that if you force people to write their language in a foreign script, the language itself inevitably changes to follow the sounds of the letters they’re given. The letters also change meaning somewhat, until the letters and sounds reach an equilibrium that accurately express neither the original language nor the meaning of the original script.

God would not have wanted this to happen to His law or to the Hebrew language in which it was written. Therefore, God would have needed, for His inspired words, a language that correctly represents His commands and a script that captures just the right truth of that language.

The third century BC writer Artapanus of Alexandria wrote of the exploits of the Patriarchs in Egypt; and while these are Jewish legends which may or may not be true, it’s interesting that one of the stories is just as I’ve said it above…

“…On account of these things Moses was loved by the masses, and was deemed worthy of godlike honor by the priests and called Hermes, on account of the interpretation of sacred letters.” Hermes was a Greek messenger god who was in Egyptian traditions associated with Thoth (Djehuty), the god of wisdom and time who invented writing. (Wiki, Artapanus of Alexandria)

Having laid all this groundwork, the actual story is easy to tell. Moses spent his time in Midian thinking, planning, being inspired by God to write an alphabet – after all, it wouldn’t do to write “thou shalt not serve idols” with letters which are literally images of the gods of Egypt!

And after all… wasn’t the main point of the plagues, as stated by God Himself, to execute judgments against “all the gods of Egypt?” How then, could He leave the hieroglyphs untouched? Hieroglyphs, which literally means “sacred carvings” in Greek?

Exodus 12:12 Against all the gods of Egypt I will execute judgments: I am Yahweh.

He is Yahweh, the Existing One; but He also calls Himself the Alpha and the Omega – the Greek equivalent of “the A and the Z.” Letters which literally evolved from the letters Moses created! And when you think about it… how can you make the WORD of God without… letters?

And how can that Word be holy if the alphabet used to create it are not holy as well?

With that in mind, consider this (admittedly much later and out of context) verse, talking about Nebuchadnezzar destroying Egypt at God’s behest. Listen closely to what it says; for many Egyptian letters were literally pictures of gods, and what are words but “houses” for letters?

Jeremiah 43:12 I will kindle a fire in the houses of the gods of Egypt; and he shall burn them, and carry them away captive: and he shall array himself with the land of Egypt, as a shepherd puts on his garment; and he shall go forth from there in peace.

And so as the final judgment against Egypt, the final way in which the Hebrews spoiled the Egyptians, they carried their letters away captive, the very finger of God Himself burned them with fire on Mt. Sinai to purify them…

Numbers 31:23 whatsoever thing can go into fire, ye shall pass through fire and it shall be clean, only with the water of separation, shall ye cleanse it (from sin). But whatsoever cannot go into fire, ye shall pass through water.

Thus, the letters we use – some of which have demonstrably Egyptian origins, such as the A which traces back to the bull’s head of Apis/Ptah – have been purified and given new meaning by the fire that is the very finger of God.

And THAT is how you got your alphabet.

After Joseph was kidnapped, as I’m sure we all know, Joseph was a trusted slave, and God blessed his master immensely because of Joseph. Then the man’s wife tried to seduce him, failed, then accused him of raping her, so Joseph was thrown in prison.

There he dreamed dreams, helped some people who promptly forgot about it; then Pharaoh dreamed a dream, finally the guy whom Joseph helped remembered him, and then Joseph interpreted Pharaoh’s dream as being a prophecy of seven good years and seven very bad years of famine.

To understand what this means to Egypt, you have to understand that the Nile is everything in Egypt. The Nile floods at a predictable time every year, bringing rich nutrients and flooding a large area for agriculture and making otherwise useless land incredibly fertile.

But the size of the flood varies based on rainfall in the Ethiopian highlands. So if there is a lot of rain, the flood is very high, and a lot of land is irrigated. If the Nile doesn’t flood, or the flood is very low, then little or no land gets irrigated.

So what was really being prophesied here was seven years of a very high Nile flood and abundant food; followed by seven years of little or no flood at all. Regardless, Pharaoh was suitably impressed and took Joseph’s suggestions to the letter:

Genesis 41:33-41 “Now therefore let Pharaoh look for a discreet and wise man, and set him over the land of Egypt. Let Pharaoh do this, and let him appoint overseers over the land, and take up the fifth part of the land of Egypt’s produce in the seven plenteous years. Let them gather all the food of these good years that come, and lay up grain under the hand of Pharaoh for food in the cities, and let them keep it. The food will be for a store to the land against the seven years of famine, which will be in the land of Egypt; that the land not perish through the famine.”

The thing was good in the eyes of Pharaoh, and in the eyes of all his servants. 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. You shall be over my house, and according to your word will all my people be ruled. Only in the throne I will be greater than you.” Pharaoh said to Joseph, “Behold, I have set you over all the land of Egypt.”

Joseph’s main job as vice-pharaoh was to make sure that they survived the famine; to do that, they needed as much grain, and as much grain storage, as was humanly possible. Grain storage is a fairly simple matter; Egyptians are nothing if not good at building monumental buildings quickly.

But the grain production was more complicated. The arable land in Egypt is finite; it’s just a few miles on each side of the Nile plus the delta. And most of the Nile has a narrow valley which quickly becomes higher in elevation and is full of rocks and impossible to irrigate. So you can’t just make more land to irrigate and farm.

But Joseph did anyway. In the center of Egypt there is a low spot west of the Nile which, provided a canal was made, could open up an immense amount of new farmland now called the Fayoum oasis. The name of this canal is today called the Bahr Yussuf, or Joseph’s canal.

This name dates back to Arabic times, and doesn’t prove too much, but it is intriguing nonetheless. Granting that the Muslim legend is biased, it’s remarkable that there is a tradition connecting Joseph to something not mentioned in the Bible… but something that Joseph would certainly have had to do.

JOSEPH’S PHARAOH

The name of the pharaohs in Genesis are, unfortunately, not listed. What names we do have, like Potiphar, don’t match anyone we know in Egypt. We even know Joseph’s Egyptian name, but it doesn’t seem to help:

Verse 45 Pharaoh called Joseph’s name Zaphenath-Paneah; and he gave him Asenath, the daughter of Potiphera priest of On as a wife. Joseph went out over the land of Egypt.

Most commentators translate this as some variation of “revealer of secrets,” which is possible, but the following argument convinced me it has a more interesting meaning, which is more consistent with the Biblical narrative and Pharaoh’s spontaneous exclamations (Genesis 41:38-39).

The Egyptian equivalent of Zaphenath is almost certainly ḏf3wn‘ty, which translates into modern English as ‘Overseer/Minister of the Storehouse of Abundance’. … The second section, p3nn’i3ḫ is a proper name, and … [these elements] combine to express Joseph’s new Egyptian name literally as [p3n]n’i3ḫ ‘[He of the] Excellent/Gracious Spirit’ where n’i translates as ‘excellent/gracious’ and 3ḫ translates as ‘spirit’. (Joseph’s Zaphenath Paaneah—a chronological key, Patrick Clarke)

So Zaphenath Paaneah means “the overseer of the storehouse of abundance – he of the excellent spirit.” The same author does a good job trying to discern the original Egyptian pronunciation of the Hebrew name, concluding that it would be pronounced Djefaneti Paneniakh (assuming AI correctly transliterated his Egyptian characters for me).

Unfortunately, I have not been able to find any example of this name, or a plausibly similar name, anywhere in Egyptian history. But Egyptians were extremely fond of names and titles; each Pharaoh had five different names, and one particular vizier boasted over 34 different titles. So the fact that this name/title which Pharaoh gave him on a whim is not the name he used at home, nor the name Egyptians primarily recorded shouldn’t really surprise us.

But if not by his name Joseph, nor by his name Zaphenath Paaneah, how can we find him?

Genesis 50:25-26 And Joseph took an oath of the children of Israel, saying, God will surely visit you, and ye shall carry up my bones from hence. So Joseph died, being an hundred and ten years old: and they embalmed him, and he was put in a coffin in Egypt.

We can be certain that he was buried with highest honors, in a grand tomb probably close to his Pharaoh. What’s more, it should be empty since his bones were carried out of Egypt by Moses. So is there such a vizier in the record?

Mentuhotep was an ancient Egyptian official and treasurer under the 12^th Dynasty pharaoh Senusret I. Mentuhotep is one of the best attested officials of the Middle Kingdom period. There is a series of statues found at Karnak, showing him as a scribe. On these he has been given the title of overseer of all royal works, which would suggest that he was involved in overseeing the construction of the temple at Karnak. (Wikipedia, “Mentuhotep”)

First, consider his name; you’ll notice an immediate similarity between Mentuhotep and Imhotep (Abraham) – but don’t get too excited, because Mentuhotep was a common Egyptian name in the 11^th Dynasty for pharaohs.

Breaking it down, the word hotep is just a word meaning “peace, satisfaction,” and mentu or montu refers to a relatively minor Egyptian god of war. Most people stop here, saying surely Joseph wouldn’t be named after a god of war – but if you look closer you see there’s more to it than that!

Montu’s name, shown in Egyptian hieroglyphs … is technically transcribed as mntw (meaning “Nomad”). (Wikipedia, Montu)

So Joseph wasn’t named after the god! Joseph was named the peaceful nomad! Or “the nomad who satisfied.” Do we have any Biblical reason to believe Joseph might have adopted this as one of his names?

Genesis 41:16 And Joseph answered Pharaoh, saying, It is not in me: God shall give Pharaoh an answer of peace.

Joseph was from a nomadic people, which is well documented by the wanderings of the patriarchs (Hebrews 11:38). And Joseph brought peace and satisfaction, through giving Pharoah “an answer of peace” and through satisfying their hunger when otherwise they would have all died.

So this name is certainly plausible, but it’s by no means proof. Fortunately, we have a lot more. Let’s go back to the fact that Mentuhotep was “overseer of all royal works,” for that corresponds precisely to the title we’d expect for Joseph…

Gensis 41:40-44 “You shall be over my house, and according to your word will all my people be ruled. Only in the throne I will be greater than you.” Pharaoh said to Joseph, “Behold, I have set you over all the land of Egypt.” …They cried before him, “Bow the knee!” He set him over all the land of Egypt. Pharaoh said to Joseph, “I am Pharaoh, and without you shall no man lift up his hand or his foot in all the land of Egypt.”

So that’s definitely an overseer of all the royal works. For all practical purposes, he was Pharaoh himself according to his brother Judah “…don’t let your anger burn against your servant; for you are even as Pharaoh” (Genesis 44:18).

Given this, it is impossible that abundant statuary and references to Joseph would not exist. People haven’t found them simply because they’re looking in the wrong place. Which is why Mentuhotep “is one of the best attested officials of the Middle Kingdom period.”

Because after all… Joseph lived to be 110 years old, 80 of which were after his elevation to vizier. While he surely wasn’t in power the whole time, he was respected throughout his entire life as evidenced by the fact that he was given a royal burial – commoners at this point in history were not mummified or put in tombs next to Pharaoh!

At el-Lisht he [Mentuhotep] had a large tomb next to the pyramid of Senusret I. When it was found it was badly damaged, but there are remains of high quality reliefs and fragments of statues. The burial chamber still contained two sarcophagi, one smashed and the other one well preserved, made of granite and with brightly painted interiors. (Wikipedia, “Mentuhotep”)

And this, to me, is the most important evidence of all. Try to imagine a circumstance where one sarcophagus is smashed, and the other well preserved. Priests who needed to access the body for some reason would have done it respectfully, carefully.

Thieves would have broken both, to get at the gold inside. Why would only one be broken, and the other not? I can only think of one reasonable answer: only one had Joseph’s bones in it – and the Israelites fled Egypt in haste, and were not interested in preserving the sarcophagus!

Exodus 13:19 Moses took the bones of Joseph with him, for he had made the children of Israel swear, saying, “God will surely visit you, and you shall carry up my bones away from here with you.”

Whomever was in the other coffin – his wife, his son, who knows – wasn’t important to the Israelites and they were in a hurry. But the size and location of the coffin is surprising to historians, since he was unusually honored for a mere vizier…

The size and proximity of Mentuhotep’s tomb to the pyramid of his sovereign Senwosret I, the exceptional number of life size statues inscribed for him, and his lengthy list of titles, prompts the justifiable question of whether Senwosret I might have been his Father. (Biri Fay, “Mentuhotep, Custodian of the Seal, Overseer of All the Works of Senwosret I”)

There is no genealogical data to support this conclusion; but there is a scripture to support it!

Genesis 45:8 So now it was not you that sent me hither, but God: and he hath made me a father to Pharaoh, and lord of all his house, and a ruler throughout all the land of Egypt.

Joseph was “a father to Pharaoh,” and would certainly have deserved this royal burial, since he was explicitly permitted to do literally anything he wanted in Egypt!

THE FAMINE OF SENUSRET I

But there is much more; and as you’re about to see, the weight of evidence that Mentuhotep was in the right place at the right time to be Joseph is just… overwhelming. Because Egyptian history also records a famine lasting “years” in the time of Mentuhotep, one so severe that they were reduced to cannibalism!

‘If – watch out that you’re not angry about this! Look, the whole household is like my children; everything is mine.’ A message: ‘Being half alive is better than death altogether. Look, one should say “hunger” (only) about (real) hunger. Look, they are starting to eat people here. Look, they haven’t been given such rations in any place (here). Until I reach you, you shall bear yourself with strong hearts! Look, I shall spend the Shemu here.’ (Mattias Karlsson, Translations and Interpretations of the Heqanakht Letters, quoting Parkinson)

These letters, written in the reign of Senusret I, speak of a famine in year 25 of his reign. One extreme enough that people had become cannibals – justifying his reducing an already low grain ration for his household.

Famine was rare in Egypt; that was the beauty of living there. Indeed, that’s why every time people were hungry, they went to Egypt (Abraham, Jacob, etc.). So a famine this extreme was exceptional, and cannot have happened very many times.

That it happened during the reign of Senusret, whose vizier Mentuhotep has so many traits in common with Joseph, is just further proof. If this was indeed the famine of Joseph, this 25^th year of Senusret I would be towards the end of the 7 years of famine, when Joseph was around 45.

Finally, [under Senusret I] Egypt was placed under much tighter state control: those living in the outer reaches of the country also had to pay taxes, and most people had to do corvée work – hard unpaid labour for the state … Further evidence for Sensuret’s tighter grip on the country is the ‘great enclosure.’ This was an institution that organised work for the state. Most Egyptians had to work there at least for a certain amount of time. The work was not popular.… (The-past.com, “Senusret I”)

Which is precisely what we would expect from a Pharaoh who literally owned the people of his country because of their hunger during the extreme famine!

Genesis 47:15-19 …“We will not hide from my lord how our money is all spent, and the herds of livestock are my lord’s. There is nothing left in the sight of my lord, but our bodies, and our lands. Why should we die before your eyes, both we and our land? Buy us and our land for bread, and we and our land will be servants to Pharaoh. Give us seed, that we may live, and not die, and that the land won’t be desolate.”

Another thing this Pharaoh did was a systematic rebuilding of all the temples of the land; after all, he had immense manpower and every last cent that was available throughout Egypt or the entire Middle East to spend – what better use of your money, to an ancient king?

THE UNKNOWN GOD

One curious thing is that, given the story in the Bible, we are shocked not to find some mention of Yahweh or some other sign that Pharaoh and the Egyptians were impressed by the power of Joseph’s God. They certainly would want to build Him a temple, and would most certainly have asked His name.

Problem is… Joseph didn’t know the name of his God! No one did.

Exodus 6:2-3 God spoke to Moses, and said to him, “I am Yahweh; and I appeared to Abraham, to Isaac, and to Jacob, as God Almighty; but by my name Yahweh I was not known to them.”

Moses was the first person to whom God identified Himself by name. To the others, he was known as “the god of Abraham,” or simply “the most powerful God.” Though the Bible does record the name Yahweh in earlier stories, these are written as Moses, who knew the name, told them; inserting the name where appropriate for clarity to his audience (for a full explanation, see my article “Did Abraham know the name of God?”).

So this means when Pharaoh asked Joseph, all he could have said was “I don’t know his name.”

Amun and Amaunet are mentioned in the Old Egyptian Pyramid Texts. The name Amun (written imn) meant something like “the hidden one” or “invisible,” which is also attested by epithets found in the Pyramid Texts “O You, the great god whose name is unknown.” (Wiki, Amun)

You literally could not describe Joseph’s God any better. It is inconceivable that the Egyptians would not have acknowledged what this unknown God did for them; this, then, is how the Egyptians interpreted the situation. And guess when Amun became popular?

The history of Amun as the patron god of Thebes begins in the 20^th century BC, with the construction of the Precinct of Amun-Ra at Karnak under Senusret I. The city of Thebes does not appear to have been of great significance before the 11^th Dynasty. (Wiki, Amun)

This is strongly persuasive; for unrelated reasons, which we will get to in time, I have concluded that the 6^th dynasty overlapped the 12^th dynasty, thus the Pharaoh Unas of the 6^th dynasty was precisely contemporary with the early years of Joseph. So we are gratified to learn that “Amun was first attested in the tomb of Pharaoh Unas” (Wiki, Amun).

So Joseph taught them the concept of the unknown God, who became – for understandable reasons – wildly popular, persisting as the primary God of Egypt throughout the rest of its existence as a nation:

…After the rebellion of Thebes against the Hyksos and with the rule of Ahmose I (16^th century BC), Amun acquired national importance, expressed in his fusion with the Sun god, Ra, as Amun-Ra (alternatively spelled Amon-Ra or Amun-Re). On his own, he was also thought to be the king of the gods.

Amun-Ra retained chief importance in the Egyptian pantheon throughout the New Kingdom (with the exception of the “Atenist heresy” under Akhenaten). Amun-Ra in this period (16^th–11^th centuries BC) [12^th-8^th centuries BC, my dating] held the position of transcendental, self-created creator deity “par excellence”; he was the champion of the poor or troubled and central to personal piety. With Osiris, Amun-Ra is the most widely recorded of the Egyptian gods. (Wiki, Amun)

The nature of this God is not unlike what Joseph might have described Him as, granted that the Egyptians played fast and loose with the nature of their gods; still…

The victory against the “foreign rulers” achieved by pharaohs who worshipped Amun caused him to be seen as a champion of the less fortunate, upholding the rights of justice for the poor. By aiding those who traveled in his name, he became the Protector of the road. Since he upheld Ma’at (truth, justice, and goodness), those who prayed to Amun were required first to demonstrate that they were worthy, by confessing their sins. Votive stelae from the artisans’ village at Deir el-Medina record:

[Amun] who comes at the voice of the poor in distress, who gives breath to him who is wretched … You are Amun, the Lord of the silent, who comes at the voice of the poor; when I call to you in my distress You come and rescue me … Though the servant was disposed to do evil, the Lord is disposed to forgive. The Lord of Thebes spends not a whole day in anger; His wrath passes in a moment; none remains. His breath comes back to us in mercy … May your ka be kind; may you forgive; It shall not happen again. (Wiki, Amun)

This is not to say that we should worship Amun; merely to say that the Egyptians had to worship something, so they, like the Greeks, worshipped the Unknown God; precisely as we would have expected.

Acts 17:23 For as I passed along, and observed the objects of your worship, I found also an altar with this inscription: ‘TO AN UNKNOWN GOD.’ What therefore you worship in ignorance, this I announce to you.

Try to imagine a reason why the Egyptians would worship a God whose name they didn’t know? Without His name, how did they even learn of His existence, much less desire to elevate Him to the top of the pantheon as king of the gods?

That is say… try to imagine a reason that doesn’t involve Joseph.

THE LAND OF GOSHEN

The ancient Egyptians called the “canal of Joseph” the Mer-wer or “great canal,” and it was greatly expanded by later Middle-Kingdom Pharaohs Senusret II and Amenemhet III, but the agricultural part of the oasis was first developed by Senusret I – Joseph’s Pharaoh!

In the early Middle Kingdom, Amenemhat I ordered the construction of canal work along the Bahr Yusef which flooded the Faiyum and created the great Lake Moeris. … Amenemhat I’s successor, Senusret I…, seems to have felt the lake was too great a luxury and wasted prime agricultural land and so ordered a series of canals built to drain it.

Senusret I’s canal system operated off a series of hydraulics which moved the water out of the Faiyum basin to other locales while still preserving a body of water there. The result was a reclamation of fertile land, the transport of water to areas in need of irrigation, and a continuation of the eco-system the lake sustained. (WorldHistory.org, “Fayum”)

So can it possibly be a coincidence that Senusret I, who experienced a crippling famine bad enough to cause people to resort to cannibalism, “considered a lake a luxury that wasted prime agricultural land?” Especially when he knew the famine was coming ahead of time thanks to Joseph?

Almost every person who has ever researched the Israelites in Egypt has concluded that Goshen was the northeastern part of the delta. It seems strange to me that I’m one of the first people to ever question that identification, because first of all, it wasn’t the best of the land. Fayoum was!

But even after the harvest when Egypt’s fields were dry and bare, and the Nile had shrunk to an unpalatable trickle – “heated in its bed, becoming greenish, fetid, and filled with worms” in one French orientalist’s acerbic account – premodern observers consistently remarked that the Fayyūm, an oasis-like depression west of the Nile Valley in Middle Egypt, remained verdant, its canals full and flowing. Marveling at its uniqueness, the first-century BCE Greek geographer Strabo wrote that “this nome is the most remarkable of all in its appearance, prosperity, and design; it is the only one planted with large and full – grown olive trees, which produce a fine crop.” (The Garden of Egypt, Brendan Haug)

The best of the land, according to Strabo, is not the delta but the Fayoum. The quote goes on…

Centuries later, Arab writers would offer still more fulsome appreciations. In his history the Futūḥ Miṣr (“The Conquest of Egypt”), the ninth-century Egyptian author Ibn ʿAbd al-Ḥakam credited the Hebrew patriarch Joseph (Yūsuf), pharaoh’s vizier, with the Fayyūm’s design and construction. At pharaoh’s command the divinely guided prophet (nabī) drained the marsh from this wasteland pit (jawba) and excavated its unique canal system, thereby transforming the Fayyūm into a garden whose canals always delivered the right amount of water at the right time. “Those who look upon what Joseph brought to life from the Fayyūm,” Ibn ʿAbd al-Ḥakam averred, “know nothing like it in all of Egypt.”

In the following century al-Masʿūdī likewise extolled the virtues of Fayyūm irrigation, particularly the dam near the village of al-Lāhūn that regulated the head of its canal system, which he loftily described as “among the most wondrous objects and most ingenious structures, an edifice that has long endured upon the face of the earth.” The dam, he claimed, was designed to admit only such water as the Fayyūm needed and no more. Moreover, every ruler who had ever conquered Egypt traveled to admire it, drawn by the renown of its construction and workmanship. (The Garden of Egypt, Brendan Haug)

We will never know why the Arab conquerors saw this as Joseph’s canal, if they had any evidence or not for their claim; all we need to know for sure is that this area was the best in Egypt, because that is where Joseph’s family was placed.

Yet even this breathless hyperbole was surpassed by the late Ayyūbid functionary Abū ʿUthmān al-Nābulusī, author of a detailed fiscal survey of the Fayyūm entitled Bilād al-Fayyūm (“Villages of the Fayyūm,” 1244 CE). In al-Nābulusī’s account, the Fayyūm’s ceaselessly flowing waters and perennial bloom were nothing less than an earthly reflection of the Qurʾānic Garden of Paradise (Janna) with its “orchards and trees and ‘gardens beneath which rivers flow.’” A local Fayyūmī couplet that al-Nābulusī transcribed put it similarly: “How wonderful is the land of the Fayyūm among countries / like the Garden of Eternity (Jannat al-khuld) in its rivers and trees.” (The Garden of Egypt, Brendan Haug)

Surely there could be no better fit for Jacob’s family.

The rich produce of the region, which reportedly was better tasting than any other, resulted in a high demand and lucrative trade with other regions in Egypt and also abroad. (Worldhistory.org, “Fayoum”).

Anciently called the “Garden of Egypt,” the Fayoum sits in a large natural depression west of the Nile Valley. The depression is about 65 kilometers across and covers about 12,000 square kilometers. … Due to the abundance of water and the milder climate (compared to the Nile Valley), the Fayoum was and is lush in vegetation, home to a variety of animals and birds, and the only substantial area of farmland outside of the Nile Valley. Anciently, many plants and crops were grown in its fertile soil including grapes, olives, figs, wheat, barley, flax, onions, sesame, indigo, cabbage, sugar cane, and turnips. (The Fayoum … A Background, Kerry Muhlestein)

A place like this would be necessary to support a population of millions, as the Israelites numbered by the time of the Exodus. This is also one of the only places in Egypt that wine can be grown, incidentally. And everyone agrees it is the best part of Egypt. That fact, alone, proves it was Goshen.

UP TO GOSHEN

Another major problem is that Joseph told Jacob “You shall dwell in the land of Goshen, and you will be near to me” (Genesis 45:10). Now if you take the traditional interpretation of Goshen as the NE delta near Avaris, no matter where the Pharaoh of Joseph lived – Memphis, Luxor, or Ity-tawy… in no sense of the word could the NE delta be considered “near to Joseph.”

To solve this problem, other chronologers try to put Joseph under a much later Pharaoh, of the 15^th dynasty Hyksos or even of the 20^th dynasty kings who ruled from Avaris or Pi-Rameses in the delta. But that requires the Bible’s timeline to be off by centuries and which is therefore unacceptable to our history.

But if I’m right and Joseph worked for Senusret I, then he would have lived in the newly constructed capital of Ity-tawy started by Amenemhet I and expanded by Senusret I. No one knows the precise location of Ity-tawy but it was near Kahun and el-Lisht, both of which are on the narrow strip of land separating the Nile from the Fayoum oasis!

Thus, the only possible place for Jacob to be near Joseph’s capital city was the Fayoum! In fact, aside from Avaris which was capital of the Hyksos 15^th dynasty, there has never been an Egyptian capital close to the traditional Goshen. That alone suggests it’s the wrong choice.

And if it was the Fayoum, then there was only ever one capital close to it, Ity-tawy; and since only a handful of Pharaohs ruled from there in the 12^th dynasty, it strongly reinforces the belief that Joseph was indeed Mentuhotep. But we’re just getting started.

Genesis 46:28 He sent Judah before him to Joseph, to show the way before him to Goshen, and they came into the land of Goshen. Joseph prepared his chariot, and went up to meet Israel, his father, in Goshen.

Now if Goshen was indeed the NE delta, there would not be any confusion about the location; it’s literally the first thing you see when you enter Egypt. You cross the border, and you’re in Goshen. What’s more, every nomad in Canaan would have known exactly where it is, since it’s where everyone – Abraham included – went when grass got scarce in Canaan!

But we can prove it another way; because it says clearly that Joseph went UP to meet him. To our modern sensibilities, “up is north.” But not to the Egyptians! To the Egyptians, among whom Joseph had lived for decades and who educated the author of this passage, Moses, for 40 years… up is UP the Nile River! Thus, southern Egypt has always been called UPPER Egypt!

So if Joseph went UP to meet his father in Goshen, he had to go upriver! But close, as Joseph said “that you be near me.” So close, and upriver… And Ity-tawy is just a bit downstream and towards the Nile from the Fayoum.

Another thing; Joseph went to the Fayoum in a chariot. Not in a boat! The vast majority of Egyptian travel was water based since almost the entire country was connected by the Nile. Had Joseph gone from any capital, including Ity-tawy or Avaris to the NE delta he would have absolutely taken a boat, not a chariot!

And as it happens that there was an ancient road that led from Ity-tawy into the Fayoum, right over the desert.

Gerza cemetery was in turn associated with an old and traditional trade route that connected the Nile Valley to the Fayoum. … Any road that cut across the desert from the Nile Valley in this eastern-most area would have run into the Gebel el-Rus ridge, whose extremely steep hills would have barred passage. The ridge suddenly ends just north of Seila, at the exact place the canal bends towards the east for a short distance. This is exactly where a road coming from the Nile Valley area of Meidum would enter the Fayoum, making this road the most direct route between the fertile depression and the concentration of population and culture that was next to the Nile. (The Fayoum… A Background, Kerry Muhlestein)

This is literally the only possible explanation for Joseph’s use of a chariot. Because this is the only pair of destinations, Ity-tawy and the Fayoum, between which it was even possible to travel by chariot.

And another thing; consider the very strange way that Joseph told his brothers to tell Pharaoh about their occupation:

Genesis 46:31-34 Joseph said to his brothers, … “It will happen, when Pharaoh summons you, and will say, ‘What is your occupation?’ that you shall say, ‘Your servants have been keepers of livestock from our youth even until now, both we, and our fathers:’ that you may dwell in the land of Goshen; for every shepherd is an abomination to the Egyptians.”

Joseph makes a very clear causative link between them being allowed to dwell in Goshen, and their being shepherds, because shepherds were abominations to the Egyptians. Why would Joseph want Pharaoh to know that his brothers were shepherds, “abominations to the Egyptians?”

And how could that possibly help them live in Goshen? To my knowledge, this has never been satisfactorily explained until now.

Genesis 47:3 Pharaoh said to his brothers, “What is your occupation?” They said to Pharaoh, “Your servants are shepherds, both we, and our fathers.”

Here, again, our ignorance of Egyptian thinking is the cause. To the Egyptians, the Nile represented life. It was the source of all good things in Egypt. But it was also the barrier between life and death.

The Egyptian religion associated the human life and death cycle with the daily journey of Ra, the sun-god, from the east to the west. They were born in the east, and died in the west. Thus, for the entire length of Egyptian history, the Nile divided two cities in Egypt – the city of the living on the east, and the city of the dead on the west.

They didn’t have a word that means “tomb”; their word meant “palace for the dead,” because they believed the dead continued to live in their burial chambers, magically consuming the food on the walls of the graves and enjoying the fun scenes of dancing and feasting on the walls, which came to life for the dead.

Superstitious Egyptians considered it all kinds of bad luck to live on the west side of the Nile. It would be literally like living on a graveyard. While it did, at times, happen, it was very reluctantly and, when possible, temporary.

So you can see they would have been reluctant to live in the Fayoum, which was west of the Nile where the dead lived! But Jacob’s family would have had no problem with this at all. And to make sure that Pharaoh settled them there, and not among the Egyptians in their cities… Pharaoh needed to know that they were… gasp! … disgusting shepherds, best kept as far from civilized people as possible.

THE LAND OF RAMSES

Genesis 47:11 Joseph placed his father and his brothers, and gave them a possession in the land of Egypt, in the best of the land, in the land of Rameses, as Pharaoh had commanded.

Few verses have caused more problems with Biblical chronology than this one. The Pharaohs named Ramses are all from the 19^th and 20^th dynasties, far later than Joseph could possibly have lived even by the most skeptical critic – in the 13^th century BC by traditional chronology, 8^th century BC by mine.

Exodus 1:11 Therefore they set taskmasters over them to afflict them with their burdens. They built storage cities for Pharaoh: Pithom and Raamses.

Yet here Joseph settles his family in “the land of Ramses,” and then two centuries later, the Israelites were used to build “the city of Ramses,” and then years later Israelites departed from that same “Rameses” (Exodus 12:37).

This is a problem for every chronology, even conventional ones, because if we take this to mean that Jacob entered Egypt under a Ramses, and that Moses left under a Ramses, the Bible places these events 224 years apart.

The total time between the first and last, Ramses I and Ramses XI, was 215 years; this seems almost close enough at first, but it really isn’t because the first Ramses reigned only 2 years; surely not Joseph’s Pharaoh, and was followed by Seti. So we really have to count from Ramses II, so 202 years.

Yet Joseph’s Pharaoh had already been Pharaoh for some time before Joseph was appointed vizier – long enough to put people in prison for awhile and then pull them out of it, at the very least. Which means we can’t really count the 224 years from less than a decade into this Pharaoh’s reign, which means really, the conventional dating between these points allows us less than 192 years.

So no matter how we look at it, Ramses presents a problem; you either have to accept that the Bible’s dates are wrong and do some heavy refiguring, or else accept that “Ramses” has a meaning other than “a Pharaoh named Ramses I-XI.”

So how do we resolve this? Easily. In fact, I’m surprised no one figured it out before me. Because the name “Rameses” literally means born of Ra. And that’s something that literally all Pharaohs believed about themselves! Thus, in a very literal sense, all Pharaohs were Rameseses!

The birth name of Senusret I is: “son of Re, Senusret” … This is the king’s own birth name and might be common to other members of the Dynasty. The [“son of Re” in the name] emphasizes the king as the heir of the sun-god Re on Earth. (Bibalex.org, “names of Senusret I”)

All Pharaohs were born of Ra, particularly including Senusret I! Thus this doesn’t need to be the well-known Pharaoh Rameses the Great who ruled nearly a millennium later! It was simply a style of speaking about himself in the third person, saying “give them my land,” the land of the son of Ra!

But why was the Fayoum in particular Pharaoh’s land? Remember, at this point the famine was just starting. Joseph wouldn’t buy the entire land of Egypt for Pharaoh until later (Genesis 47:13-20). So why was this land Pharaoh’s?

Because Pharaoh, with Joseph’s help, had literally just created this land out of lake and desert. So of course it belonged to him, and of course he named it after himself!

I mean when you think about it, all these Israelites moving in and multiplying… why is nothing said of them displacing the native Egyptians who already lived there? Of taking land from the owners and giving it to Jacob? Because at this time, the land had literally just been created and no one lived there yet!

Now one last thing about the Fayoum, and I’ll let the matter rest until we get to Moses’ time; remember the cities that the Israelites built for Pharaoh, one was called after Pharaoh’s name – not necessarily literally the name Rameses, by the way – and the other was called “Pithom” (Exodus 1:11). Hold that thought.

The name [Fayoum] derives from the ancient Egyptian word Pa-yuum or Pa-yom meaning “the Lake” or “the Sea” and refers to Lake Moeris, created by Amenemhat I (c.1991-1962 BCE) of the 12^th Dynasty during the Middle Kingdom (2040-1782 BCE) when the kings of the 12^th Dynasty, in particular, paid special attention to it. (Worldhistory.org, “Fayoum”)

And one of the cities in Goshen that later Israelite slaves helped built was called Pithom. Pa-yom. Pi-thom. When you consider that it was transliterated from Egyptian to Hebrew, and you’re reading it now in English… that’s close enough to be very compelling. And it’s a name which refers to this exact place in Egypt. What are the odds? Nor are we the first to think this – although modern scholars reject it:

Early on, the location of Pithom—just like the locations of other similar sites, such as Tanis—had been the subject of much conjecture and debate. The 10^th-century Jewish scholar Saadia Gaon identified Pithom’s location in his Judeo-Arabic translation of the Hebrew Bible as the Faiyum, 100 kilometres (62 miles) southwest of Cairo. (Wiki, Pithom)

So I consider Goshen… found.

JOSEPH’S LATER LIFE AND DEATH

Joseph ruled as vizier for 9 years before Jacob came, at which point Jacob was 130. Jacob died at 147, 26 years after Joseph’s rise to power. At this point, Joseph was still highly in favor, and when his father died he was given the same seventy-day mourning that was accorded to the elite dead.

Genesis 50:2-12 Joseph commanded his servants, the physicians, to embalm his father; and the physicians embalmed Israel. Forty days were fulfilled for him, for that is how many the days it takes to embalm. The Egyptians wept for him for seventy days. When the days of weeping for him were past, Joseph spoke to the house of Pharaoh, saying, … “please let me go up and bury my father, and I will come again.” Pharaoh said, “Go up, and bury your father, just like he made you swear.” Joseph went up to bury his father; and with him went up all the servants of Pharaoh, the elders of his house, all the elders of the land of Egypt, all the house of Joseph, his brothers, and his father’s house. … they lamented with a very great and severe lamentation. He mourned for his father seven days. When the inhabitants of the land, the Canaanites, saw the mourning in the floor of Atad, they said, “This is a grievous mourning by the Egyptians.” Therefore, its name was called Abel Mizraim, which is beyond the Jordan.

At this point Joseph had been powerful in Egypt for 26 years; he might not have been vizier anymore, but certainly was in a position of high favor. Proven by the fact that everyone who was anyone in Egypt went to Canaan – a large distance – to mourn the father of Joseph.

If the famine had its last year in year 25 of Senusret, at that point Joseph was already 13 years into his power, which means that Jacob would have died in year 38 of Senusret I. Joseph’s place of honor was assured for he said “let me go up and bury my father, and I will come again.”

Senusret I ruled 45 years; if the historians are right, his son Amenemhat II was co-ruler for his final three years. Whether Joseph continued in office through his reign or not I can’t say, as there is no evidence that Mentuhotep did, at least that I can find.

Whatever Joseph did politically after the famine, he continued to prosper and be in favor his entire life in Egypt, for when he died he was embalmed and placed in a coffin in ‑1661 (Genesis 50:26). This would have been a very fancy, typically Egyptian style burial.

Yet at this point in history, this was not something the common people could afford; it was reserved for the nobility. Thus, Joseph remained influential and in favor throughout his life – and therefore, through the reigns of Amenemhat II and Senusret II.

Exodus 1:6-8 And Joseph died, and all his brethren, and all that generation. And the children of Israel were fruitful, and increased abundantly, and multiplied, and waxed exceeding mighty; and the land was filled with them. Now there arose up a new king over Egypt, which knew not Joseph.

The king after Senusret II was, imaginatively enough, Senusret III, who began to rule after ‑1655, about 6 years after the death of Pharaoh. It’s unlikely that he didn’t know Joseph, or at least of him. But after his rule of 39 years, the memory of Joseph would be well-faded.

So Joseph and all those who knew him would be well forgotten by the time the next Pharaoh Amenemhat III began to rule in either ‑1640 or possibly as late as ‑1616 (Egyptologists can’t agree if the kings of Dynasty 12 had joint rules or not, so it makes a difference – but not much of one to us for now).

Regardless, this Pharaoh Amenemhat III would have ruled no less than 21 years, and quite likely up to 45 years after the death of Joseph. Ample time for “Joseph to die, and all his brethren, and all that generation.”

THE OPPRESSION

It’s important to realize that the Israelites were not slaves the entire time they were in Egypt. Joseph certainly wouldn’t have let his brothers serve hard bondage in Egypt; indeed, Pharaoh put Joseph’s relatives in positions of authority over flocks and such (Genesis 47:6).

The Israelites, who by this time must have numbered at least in the tens of thousands, were no doubt used for laborers, like all the native Egyptians were, but like the natives, they would have been paid and housed. But Amenemhat III decided to change that…

Exodus 1:9-10 And he said unto his people, Behold, the people of the children of Israel are more and mightier than we: Come on, let us deal wisely with them; … Therefore they did set over them taskmasters to afflict them with their burdens. And they built for Pharaoh treasure cities, Pithom and Raamses.

This is odd; what is a “treasure city,” or as some translations have it, a “storehouse city?” This had to be a unique structure of some king, to be mentioned in this way. So when we read about Amenemhet III, we are fascinated to read about his unusual building activities in the Fayoum/Pithom area…

Senusret III’s successor was Amenemhat III … who devoted significant attention to the region [of the Fayoum]. He returned to the policies of Senusret I and installed retaining walls, dikes, and canals to lower the level of Lake Moeris further and provide more arable land. He built the famous Labyrinth as part of his temple complex at Hawara which Herodotus would later record as more impressive than any of the Seven Wonders of the Ancient World. Amenemhat III also erected a number of other remarkable monuments throughout the area, as the kings of the 12^th Dynasty had done before him, and instituted policies which stimulated the economy further and encouraged trade.

Wikipedia says “the floorplan of the Labyrinth itself is estimated to have covered around 28,000 m² (300,000 sq ft).” In Herodotus’ own words:

[The Egyptians] made a labyrinth [… which] surpasses even the pyramids. It has twelve roofed courts with doors facing each other: six face north and six south, in two continuous lines, all within one outer wall. There are also double sets of chambers, three thousand altogether, fifteen hundred above and the same number under ground. … We learned through conversation about [the labyrinth’s] underground chambers; the Egyptian caretakers would by no means show them, as they were, they said, the burial vaults of the kings who first built this labyrinth, and of the sacred crocodiles. … The upper we saw for ourselves, and they are creations greater than human. The exits of the chambers and the mazy passages hither and thither through the courts were an unending marvel to us … Over all this is a roof, made of stone like the walls, and the walls are covered with cut figures, and every court is set around with pillars of white stone very precisely fitted together. Near the corner where the labyrinth ends stands a pyramid two hundred and forty feet high, on which great figures are cut. A passage to this has been made underground. (Herodotus, as quoted in Wikipedia)

This sounds like a “storage city” to me. An absolutely unique structure, surpassing the pyramids in difficulty; built at exactly the right time in history by exactly the Pharaoh we would expect to find oppressing tens of thousands of Hebrews and putting them to work on grandiose projects.

But then Moses was born. And then Amenemhet’s own daughter adopted the boy who would destroy the Egyptian empire.

Throughout Genesis, God is referred to by the names of El, Yahweh, and Elohim. And for roughly the first 2000 years of Earth’s history, men are referred to as “calling upon the name of Yahweh.”

Genesis 4:26 And to Seth, to him also there was born a son; and he called his name Enos: then began men to call upon the name of the LORD [Yahweh].

So we are understandably extremely confused when God tells Moses – the man, it will be remembered, who WROTE Genesis – that his ancestors did not know the name of the Lord!

Exodus 6:3 and I appeared to Abraham, to Isaac, and to Jacob, as God Almighty; but by my name Yahweh I was not known to them.

So why would Moses record Abraham addressing Yahweh by name, then record God telling Moses himself that Abraham had done no such thing? Thus contradicting his own story? Let that sink in.

God told Moses that Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob had known Him by the name translated “God Almighty,” in Hebrew “El Shaddai,” but not by His name Yahweh. Only… here’s the problem. Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob are explicitly recorded, BY MOSES, as having used the name of Yahweh!

Genesis 15:7-8 He said to him, “I am Yahweh who brought you out of Ur of the Chaldees, to give you this land to inherit it.” He said, “Lord Yahweh, how will I know that I will inherit it?”

How do we solve this blatant contradiction? It begins when you realize that the name Exodus 6:3 tells us they did know, El Shaddai, isn’t really a name at all…

In northwest Semitic use, “ʼĒl” was a generic word for any god as well as the special name or title of a particular god who was distinguished from other gods as being “the god” (Wikipedia, “El”).

In English we use the same word “God” to refer to Zeus as we do to address the one true God of the Christians. Just as the Canaanites and Hebrews used “El” to refer to their own personal chief God, and also to refer to deities in general.

So then when God claimed that Abraham knew Him by the name of El, Abraham knew no more about the name of the true God than did your average Canaanite. But by addressing God as the Shaddai, the mightiest, Abraham directed his prayer to the most powerful of all the El’s.

And yet this was not a name, as such, it was a descriptor. Imagine for a moment that you didn’t know the name Zeus; if you needed to get a message through to him, you might pray to “the chief god of the Greeks,” or “the father of Hercules,” or “he who rules the gods on Olympus.”

None of these are names… and yet, if a letter were addressed to this fellow, there would be no problem delivering it to the right address. Thus you can pray to God, and get your prayer to the correct God, without knowing His actual name.

Because when Abraham sent a message – a prayer – to “the most powerful God,” well, there’s no doubt in any angel’s mind who that is. And thus, without naming Him, Abraham communicates with Him, and serves Him.

A GOD WITH NO BACKSTORY

But this was quite strange for the ancient cultures, all of whose gods had names, and origin stories, and various mythologies attached to them. But the Almighty God of Abraham had no origin story; He just… always was.

I mean think about it; what do we know about God, as a person, from the Old Testament? What did He do in the beforetime? He didn’t have a wife, or battles with monsters to brag about, He didn’t even have a son at that time.

When you think about it, the mythology of the Hebrew God is the most boring of any God. I mean, even the creation in Genesis 1 ranks as the most boring of all creation myths. God spoke and it… was. No primordial turtles or dragons, just… talking? Try to make a movie out of that!

And when it gets to the thornier question that every God gets asked eventually, “where did you come from?,” it gets even more dull. God… Well, He just… was. And had always been. And that’s a tough concept to wrap a mortal mind around.

Psalms 90:2 Before the mountains were brought forth, before you had formed the earth and the world, even from everlasting to everlasting, you are God.

Psalms 93:2 Your throne is established from long ago. You are from everlasting.

This is awesome, and taken at face value solves a lot of origin problems; no big bang needed, God made the universe. Who made God? No one, He just… is. And was. For always. If you can accept this admittedly large premise, the rest of the universe makes sense.

And yet, in all fairness, this story is a lot less exciting than, say, Marduk killing his mother the dragon Tiamat and using her bones to build a tent which we call the heavens. The idea of an absolute ruler of the universe, unchallenged by anyone or anything, is far less of a nail-biter than the daily battle of Ra against the serpent Apophis intent on devouring the world.

Against the backdrop of these exciting stories, the Hebrew God is simply… there. And so how do you define Him, describe Him, limit Him to a name? What picture can do justice to such a being – for that matter, what would you even draw? He has no major life events to depict; He never killed a dragon, nor loved a wife, nor flew on a giant bird. So what is He?

Isaiah 42:8 (WEB) I am Yahweh. That is my name. I will not give my glory to another, nor my praise to engraved images.

See, images aren’t wrong, per se. If you miss your girlfriend while you’re off to war, having her picture in your pocket is comforting reminder of her. God gets this. And if there were an image which could do justice, even in a child’s crayon drawing sort of way, God might permit them.

But God hates images because no image can help but limit His glory, and thus make you think less of Him than He truly is. No image made of matter can help but leave you with a misunderstanding of His true spiritual self. And so it’s better for you to leave God invisible, as He prefers to be until we’re ready to see Him in the flesh (Matthew 5:8).

For the same reason, God resists names; because almost any name, however glorious it might seem to you, cannot help but diminish His identity.

Which is why He much prefers to interact with people through titles; the God of Abraham, for example, is not limited because it utterly lacks any restrictive content. Is he the God of Abraham but not of anyone else? What about Noah, Balaam, or Enoch? So obviously, saying He is one person’s God doesn’t exclude Him from also being other people’s God.

Likewise the Most High God is an open-ended title. How powerful is He? More. But when you give Him a name – like, say, the God of thunder – that limits Him to that role, as Baal Hadad is limited. When you call Him Jupiter, a name which derives from words meaning “bright father” that slots Him into a role. While true, He is vastly more than that… so He finds any name limiting.

Calling Him Buddha, a name which literally means “the enlightened one, the knowing” is true… and yet He is vastly more than that. Powerful, creator, father – all of these things are left unsaid, and thus limiting to His power if that is considered to be His NAME, a description of His essence.

THE NEW NAME

When God introduced Himself to Moses out of the burning bush, He didn’t bother with a name because He knew it would be meaningless to Moses. Instead, He identified himself through His relationship with his ancestors:

Exodus 3:6 Moreover he said, “I am the God of your father [Amram], the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob.…”

So first God goes with His old standby – I’m the God who talked to so-and-so. This is safe because it doesn’t limit Him to anything, as it’s a purely referential name. But Moses knew Israel was going to want more than that.

Verses 13-14 Moses said to God, “Behold, when I come to the children of Israel, and tell them, ‘The God of your fathers has sent me to you;’ and they ask me, ‘What is his name?’ What should I tell them?” God said to Moses, “I AM WHO I AM,” and he said, “You shall tell the children of Israel this: ‘I AM has sent me to you.’”

And in spite of Moses’ direct question, God still was evasive. Rather than giving a proper name, He describes Himself again in more detail, this time saying His is the “I AM WHO I AM,” which could be translated into English more freely as “I am the Being that always Is/Was/Will Be.”

John 8:58 Jesus said unto them, Verily, verily, I say unto you, Before Abraham was, I am.

This is grammatically incorrect, but faithfully translated from the original. Because the Greek language has no word for Was/Am/Will Be. Thus Jesus rendered His existence in the present tense because in ALL presents, Jesus is.

And so God suggested to Moses that, instead of calling Him the most powerful El, he instead call Him the ever-existing El. This is a more narrow descriptor, because it eliminates more confusion between the true God and false gods like Ra.

Let’s say you were an Egyptian, and some Hebrew tells you “I worship the most powerful God.” He might respond “Oh yeah? Me too! I love Ra.” Ra, the king of the Egyptian Gods (at least in some tellings – Egyptians fiddled with their gods a lot) – was the almighty.

And so that could conceivably be confusing. But if you were to go to that same Egyptian and say “I worship the ever-existing God” he would be confused; because no other religion has a God that has always existed!

All of the idolatrous gods, regardless of the culture, came from somewhere. Even Khnum and Ptah, and Ra, Egyptian creator gods from different regions, were said to have first created themselves – however that works – and then went on to create the universe. But they all admitted to having had a beginning. Abraham’s God did not.

Hebrews 7: 1-3 (WEB) For this Melchizedek, king of Salem, priest of God Most High, … (being first, by interpretation, king of righteousness, and then also king of Salem, which is king of peace; without father, without mother, without genealogy, having neither beginning of days nor end of life, but made like the Son of God), remains a priest continually.

In all truth, the most powerful God was a good enough descriptor at the end of the day. Even the angels and devils know Who this is (James 2:19), and prayers sent to that address are going to wind up in the right place. But because some of the Egyptian gods were full of themselves and claimed to be all powerful, it might not be clear enough.

So God gave Moses a second one, that no other deity even pretended to have – life from everlasting to everlasting, past eternity to future eternity. And this one was definitely good enough to avoid confusion with other gods.

Still, knowing Moses wasn’t going to let this go, God finally gave Moses a proper name based on His former answer – Yahweh. This name is derived from the Hebrew word meaning Hayah “to be.”

Thus, if God were speaking today in our language, Exodus 3:14 might have read something like “I have always existed and will always exist; tell them the existent being has sent you,” and then to provide a proper name, went on to say “Go ahead and call me Existos; this now my name forever.”

This name is one of the only, if not the only, names that does not limit God. For one who has existed for an infinite amount of time has room in His story to have done infinite things, a person whose very name is based on the verb “To Be” can, by definition, be literally anything and everything.

Thus within that name He can BE a father, BE a savior, BE a creator, BE literally anything, for He IS all-powerful because He IS. Thus this name is one which does not risk confining Him to a role too small for Him.

Verse 15 God said moreover to Moses, “You shall tell the children of Israel this, ‘Yahweh, the God of your fathers, the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob, has sent me to you.’ This is my name forever, and this is my memorial to all generations.”

MY NAME IS SECRET

And this name is holy, too holy to let just anyone use. Which is why He was so cagey about giving it out earlier, even to people He liked; because the name of God in the hands of the unclean, would make the name itself cheapened by association.

Ezekiel 36:20-21 When they came to the nations, where they went, they profaned my holy name; in that men said of them, These are the people of Yahweh, and are gone forth out of his land. But I had respect for my holy name, which the house of Israel had profaned among the nations, where they went.

There are people who do not have my phone number because I don’t want them bothering me. If they want to get ahold of me, they can contact me by email or tell a mutual friend and if he deems it important, he’ll pass it along.

So likewise the name of a divine being gives you the power to get their attention; and it’s a lot easier to not give someone your number than to block it once they have it. This intuitive fact is something that more primitive cultures understood, which is why they asked… and why God didn’t share it.

Genesis 32:29 Jacob said, “Please tell me your name.” The man answered, “Why do you ask for my name?” Then he blessed Jacob there.

Judges 13:18 The angel of Yahweh said to him, “Why do you ask about my name, since it is wonderful?”

The name of a divine being can be a very personal thing to share with mortals. Which is why celebrities don’t post their cell phone number on Twitter. And so God, by sharing His name with Moses, was giving Israel His own private line; a sign of a personal relationship with them like no other.

And when you read the story carefully, the progression from “Tell them the God of Abraham… tell them the I AM…” to finally “tell them Yahweh (the existing one),” it almost reads like God names Himself in response to Moses’ question.

I admit that might be a stretch, He may have been sitting on this name for eternity waiting for the right time to share it; He may have already shared it with Noah and the pre-flood world. But we know for a fact that Abraham did not know it, nor did Isaac and Jacob.

Why then, does Moses record them interacting, by name, with a Yahweh they didn’t know?

RETCONNING GENESIS

For those of you who aren’t nerds, retconning is the practice in sci-fi and fantasy franchises of RETroactively giving CONtinuity to events across storylines that seem to contradict, in order to make the entire history of a franchise make sense.

It’s like in Star Wars, Obi-wan at first tells Luke that his father Anakin Skywalker was murdered by a pupil of Obi-wan’s called Darth Vader. At that time, George Lucas intended for Vader to simply be a bad guy, and murdering Luke’s father provided motive for revenge.

Two movies later, after plot decisions had been made to make the story be that Anakin became Vader after falling for the dark side, this contradiction needed explained. Thus, Obi-wan’s force ghost explains that this was true “from a certain point of view,” thus admitting that Obi-wan lied, resolving the contradiction and making the plot of the movies make sense.

This is a classic example of retcon, although like all nerdy things, it is hotly debated. Not unlike the Bible, actually. So then, when Moses wrote Genesis he was telling God’s honest truth… but retroactively adding information not contained in the stories he, Moses, had been told by his own ancestors, in order to provide continuity with the newly revealed knowledge about the name of the God of Abraham!

Genesis 15:7-8 He said to him, “I am Yahweh who brought you out of Ur of the Chaldees, to give you this land to inherit it.” He said, “Lord Yahweh, how will I know that I will inherit it?”

Moses told us that Abraham did not know the name of Yahweh; then proceeded to quote Abraham as addressing Yahweh by name! This is a blatant contradiction, and leads critical scholars to contrive explanations involving later copyists, scribal errors, Babylonian-era revisions, and so on.

But it’s far easier to conclude that Moses added the name to his story so that the Israelites, reading it, would know exactly to whom Moses’ story referred! Rather than blindly repeating the story he had heard from his father, Moses retold the story with new character information that his ancestors had not known!

And so when Moses records Abraham built “…an altar to Yahweh and called on the name of Yahweh” (Genesis 12:8), if we trust that Moses knew Abraham could not have used that name, it means that the story as Moses originally heard it must have used the only name Yahweh Himself said Abraham knew at that time – El Shaddai (Exodus 6:3).

Interestingly, Moses inserted the name of Yahweh into the story of the patriarchs regularly, but he didn’t do it every time. In quite a few places Abraham addressed a being He knew to be God in the first person as Adonai (Genesis 15:2, Genesis 18:27), which is literally “Master,” whether human or divine, just as Moses himself did even after knowing the name (Exodus 4:10).

[It is unfortunate that the KJV translates Adonai as “Lord” (lowercase) and translates Yahweh as “LORD” (uppercase). This is confusing since Yahweh is based on the verb “to be,” and has no actual connection with mastery or lordship whatsoever, except in that a being who IS, by definition, IS also a Lord and Master of all.]

Which means that had Abraham himself told you the story Moses relayed in Genesis 12:8, he likely would have said something like “I built an altar to my Master [Adonai] the almighty God [El Shaddai] [whomever that might be], and there I called upon the name of the most high God” [He knows who He is].

And yet Moses’ additions to the story are absolutely true; Abraham WAS calling upon Yahweh without knowing who He was. And while this is a bit confusing for us, these additions were hugely helpful for the Hebrews, because it helped them to understand that the God Moses was teaching them to serve was the same God Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob had been serving without the knowledge of His name that the Israelites now had.

So every time you see the name Yahweh inserted into the text before Exodus 3, you know this is Moses clarifying for us that this is the God of Abraham, by the name he now knew Him. And this explains a lot of odd stories, like why Hagar felt an urge to name Yahweh:

Genesis 16:13 She called the name of Yahweh who spoke to her, “You are a God who sees,” for she said, “Have I even stayed alive after seeing him?”

Moses knew that this was Yahweh; Hagar did not. Which is why she felt a need to name Him! So she called Him El Roi, the God that sees. Which is true enough; but not a proper name. Just one more (correct) way to describe Yahweh.

And we know for a fact that Moses made this exact addition to the stories as he told them, because in the very chapter where he first received the name, before Moses would have known the name, he already identifies the speaker as Yahweh before being introduced to Him!

Exodus 3:4 And when the LORD [Yahweh] saw that he turned aside to see, God called unto him out of the midst of the bush, and said, Moses, Moses. And he said, Here am I.

Moses correctly identified the speaker to us, even though at the time this happened Moses had no idea who it was. Just as he correctly identified the speaker to Abraham, even though Abraham at that time had no idea who was speaking to him – only that it was the most powerful God.

A LIMITED GOD

Many times we have expressed God as infinite and unlimited. But there is one thing that Yahweh was not; one limit He seems to have had: He wasn’t God of the dead.

Matthew 22:32 I am the God of Abraham, and the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob? God is NOT the God of the dead, but of the living.

This was a single restriction He had; as the God who could not lie (Hebrews 6:18), Yahweh was restricted to being the God of the living. Jesus – Yahweh – said so. Then He proceeded to remove that restriction:

Romans 14:9 For to this end Christ both died, and rose, and revived, that he might be Lord both of the dead and living.

As a God who has died and lives again, He now has the keys of death and hell; and thus, has one more descriptor to use. And yet His name “Yahweh” no longer really fits, for it is, by definition, the ever existing one. For three days and nights, He didn’t exist. Therefore He is no longer Yahweh!

Isaiah 62:2 The nations shall see your righteousness, and all kings your glory, and you shall be called by a new name, which the mouth of Yahweh shall name.

Which means… all the sacred-namer’s out there praying to Yahweh are praying to a dead God! Because calling Jesus the ever existing one is false! And not only is it false, but now even THAT name is limiting!

Which is why, before losing His old name, He, Yahweh, sent an angel to give Himself a new name…

Matthew 1:21 And she shall bring forth a son, and thou shalt call his name JESUS: for he shall save his people from their sins.

It is this name that will be named on all the people in His body – not Yahweh Elohim, but Jesus Elohim – the El who saves. This is why the name of Yahweh is not found in the NT, nor is it translated as the “Existing one” or the “I AM,” because those names stopped being true after Jesus died!

Philippians 2:9-11 Therefore God also highly exalted him, and gave to him the name which is above every name; that at the name of Jesus every knee should bow, of those in heaven, those on earth, and those under the earth, and that every tongue should confess that Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glory of God the Father.

Besides, “The one who always existed” is not nearly as cool as “the one who saves… everything.” But it is just as unique, as Yahweh ever was; for no one else… saves. The living and the dead, the Jew and the Gentile, the flesh and the spirit, the human and the angel. There are no limits on this name, for He has the power to save… anything.

A SEARCH FOR GOD

Josephus tells us, and I have established a fair amount of support for his claim in my article “Abraham in Egypt,” that Abraham had, by studying the motions of the gods of Mesopotamia – in other words, charting the motions of the planets – realized that the so-called gods moved in a very predictable fashion, as if they were bound by laws.

He reasoned from this that they could not be truly Gods, else they would be free to move around at will. And thus that if they did have power at all, it was because it was delegated to them by a higher, more powerful, invisible God who alone deserved worship (paraphrased from Antiquities of the Jews, 1.7.154).

And so it was that Abraham abandoned the worship of the god of his hometown of Ur, a lunar deity named Sin who simply could not be the creator of all for the moon itself was obviously bound by rules, and thus was limited and the greatest God, logically, could not be.

The true God must be worshipped in spirit and in truth, Jesus told us (John 4:23-24). And having determined this to be true, Abraham quickly realized that no one in ancient Sumer had any idea of such a God; they all being focused on worshipping the created things – the moon, sun, planets – rather than the being who had so obviously been necessary to create them.

But reason didn’t supply Abraham with a name! Only a list of descriptors; he reasoned He must be the invisible God, the most powerful God, the creator of all things, and so on. But these aren’t names.

And Abraham would have naturally wondered if somewhere in the world, there was someone else who had come to this same realization… And, just as naturally, began to look for knowledge; and if you can’t find it in Babylonia, the only other great civilization at that time was Egypt.

And so it’s not surprising that Josephus tells us this was one of the reasons why he went into Egypt:

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)

We know he went to Egypt. And if he did, indeed, debate their priests which is likely, even without Josephus’s testimony, then we know what they would have told him. He would have asked what they knew about the most high El; and what would they have said?

…in the ancient Near East, one could identify one’s own gods and religious practices with those of other nations. For example, the Egyptians could adopt Canaanite gods and their mythology into the Egyptian religious system simply by equating them with native gods (Baal = Seth, El = Ptah, etc.) (Hendel 2005, 4–5).

Their name for the Mightiest God, father and creator of all, was Ptah; who has often been compared in antiquity to the Canaanite El. In the south of Egypt, the equivalent deity was Khnum with many of the same attributes.

These would certainly have been considered candidates by Abraham for the “true” God. And just as certainly, upon questioning the priests he would have found their narratives lacking. For one thing, Ptah was worshipped as a bull and Khnum had ram’s head.

Nonetheless, though worshipped foolishly, the basic descriptors of these Gods were correct. Ptah was the creator of all the gods and the universe. He had no apparent conflicts with other gods, being somewhat aloof from the endless war of Ra and Apophis, and far above the bickering of the Osiris-Seth narrative, his great-grandchildren in some stories.

Ptah’s descriptors were a fairly good match for Abraham’s conception of El; he was known as “Ptah lord of truth, Ptah lord of eternity, Ptah the begetter of the first beginning, Ptah who listens to prayers, Ptah master of justice” and so on; epithets that Yahweh Himself would not be ashamed to wear.

I’m sure there were many other things about Ptah’s worship that were lacking. And yet it was no doubt as close as Abraham could come in Egypt to the most high El; and so it’s very intriguing that Ptah was known as the Father of the sage Imhotep who built the first pyramid of Djoser!

IMHOTEP, SON OF GOD

If you’ve read my article on Abraham in Egypt, you’ll know that I made a strong case that Abraham was, in fact, Imhotep, a name which means “He who comes in peace,” as in, comes from somewhere else – a stranger.

Imhotep was married to his sister – as was Abraham. Imhotep sparked a revolution in construction techniques which would have been known to Abraham with his background in the pyramids of Mesopotamia. This, in turn, required Imhotep to share with the Egyptians a vast knowledge of geometry, astronomy, and sciences that would have been known to Abraham.

His lifetime also corresponded directly to a massive cultural influence in Egypt from Ur-specific customs such as the refusal to eat pork among the priests and elite classes, the measuring units that were specific to Ur such as their cubit and acre, and so on.

And finally, Imhotep was present at a time in Egypt when the religion radically changed, with the introduction of mummification and many new beliefs about the afterlife and the gods. Precisely what you would expect if a wise man were 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” (Josephus again)

For Abraham would have pointed out the flaws in their philosophies to the Egyptians, and evidently did so with such wisdom that it actually made an impact on their customs; for they learned of the resurrection from him, at the very least.

Which is why they began to practice mummification in the time of Imhotep, to preserve the physical body until the resurrection (although that’s not what Abraham said at all, it’s easy to see how they got there).

“He [Ptah] was also regarded as the father of the sage Imhotep” (Wikipedia, Ptah)

All this was in that earlier article; but now we are finally able to see that Imhotep was the son of Ptah – son of the Egyptian equivalent of El. Which, as far as I can tell, makes him the only mortal to ever be a direct son of Ptah, creator of angels and father of gods!

Just as Abraham’s inheritance, promised already before he came to Egypt, was to become a son of God (see the appendix for proof). Thus Abraham was the son of the most high El, just as Imhotep was son of the most high Ptah!

Remember further that southern Egyptian equivalent of El is Khnum; so it’s interesting that at Aswan, there is to this day a rock which describes a famine of seven years in the days of Djoser, and records that Imhotep prayed to Khnum and, some dreams and offering and temple building later, the famine ends.

Separating fact from fiction here is impossible, but it’s worth noting that Abraham went to Egypt because of an extreme famine; and that while there he debated the priests and was highly promoted to a position of honor by pharaoh.

It therefore follows that during such an extreme famine, it is likely he would be tasked with solving the famine by appealing to the God who so clearly blessed him – whom the Egyptians would have certainly identified with either Khnum or Ptah, depending on their region!

And Abraham would have had no real reason to object to this, because despite searching for most of his life, he still didn’t know the name of the true God. After all, do you object when someone says you worship the God of the Catholics, or the Allah of the Muslims – even though you disagree with how they worship Him, the basic idea of their God is right enough.

Likewise, Ptah wasn’t the right God, and His worship with idols and so on was all wrong, but He was as close a list of descriptors as one could do in Egypt. And so Almighty El, Ptah, and Khnum, Sin and many other heads of divine pantheons would have been understood by Abraham as different faces and imperfect descriptions of the God who called him out of Ur – for whom he, as yet, had no name.

THE NAME OF GOD

If true, this goes a long way towards humanizing Abraham. We tend to read the Bible and walk away thinking Abraham had everything figured out. He had, after all, talked to God, who considered him a friend. But God made it just as challenging for him to find the truth as He does any of us.

And we know from the gospels that God can be incredibly cryptic when He wants to be. To the point where the disciples were shocked when Jesus wasn’t cryptic for once! (John 16:29). And so when Abraham realized God must be an invisible spirit, he had no one to teach him what He was like; no one to give him a name, or a backstory, or a list of do’s and don’ts. (Don’t’s? Don’t’s’s?).

And just as you probably once did, when you learned about this new God, you sought others who knew more than you did – since they must exist, right? To learn from them. And so he went to Egypt, hoping to learn something… and wound up teaching them. But the one thing he couldn’t teach them was the thing he didn’t know… the name of God.

Because the fact is, Abraham wasn’t sure who He was. He, like us, was a human on a journey of discovery in a world full of deception and confusion, surrounded by people who thought they had the answers but who, upon investigation, were full of… ideas.

Hebrews 11:8-10 By faith, Abraham, when he was called, obeyed to go out to the place which he was to receive for an inheritance. He went out, not knowing where he went. By faith, he lived as an alien in the land of promise, as in a land not his own, dwelling in tents, with Isaac and Jacob, the heirs with him of the same promise. For he looked for the city which has the foundations, whose builder and maker is God.

Abraham was looking for the city; his life was a journey of discovery, much as ours – much harder than ours, actually, since we have his experiences and the Bible written by his heirs to help guide us towards that city.

And we can now follow along on much more of his journey, as he discovered more about the true God by wandering through the Middle East; studying the visible things to understand the invisible, the things that were created to understand the creator, and thus learning about the nature of the Godhead (Romans 1:20) even though he was never able to put a name to the face.

Romans 1:20-25 For the invisible things of him since the creation of the world are clearly seen, being perceived through the things that are made, even his everlasting power and divinity; that they may be without excuse. … they became fools, and traded the glory of the incorruptible God for the likeness of an image of corruptible man, and of birds, and four-footed animals, and creeping things. … who exchanged the truth of God for a lie, and worshipped and served the creature rather than the Creator, who is blessed forever. Amen.

Abraham was the first after the flood to reverse this trend, and seek the Creator instead of the created. He grew up in Ur, where the mightiest God, Father of all, was Sin – the moon God. And at some point, Abraham correctly realized that the moon wasn’t really God, and that Sin wasn’t really His name.

And so rather than worship something he knew was imperfect, Abraham worshipped Paul’s unknown God; for although in Sin, Ptah, and El Abraham found some good things, none come close to the glory the true God must have. And it was that unshakeable belief in His limitless nature, his refusal to settle for less than perfection, that made him the friend of God.

For it is better to worship a perfect God you don’t know, but who must exist… than to worship a being you can name but who, despite your best efforts, can only ever be a poor shadow of the truth. For sooner or later, such an imperfect ideal will lead you to harm others.

Something the Existing one would never do.

APPENDIX: THE FIRST HEIR

Calling Abraham “the son of God” deserves proof since Abraham never explicitly called God “Father,” nor did God call Abraham “son” in the Bible. Yet we can be absolutely certain that Abraham’s children are sons of God:

Galatians 3:26, 29 …For you are all children of God, through faith in Christ Jesus.… If you are Christ’s, then you are Abraham’s seed and heirs according to promise.

Now if our promise is to become the sons of God, and we share in the same promise, then Abraham must likewise be destined to be the son of God. Which is why God called it Abraham’s inheritance that HE would receive from God.

Hebrews 11:8-9 By faith, Abraham, when he was called, obeyed to go out to the place which he was to receive for an inheritance… dwelling in tents, with Isaac and Jacob, the heirs with him of the same promise.

Inheritances pass from fathers to children; and the original promise God gave to Abraham was…

Genesis 15:7 And he said unto him, I am the LORD that brought thee out of Ur of the Chaldees, to give thee this land to inherit it.

Furthermore, we know that Abraham had the spirit of God:

Galatians 3:14 that the blessing of Abraham might come on the Gentiles through Christ Jesus; that we might receive the promise of the Spirit through faith.

The blessing of Abraham is that we might receive the spirit through faith. Therefore it’s impossible Abraham did not have it. And that alone makes him a son of God, and joint-heir with Christ of the promises of Abraham:

Romans 8:14-17For as many as are led by the Spirit of God, they are the sons of God. For ye have not received the spirit of bondage again to fear; but ye have received the Spirit of adoption, whereby we cry, Abba, Father. The Spirit itself beareth witness with our spirit, that we are the children of God: And if children, then heirs; heirs of God, and joint-heirs with Christ; if so be that we suffer with him, that we may be also glorified together.

And therefore, we know that the promise Abraham received was to be a son of God, even though he is never explicitly called that, nor recorded as calling the most high God his Father.

While Abraham and the patriarchs were going down into Egypt, Sumer was far from uneventful. Indeed, the absence of Abraham wasn’t noticed. As has been said, Abraham’s departure roughly coincided with the arrival of Kudur-Laḫgumal the Elamite.

There followed around 75 years of the original Game Of Thrones between Eannatum, Enshakushanna, Entemena, Lugal-Anne-Mundu, Lugal-Zagesi and finally Sargon of Akkad who arguably managed to form the largest and most stable version of the Empire.

His rule also heralds the history of Semitic empires in the Ancient Near East, which, following the Neo-Sumerian interruption (21^st/20^th centuries BC), [-17^th-16^th centuries] lasted for close to fifteen centuries until the Achaemenid conquest following the 539 BC Battle of Opis. (Wiki, Sargon)

Sargon shifted the power center north and into Semitic-speaking hands, and out of the hands of the ethnic Sumerians who went into sharp decline at this point and ultimately disappeared after the Ur III period, also called the “Neo-Sumerian period” because it was the last time Enmerkar’s descendants held power in Sumer.

Speaking of Enmerkar the priest-king of Uruk, aka Nimrod, who was actually the first person to hold something like an empire in Mesopotamia, Sargon continued his legacy in other ways; in the Chronicle of Early Kings, a Babylonian text dating roughly to the time of Nebuchadnezzar, it says of Sargon…

He dug up the dirt of the pit of Babylon and made a counterpart of Babylon next to Agade. Because of the wrong he had done the great lord Marduk became angry and wiped out his people by famine. They (his subjects) rebelled against him from east to west and he (Marduk) afflicted [him] with insomnia . (Chronicle of Early Kings, a Babylonian text as cited in Wiki)

This reference to the city of Babylon is confusing to scholars, making them tend to reject this story completely as a later fabrication; which, you may be sensing by now, is a go-to move for the community of historians.

Despite their scepticism, they generally believe the Chronicle of Early Kings was probably based on the Weidner chronicle from the Kassite period, around the 12^th century BC; there is no reason not to believe that was likewise based on older stories which contained some truth to them. Scholars say of the above quote…

This seemingly anachronous reference to Babylon reproduces text from the Weidner Chronicle. Little is known of the city of Babylon in the third-millennium with the earliest reference to it coming from a year-name of Šar-kali-šarri, Sargon’s grandson. (Wiki, Chronicle of Early Kings)

But again, we have a perspective they don’t. We know that Babylon was partially built by Nimrod, but “they left off building the city” (Genesis 11:8). Knowing human nature as we do, we can be certain that following the events of Babel, they would certainly have believed the city cursed; as it no doubt was.

Jeremiah 51:24-26 I will render to Babylon and to all the inhabitants of Chaldea all their evil that they have done in Zion in your sight, says Yahweh. Behold, I am against you, destroying mountain, says Yahweh, which destroys all the earth; and I will stretch out my hand on you, and roll you down from the rocks, and will make you a burnt mountain. They shall not take of you a stone for a corner, nor a stone for foundations; but you shall be desolate for ever, says Yahweh.

Two interesting points here; God calls Babylon a “destroying mountain.” Yet Babylon is in one of the flattest places on Earth. The reference then is to the ziggurats¸ artificial mountains at the heart of all Sumerian cities. God promises to make it a “burnt mountain.”

Second, God directly curses the city saying it will never be rebuilt – and other verses in the Bible paraphrase this in a variety of ways. Granting that this was written around 1400 years after the time of Sargon, it still shows that the idea of Babylon as a cursed city was long-enduring.

So what would it mean that Sargon built the city that Nimrod abandoned? And why would he even want to do so?

Afterward in his [Sargon’s] old age all the lands revolted against him, and they besieged him in Akkad; and Sargon went onward to battle and defeated them; he accomplished their overthrow, and their widespreading host he destroyed. Afterward he attacked the land of Subartu in his might, and they submitted to his arms, and Sargon settled that revolt, and defeated them; he accomplished their overthrow, and their widespreading host he destroyed, and he brought their possessions into Akkad. The soil from the trenches of Babylon he removed, and the boundaries of Akkad he made like those of Babylon. But because of the evil which he had committed, the great lord Marduk was angry, and he destroyed his people by famine. From the rising of the sun unto the setting of the sun they opposed him and gave him no rest. (Wiki, Sargon)

The translations of that passage vary a little bit between implying the actual rebuilding Babel itself, or building a “new Babel,” a kind of model, on the other side of the river from the city of Akkad, which has never been found. Then again, both may be true.

Regardless, he clearly was involved in Babel in some way; and these passages, if true, record the first historical record of the city outside of the Bible. And they are associated, by the Babylonians themselves, with sin!

I bring this up because Sargon had, initially, had great success. But the fact that Sargon is remembered as being “cursed with insomnia” in his later years is very reminiscent of Saul who was likewise afflicted (1 Samuel 16:14-23), or Nebuchadnezzar (Daniel 2:1).

Sargon rising from cupbearer to emperor is a big jump, consistent with the blessing of God (see Saul, David, Jeroboam, etc.). Then again, getting cocky and angering God by building a cursed city is also consistent with the patterns (see Saul and Agag, David and Uriah, Jeroboam and the golden calves, etc.).

So the fact that later generations remembered Sargon’s later years as cursed directly because of the rebuilding of Babel goes a long ways towards confirming the Bible’s version of what happened with the city of Babel in the first place.

As for why he would want to – what better way for a cocky emperor to show his power, than to rebuild a city Nimrod himself couldn’t finish.

HEIRS OF SARGON

After Sargon died (‑1841), his son Rimush took over. Rimush was plagued by revolts and adopted an extremely brutal approach to the Sumerians who rebelled.

Rimush introduced mass slaughter and large scale destruction of the Sumerian city-states, and maintained meticulous records of his destructions. Most of the major Sumerian cities were destroyed, and Sumerian human losses were enormous: It appears that the city of Shuruppak was spared. (Wiki, Rimush)

His rule was not well liked, and it seems to have ended in his assassination after 9 years (‑1841‑1832). His brother Manishtushu became king, ruling for a somewhat more successful 15 years (‑1832‑1817), who likewise is claimed to be assassinated (although there is some general confusion between these two brothers in later histories, including reversing their reign order in some lists).

Regardless, Rimush’s brutal suppression of revolts brought stability at home, and Manishtushu was able to extend the empire farther abroad, including a naval battle in the Persian Gulf.

“Man-istusu, king of the world: when he conquered Ansan and Sirihum, had … ships cross the Lower Sea. The cities across the Sea, thirty-two (in number), assembled for battle, but he was victorious (over them). Further, he conquered their cities, [st]ru[c]k down their rulers and aft[er] he [roused them (his troops)], plundered as far as the Silver Mines. He quarried the black stone of the mountains across the Lower Sea, loaded (it) on ships, and moored (the ships) at the quay of Agade. …” (Wiki, Manishtushu)

The “black stone” is generally believed to be diorite from Oman, on the east of the Arabian peninsula. However, the silver presents a problem; this is presented as a naval campaign “across the lower sea,” that “plundered as far as the silver mines.” So this was not merely the capture of silver metal, but of the mines themselves.

The problem is, there are no silver mines on that part of the Arabian peninsula; and the one on the west side is not particularly good. In the picture to the rightabove [Gold and Silver: Relative Values in the Ancient Past, Ross and Bettenay], which I have cropped to focus on our area of interest, you see that the only silver mines in the area near the sea are almost to the mouth of the Indus River.

There are, of course, many inland silver mines which scholars overwhelmingly favor as the furthest boundary of his conquests; but those don’t fit the text at all; read it for yourself, Manishtushu is very clear that these things are taking place “across the lower sea,” which requires either an Arabian or Iranian coastal location.

The obvious reading of the narrative is that Manishtushu moved south, attacked Anshan (near Persepolis on the map above) and then attacked Sirihum – no one knows for sure where the latter is, though some scholars propose the Makran coast in SE Iran, not far from those same silver mines.

Following these successes over land, he then built a fleet and moved down along the coast conquering as he went; along the way, he quarried stone in Oman and reached as far as the silver deposits at the mouth of the Indus River.

If this version of events is correct, then he stopped short of invading the Indus proper, hence no reference to typical Indus goods (lapis, carnelian, etc.). But he did break their naval power, at least for a generation or two, and strangled their trade to the west beginning their decline as a civilization.

Historians would never connect events this way since their timeline is so far off, but we know that at this point the Indus Valley merchants controlled the waves; the “32 cities across the sea” are not named, but it’s difficult to imagine the Persian Gulf alone could boast 32 cities worthy of Akkad’s wrath.

So in our context, this refers to the Akkadian navy taking back the Persian Gulf from the IVC sailors; this would mean that Mesopotamian and Indus trade would cease, except under Akkadian terms. It would also mean that, had the Indus been trading directly with Egypt, it would likely no longer be possible.

That, along with his boast of conquering their cities, might suggest a reason that the IVC began to decline in roughly this time frame (‑1820’s). The last surviving patriarch, Eber, died in ‑1783 at 464 years old and was likely no longer particularly spry in the time of Manishtushu.

THE GUTIANS

Naram-sin was the next king of Akkad, and grandson of Sargon. He would see the empire reach its greatest extent during his 37 years (‑1817‑1780). But his reign was increasingly plagued by restive barbarians to the east known as Gutians.

We know this from year names of his such as “Year Naram-Sin defeated Satuni, king of the Gutium.” Though always phrased as victories, the fact they kept happening suggests the victories were less than conclusive.

No one knows who they were, although their language seems unrelated to any languages in the region – perhaps they were farther flung sons of Asshur or Elam of whom we know nothing in the Bible. Regardless, they were the next big player in the Sumerian scene. After the Sargonic dynasty of Akkad, the SKL says…

“In the army of Gutium, at first no king was famous; they were their own kings and ruled thus for 3 years.”

These people came down from the Zagros mountains of northern Iran, a nomadic barbarian race who, the SKL tells us, had a sort of rotating three-year leadership at first; in later years, they seemed to have “civilized” and settled into a more respectable lifestyle.

The current scholarly consensus is that these people had been filtering in for decades or longer. Thanks to the events surrounding Kudur-Laḫgumal and Enshakushanna, we now know that the first Gutians were probably invited in as peacekeepers by the Elamite overlords.

After a lengthy Elamite dominance, many of the Gutians were probably established and settled, and the rise of Sargon did not chase them out completely. If it did, they certainly missed the comforts and wealth of civilization, and determined to have these things for themselves as soon as a weakness was felt.

This is why Sargon’s sons Rimush and Manishtushu, in their year-names, reported regular engagements (always reported as “victories”) over the Gutians. But these victories can hardly have been decisive, for the problem always grew worse, as territories to the north and east were slowly lost to the Akkadian empire.

The best guesses of scholars at this point is that the Gutian period breaks up into two parts; a part where they were tribal chieftains, followed by a later period where they had conquered some actual cities – Adab in particular – and were more properly “kings.”

Remembering that the SKL often shows lineages before a city or tribe was dominant in Sumer, my own belief is that the first half of the Gutian list, give or take, was still as mercenaries as they had been in the times of Awan I; who were at times working for, at times working against Akkad.

There are many examples for this in history, such as the Russian Cossacks, various tribes of Native Americans working for and against the settlers, or the Romans using any number of semi-independent fringe tribes – Arabs, Germans, Gauls – to do their dirty work through threats or bribery.

But as the strength of Akkad weakened roles reversed; compare Rome against the Germanic tribes… at first they dominated the tribes through force, but then they hired them as mercenaries and then when Rome weakened those barbarians came calling and conquered Rome itself.

Likewise Akkad used some of the Gutians, and force held them at bay; but after Shar-kali-sharri died they took over the leadership role, in roughly the time of Yarlagab as you see represented by the green line in the chart. And even if they did not dominate Akkad directly, they certainly controlled most of the cities that had been subject to it, and they seemed to have been kings in Adab, no later than year 1 of Shu-durul.

Until a new threat came from the east and conquered or absorbed them once and for all.

ELAMITES

Another major player during the entire time of the Akkadian dynasty was the Elamites; we’re familiar with them from the exploits of Kudur-Laḫgumal during the Awan I dynasty, but after the Elamites were defeated in the ‑1930’s they retreated, rebuilt, and founded a new dynasty called Awan II by scholars.

The Awan II dynasty recovered from their loss of Sumer and challenged, and were defeated, by Sargon and his two sons on several occasions, allowing us to place them roughly in the proper place in time. The green arrows above show roughly when they interacted. We have no regnal length for the Awan II kings, so I have chosen an average to fit the time available for their dynasty.

Despite the growing power of the Gutians and Elamites, Akkad was strong enough to last for two more generations, through Naram-sin and his weak successor Shar-kali-sharri. But after the death of Shar-kali-sharri, the SKL describes a time of chaos; it rhetorically asks “Who was king? Who was not king?” indicating a time of anarchy which lasted three years.

A much weaker king named Dudu (if you laughed, how old are you?) was followed by Shu-durul, whose “empire” was probably confined to the walls of Akkad. These were the final kings of the Akkadian empire before it perished under uncertain circumstances.

This much historians pretty much all agree on, along with the regnal lengths of each of these kings, who after Sargon totalled about 100 years. The next great empire is the third dynasty of Ur, henceforth Ur III, whose first king was Ur-Nammu.

In between, the transition between the Akkadian and Ur III period is highly debated. This period, called the “Gutian period” since Gutians were ruling much if not all of Sumer during this time, is estimated by historians to be anywhere from 40 to 100 years long, counted from the death of Shar-kali-sharri.

We have taken the shorter view, partly because it fits the overall timeline the best; but also because it requires the fewest assumptions. Here’s what we do know about this period; some time after Sargon, but before Ur III, a new dynasty known as Uruk IV appeared, lasting 30 years.

After this, another dynasty called Uruk V appeared with a lone king known as Utu-hegal. He is known to have killed Tirigan, the last king of the Gutian dynasty according to SKL, probably in his third year. So this puts a decisive end to the Gutian period.

After Utu-Hegal had ruled 7 years he seems to have died somehow, and his younger brother Ur-Nammu of Ur founded the Ur III dynasty just after the end of the Gutian period. This would go on to become a mighty power in Sumer, but let’s not get ahead of ourselves.

The only part of this story that is unclear is when Uruk IV began; some place it at the end of Shu-durul’s reign, others at some point earlier. But the best scholarship seems to indicate that after the death of Shar-kali-sharri many territories declared independence, among them Uruk.

Which means the founding of Uruk IV is likely to date shortly after that event, which is how we have placed it on the chart, six years after his death, three years after the anarchic period, in the reign of Dudu. I mean who would want to serve a king named Dudu?

During this period, there continued to be rulers of Akkad but the empire was as good as over. The Gutians rebelled in the north and eventually settled in Adab, meanwhile the Elamites were building power in the east, and a one-time governor of Elam named Puzur-inshushinak declared independence and started conquering the territory of his one-time masters.

To help make sense of this, here is the chart. Green lines represent events which connect two kings with confidence, and which are datable reasonably securely to at least one of the kings. The reigns of Igigi, Nanum, Imi, and Elulu are the three years of chaos which began the rebellion of the city-states like Uruk and Ur.

PUZUR-INSHUSHINAK

According to one of Ur-Namma’s inscriptions, which describes his conflict with Puzur-Inshushinak, the latter occupied the cities of Awal, Kismar, and Mashkan-sharrum, and the lands of Eshnuna, Tutub, Zimudar, and Akkade. (Puzur-Inshushinak at Susa … Piotr Steinkeller)

As one of his first acts, Ur-Nammu of Ur III recaptured many important towns, specifically mentioning that he had captured back the towns that Puzur-Inshushinak, 12^th and last king of the Awan II dynasty, had taken from Sumer – notably including Akkad. Which means that by this time, the Akkadian dynasty was over, and Puzur-Inshushinak was on the throne.

It is quite certain that the foreign conquests of Puzur-Inshushinak coincided broadly with the reign of Utu-hegal of Uruk. We do not know when precisely did Puzur-Inshushinak occupy northern Babylonia, of course. But it is a good guess that, throughout Utu-hegal’s reign (of eight years), northern Babylonia remained under Puzur-Inshushinak’s control. It is equally clear that the occupation of northern Babylonia by Puzur-Inshushinak must have weakened the position of the Gutians, who at that time resided at Adab, and who may actually have ruled over northern Babylonia before its conquest by Puzur-Inshushinak. (Puzur-Inshushinak at Susa … Piotr Steinkeller)

We don’t know anything about Puzur-Inshushinak’s reign length, but it must have been decent to have done as much conquering as he evidently did.

He was a Susian who made his career by rising in the ranks of the Old Akkadian political administration (presumably of Susa). This is supported, in particular, by the use of titles conveying continuity with designations used by Akkadian regents of Susa (eg. Ešpum, Epirmu); namely: (1a). Governor (ENSI) of Susa; (1b). Governor (ENSI) of Susa and general (KIŠ.NITA/ šakanakku) of the land of Elam; and (1c). General (KIŠ.NITA/šakanakku) of Elam (Puzur-Inshushinak, Last King of Akkad? Javier Álvarez-Mon)

But what’s interesting about him is that over the course of his career, his titles evolved from being a governor of Susa, to a king of Elam, Awan, Anshan, and most telling of all, he finally adopted the very Sumerian title “king of the four quarters”; which was effectively like saying “king of the known world.”

He never really achieved this, but he apparently liked to pretend to be emperor. We’ve all been there. After an extensive review and comparison of Akkadian and Susian art, culture, and so on from the Puzur-inshushinak period, that same historian concludes…

Considered together, these political and artistic features convey a kaleidoscopic profile so heavily dominated by continuity with the Akkadian past that one might be justified to think of Puzur-Inshushinak as “the last king of Akkad.” (Ibid)

Knowing that in the Akkadian period Susa was a vassal of Akkad, it stands to reason that Puzur-Inshushinak began his career as puppet ruler of Akkad; one who gradually began to cut his own strings as his master grew weaker.

Puzur-Mama also appears in a letter about territorial disputes between two Governors, apparently sent to Shar-Kali-Sharri:

(Say to my Lord): This is what Puzur-Mama, Governor of Lagash, said: Sulum and e-apin since the time of Sargon belonged to the territory of Lagash. Ur-Utu, when he served as Governor of Ur for Naram-Sin, paid 2 minas of gold for them. Ur-e, Governor of Lagash, took them back. The consequence is that Puzur-Mama should (.…). (Wiki, Puzur-Mama)

This letter is dated to after the reign of Naram Sin; the assumption is that it dates to the reign of Shar-kali-sharri; and during that time Puzur-Mama was an obedient governor of Lagash. Puzur-Mama, in turn, is synchronized with Puzur-Inshushinak:

Puzer-Mama also appears as “King of Lagash” in a document also naming the Elamite ruler Puzur-Inshushinak, suggesting the synchronicity of the two rulers. (Ibid)

Thus, the two Puzur’s were contemporary, and one of them was contemporary with Shar-kali-sharri, last king before the anarchic period which would be a perfect time for a governor of Susa to rebel, and strike off on his own. After all, there wasn’t any clear ruler for three years.

In addition, Ur-Utu is said to have been the governor of Ur for Naram-sin (died ‑1780); it’s natural to assume this is the same person as the last king of Uruk IV, who ruled Uruk independently from ‑1725‑1719.

But this letter refers to an earlier time when he was merely a governor of Ur, 55 years earlier, subject to Akkad. While this is a long time, it’s not unprecedented for ancient kings to be in politics that long – consider Sargon, for instance. Of course, it could just be a relative or someone else with the same name.

In any case, this gives us a quadruple connection, where the lives of Puzur-Inshushinak of Elam, Puzur-Mama of Lagash, Ur-Utu of Ur and later Uruk, and Naram-sin and Shar-kali-Shari all interacted with each other in a single lifespan. If we had gone with the longer period of a century or so for the Gutians, Ur-Utu and Puzur-Inshushinak cannot fit into this picture, hence we chose the shorter period of 40 years.

To further secure these connections, Puzur-Mama’s successor was Ur-Baba (what does it say about me that I want so badly for there to have been a queen named Ur-Mama?). Anyway, Ur-Baba was followed by Gudea, a famous king of Lagash about whom we know quite a bit. Importantly, we know that he was part of a coalition with Ur-Nammu that reconquered Sumer and killed Puzur-inshushinak:

Various data indicate very persuasively that Gudea of Lagash too was part of the war on Puzur-Inshushinak. The most likely assumption is that Gudea and Ur-Namma had formed a military alliance against Puzur-Inshushinak. (Puzur-Inshushinak at Susa … Piotr Steinkeller)

Thus three generations of Lagash (Puzur-Mama, Ur-Baba, Gudea) fits well with one very long reign of Ur-Utu followed by Ur-Namma, and three generations in Akkad (Naram-Sin, Shar-kali-Shari, Puzur-Inshushinak).

THE STORY

This allows us to tell the story like this; Shar-kali-sharri was sovereign of governors in Lagash, Susa, Ur, and Uruk, among other places. Puzur-Inshushinak, who originally titled himself as the governor of Susa, was a vassal of Akkad as were the others.

But then Shar-kali-sharri died, and the unclear succession in an already weak dynasty led to three years of infighting in Akkad, while their provincial governors asked themselves “why are we serving these fools?” which led vassals everywhere to rebel. Thus, Puzur-inshushinak’s reign begins here, during the period of anarchy.

At more or less the same time Uruk rebelled and founded Uruk IV under Ur-Nigin, who had probably been the governor of Uruk under Akkad. Lagash likely also picked this time to break off the yoke in the later years of Puzur-Mama.

Meanwhile the Gutians, no longer fearing the power of Akkad, pushed further and conquered Adab, which they would use as their home base until Puzur-Inshushinak chased them out. So when the dust settled in Akkad, the new king Dudu found his empire reduced to a single city.

But Puzur-Inshushinak wasn’t content with independence. He had a taste of civilization and imperial power in the courts of Akkad, and he wanted that for himself. So he consolidated the Elamite states and pushed west, creating an empire of his own:

In view of the huge geographical scale of Puzur-Inshushinak’s conquests, it will not be unjustified to call his state an “empire.” Although this empire was short-lived, its historical importance cannot be overstated, since the act of putting of much of the Iranian plateau under a single rule, and of incorporating the Susiana into Elam, was a watershed event of the early Elamite history. (Puzur-Inshushinak at Susa … Piotr Steinkeller)

It will not be an exaggeration to conclude that Puzur-Inshushinak was not only the first native ruler to unite most of Iran but also creator of the first Iranian empire. It was as a result of these achievements, no doubt, that Puzur-Inshushinak claimed that the god Inshushinak gave him “four quarters to rule,” in which he obviously imitated the earlier achievements of Naram-Suen. At that point he also abandoned his earlier titles, replacing them with those of “the mighty one” (dannum) and the “king of Awan.” (Birth of Elam, Potts)

It’s not quite as big of a deal as Steinkeller thinks, for unbeknownst to him Kudur-Laḫgumal the Elamite had already done exactly this a century or more earlier. Nonetheless, it was significant. But really, it was a conscious imitation and briefly, continuation, of the Akkadian Empire; not unlike the Franks under Charlemagne who tried to emulate the Roman Empire that had once conquered their people.

Based on all of this, and the web of synchronisms between these people, I’ve assigned about 40 years to Puzur-Inshushinak, stretching from the anarchy after Shar-kali-shari until his defeat by Ur-nammu and Gudea – approximately ‑1750‑1710.

SHIMASHKI

The next kings of Elam are listed on the Shimashki king list, and play an important part in the next chapter of history. The first of these kings was mentioned in an inscription by Puzur-Inshushinak recounting his victories…

Toward the very end of Puzur-Inshushinak’s victory inscription, there is a passage describing how, following Puzur-Inshushinak’s victories in the Zagros, a king of Shimashki, being apparently impressed by that event, came to Puzur-Inshushinak to pay obeisance to him. Significantly, this is not only the earliest attestation of a Shimashkian ruler on record, but also of Shimashki’s name itself. The fact that Puzur-Inshushinak attaches so much importance to his encounter with the unnamed ruler of Shimashki, and that he recognizes him as a “king,” must be interpreted that this individual was a political figure in his own right, whose power, while inferior to that of Puzur – Inshushinak, was something to be reckoned with. … It will not be unreasonable to consider, therefore, that the unnamed Shimashkian partner of Puzur-Inshushinak was none other than Kirname, the first ruler of the Shimashkian dynasty. (Puzur-Inshushinak at Susa … Piotr Steinkeller)

Presumably the Shimashkians were coming on the scene from farther afield, and after the downfall of Puzur-inshushinak – which they may or may not have contributed to – they took over the reins of the Iranian territories.

Kirname [first king of the dynasty] would have been a contemporary of Ur-Namma. In turn, this would make him two generations removed from Ebarat I, the third ruler of Shimashki, whose rule seems to have begun in or shortly before the year Shulgi 44 [second king of Ur III]. (Ibid)

The twelve kings of the Shimaski king list – and probably a few others not included – would interact regularly with the kings of the later dominant states in Sumer – Ur, Isin, and Larsa – until the final king Siwe-Palar-Khuppak would be conquered by Hammurabi of Babylon.

The most important king to the story of Sumer is Kindattu, the 6^th Shimashki king, who destroyed Ur III and occupied the city for some years. But we’ll come back to that.

UR III

The details of the earlier part of Ur III aren’t clear, but it seems that Ur-nammu, the first king of the dynasty, conquered Puzur-inshushinak early in his reign:

Following Utu-hegal’s brief reign, the crown of Uruk was assumed by Ur-Namma of Ur, who probably was Utu-hegal’s younger brother. The chronology of Ur-Namma’s reign, which lasted eighteen years, is known very poorly. Even more to the truth, we know nothing certain about it. However, since the majority of his inscriptions name him a king of Sumer and Akkad, it is clear that Ur-Namma became the master of northern Babylonia relatively early in his reign. Accordingly, his conflict with Puzur-Inshushinak should probably be dated to the very beginning of his reign. (Puzur-Inshushinak at Susa … Piotr Steinkeller)

After Utu-hegal killed the last of the Gutians, and Ur-Namma expelled the Elamites from northern Sumer, the land enjoyed a golden age for about a century known as the Ur III Empire. This was a strong Ur state with long-lived and relatively benevolent rulers who were mostly unchallenged, which led to a time of peace. Well, peace-ish.

Best of all for chronologers, who in this case I agree with, the Ur III period and its successor states, the Isin/Larsa dynasties and the first (Amorite) dynasty of Babylon are all attached very tightly with a web of strong synchronisms.

“From a chronological perspective, the long period from Urnamma down to the end of the First Dynasty of Babylon … represents a firm block of 515 years. Two independent recent reconstructions have come to almost the same conclusions; only a difference of +/- 1 year seems possible for the Isin period.” (ARCANE)

They of course disagree on the absolute dates, but that is to be expected. Meanwhile, the early kings of Ur, once they had established dominance, pursued a policy of diplomatic marriages between Mari and the various rulers of Elam under the Shimaski kings. A great deal of correspondence between the contemporary states in the upper Euphrates and northern Mediterranean area has survived.

They also embarked on massive building projects, most notably the ziggurat of Ur started under Ur-Nammu and finished under Shulgi, which is still standing to this day. Kings of Ur interacted with several Shimashki kings, whether with warring or marriages – sometimes both.

But like all dynasties, later kings grew weaker as new threats came up that were harder and harder to manage. In this case, it was the arrival of the Amorites, hunger, and the general weakness of the final Ur III king, Ibbi-sin, who reigned ‑1628‑1603.

Some years after the accession of the last ruler of Ur, Ibbisuen … the disintegration of the empire started. There are several potential reasons. The presence of nomadic Amorites must have changed the socioeconomic system, probably involving various conflicts. More seriously, Ibbisuen lacked grain in the central provinces of Southern Mesopotamia and hunger must have dramatically affected the inhabitants. Hunger was less severe in Northern Babylonia, so the general Ishbierra of Isin claimed independence from Ur and declared himself king of Isin … and, as such, successor of the kingship of Ur. By that time a series of provinces had already left the state: in Ibbisuen year 3… provinces in the east and north, including Eshnuna and Susa, in Ibbisuen years 4 and 5 … Umma and Girsu, and in Ibbisuen 6, Nippur … For his final 16 years, Ibbisuen only controlled the region of the city of Ur, before the city was devastated by an army from Elam, led by Kindattu of Shimashki. (ARCANE)

Despite his weakness, he later recorded several military successes in his year names, suggesting that he formed alliances with his former subjects to defend Sumer against Elam and the Amorites:

Year 17: of Ibbisin: “The Amorites, the powerful south wind who from the remote past have not known cities, submitted to Ibbi-Suen, the king of Ur.”

Year 14: “Ibbi-Suen, the king of Ur, overwhelmed Susa, Adamdun and Awan like a storm, subdued them in a single day and seized the lords of their people.”

That’s how he tells it, at least. Given the strength the Elamites showed 10 years later, he may have been exaggerating his successes a bit. Also, his defeat of the Amorites seems to have been overblown since many later rulers of nearby Larsa were Amorites.

Regardless of what he claimed in his year names, his empire was hemorrhaging vassals in his early years; Ibbi-sin’s onetime general Ishbi-Erra had effectively extorted the kingdom of Isin from Ibbisin, with the idea of “Either make me king of Isin… or else I’ll do it myself.” Scholars generally think this was in Ibbisin’s 8^th year.

Ibbi-Sin bitterly lambasted Ishbi-Erra as “not of Sumerian seed” in his letter to Puzur-Šulgi and opined that: “Enlil has stirred up the Amorites out of their land, and they will strike the Elamites and capture Ishbi-Erra.” (Wiki, Ibbisin)

This coincides with a period of Semitic invasions and decline of ethnic Sumerians, who would soon completely disappear as an identity. Amorites, Elamites, Mitanni, Assyrians, and later Hittites and Chaldeans all invaded and settled until at some point there was no such thing as an ethnic “Sumerian” left.

Curiously, Puzur-Šulgi seems to have originally been one of Ishbi-Erra’s own messengers and indicates the extent to which loyalties were in flux during the waning years of the Ur III regime. While there was no outright conflict, Ishbi-Erra continued to extend his influence as Ibbi-Sin’s steadily declined over the next 12 years or so, until Ur was finally conquered by Kindattu of Elam. (Ibid)

The next Elamite ruler to conquer Babylonia following Puzur-Inshushinak’s feat was Kindattu, the sixth ruler of Shimashki. By sacking Ur, and by controlling it for some twenty years, this political heir of Puzur-Inshushinak’s made Babylonia pay for the annihilation of the latter’s realm by Ur-Namma and Gudea. This pattern of invasions countered by retaliations, which had began with the Sargonic conquests in Elam, was to characterize the Elamite-Babylonian relations down to the very end of these two great civilizations. (Puzur-Inshushinak at Susa, Piotr Steinkeller)

That author believes the Elamite occupation of Ur lasted 20 years, but I can’t find any substantiation for that and most scholars put it at around 8 years; what we do know for sure is from the year names of Ishbi-Erra…

Year 26, Ishbi-Erra the king brought down by his mighty weapon the Elamite who was dwelling in the midst of Ur.

Year 31, Year Ur was made safe in its dwelling place.

So he defeated them in year 26, which would be after 8 years of occupation if he began to be independent in year 8 of Ibbi-sin as most people believe. But the second year name suggests that he might not have been able to completely expel them until 5 years later.

The sack of Ur was a mighty blow to the culture of the time; it was an ancient and proud city at the peak of its glory. In response, a very emotional “Lament for Ur” was written, in the vein of Jeremiah’s lament for Jerusalem, which says things like…

The good house of the lofty untouchable mountain, E-kiš-nu-ĝal, was entirely devoured by large axes. The people of Šimaški and Elam, the destroyers, counted its worth as only thirty shekels. They broke up the good house with pickaxes. They reduced the city to ruin mounds. (Wiki, Lament for Ur)

“Mountain” in Sumer always refers to the ziggurat, the false mountains which are the closest thing you’ll find in Sumer to a “high place.” It’s curious that this temple was said to be valued by the Elamites at thirty shekels, just as Jesus was.

It’s also interesting that the city that was valued at thirty shekels was Ur, site of Abraham’s childhood and probable priesthood at that very temple. Perhaps it’s a coincidence, or perhaps more was revealed to them about the true God at times than we realize today.

Regardless, Ur was so thoroughly destroyed that the houses themselves were broken up with pickaxes, and it was occupied by Elam for around a decade before they were chased out by the founder of the Isin Dynasty.

ISIN-LARSA

As I said above, Ibbi-sin, final king of Ur III, was losing vassals fast as the Ur III empire collapsed due to famine and barbarians. The two vassals who are most important to our history are Ishbi-Erra, whom we’ve already met, and Naplanum.

Earlier inscriptions about this Naplanum suggest he may have been a wealthy merchant from Ur, who was appointed as governor of the city of Larsa. By comparing the dates when their descendants interacted, we can prove that Naplanum declared his independence from Ur just three years after Ishbi-Erra.

Naplanum would become the ancestor of the kings of Larsa, while Ishbi-Erra would become the ancestor of the kings of Isin, together forming the contemporary dynasties historians call the Isin-Larsa period which lasted from ‑1621‑1386.

For centuries theses two dynasties competed for dominance. At first Isin had the upper hand, then Larsa started pulling ahead, taking Ur away from Larsa in the reign of Gungunum and killing Lipit-Eshtar. There are many synchronisms we can use to tie these kingdoms together, but for once no one really disagrees so there’s no point in spelling them out.

Isin never really recovered after Lipit-Eshtar, and after 235 years the dynasty of Isin ended when Damiq-Ilishu was conquered by Rim-sin in the latter’s 30^th year. The joy of this victory was short-lived, however, as it was the high point of Rim-sin’s career – every year name after that just repeated the event and said “the year after the year he conquered Isin,” and so on.

Finally, after a reign of 60 years he was conquered by a king named Hammurabi, whom I’m sure you’ve heard of, in the year ‑1354.

AMORITES

Hammurabi was the 6^th king of the first dynasty of Babylon, but you may be surprised to know he was not Babylonian. At least, not in the Sumerian sense of the word; he, and his ancestors, were Amorites.

By the time of the last days of the Third Dynasty of Ur, the immigrating Amorites had become such a force that kings such as Shu-Sin were obliged to construct a 270-kilometre (170 mi) wall from the Tigris to the Euphrates to hold them off. The Amorites are depicted in contemporary records as nomadic tribes under chiefs, who forced themselves into lands they needed to graze their herds. Some of the Akkadian literature of this era speaks disparagingly of the Amorites and implies that the Akkadian – and Sumerian-speakers of Mesopotamia viewed their nomadic and primitive way of life with disgust and contempt. In the Sumerian myth “Marriage of Martu,” written early in the 2^nd millennium BC, a goddess considering marriage to the god of the Amorites is warned:

Now listen, their hands are destructive and their features are those of monkeys; (An Amorite) is one who eats what (the Moon-god) Nanna forbids and does not show reverence. They never stop roaming about …, they are an abomination to the gods’ dwellings. Their ideas are confused; they cause only disturbance. (The Amorite) is clothed in sack-leather … , lives in a tent, exposed to wind and rain, and cannot properly recite prayers. He lives in the mountains and ignores the places of gods, digs up truffles in the foothills, does not know how to bend the knee (in prayer), and eats raw flesh. He has no house during his life, and when he dies he will not be carried to a burial-place. My girlfriend, why would you marry Martu? (Wiki, Amorites)

The past several centuries before Hammurabi had been a period of rising Amorite influence, as seen by various mentions of them in the Ur III and especially the Isin period. Indeed, many of the later kings of Larsa were themselves Amorites…

Seventy years later [after Ibbi-Sin] the king of Larsa said “Zaba’ia, Amorite chief, son of Samium, built the Ebabbar.” Two generations later, Abisare … called himself “heedful [shepherd, belo]ved of the god Sîn, mighty [ma]n, [ki]ng of Ur, Amorite chief….” (Wiki, Ibbisin)

Like many barbarians before them, what were once marauding tribes got a hankering for the very civilization they were plundering and domesticated themselves. By the time of Hammurabi, Amorites spread across nearly the entire fertile crescent, from Egypt to the Persian Gulf.

This map is set during the time of Hammurabi, so in the ‑14^th century; you will notice that the land of Canaan itself is not colored on this map; this reflects historians’ belief that the Bible is not an accurate record of history; but in fact, that region was controlled by Joshua of Israel and his successors the judges.

These are the same basic peoples who would shortly become, in a manner unknown to historians, the Mitanni. You will note the Amurru to the west of the Qatna region, that is the word “Amorites” when not spelled in English.

Yet all of the colored regions were ruled by Amorites at this time, according to historians; but while this is a specific ethnicity, especially as used in the Bible to refer to certain descendants from Canaan, ancient cultures used the term far looser.

…In Sumerian they were known as the Martu or the Tidnum (in the Ur III Period), in Akkadian by the name of Amurru, and in Egypt as Amar, all of which mean ‘westerners’ or ‘those of the west,’ as does the Hebrew name Amorite. … the Akkadians also referred to them as ‘the people of Amurru’ and to the region of Syria as ‘Amurru.’ There is no record of what the Amorites called themselves.

…Van de Mieroop and others point out that ‘Amorite’ may not have originally referred to a specific ethnic group but to any nomadic people who threatened the stability of established communities. Even if this is so, at some point, ‘Amorite’ came to designate a certain tribe of people with a specific culture based on a nomadic lifestyle of living off the land and taking what was needed from the communities they encountered. They grew more powerful as they acquired more land until finally they directly threatened the stability of those in the established cities of the region. (Worldhistory.org, Amorite)

I stress this point because while there is certainly some affinity between these tribes – similar languages, similar customs – they are not necessarily all ethnically Amorite in the strict sense. That in turn is important because it opens up the possibility that some or all of these Amorites might not be Canaanites at all… but sons of Abraham.

There is, after all, “no record of what the Amorites called themselves.”

MISSING SUMERIANS

We mentioned before how the Sumerians simply disappeared without a trace; by the time of Hammurabi, it was effectively extinct as a spoken language, being replaced by Akkadian, a Semitic language related to Hebrew and Assyrian – and Amorite.

Akkadian had risen to prominence as the language of Sargon’s empire, and became widely popular as the Akkadians conquered much of the known world. After the empire fell and Sumerian-speaking Ur III replaced it, Akkadian declined somewhat and Sumerian came back to the forefront.

After the collapse of the Ur III dynasty, the troubled Isin-Larsa period saw its decline and replacement by Akkadian and Amorite. But why?

Sumerian continued to be used as a written language in religion and science for nearly 2,000 years – almost exactly how Latin is used today – but eventually even that died out around the first century AD. This tells us that the language was culturally very highly respected; so why did people stop speaking it?

A change in spoken language almost always means a population change; either by the conquerors (French into English via the Normans) or by the conquered (the Vikings learning pidgin English to communicate with the conquered population), or else by intermarriage or wholesale population replacement.

The retention of the captive’s language by the captors as a religious language and poetic language suggests that the culture of the conquered people was far more respected; think Greek to the Romans, Latin to the Germanic tribes, etc.

We know that ethnic Sumerians began to disappear or were absorbed at the same time that the spoken Sumerian language disappears. The language and the rulers, at the very least, were replaced by Amorites – it stands to reason a lot of the people were as well.

Whether these Sumerians were killed off completely, or whether they were absorbed by the incoming populations – which is the dominant theory – or whether they fled en masse to a new home is unknown.

I personally like the idea that they may have fled and ended up in Southern India; the people there are ethnically quite different from northern India, yet not like the east Asians; there are many genetic links with east African populations, whom we know would be related to Sumerians since both were descendants of Cush.

And there’s something poetic about the last Sumerians fleeing to Dilmun for salvation, only to find that Noah the ever-living was dead. This is rank speculation; makes a good story though.

MISSING AMORITES

One of the primary things that was meant to happen with the invasion of Canaan was the destruction of the Amorites. God was blunt:

Deuteronomy 20:16-17 But of the cities of these peoples, that Yahweh your God gives you for an inheritance, you shall save alive nothing that breathes; but you shall utterly destroy them: the Hittite, and the Amorite, the Canaanite, and the Perizzite, the Hivite, and the Jebusite; as Yahweh your God has commanded you;

Yet it is clear that the Hittites survived, far to the north in Turkey in their ancestral homeland, since they were a significant force much later. So we should be careful not to read this “utter destruction” language too literally.

Still, the Amorites had already taken a beating at the hand of the Hittites a few centuries earlier in the time of Kudur-Laḫgumal, to the point that most of their former land was inhabited by Hittites later in Abraham’s life.

Still, Abraham couldn’t inherit the promised land in ‑1936 when God made the promises to him because the “sins of the Amorites were not yet full” (Genesis 15:16). By the time of Joshua, they were apparently filled up.

We also know that they were the prime target of the invasion of Canaan; more than any other “-ites,” it was the Amorites whose land was given to Abraham. Given that, we would not expect much to be left of the Amorites, just a few scattered cities who negotiated peace with Israel (Judges 1:34-36, 1 Kings 9:20-21).

Amos 2:9-10 Yet I destroyed the Amorite before them, whose height was like the height of the cedars, and he was strong as the oaks; yet I destroyed his fruit from above, and his roots from beneath. Also I brought you up out of the land of Egypt, and led you forty years in the wilderness, to possess the land of the Amorite.

This metaphor speaks of complete destruction – no roots and no offspring of the Amorites. Yet if all that is true, then we are very surprised to see that the Amorites not only existed, but conquered the entire Middle East as far as the Persian Gulf within a century; holding an empire rivalling that of Sargon, albeit with a less centralized power base.

So how could a defeated people chased from their homeland by Moses and Joshua mount an invasion to conquer the oldest cities in the world?

Well… maybe they didn’t.

THE SONS OF ABRAHAM

You will remember that Medan and/or Midian became the Mitanni, whom history finds in roughly the location of Mari in the map above or a century or two later; you will also remember that it says that Dedan, a grandson of Abraham, was the ancestor of the Assyrians.

We already provided evidence for this by connecting Dedan to Dedanu, one of the “kings who dwelt in tents” in the early AKL. But we are now ready to provide a second argument; the fact that the Assyrians are not native to Assur.

Like most of you, I had always assumed that the Assyrians were ethnically linked to ancient Asshur, and at least to the Akkadians who had dwelt in the region before; but in the course of this research I learned that the Assyrians of the ‑15^th century were in fact Amorites.

As trade declined, perhaps due to increased warfare and conflict between the growing states of the Near East, Assur was frequently threatened by larger foreign states and kingdoms. The original Assur city-state, and the Puzur-Ashur dynasty, came to an end c. 1808 BC [-1358] when the city was conquered by the Amorite ruler of Ekallatum, Shamshi-Adad I. Shamshi-Adad’s extensive conquests in northern Mesopotamia eventually made him the ruler of the entire region, founding what some scholars have termed the “Kingdom of Upper Mesopotamia.” The survival of this realm relied chiefly on Shamshi-Adad’s own strength and charisma and thus collapsed shortly after his death c. 1776 BC [-1326]. (Wiki, Assyria)

To be clear, this is not believed to be a wholesale population replacement, just a conquest by Amorites; but still, it makes us much more inclined to believe the Bible when it says “And the sons of Dedan were Asshurim” (Genesis 25:2).

Because to the Sumerians, Amorites did not necessarily mean “Amorites, sons of Canaan.” But “people from what had once been the Amorite lands, i.e., Westerners.” And Abraham’s children certainly qualified.

They were westerners, from the region of Syria; precisely where Abraham’s sons were sent “east, to the east country.” So when they conquered Assyria, they became the Assyrians. We are, as always, extremely gratified to learn that the Bible knew this all along.

Shamsi-Adad’s son ruled Mari to the west; precisely the region of Job and Balaam, although a few centuries later. Meanwhile, to the south, Hammurabi the Amorite was conquering southern Babylonia; the peak of his power came a few decades after Shamsi-Adad, but suffice it to say it was a good century for Amorites.

To my knowledge no one has ever proposed that these Amorites might be anything but the Amorites of the Bible; but given the attested fact that the Sumerians used the word too generically, to mean “westerner,” it need not be the Amorites whom Joshua fought.

Indeed, it would be very odd if the Amorites, who dwelt in southern Canaan at the time of Abraham, were ethnically the same people who spread over the entire fertile crescent by the time of Joshua in ‑1467. How did they manage this? They were unable to defend a tiny amount of territory in Canaan, yet at basically the same time conquered as far as Iran?

On the other hand, 400 years is plenty of time for the sons of Abraham, “westerners” who left Canaan for the east around ‑1850 to multiply, probably in the headwaters of the Euphrates and Tigris where we find Mari on the above map.

From there it was easy to launch attacks into the aging city-states of Sumer and dominate the entire region – something we know for a fact happened, since Ibbi-Sin was constantly complaining about Amorite raids, and many of the Isin-Larsa kings either were raided by Amorites, or were Amorites.

But now we know, these were not Canaanite Amorites; these were the sons of Abraham. And the simple fact that science confirms that the population of “the east” was dominated by “westerners” is an impressive confirmation of the Bible’s accuracy; for where Abraham sent his children, we find Amorites prospering.

THE LAW CODE OF HAMMURABI

Since the discovery of the law code of Hammurabi, which scholars date to the ‑1700’s, it has been noted how many strikingly similar principles it shares with the law of Moses. “An eye for an eye,” is found there, along with some strikingly similar examples; for example:

250. If while an ox is passing on the street (market) some one push it, and kill it, the owner can set up no claim in the suit (against the hirer).

251. If an ox be a goring ox, and it shown that he is a gorer, and he do not bind his horns, or fasten the ox up, and the ox gore a free-born man and kill him, the owner shall pay one-half a mina in money. (Code of Hammurabi, Yale Avalon project)

Exodus 21:28-29 If a bull gores a man or a woman to death, the bull shall surely be stoned, and its flesh shall not be eaten; but the owner of the bull shall not be held responsible. But if the bull had a habit of goring in the past, and it has been testified to its owner, and he has not kept it in, but it has killed a man or a woman, the bull shall be stoned, and its owner shall also be put to death.

This is a reasonably common sense law, but still striking in its similarities. This, of course, causes Bible critics and skeptics to say that Moses (~1500 BC) plagiarized the code of Hammurabi (~1850 BC, they believe) for his law.

Only as you can see now, Hammurabi in ‑1354 actually post-dates Moses! So if there was plagiarism, it was the other way around – Hammurabi would have acquired it, somehow, through the writings of Moses.

Then again, the law code of Hammurabi is very similar, but hardly a copy-and-pasting of the Torah. Hence, it does not need a direct influence from Moses to exist; it suggests only a common ancestry, with similar concepts of right and wrong.

And if, as we have shown, the entire northern Mesopotamian region was populated by Abraham’s descendants, then we can see how both Moses and Hammurabi were heir to the same traditions. After all, Job and Balaam both lived quite close to Mari; Shamsi-Adad, one of the first kings of Assyria, was from Mari or nearby Terqa. Hammurabi’s ancestry almost certainly came from this region as well.

So like Job and Balaam, to whom his ancestors had certainly been exposed, he was heir to the beliefs of Abraham; albeit watered down with idolatry and beliefs of the tribes who inhabited the lands in which the sons of Abraham settled.

SUMMARY

Abraham’s descendants left Canaan for the east around ‑1850, before Abraham died (Genesis 25:6). They settled in northern Mesopotamia, mingled with the Aramites and Asshurites already there, outbred and outfought them, and ultimately became the Amorites, among others.

As for their being inaccurately called Amorites, large cultures like Sumer and Egypt tended to be snobbish, and tended not to differentiate rigorously between outlanders; the Egyptians, for example, called everyone from the Canaan-Syria area “A’amu,” which was probably derived from Amurru, regardless of their actual heritage.

Even the Bible called Abraham an Aramean; so if Abraham’s sons settled in the northern part of the fertile crescent in ancestral Amorite territories, as we know they did, then naturally they would be called Amorites by the equally uninterested Sumerians, to whom one barbarian tent-dweller was the same as any other.

So in the end there is closure in the realization that Abraham’s descendants wound up conquering the very lands he had to flee; that Chaldea, from whom Abraham was called out, would one day bow the knee to his own seed.

That the descendants of Nimrod were chased out, wiped out, or otherwise absorbed into an Abrahamic culture; God reversed the exile of Abraham from Sumer, took the land away from the original inhabitants and gave it to the those whom they persecuted.

Surely there must be some symbolism in that if you look for it.

Abraham settled in Canaan, and life seems – at least, from the Bible’s version of it – to have been relatively uneventful. When God promised him an heir “from his own body” at 85, in ‑1937, he knew his wife at 75 was too old to bear – as did she – so they decided to help God fulfil His promise by giving Abraham an heir by Sarah’s Egyptian handmaiden Hagar (Genesis 16:1-3).

This worked about as well as you’d expect, for as soon as she was pregnant Hagar hated Sarah, who hated her right back. Abraham, caught in the middle of this, told Sarah to do whatever she wanted; so she kicked the pregnant Hagar out of the house, who fled towards Egypt, along the way of Shur which led to her former home – exactly as you would expect her to do (verses 4-6).

There an angel met her and instructed her to humble herself and go back to Abraham’s house, for her son would become a great nation, and said to name her son “Ishmael,” prophesying that he would become a great nation who was at odds with every nation around him (verses 7-16).

Time passed, and when Ishmael was 13 and Abraham was 99 (‑1923), God appeared to him and made a covenant – a contract – with Abraham that if he would “walk before him and be perfect,” God would bless him and he would become a father of many nations.

The symbol of this agreement was the circumcision of every male in Abraham’s house, starting with him and Ishmael (Genesis 17:1-14, 23-27). At the same time, He changed his name from Abram (“exalted father”) to Abraham (“father of a multitude”), and changed Sarai’s name (“princess”), to Sarah (“noblewoman”).

Along with this came a promise that Sarah, 89 years old, would bear Abraham’s child. They both laughed at this idea (Genesis 17:15-17), but God was serious. On another day, but not too far in the future, God appeared to Abraham again and reiterated His promise that Sarah would bear a son, and they again laughed at the idea, which irked God a bit (Genesis 18:9-15).

Genesis 18:14 (BBE) Is there any wonder which the Lord is not able to do? At the time I said, in the spring, I will come back to you, and Sarah will have a child.

This is a very useful fact for much later chronology, because as we’ll see soon Isaac was a type of Christ, who was also known as the lamb of God; and like Isaac, Christ must have been born in the spring when lambs are always born. Contrary to what literally every Christian believes.

It’s worth noting that, when the angels went to see Lot in the next chapter, a few days later at most, he served them unleavened bread (Genesis 19:3). Which suggests that these promises were made at the time of the festival of unleavened bread which is celebrated in the spring.

SODOM AND GOMORRAH

After this God decided to visit Sodom to see if it was really as evil as He’d been told, going there with two angels – no doubt the tattletales who had told Him about how bad it was. Jude told us that this was a type of the final judgment – that God turns a blind eye to the sins of the mankind until one day He comes and sees for Himself (Jude 1:7). Because God won’t judge on hearsay, not even that of an angel.

But here we can tie back into secular history and archaeology in a very interesting way. Everyone knows the story of Sodom being evil, Lot and his daughters being saved, and the fire and brimstone falling. What people don’t know is that this miracle was far less magical than you might think.

Genesis 14: 3, 10 All these joined together in the valley of Siddim (the same is the Salt Sea). 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.

This tells us that the salt sea – what we call the Dead Sea – is now what was, at that time, a valley called Siddim full of tar pits. In Josephus, the sea is known as the asphalt sea – asphalt being an ancient word for oil tar, which is why we call our road coverings “asphalt” to this day.

Whether found in natural deposits or refined from petroleum, the substance is classed as a pitch. Prior to the 20^th century, the term asphaltum was in general use. The word derives from the Ancient Greek word ἄσφαλτος (ásphaltos), which referred to natural bitumen or pitch. (Wikipedia, “bitumen”)

Interestingly, the very first picture on that Wikipedia page is natural bitumen from that very same Dead Sea where Sodom and Gomorrah once were!

Knowing that what is now a lake was once a valley full of petroleum-based slime, we can immediately understand the nature of the “fire and brimstone” which fell from heaven. The valley was obviously a source of highly explosive natural gas; a proper sized pocket underground, under pressure, and all that would be required was an angel lighting a cigarette for it to literally rain flaming “hailstones.”

I don’t wish to imply this was not a miracle; it absolutely was. But the miracle was in the timing, in the fact that it happened when God said so, not that it happened outside of the bounds of the physical laws of the universe. The miracle was that Lot was led out of the city by an angel who knew it was about to explode because he was going to set it off.

Genesis 19:22-25 [the angel said to Lot] “Hurry, escape there [to Zoar], for I can’t do anything until you get there.” Therefore the name of the city was called Zoar. The sun had risen on the earth when Lot came to Zoar. Then Yahweh rained on Sodom and on Gomorrah sulphur and fire from Yahweh out of the sky. He overthrew those cities, all the plain, all the inhabitants of the cities, and that which grew on the ground.

See, this is true; the sulphur and fire did rain out of the sky. It just didn’t start there, it was blown there by a massive petroleum explosion that buried the city in burning tar and pitch.

After this, Lot escaped to a city, and his daughters – thinking the world had come to an end, no doubt, considering what they had just seen – decided if they were going to have children, they’d have to use the only man handy. So they got him drunk and each got pregnant; giving birth to Ammon and Moab, second cousins of Israel, and inhabitants of the neighbouring countries for millennia after.

SARAH THE BABE

After this, but before Isaac was born – so still in ‑1923 – Abraham went south to Gerar (Genesis 20:1). No reason is given, but since it follows the massive ecological disaster that was the valley of Siddim exploding, it’s likely that every place in the area became an unpleasant place to be; sulphur fumes, tar everywhere, acid rain killing grass, that sort of thing.

There, for the second time, someone found Sarah so beautiful that they just had to have her in their harem. Abraham, for the second time, told a half-truth and said that she was his (half) sister, and so Abimelech took her for his wife (Genesis 12:11-14).

At that point Sarah was 89; how many 89 year old women today are so beautiful that their husbands must fear being murdered to have them as their wives? For this to happen, Sarah cannot have appeared over 40, and more likely 30. She must have begun aging at a more-or-less modern rate after this to die at 127. Which means not only did the patriarchs have long life, they had long youth.

Probably about nine months after the events in Gerar, when Abraham was 100 (‑1922), Sarah bore Isaac, whose name means “laughter” (Genesis 21:1-2). This, because Sarah said everyone would laugh with her; but interestingly, Ishmael laughed cruelly (verses 6-9) – just as Jesus, a type of Isaac, was a “stone of stumbling” to His enemies, but “the chief cornerstone” to His friends (1 Peter 2:6-8).

As a result of his mockery, the 14-year-old Ishmael and his mother were cast out of the house by Sarah, which grieved Abraham but God said it was meant to be (verses 9-13). So Hagar found an Egyptian wife for Ishmael, and he dwelt in Paran, in Arabia.

Interestingly, this is one of only three places in the Middle East where circumcision was practiced in antiquity; all of them places Abraham went. Israel, Egypt, and Arabia. The enmity between Ishmael and Isaac would color the history of the region for 4,000 years, up to our day.

SACRIFICE OF ISAAC

After this, God tested Abraham by asking him to sacrifice Isaac; long story short, God never intended for Abraham to follow through, but He wanted to know that he would give up that which was most cherished for God.

Hebrews 11:17-19 By faith, Abraham, being tested, offered up Isaac. Yes, he who had gladly received the promises was offering up his one and only son; even he to whom it was said, “In Isaac will your seed be called”; concluding that God is able to raise up even from the dead. Figuratively speaking, he also did receive him back from the dead.

Abraham knew that God could not lie, and that God had made a promise that Abraham’s descendants would be as the grains of the sea or the stars of the sky; and specifically that they would be children of Isaac.

That obviously could not happen if Isaac died, ergo, Abraham could obey God’s instruction knowing that whatever happened, God could not let anything happen to Isaac even if he died. Because unless God were a liar, Isaac could not remain dead.

This is of course also a metaphor for the Father sacrificing Jesus, His “only begotten son,” and His returning from the dead because “it was impossible that death could hold him” (Acts 2:24).

This happened on the same spot, Mt. Moriah, where the temple of Jerusalem would one day be built, and almost certainly happened on the day of the Passover, and most likely when he was 34, the same age as Jesus was (although the Bible allows it to be anywhere from about 12 to 37 years of age).

NEWS FROM HOME

Genesis 22:20 And it came to pass after these things, that it was told Abraham, saying, Behold, Milcah, she hath also born children unto thy brother Nahor;

This is actually a key event for chronology, although you wouldn’t think it. Remember, Nahor and the rest of the family dwelt in Haran; about 600 miles north. Back then, one wasn’t just told things out of the blue, especially not after decades.

There must have been a significant event to justify sending a messenger so far afield to track down Abraham. To learn what that was, consider that it is after the sacrifice of Isaac, which most likely happened in ‑1888, when Abraham would have been 134.

And yet this messenger came before the death of Sarah when Abraham was 137 (Genesis 23:1-2), ‑1885; that leaves us a very narrow window of time between ‑1888 and ‑1885, or Abraham’s 134^th and 137^th year. What might have happened in that time?

Well, remember that Terah had Abraham when he was 70, and died when he was 205. That tells us that Terah would have died when Abraham was 135, in ‑1887 – precisely in the window we find “news from home.” And surely the death of his father would be sufficient reason to send a messenger to find Abraham!

This fact solves a very thorny chronological problem. Because Acts 7 seems to imply that Abraham was born when Terah was 130; see for yourself:

Acts 7:4 (Rotherham) Then, coming forth out of the land of the Chaldeans, he dwelt in Haran; and, from thence, when his father was dead, he removed him into this land, in which, ye, now dwell;

At first glance, this seems to say that Abraham didn’t leave Haran until after his father was dead; since that happened when Terah was 205 and Abraham was 75, ergo, Abraham must have been born at 130! But this directly contradicts the Bible’s statement that Abraham was born to Terah at 70.

And lest someone try to reason “well, Abraham’s brothers were born when Terah was 70, but Abraham was born at 130,” let them try to explain why Abraham was stunned at the idea of a man who was 99 having children while he, himself, had been born to a man 130 years of age! So shocked was he at the idea a man could have children that old, he laughed at God!

Genesis 17:17 Then Abraham fell on his face, and laughed, and said in his heart, “Will a child be born to him who is one hundred years old? Will Sarah, who is ninety years old, give birth?”

Abraham literally ROFLed at the idea. Hence, this is not possible; he must have been born at 70, as Genesis tells us. What then are we to do with Stephen’s statement? Well, read it carefully. It’s really not that clear what it says – because it uses too many pronouns. Who are the “he” and the “him” being spoken of?

Further, think about the phrase “he removed him.” That is a very odd and awkward way to say “departed,” isn’t it? And even if it does mean “departed,” what do the pronouns mean? “God moved Abraham?” “Abraham moved himself?”

Or does it mean, which makes the most sense given the immediate context… that Abraham removed his dead father’s body and brought it to Canaan! (Compare to Joseph’s bones in Exodus 13:19).

The bones of ancestors were important to people, and remember: Terah said he was going to move to Canaan (Genesis 11:31). So what better tribute could Abraham give to his father, than to fulfill his long-postponed wish of going to Canaan than to send for his body and finish the journey he started a century earlier in Ur!

So it’s no accident that “it was told Abraham…” news from home at precisely the time Terah must have died (‑1887); the Bible simply doesn’t tell us the main event that caused it – the death of Terah – because that information was already provided in Genesis 11:32. And so Abraham must have sent back servants to Haran to bring his father’s bones into the promised land.

Genesis 23:3-4 And Abraham stood up from before his dead, and spake unto the sons of Heth, saying, I am a stranger and a sojourner with you: give me a possession of a buryingplace with you, that I may bury my dead out of my sight.

Which is why, when Abraham begged a cave to bury Sarah in, he didn’t say he needed it to “bury my wife”; he said he needed it to bury his plural “dead.” Because he had more than one dead member of his family to bury.

ISAAC AND REBEKAH

After this Abraham sent a servant to get Isaac a wife of his relatives near Haran;

Genesis 24:10 And the servant took ten camels of the camels of his master, and departed; for all the goods of his master were in his hand: and he arose, and went to Mesopotamia, unto the city of Nahor.

This is a city named after Abraham’s other brother, Nahor, in “Mesopotamia.” Literally this is the Hebrew words aram naharaim, which means “Aram of the two rivers.” Aram, you will recall, was the son of Shem who first dwelt in upper Mesopotamia.

So this wasn’t Mesopotamia in the sense we usually mean it, referring to ancient Sumer/Akkad in southern Iraq, but the far northern portion of the rivers, in eastern Syria, near where Terah originally settled in Haran.

Long story short, the servant went, met Rebekah, and proposed marriage. Interestingly, her family didn’t sell her to Isaac, despite the servant bringing many gifts; they agreed to the union, but still gave her the choice.

Genesis 24:50-58 Then Laban and Bethuel answered, “The thing proceeds from Yahweh. We can’t speak to you bad or good. Behold, Rebekah is before you. Take her, and go, and let her be your master’s son’s wife, as Yahweh has spoken.” … They said, “We will call the young lady, and ask her.” They called Rebekah, and said to her, “Will you go with this man?” She said, “I will go.”

In the times of the patriarchs, at least in the Hebrew countries, women had many more rights than historians give them credit for. Regardless, she became Isaac’s wife in ‑1882, and Jacob and Esau were born 20 years later in ‑1862.

ESAU AND JACOB

Before they were born, Esau and Jacob wrestled in the womb, and Esau came out first, but Jacob had a grip on his heel as he was born. Esau was, by all measures, a better man; stronger, tougher, more honorable. But for some reason, God loved Jacob before they were even born and hated Esau.

Romans 9:13 Even as it is written, “Jacob I loved, but Esau I hated.”

Jacob was a liar, deceiver, and thief. His name actually means “supplanter,” which was something he lived up to according to Esau after Jacob had tricked Isaac into blessing him instead of Esau…

Genesis 27:36 He said, “Isn’t he rightly named Jacob? For he has supplanted me these two times. He took away my birthright. See, now he has taken away my blessing.” He said, “Haven’t you reserved a blessing for me?”

Unfortunately Isaac had already given Jacob every blessing he could think of, believing he was blessing his favorite son Esau. So he told Esau he would have a lot of good things too, but he would serve his brother. This of course did not sit well.

Genesis 27:41 Esau hated Jacob because of the blessing with which his father blessed him. Esau said in his heart, “The days of mourning for my father are at hand. Then I will kill my brother Jacob.”

Meanwhile, Esau married Hittite women whom, like a typical mother in law, Rebekah despised (verses 46). Using this, and fearful for Jacob’s safety around Esau, Rebekah schemed to convince Isaac to send Jacob to her homeland.

So he sent him to “Paddan-aram,” literally “the fields of Aram,” which is another term for the lands north of the Euphrates where Haran and Nahor were (verses 42-45). Note that by this point, the inhabitants of this particular area of Aram were no longer solely Arameans, sons of Shem; they had been heavily mixed with the Terahites who were now the inhabitants of Aram.

Esau, seeing that his parents weren’t happy with his taste in women, went to Ishmael, who now lived in Arabia, and married his daughter Mahalath – this would be Esau’s cousin. This further cemented a bond that would last for millennia between Ishmael and Esau, who were already bonded over their shared hatred of the “golden boys” Isaac and Jacob.

Which is behind the conflict in the Middle East to this very day.

JACOB IN HARAN

Jacob fled to his uncle Laban in ‑1801, who was probably jealous of his brother-in-law Isaac’s prosperity and took advantage of Jacob at least 10 times (Genesis 31:47). Jacob loved Rachel, and agreed to seven years of bondage to have her.

Laban agreed, but on the fateful night played a dirty trick and gave him Leah instead. He then demanded another 7 years of service for his second daughter (Genesis 29:16-28), and seems to have fulfilled the contract immediately, meaning Jacob married them both at roughly the same time.

The sisters, jealous as always, played lots of mind games and manipulations to try and get the better of each other, resulting in Jacob having six children by Leah, two by Rachel’s handmaiden, two by Leah’s handmaiden, and finally two by Rachel.

In the end, Jacob wound up working for 20 years for Rachel, Leah, and his inheritance in the house of Laban; and another 20 years afterwards as a junior partner with him. That there were two periods of 20 years mentioned in Genesis 31:38-39 is suggested by the language.

In the Hebrew, each “twenty” is prefaced by the word “zeh.” When repeated, this word is used to separate two distinct things, as we say “This and that, the one or the other.” Examples of this usage in scripture are Exodus 14:20, Ecclesiastes 6:5, Job 21:23-23.

It is also required by the chronology, for without getting into the details there is no way to have the kids in the order specified, with the generations given by the time they enter Egypt, and do all that in a single set of 20 years (of which he wasn’t even married for the first seven).

We know for certain that Joseph, child #11 was born when Jacob was 91, in ‑1771. We know this because Jacob stood before Egypt when he was 130 years old (Genesis 47:9), and that was the second year of the famine (Genesis 45:6), in the year ‑1732.

We also know that Joseph had become vizier of Pharaoh at 30 years old, after which came seven years of plenty and 2 years of famine to this point (Genesis 41:46); hence, Joseph was 39 in Genesis 47 and was born when Jacob was 91. Shortly after the birth of Joseph, Jacob wanted to leave Laban, who begged him to stay, which he agreed to do (Genesis 30:25).

They made agreements that Jacob could have all of the animals that came out looking a certain way; and all the animals started bearing offspring like that. Laban, seeing this, said “no, no, I want all the ones that look like that next year” so Jacob agreed and next year, none of those were born. (Genesis 30:31-43).

This happened 10 times, according to Jacob, and therefore took ten years after the birth of Joseph (since he was there a total of 40 years, this is how I conclude that Jacob came to Laban 30 years before the birth of Joseph, hence when he was 61).

When Jacob was 101 he decided it was time to leave before Laban tried to kill him (Genesis 31:1-18). It’s worth noting that, at this age, he must have been relatively youthful and vigorous to be tending the flocks.

He then journeyed into Canaan, settled there for a while; made a fragile peace with Esau, had various adventures, his children got into trouble, God reaffirmed and added to the promises He had made to Abraham and Isaac, Benjamin was born and Rachel died, and then Isaac died at 180 years old (‑1742).

Esau moved out of Canaan to the southeast, to a land which became known by his nickname “Edom,” meaning “red” (Genesis 36:6). Joseph was sold by his brothers to Midianite traders heading to Egypt where he went first as a slave, then as a prisoner, then as, effectively king.

We’ll come back to Joseph’s adventures in the next chapter, but first we need to back up to talk about a far lesser known, but historically much more important, set of Abraham’s sons – Midian and Dedan.

ASSYRIANS

After Sarah died, Abraham married another wife named Keturah and had quite a few more children who were to have a profound impact on later history; Genesis 25:1-6 tells us she bore him “Zimran, and Jokshan, and Medan, and Midian, and Ishbak, and Shuah; And Jokshan begat Sheba, and Dedan. And the sons of Dedan were Asshurim, and Letushim, and Leummim.”

To these sons and grandsons “Abraham gave gifts, and sent them away from Isaac his son, while he yet lived, eastward, unto the east country.” If you’re paying attention, you might notice that Dedan’s sons were the Asshurim. This is literally the Hebrew word for “Assyrians.”

What?

Before this point in history, there is no mention of Assyrians in Sumer. The northern Sumerians were called Akkadians. The name Assyrian comes from their capital city, Assur. This city existed from the earliest times, according to historians, and from the Bible we know it was built by Asshur, son of Shem.

But after that, the first textual reference to the city is from ‑1600, in the Ur III dynasty, where it appears as a client state of Ur. It was clearly occupied in the meanwhile, but not by any famous or important dynasties, at least, not in the SKL or under the name of Asshur.

But here Moses tells us that these sons of Abraham, some time before his death in ‑1847, had been sent “eastward, unto the east country.” Historians universally believe they went to southern Arabia, which would be “south, to the south country.” In no universe is Arabia east of Abraham’s home, or any Biblical reference point.

“The east” refers to where Balaam’s home was, on the Euphrates (Numbers 23:7); “the east country” in 1 Kings 4:30 certainly refers to Babylonian wisdom as opposed to Egyptian; Abraham came “from the east” in Isaiah 41:2; and so on.

All arguments that you will read to the contrary are circular, in the format “Arabia is where these people lived; therefore Arabia must mean “east” in the Bible”; therefore “when they went ‘east’, they went to Arabia.”

But the fact is, from Israel, there is nothing due east but desert; what little habitable land there is near the Jordan was already occupied by Ammon and Moab, and Esau a generation later. So where did the sons of Abraham by Keturah go?

They certainly didn’t go south, as most people believe they did, to settle in Arabia where Ishmael already was. Because Abraham wanted these later sons of his to be far away from his favorite son Isaac, and Arabia was too close.

He wouldn’t send them back to Laban and his family, because then it would have said they were sent to aram naharaim, which, besides, is to the north. Which means these sons were sent back towards his original homeland, Sumer, where they became the Asshurim – literally, the Assyrians! Which means they must have settled in or near the city of Ashur. (Is it Ashur or Asshur? Or was it both at different times?)

INHABITANTS OF, NOT DESCENDANTS OF

It’s worth noting that none of these sons of Dedan was named “Asshur, of whom were the Assyrians.” It says that the sons of Dedan were the Asshurim who were known in Moses’ time. Which means that Dedan and his family invaded or colonized the land of Asshur, son of Shem, and conquered or replaced the former inhabitants, becoming the civilization known to later generations as “Asshurim,” literally Assyrians.

Thus these Abrahamic Dedanites were called Assyrians, not after their ancestry, but after their land. In the same way Abraham himself was called an Aramean, even in the Bible, although genetically he certainly was not:

Deuteronomy 26:5 You shall answer and say before Yahweh your God, “A Syrian [Aramean] ready to perish was my father;…”

Abraham and his ancestors had settled in the land of Aram, founded a city called Haran, and were later known as Arameans after the land, even though they were not descended from Aram, but Eber. Likewise Jesus, though from Bethlehem and of the tribe of Judah, was called Jesus of Nazareth and a Nazarene after His adopted city in Galilee, which was of the tribe of Zebulun (Matthew 2:23).

And so when Dedan and family settled in the land of Asshur, and were later known as Asshurim even though they were not descended from Asshur. Which means the culture which would later dominate the entire Middle East from Iran to Egypt were ethnically Abrahamites.

The original “real” Assyrians, those who dwelt in the city of Asshur, may even have already left the area under pressure from the ethnic Sumerians or Akkadians; or they may have welcomed the Abrahamites and mixed with them. We may never know. But we do know that it was Abrahamites who replaced them.

Scholars, even Biblical ones, reject this without a second thought. But as it happens, the Assyrian king list (AKL) actually confirms this; for in the oldest kings of the people known to as Assyrians are “17 kings who dwelt in tents.”

To us, that doesn’t mean much, but you have to put yourself in the prejudicial mindset of Sumerians; to them, only savages dwelt in tents. Good, law-abiding, gods-fearing people lived in cities, in houses of bricks. The only people who dwelt in tents were the Gutians and other savages who dwelt in the mountains. But absolutely not anyone from Mesopotamia!

Which means, the earliest reference to the ancestors of those we know as Assyrians clearly tells us that they were not from around there! For surely the descendants of Asshur, himself, would have traced their ancestry back to the flood and the city he built in Sumer… not to barbarian tent-dwellers.

Also, it is generally agreed by scholars that these earliest kings lived sometime around time of the Sargonic-Ur III period, or around ‑1900‑1600; precisely when we would expect these earliest Assyrians to be sent east by Abraham (‑1860).

Scholars generally believe this list was commissioned by a later king, perhaps Shamsi-Adad I. But no real Mesopotamian would have faked this origin story mythological or prestige reasons, since tent-dwellers were universally hated.

Why do I stress this? Because in the AKL, one of these 17 tent-dwelling ancestors is called Didanu! Precisely the same as Dedan, whom the Bible says is ancestor of the Assyrians! Who dwelt in tents, because that is how his father, Abraham, dwelt! So when he migrated east, of course he would have come in a tent!

But he and his brothers – there are 16 total names mentioned in Genesis 25:1-6 – were sent with enough gifts from Abraham to be powerful, enough servants and tents to establish a strong presence in the “land to the east” where they became the first “kings” of Assyria!

MITANNI

Two of Abraham’s other sons were also sent east – not south, this is important. One was called Medan and the other was Midian. And in the east, precisely where Abraham said he sent these men, we find a powerful civilization called the Mitanni.

These very similar names share the consonantal structure M-D-N or M-T-N. It is well attested that the change from D to T or vise versa is very common in ancient scripts and in languages in general – for example, the English word hearT is derived from the same source as the English word carDio and corDial.

At their peak, the Mitanna controlled most of the upper Euphrates as far as Turkey and Assyria. A great deal is unknown about them, and some of their key cities have never been found, but the map below shows their highest extent as understood by Wikipedia circa ‑1100 (‑1500 in conventional dating). While it was certainly somewhat smaller in Joshua’s time, we can see that the Mitanni controlled a great deal of the land to the east.

Much later, in the ‑900s, they were known to the Egyptians as the Naharina, which you may recognize from the Hebrew word naharaim “between the rivers.” Which means by that time, they had expanded west to the region around Haran – as you see in the picture above.

The Bible tells us that Abraham’s sons Medan or Midian were sent east “with gifts,” and either of them could have given birth to the Mitanni. While they and the Assyrians made a name for themselves, the rest of the sons of Abraham seem to have been lumped together under the term “children of the east,” a term which otherwise makes little sense.

Judges 6:33 Then all the Midianites and the Amalekites and the children of the east were gathered together, and went over, and pitched in the valley of Jezreel.

Unfortunately, there is another unrelated ethnic group which shares the M-D-N structure also called Midianites who inhabited Arabia in the time of Moses (Exodus 2:15), and most scholars confuse the two, even though this was a very common name structure.

But these Arabian Midianites cannot be descended from Abraham, because Abraham sent his grandson Midian “east, to the east country,” and there is nothing “east” about SW Arabia where Moses found them when fleeing from Pharaoh.

But there were Midianites in Arabia; just not Abrahamites. When Ishmael moved to Arabia (Genesis 25:16-18), he became close with a group of Midianites there to the point where “Ishmaelites” and “Midianites” was synonymous in Genesis 37, just 150 years later.

These Midianites could not be descended from Medan or Midian, son of Abraham, who wouldn’t even be born until long after Ishmael left for Arabia, because Abraham married their mother Keturah only after Sarah died when Ishmael was around 50.

Unfortunately most scholars never think to connect Abraham’s son to the Mitanni, assuming that there was only the one group of Midianites in Arabia; but Arabia is, I must stress, south of Israel. They cannot be one and the same.

The Mitanni were an immensely powerful civilization in Bible times, and a fairly close northern neighbor to Israel at its peak. It would be extremely strange to have them be completely ignored, as the Bible seems to do; but that’s just because all mentions of them are reassigned to the Midianites of Arabia!

CUSHAN OF MIDIAN

Habakkuk 3:7-8 I saw the tents of Cushan in affliction: and the curtains of the land of Midian did tremble. Was the LORD displeased against the rivers? was thine anger against the rivers? was thy wrath against the sea, that thou didst ride upon thine horses and thy chariots of salvation?

This tells us that the land of Midian has rivers in it. You know what Arabia doesn’t have? Rivers! It doesn’t even have river, singular! But the Mitanni do! They were literally called “the two rivers” by the Egyptians.

This passage uses the same Hebrew word naharaim; it’s translated as generic “rivers,” which is correct but it may also have been a direct reference to the region of Aram Naharaim where the Mitanni dwelt. It’s just obscured by the translation.

This passage also connects Midian to Cushan; no one is certain what or where this is, and most people believe they must be in Arabia since Midian “must be” there as well; but if Midian wasn’t there, then neither was Cushan.

The passage itself is very strange; by the time of Habakkuk, in the late ‑500’s, there were no people called Midian in Arabia nor were there Mitanni in Mesopotamia. Both people had long since disappeared or been conquered by the various empires that had taken over the Middle East.

So from the start, this reference is anachronistic – it doesn’t belong here. Which means God is being poetic, either in a prophetic sense or in a past sense. Which gives us the freedom to look into the past for a “Cushan” to identify the location. And the only the only example of this name in the Bible is found in…

Judges 3:8 (YLT) And the anger of Jehovah burneth against Israel, and He selleth them into the hand of Chushan-Rishathaim king of Aram-Naharaim, and the sons of Israel serve Chushan-Rishathaim eight years;

Cushan in Habakkuk does not need to be interpreted as a place name, then; but as the people of a deceased king, or descended from a patriarch. Compare frequent examples of this such as Genesis 9:27, Psalms 78:51, Zechariah 12:7, etc.

We know that Chushan-Rishathaim was king of Aram-Naharaim, king of the two-rivers area, in the early judges period in ‑1418‑1410. We also know that Abraham’s son Midian went east, to precisely that area.

And so when in Habakkuk, God references this region and its two rivers, he address them as the tents of [king] Cushan, and references the curtains of Midian/Mitanni, because Chushan was king of the Midianites in Mesopotamia!

Which makes perfect sense; the last nation Moses attacked before the entry to the promised land was the Midianites (Numbers 31), as reprisal for the curse of Balaam which we’ll read about in a moment. After the war which ended with decisive victory for the Hebrews, they settled in Canaan. And the very first nation to attack them in Canaan 50 years later was the Mesopotamians.

Why? They still held a grudge.

THE CURSE OF BALAAM

Something that no one bothers to explain is why would the Midianites, who were literally Moses’ family¸ have fought with Moabites against him. Moses’ father-in-law Jethro was a priest and clearly a powerful man in the region. Moses even offered the Midianites them a share in the promised land (Numbers 10:29, Judges 1:16).Yet the Moabites appealed to the Midianites for help against Israel – why would they ask Moses’ in-laws for help against Moses?

Numbers 22:3-4 Moab was very afraid of the people, because they were many: and Moab was distressed because of the children of Israel. Moab said to the elders of Midian, “Now this multitude will lick up all that is around us, as the ox licks up the grass of the field.”

And another thing; why would the Moabites have to tell the Midianites and Balaam that Israel had come to their borders; certainly if these were the Midianites of Arabia, they would already known since that’s where Israel had just come from!

While we’re on the subject, why were the Midianites even involved in this conversation? The Moabites played up the threat Israel supposedly represented to the Midianites, but if the Midianites dwelt far to the south in Arabia… then Isreal’s migration had already passed their borders hundreds of miles ago. How could the Moabites convince them that Isreal posed a threat to them?

But clearly, they did pose a threat to these Midianites, which means they cannot be the same ones. At this point, Israel was camping to the north of Moab, having skirted the eastern borders of Edom and Moab to the east and cut back from the north through Amorite territory. Which means at that time they were near to these Midianites, who can only be the Mitanni!

Numbers 22:5-6 … He sent messengers to Balaam the son of Beor, to Pethor, which is by the River, to the land of the children of his people, to call him, saying, “Behold, there is a people who came out from Egypt. Behold, they cover the surface of the earth, and they are staying opposite me. Please come now therefore curse me this people; for they are too mighty for me: perhaps I shall prevail, that we may strike them, and that I may drive them out of the land; for I know that he whom you bless is blessed, and he whom you curse is cursed.”

Deuteronomy 23:4 … and because they hired against thee Balaam the son of Beor of Pethor of Mesopotamia, to curse thee.

Deuteronomy uses the term Aram Naharaim, here translated Mesopotamia as usual, to specify that Balaam dwelt far to the north, near the Euphrates. That is always used to refer to the region around Haran, in the upper Euphrates. And the narrative makes it clear that Balaam came from the north:

Numbers 22:36 When Balak heard that Balaam had come, he went out to meet him to the City of Moab, which is on the border of the Arnon, which is in the utmost part of the border.

The river Arnon formed the northern border of Moab (Numbers 21:13); so once again, why were the Midianites involved in the conversation? Because these are the Mitanni, and Balaam dwelt in their land! Moab needed their permission to send “to Pethor, which is by the River, to the land of the children of his [Balaam’s] people.”

BALAAM’S HOMETOWN

Most people would tell you that Balaam came from one of two places; the more skeptical, critical point of view says he came from Deir Allah, just a few miles north of the Arnon River and the northern border of Moab; this is because they have found some texts there that mention Balaam and his prophesies. But while Balaam did prophesy there, that doesn’t prove he was from there.

We’ve already established he came from “the river,” from “Aram naharaim,” which can only refer to the Euphrates. So Balaam certainly did not live in Deir Allah. Since the Bible also locates his hometown as Pethor, more conservative scholars (those guided more by the Bible, in this case), place him on the west side of the Euphrates in Ancient Pitru.

Pethor or Petor (פְּתוֹר) in the Hebrew Bible is the home of the prophet Balaam. In the Book of Numbers, Pethor is described as being located “by the river of the land of the children of his people.” The Bible usually uses the name “the River” to [refer to] the Euphrates; … In Deuteronomy, Balaam is from “Pethor of Aram-Naharaim” in Upper Mesopotamia. It is widely accepted that Pethor is the town Pitru, which is mentioned in ancient Assyrian records. (Wiki, Pethor)

I like the agreement of the Pitru/Pethor here, but it’s hardly conclusive given Hebrew’s lack of vowels. And the problem is, this description is missing two key factors: Balaam said he was from the east, and from a mountain.

Numbers 23:7 He took up his parable, and said, “From Aram has Balak brought me, the king of Moab from the mountains of the East. Come, curse Jacob for me. Come, defy Israel.”

Pitru doesn’t fit this description; there are no mountains, and only in the most generous sense could we call it “east.” The Bible has the word “north” and knows how to use it. With all of these factors, the only possible candidate I see is Jebel Bishri, a mountain range which is indeed near the Euphrates in the east. In the heart of Mitanni territory.

Placing Balaam on the east coast of the Dead Sea requires us to dismiss every single description about where he came from; the east, Aram Naharaim, on the river, and in the mountains. If we actually listen to those descriptors, this is the only possibility.

And the following map shows that, at least in later centuries, the Mitanni controlled a vast swath of the upper Euphrates, nearly reaching as far as the northern borders of Moab. At the time of Numbers, they would have almost certainly controlled Balaam’s mountain, which was in their core territory.

This makes sense of all the facts; why the Bible seems to make fetching him seem like such a big deal, far away from the local area; why they had to get the Midianites’ permission to cross their borders and extract one of their prophets; why Israel, moving due north, would have plausibly seemed like at threat to the northern-eastern-dwelling Mitanni.

And why the king of Moab talked to the elders of the Midianites to request Balaam, and both went together to talk to him (Numbers 22:7).Yet later there is no mention of those elders back in Moab when Balaam arrives, only the Moabite elders. Because the Midianite elders stayed in Midian!

Josephus, writing much later when knowledge of the Mitanni was likely lost, nonetheless tells the same story – that the Moabites sent ambassadors to the Midianites, who in turn sent ambassadors to Balaam.

…but [Balak king of Moab] he thought to hinder them, if he could, from growing greater, and so he resolved to send ambassadors to the Midianites about them. Now these Midianites knowing there was one Balaam, who lived by Euphrates, and was the greatest of the prophets at that time, and one that was in friendship with them, sent some of their honorable princes along with the ambassadors of Balak, to entreat the prophet to come to them, that he might imprecate curses to the destruction of the Israelite. … (Josephus)

How could Arabians know about, and be better friends with, a prophet on the Euphrates than the Moabites? This makes sense only if the ambassadors were sent, as I said, to the north – farther from Moabite territory, in Midianite territory. Balaam of course refused, so they tried again.

…Now the Midianites, at the earnest request and fervent entreaties of Balak, sent other ambassadors to Balaam, who, desiring to gratify the men, inquired again of God; (Ibid)

Note that Balak sent to the Midianites who in turn sent ambassadors to Balaam. At the risk of repeating myself, this can only make sense if the Midianites were north, and Balaam dwelt in their land – or at least, far closer to them than to Moab. That, in turn, is confirmed by the following two examples where Balaam showed a duty to the Midianites:

…but now, because it is my desire to oblige thee thyself [Balak], as well as the Midianites, whose entreaties it is not decent for me to reject, go to, let us again rear other altars … [which didn’t help] … But Balak being very angry that the Israelites were not cursed, sent away Balaam without thinking him worthy of any honor. Whereupon, when he was just upon his journey, in order to pass the Euphrates, he sent for Balak, and for the princes of the Midianites, and spake thus to them: – “O Balak, and you Midianites that are here present, (for I am obliged even without the will of God to gratify you,) it is true no entire destruction can seize upon the nation of the Hebrews, neither by war, nor by plague, nor by scarcity of the fruits of the earth, nor can any other unexpected accident be their entire ruin; …” (Ibid)

What’s key here is that Balaam twice says that he is obligated to gratify the Midianites, and “in order to pass the Euphrates,” he tries to offer an olive branch to the Mitanni whose requests “it is not decent for me to reject.” Because he lives in their land. Their land, therefore, is on the Euphrates.

Interestingly, though he inadvertently helps us prove this by being faithful to his sources, Josephus himself did not believe this, placing the Midianites in Arabia; as I said, he could not have known of the Mitanni, so was obliged to find some location in Arabia to try and make sense of this.

THE KINGDOM OF MIDIAN

Scholars are not ignorant of these problems, although they don’t talk about them much. Their solution is to propose a “diffuse network of Arabian trading groups,” of which these northern Midianites formed a part. But if that were true these would be small groups of traveling merchants, not whole cities of Midianites… but the Bible places them in cities.

Balaam, in an attempt to provide something of value to his hosts and earn their favor before leaving, finally suggests that the Moabites send the daughters of the chiefs of Midian to seduce the Hebrews and convince them to serve their pagan gods, and thereby get God Himself to curse Israel. This works wonderfully, as expected.

After the daughters of Midian do their work, at God’s command Moses sent an expedition to punish the Midianites, presumably to prevent this from happening again, with 12,000 chosen men (Numbers 31).The slaughter was immense, with probably one or two hundred thousand Midianites killed.

This, therefore, cannot be a small camp of Midianites; indeed, the Bible mentions that several cities were captured with their kings. This is a real, developed, and most importantly sedentary civilization. Not a “diffuse network of traders.”

And let me stress one last time that if these cities had been located in Arabia, Moses would have had to go back south, skirting east around the Moabites and Edomites, back where they had just left to capture cities in Arabia they didn’t need. Ridiculous!

The Bible makes no mention of such a journey because it could not have happened; these Midianite cities were close at hand, and can only have been to the north since Canaan was west and Moab was south, and they had already come from the east. Of these northern cities, Josephus says…

Now when the enemies were discomfited, the Hebrews spoiled their country, and took a great prey, and destroyed the men that were its inhabitants, together with the women; only they let the virgins alone, as Moses had commanded Phineas to do, who indeed came back, bringing with him an army that had received no harm, and a great deal of prey [675,000 sheep, according to Numbers 31:32]; fifty-two thousand beeves, seventy-five thousand six hundred sheep, sixty thousand asses, with an immense quantity of gold and silver furniture, which the Midianites made use of in their houses; for they were so wealthy, that they were very luxurious. There were also led captive about thirty-two thousand virgins. (Josephus)

What’s interesting here is the “immense quantity of gold and silver furniture,” and the references to “houses” and “cities.” This is incompatible with the known nomadic lifestyle of the Arabians, but quite in keeping with an immensely powerful state like Mitanni.

They had kings, something that the Arabians of that time probably did not have; Arabians had elders and chieftains, but kings require cities, as a rule. Something nomadic people by definition did not have. But something the Mitanni had in abundance.

Ergo, the Mitanni were the Midianites, who descended from a son of Abraham.

THE BOOK OF JOB

Job 1:1-3 There was a man in the land of Uz, whose name was Job; and that man was perfect and upright, and one that feared God, and eschewed evil … His substance also was seven thousand sheep, and three thousand camels, and five hundred yoke of oxen, and five hundred she asses, and a very great household; so that this man was the greatest of all the men of the east.

The book of Job stands unique in scripture; it has no reference to the Exodus or to Moses, at least one of which is alluded to in nearly every other book of the Bible. There are no clear quotes to any of Moses’ laws either, for that matter.

God brags extensively in the later part of the book, but confines his great works to the creation of the Earth – suggesting these other great works either hadn’t happened yet, or at least were not relevant to the audience of the book.

The flood is mentioned (Job 22:16), and the creation and sin of Adam (Job 31:33), showing that Job was heir to the same historical knowledge as Moses, but most likely was around before him, which would mean Job is the oldest book in the Hebrew Bible.

Precise dating isn’t possible, but we can get it to within a generation or so based on the names of Job’s friends. Eliphaz was a Temanite; Temanites were probably descended from Teman, son of Eliphaz, son of Esau; so Eliphaz was clearly a family name, and was most likely reused after Teman, and thus Job’s friend probably lived 3-5 generations after Esau.

We don’t know Esau’s lifespan exactly, but he was Jacob’s twin who lived ‑1862‑1715. So if we allow three generations from Esau’s time, figuring thirty years apiece, to having a mature Eliphaz, our first estimate would be that the events in Job took place not earlier than ‑1740, probably much later – but not after the time of Moses, meaning they preceded the Exodus in ‑1507.

THE LAND OF UZ

Job’s ancestry is never given, but his location was; he is said to have lived in “the land of Uz”; now Uz was a son of Aram (Genesis 10:23), which combined with him being one of the “men of the east” means he probably dwelt in the general upper Euphrates region, in some proximity to Balaam (though probably not at quite the same time).

In addition, another friend of Job’s was Bildad the Shuhite, whom most commentators agree was descended from Shuah, one of the sons of Abraham by Keturah; who was, as you’ll remember, sent far to the east.

Shuah is identified with Suhu, mentioned by Tiglath-pileser I as lying one day’s journey from Carchemish; and a “land of Uzza” is named by Shalmaneser II as being in the same neighborhood. Buz is a brother of Uz (“Huz,” Ge 22:21) and son of Nahor. Esar-haddon, in an expedition toward the West, passed through Bazu and Hazu, no doubt the same tribes. Abraham sent his children, other than Isaac (so including Shuah), “eastward to the land of Qedhem” (Ge 25:6). These factors point to the land of Uz as lying somewhere to the Northeast of Palestine. (ISBE online, “Shuhite”)

Another key is that when Job’s calamities were starting, his camels were stolen by three bands of “the Chaldeans.” The Bible seems to always treat Chaldea as synonymous with Babylon, although scholars place it somewhat farther to the south. So now we have “east from Israel, NE of Palestine, and close enough to be raided from Babylon.” And all of these things agree well with the region of Suhu.

Suhu was a region located on the Middle Euphrates that extended from Hindanu (perhaps located at modern Anqa or Tell al-Gabriya) in the north to Rapiqu (near modern Falluja) on the border with Babylonia. Suhu is attested from the early second millennium to the mid-first millennium BCE. … According to Assyrian records, Suhu was an important region of commerce. … (Wiley-Blackwell encyclopedia, “Suhu”)

In this map showing the territories of Shamsi-Adad from Wikipedia, dating to approximately ‑1400 (my dating), you can see Suhu (Suhum) just to the east of Mari. Now that’s the home of Bildad, not necessarily of Job.

Still, Shalmaneser told us that Suhu was in the same vicinity as Uzza, and as the map shows us it is northeast of Palestine, close to Chaldea, and in the same area that Abraham’s children by Keturah were sent.

That last part answers the thorny question “how did Job know the God of Abraham?” Now the answer is easy – he learned it the same way Balaam did, from his ancestors the Abrahamites!

JOB’S ANCESTRY

The specifics of Job’s own ancestry is a puzzle we may never solve; but he almost certainly was a 4^th-7^th generation descendant of Abraham. This is suggested by his longevity – he lived 140 years after his trial, even longer than Abraham himself.

Since everything else he lost was rewarded double (Job 42:10-12), and since Job was older than the fathers of adult men at the time of the trial (Job 30:1), thus at least 50-60, it stands to reason Job was 70 at the time of his trial, for a total lifespan of 210 years.

If his trial did indeed take place after the ‑1700s, say around ‑1650, it means he would have died only a few decades before the Exodus, which means men such as Balaam who lived 40 years later would certainly have known the story and communicated it to Moses in some fashion; probably not via Balaam himself, but there were plenty of ways it could have reached the Hebrews.

Remember, writing was well developed in this region – done in cuneiform, of course. Job himself is almost certainly not the author of the book as we have received it, since it records how long Job lived (something Job himself could not have done).

The best guess is that Elihu wrote it down more or less contemporary with the events in cuneiform (proto-Hebrew wouldn’t be invented until the time of Moses), and that it was updated when it was transmitted into the Hebrew canon to include Job’s age at death and other details.

It’s also worthy of note that with one exception (Job 12:9), the name of Yahweh does not appear in the body of the book, only in the prologue and epilogue (chapters 1-2 and 38-42). God is referred to as “the Almighty,” Hebrew Shaddai, the only name by which Abraham and the patriarchs knew Him until the time of Moses (Exodus 6:3).

MORE CLUES

Job 1:19 And behold, there came a great wind from the wilderness, and struck the four corners of the house, and it fell on the young men, and they are dead. I alone have escaped to tell you.

This locates Job’s dwelling as close to “the wilderness,” i.e., close to the desert but not in it, since the wind came from it. So he lived in a well watered area – which would be necessary to support a wealth of “seven thousand sheep, three thousand camels, five hundred yoke of oxen, five hundred female donkeys, and a very great household” (Job 1:3).

Since Job counted his wealth in livestock, he was clearly from a pastoral culture; but not a nomadic one, for his sons were killed when their houses were smitten (Job 1:19). Thus he did not dwell in tents.

And these houses were made of clay, not stone, for they could be “dug through” (Job 24:16). This adds more evidence that Job didn’t live in the rocky mountains east of Israel, where some place him, but rather in the Euphrates area where building out of clay was more normal.

Job 29:7-10 when I went forth to the city gate, when I prepared my seat in the street. The young men saw me and hid themselves. The aged rose up and stood. The princes refrained from talking, and laid their hand on their mouth. The voice of the nobles was hushed, and their tongue stuck to the roof of their mouth.

Further, he mentions having spent time in cities; he mentions sitting in the street, which was a common practice where elders would sit in or near the city gates judging causes. Nor was this a small village, for it had nobles and princes/kings who all deferred to Job.

Another of Job’s friends – the righteous one, Elihu, was said to be “the son of Barachel, the Buzite, of the family of Ram” (Job 32:2). Buzites were descended from Nahor, brother of Abraham (Genesis 22:21); of Ram, JFB commentary says “Ram–Aram, nephew of Buz.”

We would infer that the whole household was called Buzites, including his nephew Aram, of whom Barachel and Elihu were descended. Which means here, including Nahor, we have five generations; Nahor, Buz, Aram, Barachel, and Elihu.

This was not intended to be a complete family tree, and generations are probably skipped here; but if we take a minimalistic view of this, Nahor-Buz-Aram-Barachel-Elihu would roughly correspond to Abraham-Isaac-Jacob-Joseph-Manasseh, the last of whom was probably born around ‑1740.

It could be off significantly, of course, but it agrees well with the generation of Eliphaz the Temanite whom we likewise placed not earlier than ‑1740. And these events are more likely later than earlier – since Elihu probably skipped generations in his genealogy – so I’d guess at the events of Job taking place more likely around ‑1650.

Regardless, this last clue tells us that a Nahorite was present; Nahor settled initially in Haran, and his family spread out from there, most likely to the city that bears his name (Genesis 24:10), which we know as the ancient city Nagar/Nahar. And with this, we’re finally ready to make our own map.

You’ll notice this is the same exact lands where all of Abraham’s children went; Dedan became the Asshurim/Assyrians, Medan became the Mitanni, and so on. He knew they would be taken care of, because by this point Nahor had spread east and taken over much of Aram’s land.

If Elihu came from Nahor, and Bildad came from Suhu, and Job lived nearby in Uzza, the only oddity is Eliphaz the Temanite who came from the far SW in Esau’s territory (just off the map). Easily explicable by trade routes and so on, though it’s also possible there was a Tema who lived in the region we don’t know about.

Jeremiah 25:23 Dedan, and Tema, and Buz, and all who have the corners of their beard cut off;

You may recall that Dedan was the ancestor of the Assyrians, Buz you’ve just met as the ancestor of Elihu, and Tema may have been the father of the Temanites not related to Esau’s lineage, meaning the Eliphaz-Teman link is a coincidence.

This scripture puts all three in close proximity, as we would expect them to be based on Job. And it was clearly intended to be a far-reaching passage, since two verses later it mentions the Medes and Elamites, much farther to the east.

Whatever we do with Eliphaz, everything else fits; Chaldeans, desert nearby, mud-brick houses, abundant pasturage, cities, and the general proximity of Balaam’s mountain helps to show that the worship of the true God, in a way acceptable to Moses, was present in this region at approximately this time.

Of course it was – because nearly everyone here was descended from Abraham.

THE LANDS OF ABRAHAM

So in the end we see that, thanks to the blessing of God, the entire northern half of Mesopotamia became populated by Abraham’s family, from Assyria, through lands of the Mitanni, through Haran which was already populated by his cousins, down the eastern side of the Mediterranean, for Ammon and Moab were his great-nephews, all the way down to the tip of Arabia which belonged to Ishmael.

As I said at the beginning, the Mitanni were close to Israel during most of the judges and early kingdom period of Israel. As close as the Hittites, who were mentioned many times, and much closer than the Assyrians or Babylonians. So why is the Bible so utterly silent about them? We see now that it wasn’t.

Among David’s mighty men were many foreign warriors; Uriah the Hittite being the most famous, but also including Zelek the Ammonite and Ithmah the Moabite. For our purposes, the most interesting is Joshaphat the Mithnite (1 Chronicles 11:43).

While it can hardly be proven, the trend in these names is a very diverse coalition of fighters from many nations, not just Israelites. And Mithnite is plausibly derived from Mitanni. By this time – 400 years later – the name may have been written differently in Hebrew.

What cannot be argued is that the Mitanni were real, and present, in Biblical times. They should be in the Bible. And they are – as Midianites, descended from Abraham, dwelling to the east precisely as it said they would; and now, finally, we are ready to answer a question no one has ever answered before:

Why was Balaam able to curse Israel?

Moses acknowledged that Balaam was a prophet to fear, one to whom his own God spoke, whom Moses’ God gave the power to bless and curse. Isn’t that odd? Why was a prophet of Abraham’s God dwelling in Mesopotamia “by the river of the land of the children of his people?”

Because he, and his Midianite/Mitanni brethren, were descendants of Abraham!

He learned about the God of Abraham the old-fashioned way: from Abraham’s descendants, his own ancestors – like Job.

To briefly recap the history of Sumer so far, it’s something like this; remember, these earliest dates are not locked in stone, and could easily be moved decades in either direction. I list them only to show that the events fit the time the Bible allows for them to have happened in.

Enmerkar builds Babel approximately ‑2196; he, as the priest-king of Uruk, presides over the “Uruk Expansion” with varying degrees of control over colonies from Syria to Egypt as the family of Man disperses to the corners of the globe.

Around ‑2140 or so, he began trying to get Aratta to submit; the various adventures of the Enmerkar-Aratta cycle probably took around a decade or two, and Enmerkar most likely died in the Indus Valley around ‑2126, leaving Lugalbanda in charge of Uruk.

While Enmerkar was gone, Dumuzi ruled Uruk as governor in his absence for 20 years or so; either he or Lugalbanda was the father of Gilgamesh. Both seemed very friendly with the high priestess of Inanna in the last book of Lugalbanda, so it’s possible no one was sure even then who his father was.

Gilgamesh grew up, had the adventures we’ve already recounted, warred with Kish and conquered it, then eventually died after a reign of 21 years around ‑2085; after his death, Aratta saw an opportunity and sent Eber as ambassador to Ur; eventually convincing/bribing them to conquer Uruk once and for all around ‑2040.

This worked, and for a few generations Ur ruled in Sumer. This was the time when Abraham was born (‑2022), grew up, and served in Ur as a priest of Sin, the God of Aratta. Eventually he realized that the worship of idols was foolish and found himself unwelcome in Ur.

Terah and family went west to the newly opened frontier in Canaan, pausing in Haran due to news from Canaan that seemed unfavorable for Sumerians to live there – this around ‑1960. Meanwhile, shortly after they left, Chedorlaomer invaded Sumer and took over the empire that dated back to the time of Enmerkar himself.

And it is the story of that empire, of its rise and fall, that we are now prepared to tell. But we have to begin at the end, with the rise of Sargon the Great.

LATER SKL

Moving forward from ‑1937 and the destructive aftermath of the Elamite and Hittite invasions, the SKL continues to list a dozen more “consecutive” (but not really consecutive) dynasties; Kish II, Hamazi, Uruk II, Ur II, Adab, Mari, Kish III, Akshak, Kish IV and Uruk III.

We know for certain that kings of these last two entries – Ur-Zababa of Kish IV and Lugal-Zagesi of Uruk III – were contemporary with Sargon; he served as cupbearer to the former, and conquered the latter. This strongly implies that the SKL’s dynasties 4-14 all fall before Sargon, who began to rule in ‑1897.

Many of these dynasties were very short (three dynasties only have a single ruler). So it seems the author tried to break up the dynasties in such a way as to have the ones that everyone knew interacted fall at roughly the right time – yet maintain his pretense of consecutive dynasties.

It’s also generally agreed that the dynasty breaks probably were not totally arbitrary, and that the final ruler tends to represent the time when power was lost to another dynasty, usually through conquest. So we can take the death of the final ruler as a chronological anchor point to a nearby dynasty, as a rule.

Interestingly, there are more foreign dynasties in this section of the SKL than in any other part; Mari is far NW of Sumer, half-way to the Mediterranean. Awan (Elam) is of course far to the East. Akshak is central, Hamazi is on the north-eastern edge of central Sumer; Adab is south-central.

Which means there is plenty of room for these dynasties to exist in parallel for generations, with from time to time a single king from one dynasty or another managing to exercise significant power in Sumer, even if the other kings were never truly deposed but merely gave tribute.

Now we can test some parts of this theory; Kubaba is the only queen in the SKL, and the only ruler of Kish III. And she is said to have begun her life as a tavernkeeper and yet “strengthened the foundations of Kish.”

A millennium after these events, the Weidner Chronicle states that Puzur-Nirah, king of Akshak, awarded Kubaba her kingship for a pious deed. This puts Akshak contemporary with Kish III, thus approximately ‑1925.

Awan I we’ve already established as contemporary with Abraham, thus ending in ‑1937. Hamazi had a single king, which the SKL said ruled for 360 years. Most likely, that means 6 years using our divide-by-60 trick.

Unfortunately, we cannot connect any of the kings of Mari to any contemporary kings of the SKL, but we do know that some kings in this area claimed to conquer Mari and extract tribute; which explains why the SKL brings them into the story.

The conclusion to all of this is that these foreign dynasties are often brought into the story just to show a connection to the kings who conquered them – so the kings of Mari are listed not because they “held rule over all Sumer,” but because their final king was conquered by a native Sumerian hero like Sargon.

SARGON OF AKKAD

Sargon was the founder of an immensely powerful dynasty that ruled all of Sumer for about a century. He is credited with building Akkad, but we know that was one of the first cities which had been built by Nimrod in Genesis 10:10.

That tells us that Sargon did not build Akkad, he rebuilt it after it was destroyed. Interestingly, there is a king who claimed to conquer Akkad named Enshakushanna, but who, according to the king list, must have lived a generation before Sargon.

This causes historians fits, since they are certain Sargon was the first to build Babel. So they have to distort the timeline, without any other evidence, to make Enshakushanna contemporary even though all other evidence puts him at least 20 years before Sargon.

But it causes no contradictions with the Biblical narrative at all. Nimrod built Akkad, three centuries passed, then Enshakushanna destroyed it; a few decades later, Sargon needed a new place to settle away from the powers-that-were, and rebuilt it. Easy.

Sargon is a key figure in history because we can connect him securely to contemporary rulers of many city states, including many of the members of dynasties 4-14, which will allow us to place some of them in relationship to one another on the timeline.

Sargon is mentioned [in the SKL] as the son of a gardener, former cup-bearer of Ur-Zababa of Kish. He usurped the kingship from Lugal-zage-si of Uruk and took it to his own city of Akkad. The later (early 2^nd millennium BC) Weidner chronicle has Sargon ruling directly after Ur-Zababa and does not mention Lugal-zage-si. Various copies of the king list give the duration of his reign as either 40 or 54–56 years. (Wiki, Sargon of Akkad)

Sargon, king of Akkad, overseer of Inanna, king of Kish, anointed of Anu, king of the land, governor of Enlil: he defeated the city of Uruk and tore down its walls, in the battle of Uruk he won, took Lugalzagesi king of Uruk in the course of the battle, and led him in a collar to the gate of Enlil. — Inscription of Sargon. (Old Babylonian copy from Nippur)

Between these two, we can see that young Sargon was a cupbearer of Ur-Zababa of Kish IV – a much more important role than it sounds like, cup-bearer being a role somewhat analogous to America’s White House Chief of Staff.

A cup-bearer was historically an officer of high rank in royal courts, whose duty was to pour and serve the drinks at the royal table. On account of the constant fear of plots and intrigues (such as poisoning), a person had to be regarded as thoroughly trustworthy to hold the position. He would guard against poison in the king’s cup, and was sometimes required to swallow some of the drink before serving it. His confidential relations with the king often gave him a position of great influence. (Wiki, Cupbearer)

So much later Nehemiah, “cupbearer to Artaxerxes,” was actually a very powerful and trusted man, not the menial palace slave we might have envisioned without knowing this. Regardless, young Sargon the cupbearer had to be at least twenty, more likely far older in his 30’s, to be in a position of such trust in Ur-Zababa’s court.

If we take these reigns as being sequential then we would have 6 years of Ur-Zababa, then 25 years of Lugal-zagesi’s rule and then Sargon would have had to rule 56 years after that, making him over 100 years old – possible, but improbable.

This gives us reason to believe that their reigns were not end-to-end. In fact, we have every reason to believe a significant overlap existed between their reigns. Lugal-zagesi didn’t even conquer Uruk until his 7^th year, with Kish conquered at some point after that.

SARGON’S EARLY CAREER

As we saw above, Sargon humiliated Lugal-zagesi upon his capture by putting a collar on him like an animal and leading him to the temple of Enlil – what happened next is unknown, but I wouldn’t have wanted to be Lugal-zagesi that day.

This treatment is a departure from the more chivalrous attitude of earlier kings, such as Aga who was allowed to keep ruling Kish after his defeat by Gilgamesh. Hence, it suggests a deep animosity, and we find the reason in the fact that Lugal-zagesi had, some time earlier, conquered Ur-zababa of Kish, Sargon’s patron.

Lugal-Zage-Si pursued an expansionist foreign policy. He began his career as énsi of Umma, from where he conquered several of the Sumerian city-states. In the seventh year of his reign, Uruk fell under the leadership of Lugal-Zage-Si, énsi of Umma, who ultimately annexed most of the territory of Lagash under king Urukagina, and established the first reliably documented kingdom to encompass all of Sumer. … Later, Lugal-Zage-Si invaded Kish, where he overthrew Ur-Zababa, Ur, Nippur, and Larsa; as well as Uruk, where he established his new capital. He ruled for 25 (or 34) years according to the Sumerian King List. (Wiki, Lugalzagesi)

After the fall of Kish, Sargon escaped with the survivors of the armies, and probably quite a few court officials, and went far to the north and settled in the abandoned city of Akkad and began building his strength.

Sargon would have considered himself king since his predecessor died; yet he would have avoided challenging Lugal-zagesi until he had rebuilt his power. Thus all of the early years of Sargon and the later years of Lugal-zagesi overlapped.

According to the SKL, Lugal-zagesi ruled 25 years, and Sargon 40 or 56, depending on the source. but rather than put these sequentially, they almost certainly overlapped. Rebuilding Sargon’s power sufficiently to challenge Lugal-zagesi could easily have taken a decade or more, during which time he may even have paid tribute like the other cities of Sumer.

Thus, to try and work with our SKL sources as much as possible, let’s assume that he did in fact reign for 56 years from his start in Akkad but only reigned over all of Sumer for 40 years after conquering Lugal-zagesi.

That would mean that Lugal-zagesi conquered Kish 16 years before the end of his reign, or in his 9^th year; which is precisely what we would expect for a king with “an expansionist foreign policy,” having conquered Uruk, then Lagash, to move on to Kish within a year or two afterwards.

Our conclusion then is that knowing that Sargon’s reign began in Akkad ‑1897, but his rule of the empire began when he conquered Lugal-zagesi in ‑1881, whose own rule in Umma had begun 25 years earlier in ‑1906.

THE RISE OF LUGAL-ZAGESI

Everyone believes Sargon was the first emperor of Sumer, but it is beyond all argument that Sargon did not build the empire, he inherited it from Lugal-zagesi. Lugal-zagesi dedicated a vase to Enlil, speaking of his accomplishments as follows:

When Enlil, king of all the lands, had given to Lugal-zagesi the kingship of the nation, and had let the eyes of the nation be directed toward him, and had placed all the lands at his feet, and had made lands from east to west subject to him, then, from the sea, the lower one, along the Tigris and the Euphrates to the sea the upper one, he put their roads in proper order for him. From east to west Enlil let him have no rival. All the lands in riverine meadows rested (contentedly) under him, and the nation was happily making merry under him. All those on thrones in Sumer and the rulers of foreign lands, they determine (?) for him the divine power of princeship unto the land of Uruk. In those days, Uruk spent its days under him in rejoicing. (The Nippur Vase of Lugal-zagesi)

Despite the above claim, historians almost all dismiss the above claims as boasting; see the attached map of Wikipedia that ascribes to him perhaps half the land he claims; their view on his claims is summed up as follows:

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-zagesi)

Thus casually are dismissed the claims of Lugal-zagesi. You begin to see, now, why I say historians ignore their own sources. They don’t have any way to prove he didn’t rule that territory; but because they can’t prove he did, therefore he didn’t. That’s not science, it’s faith. And as we’ve already seen in the case of Aratta, Mt. Mashu, Dilmun and “Sephar, a mount of the east”… the faith of historians really can move mountains (but not in a good way).

But think about it rationally for a minute. This was not massive carving in a hillside to boast to travelers of his greatness, like the Persians did; it was not an arch inscribed with your exploits in your capital city, like the Romans did. This was a deeply heartfelt prayer to his God for his kingship and continued prosperity; the inscription continues, after listing how happy the Sumerian cities were under his rule:

Lugalzagesi, king of Uruk and king of the nation, solicitously (?) serves very large food offerings to Enlil his master in Nippur, and he pours out sweet water for him. If Enlil, king of all the lands, should say to An, his beloved father, a prayer on my behalf, may he add to my life (additional) life! … May the favorable destiny, which they (An and Enlil) have determined, never alter for me! May I be forever a proud shepherd! He dedicated it (this vessel) to Enlil, his beloved master, for his life. (The Nippur Vase of Lugalzagesi)

Now let me ask you this; at what point in history has it ever been considered wise to lie to God?

This was not a public monument, it was a private vessel placed in the holy place in the temple of Enlil, where none but priests and the God himself could read it. Why on Earth would you pray in secret and thank God for lands he had not, in fact, given you?

How can historians claim propaganda and boasting in a context where there could be no possible purpose for it?

We will, therefore, take his claims at face value; at the very least, he believed them to be true.

LUGAL-ZAGESI IN LEBANON

Besides, we can corroborate his claims. According to ARCANE, “Lugalzagesi is known to have exercised overlordship over Adab at the time of Meskigalla,” this is based on an inscription which says “Meskigalla being the ruler of Adab and Lugalzagesi being the king (of the country).” This relationship between ruler and king suggests that Meskigalla was subservient to Lugal-zagesi.

That’s important to our point, because Meskigalla, at some point in his career claimed to have visited Lebanon! How could he have done that… if Lugal-zagesi didn’t control the area exactly as he claimed to have done?

“In a fragmentary inscription, he claimed to have been on an expedition to the “Mountain of the Cedar forests” … perhaps together with Sargon I:” (ARCANE)

Note I have underlined the word “perhaps,” in the context of “together with Sargon,” because there is no evidence for this whatsoever; there is nothing to suggest that he went there with Sargon, and every reason to believe he went there with Lugal-zagesi. The inscription in question reads…

“For Ninšubur, the minister of An, for the life of Meskigal, ruler of Adab, (…) from the cedar mountains. (…) For the life of his wife and children to Ninšubur his goddess he dedicated it (this statue). Though (my) … Prayer Have Compassion!” — Inscription of Meskigal

This is the full text, so now you know as much about the subject as any scholar does. They claim as always “there is no corroboration of Lugal-zagesi’s controlling areas as far as the Mediterranean,” “at most it was a raiding party”… and yet here there is corroboration!

Corroboration from Lugal-zagesi’s own governor of Adab, which is then promptly dismissed and implausibly reassigned to Sargon, a generation later.

THE EMPIRE OF LUGAL-ZAGESI

Lugal-zagesi explicitly claimed before his God to rule – not just visit but rule – as far as the Mediterranean. I think we should take that seriously, and there are one or two scholars who actually do believe him.

‘Indeed a great conqueror [Lugal-zagesi] must have been, one of the mightiest monarchs of the ancient East this far known, a king who could boast of an empire extending from the Persian Gulf to the shores of the Mediterranean Sea’ …

…Historians are by no means unanimous on the details of Lugalzagesi’s rise to power in Mesopotamia. A strikingly different interpretation is provided by Diakonoff, who relates that Lugalzagesi in fact ‘had inherited’ his hegemony over the majority of Sumer from a previous potentate based at Uruk perhaps related to the dynasty of Enshakushana. (Lugalzagesi: the first emperor of Mesopotamia? By Kesecker)

Now this is quite interesting; Sargon inherited a well developed empire from Lugal-zagesi; and it seems he, in turn, may have inherited it from a predecessor. An interesting feature of Lugal-zagesi’s career is that after his initial warring with Lagash and Kish, his reign is presented as a peaceful golden age.

Note the language he used in his boasting – Enlil made the lands throw themselves at Lugal-zagesi’s feet. This could, technically, be a euphemism for conquest – but it doesn’t sound that way. Certainly there is no Sennacherib-like boasting of making the natives submit to his shining glory and the power of his mighty armies in any of Lugal-zagesi’s inscriptions.

Powell also agrees with this assessment based on his analysis of Lugalzagesi’s inscriptions, which omit any possible military campaigns from the description of Lugalzagesi’s domination over Mesopotamia. (Lugalzagesi: the first emperor of Mesopotamia? By Kesecker)

Which means, if these distant lands did submit, they did so because it was continuing an existing and accepted arrangement established, by force or treaty, by earlier kings. Once those kings were conquered, all of the foreign lands would have submitted as well. So who was that prior king?

Lugalzagesi is known to have exercised overlordship over Adab at the time of Meskigalla. … the seizure of Adab must have taken place before the seventh year of Lugalzagesi’s reign, since a few texts from Zabala (m) dating to that year record the allocation of lands to the rulers of Adab and Nippur, as well as to a high priest of Uruk. (Toward a chronology of early Mesopotamia, ARCANE)

This means that the first target of Lugalzagesi’s ambitions was not Uruk, Kish, nor Lagash, but Adab! And that is significant because Adab’s sole ruler in the SKL was Lugal-Anne-Mundu who likewise claimed an empire reaching from the Mediterranean to the Persian Gulf!

The conquest of Adab must have been an outstanding royal deed, since a Presargonic or Early Sargonic year name from Nippur refers to the destruction of Adab. (Ibid)

Outstanding indeed; for it meant the toppling of the previous emperor, Lugal-anne-mundu of Adab! Surely any conquest of Sumer would have to begin there.

LUGAL-ANNE-MUNDU

This name appears in the SKL as the sole king of the Adab I dynasty, where he is said to have ruled 90 years (dividing by six yields a plausible 15 years). Once again, scholars generally claim he did not exist and that if he did, he was wildly inflating his claims. But as usual, we are going to hear him out before we pass judgment.

The chief ministers of the Cedar Mountain, Elam, Marhashi, Gutium, Subartu, Amurru, Sutium and [the Mountain of Eanna *came]. It was 60 men … [I sent] 60 fattened bulls, 420 [rams to them]. … [They came] into the middle of the temple of E-nam-zu [in Adab]… with divine encouragement … for four days… I am [Lugal-an-na]-mu-[un-du], … the king of Adab…, … who exercises the kingship. (Lugal-Anne-Mundu inscription, as translated in “The Names of the Leaders and Diplomats of Marhashi; Yanli, Wuhong)

These ministers represented, in order, regions now known as Lebanon, southern Iran, central Iran, northern Iran, eastern Turkey/southern Armenia, Syria, northern Iraq, and finally Uruk (the mountain of Eanna is the name of the ziggurat of Inanna in Uruk).

This means Lugal-anne-mundu dominated Uruk, which would have been ruled by Lugal-kinishe-dudu at this time (we’ll come back to him in a minute). The point is, literally every political power center in the region sent delegations for a feast in Adab.

… the luxuriant grasses … For the [governors] of the [the regions listed above], in their [arrivals, I made] them sit on golden thrones, I placed the golden [gifts] in their hands, and I placed golden [objects] in their laps. Their [messengers came] in Adab into my [palace], I have made them come, and … I have made them come before me, … much shade I indeed … there. When … have passed, the … go for all future days. The many [statues] of Enlil I have raised up, their …, how is it that I am a just king? …, I returned them to everywhere and their countries. … of Adab and its land to his city, … I had carried in. May … he not reduce them there! May … he not destroy them! [After] wards, may Dingir-maÌ, the mistress of the Enamzu temple, grant life to all the ruler of the Cedar Mountains, Elam, Marhashi, Gutium, Subartu, Amurru, Sutium, and the Eanna Mountain who does not cut off the established cattle and sheep offerings, and who does not cut off those regular provisions from her mouth! (Ibid)

So this king, too, is not boasting of conquest, but of his abilities to throw a good party. After the party, he blesses the kings of all these lands who visited him and paid tribute, asking Enlil to grant them long life if they do not stop sending offerings to the temple (and, presumably, tribute to him as well).

This speaks of a strong diplomatic relationship – which doesn’t preclude the threat of force, of course, but it shows less of a Nazi and more of a British commonwealth approach to power. Which is why he boasts he “made the people of all the lands live in peace as in a meadow.”

That being said, the inscription began by mentioning putting down an uprising consisting of 13 rebel chiefs, some of them from these very same countries. So as I said, the threat of force wasn’t ruled out. Again, the British commonwealth is an excellent example of this sort of empire.

And yet to be rebelling, they must first have been subdued and brought into the empire. Who did that? There is nothing in his inscriptions to suggest that Lugal-anne-mundu had conquered them. The simplest interpretation is that he, too, inherited this empire from his predecessor.

Like most new rulers, he had to begin his reign by demonstrating to the restless outlanders that they still served Sumer. Of course, I mean inherited in the loosest possible sense – that he stepped into a power vacuum and profited by someone’s demise.

But whose?

ADAB IN LEBANON

Generally, if a king is only found in the SKL, historians tend to believe he didn’t exist by default. The above tablet attests his existence, but we have another source as well. In Sumerian, Lugal meant “king,” so it was not really a proper name element in the way we are using it here. So really, his name was Anne-Mundu.

And it turns out there is an archeologically-attested person who ruled Adab at precisely this point in history, whose name is plausibly similar to Anne-mundu – Enme’annu! And according to the report in the ARCANE project, the definitive modern work on early Sumerian kings…

Both spellings presumably stand for Enme’annu, “The Eminent One Lies among the Divine Powers.” The ruler Enme’annu of Adab was a contemporary of Lugalkišarešdudûd of Uruk… (ARCANE)

Lugal-kinishe-dudu was a predecessor of Lugal-zagesi in the SKL, with one king ruling between them briefly. This puts Enme’annu in the right time to be conquered by Lugal-zagesi when he conquered Adab, as apparently his very first act of business!

Now since historians accept that Sargon’s empire reached the Mediterranean, there is no good reason to believe that Lugal-zagesi’s didn’t, particularly when he said it did. And if we accept that he did, then it’s completely believable that his predecessor Lugal-Anne-Mundu of Adab also ruled as far as Lebanon, precisely as he said he did.

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)

We now have not a single king’s boast of this territory, but three consecutive kings all saying the same things; why not believe them?

Besides there are more.

ENTEMENA OF LAGASH

The city of Lagash isn’t on the SKL, which is odd considering it was a powerful force at the time; we can only surmise that the author of the SKL, for political reasons, didn’t want to give Lagash credit for having been, at one time, “ruler over all Sumer.”

Entemena was a son of Enannatum I who re-established Lagash as a power in Sumer. He defeated Il in a territorial conflict through an alliance with Lugal-kinishe-dudu of Uruk, successor to Enshakushanna, who is in the king list. The tutelary deity Shul-utula was his personal deity. His reign lasted at least 19 years. (Wikipedia, Entemena)

Note Entemena’s connection to Lugal-kinishe-dudu, who was a minor king during the hegemony of Lugal-anne-mundu before the time of Lugal-zagesi. This places him in the right place in time to have contributed at least somewhat to the establishment of the empire.

“At that time, Entemena built and reconstructed the E-mush, his beloved temple, in Badtibira, for the god Lugalemush, (and) he set free the citizens of Uruk, Larsa, and Badtibira.” – Inscriptions of Entemena

I call your attention to the use of “re,” as in “re-constructed” connected to this person’s name. Also that the citizens of Uruk and Larsa and Badtibara had been captives who were “freed.” This suggests that Entemena came on the scene in a time of disaster and picked up the pieces.

The idea of captives makes no sense in the context of a native ruler; Sumerian city states had been dominating one another since the time of Enmerkar/Nimrod, and “freeing” the citizens of another city was never used as a euphemism for “conquering” a city.

No, this had to have meant he was freeing them from a foreign occupation; but which? Consider the timeline we have; Sargon began to rule the empire (not just Akkad) in ‑1881; Lugal-zagesi began to rule the empire (not just Umma) in ‑1906 when he conquered Adab and presumably killed Lugal-Anne-Mundu.

He in turn had begun to rule the empire 15 years earlier in ‑1921. If we take Entemena of Lagash as his imperial predecessor, then we run smack into the aftermath of the death of Kudur-Laḫgumal in ‑1937! Thus, it can only be the Elamite invaders from whose oppression Entemena freed the cities of Sumer!

The rebuilding and reestablishing now makes perfect sense; Entemena was repairing the damage done by Tidal of nations and his mercenaries after the death of Kudur-Laḫgumal! Precisely as the Spartoli tablets suggested would need to be done, for it told us the temples were destroyed.

For Inanna and Lugal-emush Enmetena ruler of Lagash built the Emush their beloved temple and ordered these clay nails for them. Enmetena who built the Emush, His personal god is Shul-utul. At that time Enmetena ruler of Lagash and Lugal-kinesh-dudu ruler of Uruk established brotherhood. (Alliance treaty between Entemena and Lugal-kinishe-dudu)

Given that he claims to have “freed” the citizens of Uruk, then made a treaty of brotherhood with Lugal-kinishe-dudu king of Uruk, it stands to reason that Entemena must have placed him on the throne of Uruk after driving out the previous (foreign) occupier. And who might that be?

Obviously, the beleaguered successor of Kudur-Laḫgumal, the “vile elamite” of the Spartoli tablets whom we now know was killed by Entemena, liberating the Sumerians from bondage to Awan.

EANNATUM

We have exposed a direct link between the empires of Sargon, Lugal-zagesi, Lugal-anne-mundu, and Entemena and Kudur-Laḫgumal. But to get the whole story of this empire we have to go back one more generation before Kudur-Laḫgumal to “Eannatum, ruler of Lagash, uncle of Entemena, ruler of Lagash.”

Eannatum was a Sumerian Ensi (ruler or king) of Lagash. He established one of the first verifiable empires in history, subduing Elam and destroying the city of Susa, and extending his domain over the rest of Sumer and Akkad. One inscription found on a boulder states that Eannatum was his Sumerian name, while his “Tidnu” (Amorite) name was Lumma. (Wiki, Eannatum)

It’s very odd, and no one can really explain, why a Sumerian king who was not Amorite would go out of his way to mention his Amorite name. We know precisely where the Amorites dwelt at this time in history, for we are dealing with the precise time that Abraham entered Canaan and dwelt among them.

So what is a ruler of Lagash, in southern Sumer, doing proudly announcing his Amorite name to his Sumerian subjects? Unless he had… you know… been there? Been to the lands near Sodom and Gomorrah, established treaties, made friends, established trade networks and perhaps even extracted tribute? He certainly did in Mari, which was already half-way there.

Eannatum expanded his influence beyond the boundaries of Sumer. He conquered parts of Elam, including the city Az off the coast of the modern Persian Gulf, allegedly smote Shubur, and, having repulsed Akshak, he claimed the title of “King of Kish” (which regained its independence after his death) and demanded tribute as far as Mari.

He (Eannatum) defeated Zuzu, the king of Akshak, from the Antasurra of Ningirsu up to Akshak and destroyed him. The king of Akshak ran back to his land. He defeated Kish, Akshak, and Mari from the Antasurra of Ningirsu. To Eannatum, the ruler of Lagash, Inanna gave the kingship of Kish in addition to ensi-ship of Lagash, because she loved him. – Inscription of Eannatum. (Ibid)

Note also the presence of Akshak in his list of conquered cities – now we know why the SKL lists them at this point in the story, because before Eannatum they must have held sway over a substantial part of northern Sumer – as confirmed by historians.

Zuzu. King of Akšak who led a coalition of northern Babylonian cities (which included Kiš and Mari) against Lagaš and was defeated and killed by E’annabtum. According to Cooper (1983b: 26), Kiš and northern Babylonia were under the hegemony of Akšak at that time. (ARCANE)

“Eannatum, the ensi of Lagash, who was granted might by Enlil, who constantly is nourished by Ninhursag with her milk, whose name Ningirsu had pronounced, who was chosen by Nanshe in her heart, the son of Akurgal, the ensi of Lagash, conquered the land of Elam, conquered Urua, conquered Umma, conquered Ur. At that time, he built a well made of baked bricks for Ningirsu, in his wide temple courtyard. Eananatum’s god is Shulutula. Then did Ningirsu love Eannatum” — Brick of Eannatum-AO 351, Louvre Museum (Wiki, Eannatum)

Thus, before Kudur-Laḫgumal invaded Sumer, Eannatum had subdued Elam by invading them and destroying the city of Susa! And it was, not surprisingly, his nephew who much later would drive the Elamite out.

But it was uncle Eannatum’s invasion of Elam, probably in the time of Kudur-Laḫgumal’s father, which set the stage for an Elamite revolt that turned the tables completely, whereby the Elamites absorbed the entire empire of Eannatum and more.

At that time in the ‑1980’s or ‑1970’s, when Abraham was in his 40’s or 50’s, Eannatum built an empire from Elam to Mari, the same empire his nephew Entemana would rebuild later – but not right after his death. There was another much weaker ruler between them, his brother Enannatum I.

We have a king list for Lagash, but no reign lengths so we don’t know how long he reigned; at least 4 years, for certain. Historians think not much longer, mostly because he didn’t leave behind a lot of accomplishments… but that’s to be expected since he was a vassal of Kudur-Laḫgumal!

Hence, I expect his reign to have been at least 10 years, probably more, beginning with KL’s reign in Sumer. Because Kudur-Laḫgumal couldn’t rule over Sumer until the existing emperor, Eannatum, was dead!

Then his brother (not his son) ruled in his place. This is not a typical succession; it suggests either foreign meddling (2 Kings 24:17), or a child too young to rule. Perhaps both, in this case. After Enannatum I’s death, his son Entemena inherited the vassalage, and seems to have reigned for a long time, at least 19 years, possibly 27+.

However, during the early part of his reign he was powerless to do anything until the death of Kudur-Laḫgumal after which he promptly set about RE-establishing Lagash’s power and rebuilding the temples sacked by the Elamites and Hittites!

AKSHAK AND MARI

Going back to the final two unexplained entries on the king list, we can now see why the SKL felt it necessary to mention these two otherwise unconnected kingdoms; because at the period in history it was addressing, ‑2000 to ‑1900, Mari and Akshak and Elam (under the first king of Awan I, probably) had each controlled a sizeable portion of Sumer.

This is why the SKL wanted us to know of these nations, so we would have the background to understand that they were conquered (albeit by Lagash, to whom the scribe did not want to give the credit), and that their defeat gave rise to the first great empire to which Sargon would become heir.

Which is why, where Lagash should be on the SKL, we find Awan; the first of the powerful dynasties after Lagash to have hegemony over Sumer. And now with that, we can finally move forward and tell the entire story in context.

Knowing this story – all of the pieces of which scholars are well aware, but which they never connect into a narrative, not having the Bible to provide a backbone to the story – we can now see that each of these six generations ruled over a recognizably similar area of territory, demonstrably successive in time, spanning the course of less than a century.

The consistent thread between these rulers – Eannatum, Kudur-lagamal, Entemena, Lugal-anne-mundu, Lugal-zagesi, and Sargon – is that they all ruled over an empire that they claimed reached to Lebanon if not further.

We could reject the claims of a single king on the grounds of boasting, as all historians do; but each of these kings, in succession, boasting of the same exact thing, seems strongly to indicate that all of them are telling the truth.

Therefore this is not really six empires; it is a single empire ruled over by six dynasties across a century or less. These men may not have ruled over all of these lands in the strictest sense, but they had power over these regions and received tribute from them – just as Kudur-Laḫgumal did in Sodom in Genesis 14.

ENSHAKUSHANNA

Historians at this point will object violently to the possibility of Lugal-anne-mundu exercising dominion over Sumer, given the powerful king Enshakushanna who ruled over it prior to the time of Lugal-zagesi.

But they shouldn’t worry – he’s part of the story too. In fact, he’s the last missing piece! Before Sargon, Lugal-zagesi ruled in Uruk, and over the domains of Sumer as far as the Mediterranean. Before him, Lugal-anne-mundu ruled from Adab, likewise as far as the Mediterranean.

At that point the king of Uruk was Lugal-kinishe-dudu. He had been installed in Uruk by Entemana of Lagash after he “freed” the citizens of Uruk from some foreign occupier; it does not seem that Entemena lived long afterwards.

According to the SKL, the prior ruler of Uruk before Lugal-kinishe-dudu was named Enshakushanna. And he… doesn’t fit.

En-šakušuana was a king of Uruk around the mid-3^rd millennium BC who is named on the Sumerian King List, which states his reign to have been 60 years. He conquered Hamazi, Akkad, Kish, and Nippur, claiming hegemony over all of Sumer. (Wiki, Enshakushanna)

He is a very interesting character; his destruction of Kish was extreme, like nothing that had been done before. Half the kings on the SKL claimed to be “king of Kish,” but that simply meant they showed up with an army, Kish agreed to send tribute, and that was that. Only this king felt it was necessarily to burn Kish to the ground:

“… [his] reign is largely characterized by his military campaigns, the most prominent of which was against Kish and Akshak. His attack on these two cities is attested from a stone bowl at Nippur and reads as follows:

For Enlil, king of all lands, Enshakushanna, lord of the land of Sumer and king of the nation when the gods commanded him, he sacked Kish (and) captured Enbi-Ishtar, the king of Kish. The leader of Kish and the leader of Akshak, (when) both their cities were destroyed … (Lacuna) in (?) [..] he returned to them, but [he] dedicated their statues, their precious metals and lapis lazuli, their timber and treasure, to the god Enlil at [N]ippur.” (Ibid)

Archeologists have associated the attack of Enshakushanna with a heavy layer of ash and destruction at that layer of the site, thus confirming it really happened and was really a severe destruction:

Many scholars have attributed the ED IIIb destruction layers at the Palace A and Plano-Convex Building in Kish to Enshakushanna. Federico Zaina notes the archaeological evidence at Kish attests to a “pervasive violent destruction of the city of Kish at the end of the ED IIIb.” (Ibid)

Scholars uniformly assume this man to have been a native Sumerian, but in the historical context we are constructing, it makes much more sense to see him as an Elamite because it’s hard to imagine any Babylonian burning the holiest and most ancient city of Sumer, “where the gods first placed kingship!”

It’s like imagining a Catholic burning the Vatican or a Jew burning Jerusalem. But Enshakushanna believed he was doing the right thing. Indeed, he said he did it because “the gods commanded him.” What Sumerian gods would have commanded the burning of one of their holiest cities?

What’s also weird is that he identifies himself as “king of all lands… lord of the land of Sumer and king of the nation.” This is an unusual title, unique as far as I can tell, and suggests to me that he was king of other lands, not just Sumer where he was merely a lord, a governor for someone else.

Yet what his home nation might be is not clearly stated. But we get a clue from the fact that Enshakushanna… is an Elamite name!

No one has ever considered this before, to my knowledge, and I don’t speak Elamite, but I recognized the sounds shakush as being more Elamite than Sumerian (compare the Elamite god “Inshushinak” for example). So I asked AI; pending confirmation, it says…

Inshakush (𒅴𒋾𒀭) is a known Elamite name or title. The element shakush in Elamite could be associated with concepts of strength, power, or might. In Elamite, Anna (𒀭𒀜) is similar to the Sumerian form An (the god of the heavens). Anna might refer to a divine or celestial connection, in this case perhaps linking the individual to the heavens or a divine authority. … Thus, Inshakush-anna could be interpreted as “Mighty (or Powerful) One of the Heavens” or “Strong One of the Divine.” (ChatGPT)

This is a very king-like name, and with its abundant sh and k sounds, is very unlike all contemporary kings on the king list – but right at home in Elamite names. To support his foreign identity, consider Enshakushanna’s excuse for destroying Kish: “The gods made me do it.”

Which gods? Obviously not Enlil, who would not need to be told this on an offering plate. If it had been in response to Enlil’s will, Enshakushanna would have simply said “I destroyed Kish at thy command, O Enlil!”

Besides, Enlil would certainly not ask for his own holy city of Nippur to be conquered; so which gods would have counselled this? Foreign ones! It’s difficult to imagine any Sumerian deity declaring war on the city of Kish or Nippur.

But it is quite like the nature of the Elamite deity Lagamar, a god of death whose name literally means “merciless!” And who was, by the way, Chedorlaomer’s patron saint, whose name literally means “servant of Lagamal.”

Lagamal was associated with the underworld. Wouter Henkelman describes him as fulfilling the role of advocatus diaboli in the beliefs pertaining to judgment of souls in the afterlife documented in texts from Susa. The possibility that Lagamal served as an accuser in the judgment of the dead is also accepted by Manfred Krebernik. (Wiki, Lagamal)

THE LATE BABYLONIAN SPIN

As I said, Enlil would not have commanded the destruction of his city nor the utter destruction of the oldest and holiest city in Sumer. So it makes no sense to tell Enlil that you committed sacrilege against him because Enlil told you to do it.

However, from the perspective of the worshippers of Enlil, he was nearly all-powerful, second only to An, his father. They believed there was nothing that happens that Enlil doesn’t command; thus, if the temple was sacked it automatically means Enlil must have commanded it.

And that belief of theirs finally allows us to explain that part of the Spartoli tablet that we referred to earlier…

“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.” (Spartoli Tablet)

Note that this king – associated with, but not identified as Kudur-Lagamal – took possessions away from Enlil, where he dwelt. And the temple of Enlil was in Nippur!

That in turn means the vile Elamite must have conquered Nippur violently. Something we know that Enshakushanna did!

[Enlil 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)

Thus, it was Enlil who called for this destruction after the robbing of his temple by Kudur-Laḫgumal prior to leaving for Canaan – money Kudur-Laḫgumal desperately needed to bribe the Hittite mercenaries of Tidal.

And after the death of Kudur-Laḫgumal, Enshakushanna, governor of Sumer but now the king of Elam, turned on his Sumerian allies and proceeded to plunder what was left.

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)

Note that the Elamite was an “improvident (unwise) sovereign.” He warred with the son of Arioch, and killed him; presumably without Kudur-Laḫgumal, Arioch’s Sumerian son thought he could drive the Elamite out and was cruelly surprised. And then Tidal arrived to finish the slaughter.

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… (Ibid)

It’s difficult to understand what the underlined section there means, but clearly the king of Elam – not Kudur-Laḫgumal – was involved, either allied with or against Tudhula, in plundering the great temples of Sumer, all the “cult centers of Akkad”; which is something we know, by his own admission, was done by Enshakushanna!

Hence why, after Tidal went back home with his plunder, Enshakushanna felt a need to placate Enlil with the offering plate inscribed above. But the Babylonians saw that as far too little, far too late.

The SKL gives him 60 years of rule – dividing by six yields a more plausible 10 years. But we are only certain he reigned 2 years, based on year names that have been found. Most likely he was a governor in Sumer under Kudur-Laḫgumal for several years until his master’s death.

That means he may only have had a few years of sole rule in Sumer before being either chased out or killed by Entemena of Lagash, who finally freed the cities of Sumer from the “vile Elamite” and rebuilt the the destroyed temples.

ONE LAST TIME

So the sequence of events is as follows; Abraham was born in Ur, in the midst of a golden age for Ur which had subdued Uruk, and was allies with the far more righteous and long-lived Hebrews, descendants of Arphaxad who still lived in Aratta in the Indus Valley.

Nearby cities Lagash and Umma are in the midst of a centuries-long border dispute which doesn’t really concern Ur. Somewhere in the ‑1980’s or ‑1970’s or so Eannatum of Lagash finally conquered Umma, and kept going to conquer all of Sumer – including Ur.

This would have altered the balance of power in the region, particularly in regards to the Hebrew presence there. Perhaps the ethnic Hebrews were tolerated, but their foreign meddling was not. Regardless, it changed things and could be one factor that made Terah feel unwelcome.

Simultaneously Abraham was realizing, in the course of his astronomical observations at the temple of Sin in Ur, that God was not the moon, nor any visible thing that could represented as an idol. This would certainly have been unpopular in the birthplace of idolatry.

Still, whether it was the religious persecution or the ethnic persecution, or both, that led them to leave, at some point Terah packed up and left Mesopotamia; I can’t confidently place their departure closer than the window ‑1990‑1950, but I favor a later date closer to the Elamite invation.

Meanwhile Eannatum had pushed far beyond the city-states of Sumer and reached to recreate the original empire of Enmerkar, pushing back the encroaching powers of Mari, Akshak, and Elam, and opening new frontiers in Canaan among his Amorite friends.

Hearing of these new frontiers Terah packed up the wagons and headed west. Around that same time, Eannatum decides to attack and burn Susa. This creates a rallying cry in Elam, so they gather their forces and strike back eventually killing Eannatum in battle and installing his weak brother as puppet king – probably in the late ‑1960’s or early ‑1950’s, early in KL’s reign in Elam.

This causes the Sumerian forces holding the frontier in the west to be called back home for defense, leaving no protection in Canaan for Terah, who balks at continuing into Canaan and stays in the safer, more stable lands in Haran. Now we finally know for sure why he stopped there.

ELAMITE RULE

Meanwhile the Elamite king, now Kudur-Laḫgumal, conquers not just all of Sumer but the lands as far as Canaan by the year ‑1951, absorbing and probably expanding upon the territory of Eannatum by making treaties with the enemies of the Sumerians in these lands, Hittites chief among them.

It can’t be an accident that Eannatum was proud of his Amorite name, while the Elamites allied themselves with the Hittites who, over the lifetime of Abraham, largely displaced them; “the enemy of my enemy is my friend” has always been a thing.

Back in Sumer Kudur-Laḫgumal plays his cards well, offers to the gods, and is considered a legitimate ruler by the Sumerians. Over time however this foreign king becomes unpopular and requires mercenaries – probably the Gutians, certainly the Hittites – to keep down civil unrest.

Paying these mercenaries requires gold, for which he raids the temples of Sumer, causing even greater civil unrest and requiring even more gold. In ‑1938 the kings of the Transjordan hear of these problems and believe now would be a good time to stop paying tribute – the king is too distracted at home to do anything about us distant border regions, right?

But that backfires, and Kudur-Laḫgumal reinvades Canaan, leaving behind Arioch’s Sumerian son Dur-sil-ilani and a trusted Elamite general or noble called Enshakushanna to keep the peace. And it would have worked, had not Kudur-Laḫgumal made a fatal mistake while in Canaan and kidnapped the nephew of the friend of God, who then killed him.

When the news reaches home, civil war breaks out between Arioch’s son and Enshakushanna “the vile Elamite,” who in the end wins out and kills Dur-sil-ilani and further plunders temples and burns cities like Kish.

Just then Tidal, his Hittite mercenary ally, arrives in Sumer to collect what he is owed. Remember, he lost all the booty he was promised in the Jordanian campaign, Abraham having confiscated it and given a tenth of it to Melchizedek. So Tidal wants his, with a vengeance.

Whether he is defeated by Enshakushanna or simply gets what he came for – gold – he leaves eventually. Enshakushanna then tries to hold down a devastated and increasingly unhappy populous with increasingly fewer resources.

He makes very public sacrifices to the gods to try and keep the peace, apologizing for his earlier sacking under Kudur-Laḫgumal and for whatever part he played with Tidal, but it’s no use – he can’t live down the “vile Elamite” name.

In the end Entemena, his former vassal, defeats him and liberates all the remaining Sumerian cities from Elamite control, installing trusted ally Lugal-kinishe-dudu as king of Ur and Uruk. Entemena dies not long after, having had a long reign first as vassal and finally as savior of Sumer (the Hebrews may have remembered him differently).

Lugal-Kinishi-Dudu was not a strong king (hence the name dudu), and seems to have fallen under the suzerainty of Lugal-anne-mundu of Adab, who restored the empire to its former glory – mostly peacefully, since the foreign territories had already been subjugated by his predecessors.

Lugal-anne-mundu in his turn dies after 15 years, whereupon Lugal-zagesi is emboldened to attack the now-leaderless Adab in his 6^th year or so and claim the empire for himself for the next 19 years.

Lugal-kinishi-dudu remained in power for 20 years in Uruk and Ur during the reign of Lugal-anne-mundu; when Lugal-zagesi took over it seems he placed Lugal-kinishe-dudu’s son Lugal-kisalsi on the throne of Ur and Uruk, presumably as vassal. At least, the timeline lines up.

He then attacks Lagash and in his 9^th year Kish as well, killing Ur-zababa and freeing Sargon to flee far afield and begin his own empire in a new city – who never forgot Lugal-zagesi’s offence nor stopped plotting revenge.

Having nursed his grievance (and built his power) for 16 years, Sargon finally attacks Lugal-zagesi, captures him, and brings him to Nippur with his neck in the stocks, humiliating him as vengeance for his murder of Ur-Zababa. We actually have a “picture” of this event (aboveright).

Wikipedia says of this picture: “Prisoner in a cage, probably King Lugalzagesi of Uruk, being hit on the head with a mace by Sargon of Akkad. Akkadian Empire victory stele circa 2300 BC [~1900, my dating]. Louvre Museum.” (Wiki, Sargon)

Sargon proceeds to consolidate his power and put down the challengers of every single city-state, and making it, like his predecessors, as far afield as Canaan, Elam, and the Persian Gulf. He continued to reign for 40 years after the death of Lugal-zagesi, dying an old man at roughly the same time as Abraham died (‑1847) having dealt with rebellions regularly in his life, he nonetheless left to his sons a stable empire.

Which, as so often happens, all promptly went to pieces when the barbarians invaded.

SUMMARY

Much of this is wrong; the dates of some events may be off by 10, 20, maybe even 50 years. But it’s a story without contradictions in the historical or archeological record that I know of, and that’s a rare thing indeed.

Most importantly the sequence of events, and the background of them, rests on firm footing. All of these things – the destruction of Kish, the empire of Lugal-zagesi, etc. – are well known to archaeologists and historians as fact.

What’s new is simply the stringing of them into a story, revolving around the events of Genesis 14, which they are unable to do precisely because they reject Genesis 14 and are prejudiced against any evidence that might support or corroborate it.

We are not; and that’s how we can understand the life and times of Abraham. He was born into a golden age of empire – but there were barbarians without, civil war within, and the golden fabric of society soon tore to shreds.

It was not unlike Europe in the 19^th century, where various imperial states fought for dominance, and within that century every single nation in Europe (except England) experienced a revolution of some kind, and they all were involved in wars most of the time.

It was a bad time to be a peasant in Europe. And the 20^th century BC was likewise a bad time to be a peasant in Sumer, and for all the same reasons. The wilderness didn’t seem quite so bad by comparison.

And so, just as happened in 19^th century Europe, Mesopotamian settlers like Terah emigrated to the world’s frontiers, seeking religious freedom, political freedom, and the right not to be conscripted into endless petty wars between fiefdoms.

Abraham in particular needed religious freedom – for had he stayed in the plains of Shinar, where the deception of Nimrod was built, he might never have found the truth which you can only find when you “come out of her, my people.”

Jeremiah 50:6-9 My people have been lost sheep: their shepherds have caused them to go astray; they have turned them away on the mountains; they have gone from mountain to hill; they have forgotten their resting place.

All who found them have devoured them; and their adversaries said, we are not guilty, because they have sinned against Yahweh, the habitation of righteousness, even Yahweh, the hope of their fathers. Flee out of the midst of Babylon, and go forth out of the land of the Chaldeans, and be as the male goats before the flocks.

For, behold, I will stir up and cause to come up against Babylon a company of great nations from the north country; and they shall set themselves in array against her; from there she shall be taken: their arrows shall be as of an expert mighty man; none shall return in vain.

This was written 1300 years after Abraham obeyed these exact words, for these exact reasons. For the people of Chaldea had forgotten their resting place, where the ark settled on Mt. Ararat and God spoke to them.

They had ceased worshipping at that mountain, and been worshipping instead at a man-made hill, a ziggurat. Why? Because their shepherd-kings had led them astray; remember the strong shepherd imagery Nimrod used as the priest-king of Uruk?

When Enmeanna conquered Ur and Kish, he broke the power of Aratta in Sumer, and lost the last contact the Sumerians had with the legacy of Noah, and the righteous sons of Arphaxad. And so God called Abraham to “flee out of the midst of Babylon,” for he was about to stir up “a company of great nations from the north country” against her.

The Spartoli tablets record this destruction by Tidal of nations, the Elamites from the east and probably Gutians from the north as well; brought by the Lord – known to the Sumerians as Enlil – because they had listened to a literal hunter in shepherd’s clothing.

Just as the people of Jeremiah’s time had done, just as the Jews of Jesus’ time had done, and just as so many Christians have done since. Hence why God inspired John to say, at the very end of the Bible, speaking again of the very same Babylon…

Revelation 18:2-4 He cried with a mighty voice, saying, “Fallen, fallen is Babylon the great, and she has become a habitation of demons, a prison of every unclean spirit, and a prison of every unclean and hateful bird! For all the nations have drunk of the wine of the wrath of her sexual immorality, the kings of the earth committed sexual immorality with her, and the merchants of the earth grew rich from the abundance of her luxury.” I heard another voice from heaven, saying, “Come out of her, my people, that you have no participation in her sins, and that you don’t receive of her plagues,”

By going to Canaan, Abraham set an example for all of us to do exactly that.

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 11^th 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 4^th-9^th 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?