FROM BABEL TO ABRAHAM
After Babel, the world was being repopulated, the first dynasty in Egypt was being founded by Mizraim – known to history as the first dynasty Pharoah Menes – and the languages were mutating and people were moving.
The Bible is pretty silent about this period, just giving us a list of the ancestors of Abraham and then getting to its main focus – Abraham, who was born in the year -2022, 170 years after the events of Babel.
Genesis 11:26-31 …Terah lived seventy years, and became the father of Abram, Nahor, and Haran… Haran died before his father Terah in the land of his birth, in Ur of the Chaldees. Abram and Nahor took wives. The name of Abram’s wife was Sarai… Sarai was barren. She had no child. Terah took Abram his son, Lot the son of Haran, his son’s son, and Sarai his daughter-in-law, his son Abram’s wife. They went from Ur of the Chaldees, to go into the land of Canaan. They came to Haran and lived there. The days of Terah were two hundred five years. Terah died in Haran.
There is some debate as to whether this is Ur in Sumer or Urfa in eastern Syria; I am fairly confident that the Sumerian Ur was his hometown, partially for reasons explained in my paper “Abraham in Egypt”, but also because of the journey Terah and his family made.
Consulting this map [make something like TheTorah.com which I have bookmarked], you’ll see that it was Terah’s intention to go “to the land of Canaan”. Yet for some reason, he journeyed as far as Haran and decided that was good enough. But that wasn’t the land of Canaan! It was barely 30 miles from Urfa!
Now I can see how, after a journey of almost eight HUNDRED miles, Terah might be tempted to call the journey “good enough”. But to quit after thirty miles is remarkable. Why leave Ur at all, just to go a stone’s throw away in what was literally the same country?
Thus, I’m confident that “Ur of the Chaldees” must have been Ur in southern Iraq. But it still makes us wonder why he journeyed so far, only to give up at what was, relatively speaking, the last minute. And what’s more, Haran is a significant detour from the straightest route to Canaan. Which makes us wonder… why did he stop?
WHY LEAVE UR?
It is clear that God told Abraham to leave his home country and his father’s house, and that was the reason he left Haran (Genesis 12:1). Yet Genesis 11:31 tells us that “Terah took Abram his son, … They went from Ur of the Chaldees”.
This tells us that Terah was the driving force behind the move, not Abraham. It also makes it clear that Haran died in Ur, before they left. Since the Bible says nothing without a reason, that this fact is mentioned at all suggests that Haran’s death inspired their move to Canaan.
Given that the place they moved was called “Haran”, certainly after their dead relative, it suggests that Haran’s death had a large impact on the family. Also, we know that Abraham effectively adopted Haran’s son Lot, bringing him along as they left Haran and sharing the best of the land of Canaan with him.
Together these things suggest that Haran died a hero. We have the witness of Josephus that Abraham was discovering in Ur that the entire Sumerian religious system was flawed, and that idolatry itself was not only a sin, it was irrational and illogical; given my own experience arguing with religious types, I cannot imagine that was received warmly (compare to Acts 19:24-41).
Putting this together, it seems likely that the move was not entirely voluntary; but was a matter of self-preservation. The death of Haran was likely a martyrdom which led to Terah deciding it was an unhealthy place to live – even though Terah himself was an idolator (Joshua 24:2), a tradition which his family in Haran continued (Genesis 31:19). Which is why God needed him to keep moving, to not be in the company of his idolatrous father’s house…
Genesis 12:1-4 Now Yahweh said to Abram, “Get out of your country, and from your relatives, and from your father’s house, to the land that I will show you. I will make of you a great nation. I will bless you and make your name great. You will be a blessing. I will bless those who bless you, and I will curse him who curses you. All of the families of the earth will be blessed in you.” So Abram went, as Yahweh had spoken to him. Lot went with him. Abram was seventy-five years old when he departed out of Haran.
We can securely date this departure to Canaan as -1947. Soon after arriving, there was a famine in Canaan so he continued on to Egypt; there he had some adventures – a story for another time – and came back a rich man (Genesis 13:1-2).
He and Lot divided the grazing land among them, and Lot chose the plains of Sodom and Gomorrah (Genesis 13:10-11), which were across the Jordan River from Israel and thus are called the Transjordanian cities. Lot settled there in the city of Sodom, and things seem to have been peaceful for a time, until he was kidnapped by Chedorlaomer (Genesis 14).
Before we get into that story, let’s jump ahead and work backward, so we can date Lot’s kidnapping precisely, as it’s crucial to our timeline. In Genesis 15 God appeared to Abraham and promised him a son; as a direct result of this, Abraham had a child by Hagar (thinking that’s how God meant for it to happen), and Ishmael was born when Abraham was 86. Therefore, God appeared to him when he was 85 years old (-1937).
Narratively connected to these events (Genesis 15:1), Melchizedek appeared to Abraham (Genesis 14:17-20) – therefore, also when he was 85. This is important, because Melchizedek appeared to Abraham while he was returning from warring with a group of Mesopotamian kings who had kidnapped Lot, a battle which we can now confidently date to -1937.
THE BATTLE OF SIDDIM
Genesi 14:1-3 It happened in the days of Amraphel, king of Shinar, Arioch, king of Ellasar, Chedorlaomer, king of Elam, and Tidal, king of Goiim, that they made war with [five kings of Sodom, Gomorrah, etc]. All these joined together in the valley of Siddim (the same is the Salt Sea).
Casually reading Genesis 14, you might get the impression that there were two incursions by these four kings; a first one to establish dominance, and a second trip 14 years later, to restore control after the Canaanites rebelled; but that’s actually not what is recorded in Genesis 14; there likely was an earlier mission to establish dominance, but not necessarily by these kings. For our purposes, it’s important to know that there was only one battle of Siddim, in the 14th year.
Genesis 14:4-5 Twelve years they [had] served Chedorlaomer, and in the thirteenth year, they rebelled. In the fourteenth year Chedorlaomer came, and the kings who were with him…
The Mesopotamian kings fought many other kingdoms on their way to the Transjordan; so, although the Bible focuses on the narrative involving these five kings, they were only a small part of a much larger rebellion of the entire territory from Syria to Arabia.
When they arrived, the kings of the cities of the plain of Sodom and Gomorrah – across the Jordan river from Israel – came out to meet them and battle against them. Given that this was a fight for survival, we would expect that all the able-bodied men of the five cities in the Transjordan would be conscripted, thus the armies should have numbered in the thousands, perhaps ten-thousands. And yet they still lost. So this was no mere “policing” operation from Mesopotamia, this was a significant army.
Verses 10-12Now the valley of Siddim was full of tar pits; and the kings of Sodom and Gomorrah fled, and they fell there, and those who remained fled to the hills. They took all the goods of Sodom and Gomorrah, and all their food, and went their way. They took Lot, Abram’s brother’s son, who lived in Sodom, and his goods, and departed.
Verses 14-15When Abram heard that his relative was taken captive, he led out his trained men, born in his house, three hundred and eighteen, and pursued as far as Dan. He divided himself against them by night, he and his servants, and struck them, and pursued them to Hobah, which is on the left hand of Damascus.
This is quite plausible, even if the invasion force numbered in the thousands – the element of surprise counts for a lot against a drunken, sleepy enemy. Regardless, it seems like all of the kings of Mesopotamia were killed.
Verse 17 The king of Sodom went out to meet [Abraham], after his return from the slaughter of Chedorlaomer and the kings who were with him, at the valley of Shaveh (that is, the King’s Valley).
However – and this becomes important later – the text does permit us to surmise that one king might have survived the “slaughter of Chedorlaomer and the kings with him”, plural, means that Chedorlaomer and two kings could be killed and one of the fourth might have escaped.
We do know for a fact that some men escaped, because after Abraham “struck them”, he pursued them to Hobah – where no further slaughter is mentioned, which implies Abraham felt they’d not be a problem again after that and let them go.
We glean some key facts from this story; most interesting is that in Genesis 14:4 the kings of the Transjordan were already paying tribute to Mesopotamia before Abraham ever set foot in Canaan. Since the battle of Siddim is dated to Abraham’s 85th year or so, and the kings came in the 14th year to collect tribute, it means that the Transjordan had been paying tribute since Abraham’s 71st year or so, or about -1951, while he was still in Haran – or possibly even in Ur.
And at that point, Sumerian cities were able to project enough power to conquer every Canaanite city over 1,000 miles away from home – and enough fear to collect tribute for over a decade. A mighty empire indeed. Never mind that according to historians this never happened – we’ll show soon that they have powerful evidence of this empire that they choose to ignore.
Meanwhile, this allows us to explain why Terah, needing to leave Ur, would say “let’s go to Canaan!”. He could have gone literally any direction, so why travel 1,000 miles with everything you own to a land you’ve never seen, full of hostile foreigners whose language you don’t speak?
He must, therefore, have had reasons to think this was a good place to go. Historically, settlers trying to escape religious oppression head to the newest frontier on the edge of civilization. And yet they don’t go there without government support of some kind – there need to be roads, or at least trading outposts, to guide and protect you on your journey.
All of this tells us that when Terah chose to go to Canaan, it was because it had recently been conquered and he could expect a Sumerian military presence to help him settle and keep him safe until he had made local contacts.
Further, it suggests a possible reason why Terah didn’t, in the end, make it to Canaan – because Haran was, at the time, on the border between the relatively civilized Euphrates valley and the tribes of Canaan.
He may have heard rumbles of dissatisfaction from the subjugated natives that made him afraid to keep going, so he decided to stay in friendly territory and make a home there. In other words, he chickened out at the last minute. Abraham, having more faith, and with a direct commandment from God, decided to travel there anyway (Psalms 105:9-15).
SUMERIAN CONTROL OF JORDAN
This story actually allows us to fill in a rather large blank spot in the Sumerian king list, plugging in several dynasties that traditional historians dismiss as fantasy. The SKL tells us that during the time of Abraham the city-states in southern Sumer kept growing, bickering, warring, and occasionally one would become dominant over another.
Most historians would tell you that Mesopotamians continued this bickering amongst themselves without major foreign intervention, nor with any empire-building that could possibly have stretched as far as the Mediterranean, let alone all the way to the Transjordan, until the time of Sargon (-1900).
Sargon the Great, was the first ruler of the Akkadian Empire, known for his conquests of the Sumerian city-states in the 24th to 23rd centuries BC [-1900 to -1840 by our dating, at least 50 years after Abraham entered Canaan]. He is sometimes identified as the first person in recorded history to rule over an empire. (Wiki, Sargon of Akkad)
Thing is, their own evidence shows this isn’t true. Sargon was not the first person to unite the city-states. A generation earlier, Lugal-zage-si (whom Sargon conquered) claimed to have conquered the world as far as the Mediterranean…
“Enlil gave to him “all the lands between the upper and the lower seas”, that is, between the Mediterranean Sea and the Persian Gulf … Although his incursion to the Mediterranean was, in the eyes of some modern scholars, not much more than “a successful raiding party”, the inscription “marks the first time that a Sumerian prince claimed to have reached what was, for them, the western edge of the world” (Wiki, Lugal-zage-si).
Note the dismissive tone; “he wasn’t really king over that region, he simply led a raiding party”. That may perhaps be true, but they have no way of knowing that for certain. But the fact is, this isn’t “the first time that a Sumerian prince claimed to have reached what was, for them, the western edge of the world”, and they know that. Wikipedia goes on to say…
Historical accounts from much later tablets asserted thatLugal-Anne-Mundu of Adab, a slightly earlier king, had also conquered as far as the Mediterranean and the Taurus mountains, but contemporary records for the entire period before Sargon are still far too sketchy to permit scholars to reconstruct actual events with great confidence. (Ibid)
Note their statement: “records… are far too sketchy to permit scholars to reconstruct actual events with great confidence”. And yet somehow, they are able to confidently state that the records they DO have are not true…? That this king did not, in fact, rule as far as the Mediterranean?
They tell us that Sumerian kings never projected power that far into Canaan at this point in history; and if they had been there, it would have been a mere raiding party, not a proper army with the personal presence of the kings of Sumer. But by claiming that, they disagree with their only sources of information!
One king of Adab, Lugal-Anne-Mundu, appearing in the Sumerian King List, is mentioned in few contemporary inscriptions; some that are much later copies claim that he established a vast, but brief empire stretching from Elam all the way to Lebanon and the Amorite territories along the Jordan.(Wikipedia, Adab)
The Amorite territories along the Jordan are the cities of Sodom and Gomorrah! What a shocking coincidence, that the SKL records a Sumerian presence in Israel precisely when Abraham encountered them there!
And yet the idea of a king of Sumer ruling as far as the Jordanian plain, this far back in history – around 1950 BC in our chronology, but roughly 2500 BC in their chronology – is unacceptable to historians. And so, in response to that quote above describing a Sumerian empire in precisely the place Abraham encountered it, this is what historians say…
In this connection, one might also mention the figure of Lugal-anemunDU [Lugal-Anne-Mundu above], … Lugal-anemunDU is also the subject of an Old Babylonian literary composition (Güterbock 1934: 40–47), which ascribes to him the creation of an empire, extending from the Mediterranean to the Iranian plateau, and embracing within its scope the lands of Elam and Marhashi (the latter ruled by a governor named Migir-Enlil). But since the existence of such an Adab ruler finds no corroboration in any other data, one may confidently conclude that both Lugal-anemunDU and his alleged exploits are poetic inventions which were perpetrated sometime in Old Babylonian times (for reasons that completely escape us). (The Birth of Elam in History by Piotr Steinkeller)
Historians tend to dismiss anything they can’t prove conclusively as sheer fabrication. They are guided by a logical fallacy; that if we cannot conclusively prove something did happen, therefore we have proven that it did not happen. But absence of evidence is not evidence of absence.
So because there is no corroboration for this story, they are certain it didn’t happen. Only… there IS corroboration! Genesis 14 corroborates this data! Firmly establishing that, at roughly this point in history, Sumerian forces extracted tribute from the tribes along the Jordan for over a decade!
Yet historians stubbornly refuse to accept the Bible as a source, even when it agrees with their own sources. So instead, Steinkeller believes that a Babylonian scribe thought it would be fun to make up a story about an obscure king (Lugal-Anne-Mundu) who lived almost a millennium earlier in a city-state (Adab) that no one cared about, and ascribe to him a world-ruling kingdom that just happens to confirm Abraham’s story. How likely is that?
Don’t get me wrong, Sumerians made stuff up all the time. But they did so with a purpose; they did so to deify the ancestors of their kings, to praise their gods, to try and show the primacy of their own town or deities. If this were fabricated, then as Steinkeller admitted… it makes no sense why they would have done so.
And yet, having conceded that, he is still arrogant enough to state, simply because they have no corroboration yet, that “we can confidently conclude… his alleged exploits are poetic inventions”. But, logically, the absence of corroboration doesn’t allow you to confidently conclude anything.
And yet somehow they feel confident in telling us that one day a priest was suddenly inspired to invent an awesome fan-fiction about a man who was not worshipped, not deified, not the ancestor of any important king – and, if the historians are right, wasn’t even powerful and probably did not even exist!
And get this – the priest would have been writing this fantasy story… for the benefit of a population that could not read! And who would never even hear it! Because the historian’s belief is that these documents were only circulated within the inner circle of priests.
So we can see why Steinkeller says this was done “for reasons that completely escape us”. Because it’s an absolutely absurd theory. They invented this ridiculous theory because they could find no corroboration. And yet Genesis firmly corroborates the existence of such an empire, at precisely the era of Lugal-Anne-Mundu. And there is a third witness to this story.
THE SPARTOLI TABLETS
Genesis 14 gives us four names, and the region they ruled over, which should make our job easy. Unfortunately, they don’t match up with any contemporary kings of Sumer; at least, not at first – but then again, we had that problem with Enmerkar/Nimrod and Utu/Shamash/Ham didn’t we? So this is solvable.
The name “Chedorlaomer” has long been the subject of controversy, that has increased, rather than diminished, since the discovery of native Elamite and Babylonian documents. The first clue to an identification of the name is found in the fact, everywhere now regarded as established, that the name is a correct Elamite compound. Its first half, “Chedor” (= “Kudur,” “servant of,” or “worshiper of”), is found frequently in Elamite proper names, such as “Kudur-nanḥundi” (“naḥunte” in Susian or Elamite) and “Kudurmabuk.” The latter half of the name, “la’omer,” (= “lagamaru”), is the name of an Elamite deity, mentioned by Assurbanipal. (Jewish Encyclopedia, “Chedorlaomer”)
So the first take-away is that whoever wrote the Bible – Moses, in our view – either they were telling the truth, or else they were skilled enough at Elamite, a language quite different from Hebrew spoken over a thousand miles away, to concoct a plausible fake name using elements of well-attested Elamite names. Which is more probable? Fake or fact?
And the precise name Chedorlaomer or Kudur-Lagamaru is not attested in any contemporary, ~2000 BC source. And yet… the name is attested in a much later copy, in exactly this form, as an Elamite and in connection with the names of Arioch and Tidal!
In the so-called “Chedorlaomer Tablets”, from the Spartoli tablets collection in the British Museum, a “king of Elam” called Kudur-Laḫgumal is mentioned as defeating “Dur-ṣil-ilani, son of Eri-e-Aku” and “Tudḫula, son of Gazza-X”. These tablets, written sometime between the 7th and 2nd centuries BC…
I disagree with this author about what the tablets actually say, but we’ll get to that in a moment. For now it’s enough to note that this tablet, late Babylonian fantasy or not, directly connects four facts in one place, precisely as the Bible arranges them; Kudur-Laḫgumal the Elamite, Arioch, and Tidal.
Surely no reasonable person can deny that there has to be some connection between these names and the ones mentioned in Genesis 14.It’s simply not statistically possible that three random names are connected in this way, with the added fact that Kudur-Lahgumal was a king of Elam!
Of course, critics find a way. Their theory is that this was a metaphorical allusion written in the 3rd century BC about kings from the 12th century BC, 900 years earlier. But really… why would they write in code about long-dead kings?
First, what possible reason could they have to write about these kings at all, 900 years after the fact – ancient history not being considered very important in ancient times, except as it affected deities or royal legitimacy.
And if they did write such a fantasy, why hide it in metaphor by alluding to these 12th century kings with random names, which just happen to match the names of 20th century kings the Bible says invaded the Transjordan?? Why not just use the names of the people you’re talking about?? Were they worried about hurting the feelings of these long-dead kings?
I mean… is the historian’s theory really more likely than a gap in historians’ understanding of 2000 BC Mesopotamian political intrigue? I think not, particularly since they admit they don’t know enough about the era to draw firm conclusions!
Therefore, we will treat these tablets as based on history, not fantasy – because that simply makes more sense.
CHEDORLAOMER
One reason no researcher has ever reliably proven this connection is that they are, without exception, looking five centuries too late, in the wrong era of history altogether. They start with the present, work backwards trusting the chronological opinions of modern historians, and invariably have dynasties ruling Egypt and Mesopotamia centuries before the Bible states the flood happened.
By starting with the flood, the sons of Noah, and moving forward, not arbitrarily trying to connect 2000 BC Bible history to what historians think the 2000 BC Sumerian political situation looked like (they’re off by about 500 years at this point), and instead using the Bible’s firm chronology as our anchor point, we are looking at history very differently – and it opens up possibilities to us that no other historian would see.
So to that end, we begin by looking for Chedorlaomer, or more properly, Kudur-Laḫgumal, about two centuries forward from Babel and Enmerkar. This part of the SKL is actually reasonably agreed upon by historians, as much as they agree on anything, so we know about when to look for possible matches, either in name or in deed.
I’m tired of writing Kudur-Laḫgumal so henceforth I’m going to call him KL. Do find and replace later.
Knowing how the SKL works, it typically “begins” a dynasty long before it actually conquered the city it says it conquered; Gilgamesh of Uruk, for instance, conquered Aka of the first dynasty of Kish (henceforth, Kish I) and only at that point “held the kingship of Sumer”; yet Gilgamesh was the 5th ruler of Kish, meaning 4 earlier rulers were legitimate, but not really head of an empire yet.
Kish I ended around -2100, Uruk I ended around -2000, and Ur I ended around -1936. These dates are not reliable enough to be perfect yet, but are probably accurate to within 20-30 years at least.
Which means we would expect, based on this pattern alone, and how it matches with the expected dates of Abraham’s battle in Jordan with an Elamite empire, to find the 4th dynasty in just about the right chronological place around -2000-1900.
And what do you know? Following Ur, the SKL says “kingship was taken to Awan”, where three kings reigned for an implausible 356 years. And Awan was a city of Elam! Thus, the fourth dynasty was an Elamite kingdom!
This is an amazing coincidence, for now we have proved that it was at least possible for an Elamite to invade Jordan, for we have proven that the Elamite dynasty was leading Mesopotamia in the time of Abraham!
Unfortunately the names on this part of the SKL are badly preserved; the first name is gone, the second name is just “…lu”, and all we can make out of the third king is that he reigned for 36 years, and the first part of his name which is…
Sumerian: 𒆪𒌌, romanized: ku-ul-x; transliterated: ku.ul.x; anglicized: Ku-u [l- . . . ]; also: Kul[…]; alternatively: Kur-Ishshak (Sjöberg, Leichty & Tinney 2024) (Wiki, Kur-Ishshak).
Linguistically, the part of the name least likely to change is the consonants, and particularly the first consonants of the name. Thus, the third and final king of the dynasty starting with a Ku- sound, just a Kudur-Laḫgumal does, is encouraging.
Now these are Elamite, not Akkadian or Sumerian names, and in Elam, no name is attested to have begun with Ku-ul. However Ku-du is another possible way of reading the second cuneiform sign, and that is a highly popular Elamite name element, usually in the form of Kudur or Kutur, meaning “servant of…” and followed by the name of a deity.
On the SKL, there are traces which suggest the third sign is an “L”. Thus, we have Kudur-L…; and there is only one Elamite deity that I can find which begins with L, a very common one named Lagamal or Lagamar. If that were true, then the full name, meaning “Servant of Lagamar” would be spelled Kudur-Lagamar – precisely the name from the Spartoli tablets!
Then just take all the vowels away, and spell it in Hebrew, add vowels back in and translate it into English and you have – very plausibly – Chedor-laomer, king of Elam, final king of the first dynasty of Awan! Final, because Abraham killed him, plunging Sumer into anarchy! But more on that later.
TIDAL, KING OF NATIONS
The Bible mentions four names, Amraphel of Shinar, Chedorlaomer of Elam, Arioch of Ellasar, and Tidal “king of nations”. This last title is a very generic term – king of which nations? Clearly not Sumerian ones, for we already have a king of Sumer (Amraphel of Shinar).
This is where we have the advantage over historians, for we have confidence that the Bible meant for us to understand this. Remember, Moses wrote this for his Israelite audience – he wanted them to understand it. So what would they have understood by “the nations”?
Deuteronomy 7:1 When Yahweh your God shall bring you into the land where you go to possess it, and shall cast out many nations before you, the Hittite, and the Girgashite, and the Amorite, and the Canaanite, and the Perizzite, and the Hivite, and the Jebusite, seven nations greater and mightier than you;
While the word “nations” (goyim in Hebrew) refers to any nation, by far the most frequent use of the term in the books of Moses is to refer to the Canaanite tribes. Thus, this is what Moses’ audience most likely understood. So Tidal, therefore, was king over these nations, at the time of Abraham.
Note also that the first nation Moses mentioned, for whatever reason, was the Hittites. And that allows us to identify Tidal precisely – for the name Tudḫaliya is a very common Hittite royal name, with no less than eight Wikipedia entries for different Hittite kings bearing that name over the course of a thousand years.
“Tudḫaliya (sometimes called Tudḫaliya I) is deduced from his early placement in a later offering list as a hypothetical pre-Empire king who might have reigned in the early 17th century BC. (Wiki, Tudhaliya, disambiguation)
Basically, that means he was worshipped as a deity by later kings, and that he existed before any of the other kings by that name; perhaps the 17th century BC, perhaps later or earlier, they really don’t know. Which means my guess is as good as theirs.
The point is Tudhaliya, in Hittite, would be spelled Tidal in Hebrew – and he was king of the (Canaanite) nations, specifically of the Hittites. Thus, although we cannot date Tudhaliya I, he is an attested ancient person.
When you think about it, this identity makes a lot of sense; for the Sumerians to come this far west, they would have to make some agreement with the Hittite tribes who dominated this region; so either by conquest or treaty, the Hittites would have had to be involved in any military action in Canaan.
It’s also interesting that Jordan and Canaan were inhabited, at that time, primarily by Amorites – not Hittites; for when God promised the land he stood on to Abraham, he specifically mentioned the Amorites’ lack of sin (Genesis 15:16).
At the same time, God did promise him the land of a variety of tribes – specifically including Hittites and Amorites – which stretched from the Euphrates in Syria to the Nile in Egypt (Genesis 15:18-20). But the place he was, apparently, belonged to the Amorites.
Abraham dwelt by the oaks belonging to Mamre, the Amorite (Genesis 14:13), who was an ally of Abraham. Why did Abraham need allies? Against whom? Jacob claimed to have carved out his inheritance in Canaan with his sword and bow from the Amorites (Genesis 48:22).
And yet when Sarah died and Abraham buried her in the cave of Machpelah (Sarah died at 127, Abraham was 137 at the time, hence in the year -1885), we find Hittites living there, not Amorites.
Genesis 23:10, 18 And Ephron dwelt among the children of Heth: and Ephron the Hittite answered Abraham in the audience of the children of Heth, even of all that went in at the gate of his city, saying [and he sold it]… Unto Abraham for a possession in the presence of the children of Heth, before all that went in at the gate of his city.
So this city was clearly possessed by Hittites. How? Because it had been conquered by them in the intervening 66 years, no doubt started by the raids with the Mesopotamian confederacy! Because if you read closely, you’ll notice no Hittites were attacked by the Mesopotamians when they came to conquer the Transjordan:
Genesis 14:5-7 And in the fourteenth year came Chedorlaomer, and the kings that were with him, and smote the Rephaims in Ashteroth Karnaim, and the Zuzims in Ham, and the Emims in Shaveh Kiriathaim, And the Horites in their mount Seir, unto Elparan, which is by the wilderness. And they returned, and came to Enmishpat, which is Kadesh, and smote all the country of the Amalekites, and also the Amorites, that dwelt in Hazezontamar.
No Hittites were harmed during the raids because Hittites were the aggressors! No reference to Hittite inhabitants exists from the time of Abraham’s first decade in Canaan, because at that time there weren’t any!
Which suggests how the Mesopotamians had such power so far from home; because they allied with a powerful, much closer, tribe – the Hittites. And it suggests why the Hittites accepted the agreement – it would provide them with new land to settle cities in. And we can support this in an unexpected way;
Ezekiel 16:2-3 …Thus says the Lord Yahweh to Jerusalem: your birth and your birth is of the land of the Canaanite; the Amorite was your father, and your mother was a Hittite.
Thinking of this in a metaphorical sense, as God clearly meant, a city was “founded” by its father; he planted the seed that became the city. In this case, the Amorites founded Salem. Then a Hittite “nurtured” it, and made it larger, playing the role of a mother.
This tells us that first the Amorites were in the regions around Salem, built the city, and that later it was invaded and occupied by Hittites who expanded upon it. And now we know that this happened in the time of Tidal, king of nations!
Verses 4-6 As for your birth, in the day you were born your navel was not cut, neither were you washed in water to cleanse you; you weren’t salted at all, nor swaddled at all. No eye pitied you, to do any of these things to you, to have compassion on you; but you were cast out in the open field, for that your person was abhorred, in the day that you were born. When I passed by you, and saw you wallowing in your blood, I said to you, Though you are in your blood, live; yes, I said to you, Though you are in your blood, live.
This tells us that the city had a hard time of it until the Lord “took compassion on it”. This no doubt began in the time of Melchizedek, king of Salem, whom Paul tells us in Hebrews 7 was none other than the Lord Yahweh himself.
ARIOCH OF ELLASAR
Although there is some room for debate, Ellasar, if you remove the vowels which are absent in Hebrew, would be Lsr. If the letters were swapped in transcription, it’s quite easy to get to Larsa – a well-known city in southern Sumer, which was powerful – although its heyday was much later, around -1600-1400.
If the name Arioch were written in Sumerian, it would most likely be rendered as Eri-Aka, which means “servant of the moon”. This name, translated literally into Akkadian, would be rendered as Warad-Sin (other translations could be Aram-Sin).
There is no known historical person by this name at the right place in history (-1937), but there is a person by this name on the SKL, one of the final kings of Larsa (approximately -1375). Most people, since they are heavily guided by traditional history and are all too willing to dismiss the Bible, try to connect Abraham to this Arioch anyway; by moving Abraham too late (~1800 BC) and Warad-sin far too early (~1800 BC).
But that’s totally unnecessary and frankly, wrong. We know quite a bit about the life and times of Warad-sin of Larsa -1375; and the events of the Spartoli tablets did not happen in his lifetime. These are the well-documented times of Hammurabi, and there was no Elamite king dominating all of Sumer, nor did Warad-sin die in Canaan.
We have enough information about the period to be confident that we would know if KL had an empire as far as the Mediterranean in that era. Thus, the Warad-sin of Hammurabi’s era is certainly not Abraham’s adversary… but he might be his namesake!
As we see with Tudaliya, Ramses, Henry, and Popes named John, there is a strong tendency to recycle old names of powerful kings and use them for your own regnal name. Larsa had been a significant city dating back the earliest times in Sumer, and had been ruled over by kings or at least, governors for most of the time.
Unfortunately we do not have any records of the kings of Larsa going back to the time of Abraham. But since kings almost always choose names from kings of their own nation, the fact that there is an Arioch of Ellasar in the 14th century BC tells us there probably was also an Arioch of Ellasar in the 20th century BC! One who was a confederate or vassal of KL!
DATING AWAN
We can, with a bit of effort, reasonably establish KL as a contemporary of Abraham. The Awan I dynasty is said to have conquered Ur; given how the SKL uses the transfer of kingship, it’s probably not the first king of the dynasty who did the conquering, but one of the middle or later kings. Hence, Kudur-Lagamar, or at most his father, is likely the one who conquered Ur and established dominance in Sumer.
Now our tentative date for the fall of Ur, which we did by counting forward from the fall of Babel, puts the end of the first dynasty of Ur in roughly -1936 – give or take a few decades at this point – which is coincidentally just a year away from the battle of Siddim in the Transjordan.
This places the last king of Awan I, pending better proof, in exactly the right ballpark. Meaning we probably need to move the Ur I dynasty backwards in time a few decades to coincide with the beginning of KL’s reign, but we’re either remarkably lucky to find a Elamite king contemporary with Abraham – or else we’re right.
From another source, we have a list of twelve kings of Awan, which scholars call Awan II, which doesn’t seem to match or overlap with Awan I’s rulers. Even so, we can use their placement in history to help establish that Awan I is in roughly the right place.
There were twelve kings in Awan II, and unfortunately no reign lengths have been preserved. But the 8th and 9th kings of Awan II, Luh-ishan and Hishep-Ratep (the order might be reversed) were contemporary with Sargon the Great (-1894-1838), and the 11th king, Khita, interacted with Naram-Sin of Akkad (-1814-1777).
Thus, we know that roughly, assuming a reign length of 12-16 years on average – which is typical in most civilizations (it’s hard to be king) – then the beginning of Awan II and the end of Awan I would be around -1920-1960 – again, precisely when we would expect Abraham’s adversary to have died at his hand!
Given how well it fits in both directions, we can now feel justified in placing Awan precisely in history using the Bible’s dating as a backbone, and making adjustments to Ur’s, Uruk’s, and other dynasties nearby around the known fact that Awan I ended when Abraham slaughtered Chedorlaomer and the others in -1936!
And the first step of that is to look at the fall of Ur. The final king of the Ur I dynasty according to the SKL was Balulu. Now nothing else is known about him, but it is very interesting that his regnal length is identical to the reign the SKL assigns to Kudur-Lagamar – 36 years!
Interesting also that the king of Uruk who would be his contemporary is also credited with reign of 36 years.
This suggests that Kudur-lagamar began his reign by conquering Ur and installing Balulu as his puppet-king – probably a younger scion of the ruling dynasty from whom he extracted an oath of loyalty at the point of a sword (compare to 2 Kings 23:34, a common practice).
Interestingly, and very uncharacteristically for a king, the name “balulu” means “to go down,” “to descend,” or “to fall.” It can also carry the connotation of “to be brought low” or “to sink.” (ChatGPT translation). Which might be a name given to him by ancient historians to reflect the shame at his being a puppet king of an Elamite.
Regardless, when the puppet-master died, the dynasty of Ur collapsed, whereupon some other opportunistic leader took over and built his own empire – according to the SKL, Lugal-Kinishi-Dudu, the next ruler of Ur. But we’ll come back to him later.
THE STORY OF CHEDORLAOMER
Having identified the timeframe and most of our key players, it’s finally time to read the only story that tells the history of KL from the perspective of his Babylonian subjects, which is recorded in the Spartoli tablets.
Note that in the following quotes, his name is spelled Kudur-KUKUmal; the KU-KU represents the name of the sign used to spell the name, not how it was pronounced. No one is quite sure what these symbols sounded like (there are several possibilities, reading cuneiform is complicated). But La-Ga- is definitely possible.
Also, like most ancient tablets from this part of the world, there are missing pieces and so it is sometimes necessary to add words in [brackets] with suggested words to fill gaps or unclear parts in the text.
With their firm counsel, they [the gods] established, Kudur-KUKUmal; king of Elam. Now, one who is pleasing to them [-] will exercise kingship in Babylon, the city of Babylonia (…) What king of Elam is there who provided for Esagila and … ? The Babylonians… and their message: “(As for) [the wo]rds that you wrote: ‘I am a king, son of king, of [royal seed e]ternal, [indeed] the son of a king’s daughter who sat upon the royal throne.
The tablets are fragmented, and it’s not clear precisely what is happening. But it seems that the gods legitimately gave the kingdom to the Elamites, Kudur-Lagamar in particular, because he responded that he was “king, son of a king, of royal seed eternal”. And yet despite that, the Babylonians were unhappy with his rule. The tablet continues…
[As for] Dur-ṣil-ilani son of Eri-e[A]ku, who [carried off] plunder of [-], he sat on the royal throne… [-] [As for] us, let a king come whose [lineage is] firmly founded] {where is the open bracket supposed to be?} from ancient days, he should be called lord of Babylon …
This seems to be the people complaining to KL about Dur-sil-ilani, who sat on the throne of Babylon, and had plundered something – in context, perhaps a temple? And the people of Babylon did not consider Dur-sil-ilani as a legitimate king and wanted to replace him with someone “whose lineage is firmly founded from ancient days.”
Since the scribe is telling this story after the fact, this means that after the dust settles, we will expect to find a king on the throne that can trace his dynasty back to a proper royal house – Kish, Ur, Uruk or some such.
The oldest of these is, of course, Kish. So it’s interesting that the next king to rule over Ur and Uruk (and many other cities besides) after the puppet Balulu is Lugal-Kinishi-Dudu (also spelled Lugal-Kiginne-dudu), who was a king of Kish, Ur, and governor of Uruk; all of them the most royal of royal houses!
“For An, king of all the lands, and for Inanna, mistress of Eanna. Lugalkiginnedudu, the king of Kish. When Inana gave to Lugalkiginnedudu en-ship in addition to kingship, she allowed him to exercise en-ship in Uruk, and she allowed him to exercise kingship in Ur.” — Inscription of Lugal-kinishe-dudu. (Wiki, Lugal-kinishe-dudu)
Back to the Spartoli tablets; the sin of Dur-sil-ilani, and probably Kudur-lagamar as well, was stealing from the temple, particularly the temple of Enlil, chief of the Gods.
The Elamite hastened to evil deeds, for the Lord devised evil for Babylon. When the protective genius of justice stood aside, the protective spirit of Esharra, temple of all the gods, was frightened away. The Elamite enemy took away his possessions, Enlil, who dwelt therein, became furious.
This seems like the Elamite dynasty was in trouble. At first, he was deemed “legitimate” and then he, or his governors, began to rob the temples; that’s typically only done when you are having a money crisis and need to bribe armies or kings (compare to 2 Kings 18:16).
This, in turn, typically happens because you need loyal manpower to crush local rebellions; no one liked having an Elamite king, obviously. And as a result of this sacrilege, Enlil – chief of the Gods – called the Umman-manda and Enlil, not KL, laid waste to Sumer at their side.
[The god had] become furious: he commanded for Sumer the smashing of En[lil]’s land. Which one is Kudur- KUKU[mal], the evil doer? He called therefore the Umman-man(da he level)led the land of Enlil, he laid waste (?) [-] at their side.
The Umman-manda seems to have been a generic term for “barbarian horde”. Most people believe it was the Gutians, a barbarian tribe from the north-east of Sumer, modern Iran, who may have been early Medes.
These Gutians were about to be a major player in Sumer, inhabiting, and then dominating, Mesopotamia for over a century. And this is quite possible; Gutians and Elamites were neighbors, who had a shared hatred of Sumerians, and naturally would form alliances.
But the word Umman-manda applies to any barbaric race in Sumerian; which, in this context, makes it also quite likely that it meant Hittites. Who were also, by Sumerian standards, a savage race. And of course, it’s also quite possible that the word “barbarians” was used precisely because both Gutians and Hittites were invited into Sumer by the Elamite.
The Elamite [enemy] sent forth his chariotry, he headed downstream toward Borsippa. He came down the dark way, he entered Borsippa. The vile Elamite toppled its sanctuary, he slew the nobles of … with weapons, he plundered all the temples. He took their possessions and carried them off to Elam. He destroyed its wall, he filled the land [with weeping …] (…) an improvident sovereign [-] he felled with weapons Dur-ṣil-ilani son of Eri-[e]Aku, he plundered [-] water over Babylon and Esagila, he slaughtered its [-] with his own weapon like sheep, [-] he burned with fire, old and young, [-] with weapons, [-] he cut down young and old.
Most people read this unnamed “Elamite” as the same earlier king KL, but he is not mentioned by name. According to this story, KL was a good king at first. Furthermore, why would KL would kill the son and heir of his ally Arioch?
Historians struggle to make sense of this narrative precisely because they’ve made the assumption that KL is “the Elamite”. But when you think about it, KL doesn’t appear in this narrative at all, except as a background figure.
Nor do the Sumerians complain about KL except for his temple-robbing, making him an “evil-doer”. He was the legitimate king who was appointed; but they complain about Dur-sil-ilani because he is the only king actually there. Why?
Further, where is his father Arioch in all of this? Clearly, it’s his lineage as a king of Ellasar (Larsa) that gives Dur-sil-ilani what legitimacy he does have; yet Arioch is not a part of the story. Why? Because both Arioch and Chedorlaomer were already dead when these events happened, by the hand of Abraham!
In fact, it was the power vacuum caused by the loss of four great kings of Sumer that so weakened the country that “the gods” sent the barbarians to Sumer, rationalized by the later Sumerians as due to the KL’s sins against the gods (compare Jeremiah 44:18-19). As for the identity of the unnamed Elamite who sacked Sumer… we’ll come back to him a bit later.
THE BARBARIANS INVADE
Abraham killed KL and at least some of the “kings” who were with him; but there was one king who must have escaped; because the Spartoli tablets tell us that Tudhula – Tidal, king of nations – took the opportunity to invade Mesopotamia and sack the temples for plunder!
Tudḫula son of Gazza[-], plundered the [-] water over Babylon and Esagila, [-] his son smote his pate with his own weapon. [-] his lordship to the [rites] of Annunit[um] [king of] Elam [-] plundered the great …, [-] he sent like the deluge, all the cult centers of Akkad and their sanctuaries he burned [with fi]re Kudur-KU[KU]mal his son c[ut?] his middle and his heart with an iron dagger, [-] his enemy he took and sought out (?). The wicked kings, criminals, [-] captured. The king of the gods, Marduk, became angry at them (…) [The doer] of evil to him [-] his heart [-] the doer of sin must not [-]71.
It’s a bit hard to read this part, as you can see from all the missing words. But what is clear is that this Tudhula is the king who is doing the plundering – the leader of the Umman-manda, the barbarian horde whom Enlil had called to punish Sumer for KL’s sins.
But now we can fill in the real story, because it was KL who had robbed the temples already to bribe the Hittites to help him conquer Canaan. Thus KL rightly bears the blame for opening the door to the savages because he invited them, as mercenaries, into a confederacy with Sumer… but with KL dead, there was no one to control the Hittites.
And there’s a very odd phrase here at the end; “Kudur-KU[KU]mal his son c[ut?] his middle and his heart with an iron dagger”. Who is Kudur-lagamar the son of here? Or is it speaking of Kudur-lagamar’s own son? Historians are divided, but we have a leg up because we know what happened in Canaan – Kudur-lagamar is already dead.
Which means this passage must refer to the son of KL, who stayed behind to mind the fort in Sumer, and mounted an insufficient defense against Tidal’s fury – who, after conquering him, made sure the dynasty ended with him.
Thus, the reading should be “He (Tudhula) killed Kudur-lagamar’s son and cut out his genitals and his heart with an iron dagger”. This makes sense because it’s standard practice; when you invade a country, you castrate and/or kill the royal house to avoid any focal points for rebellion later (compare Jeremiah 52:10).
There is no logical reason to introduce the word “son” in this context, unless it is to show how the wicked dynasty of Elam, who did not properly worship the gods, saw their just and fitting end at the hand of barbarians they allied themselves with.
And so the Babylonians must have loved the poetic justice that these same barbarians murdered his son and extinguished his name. From Tidal’s point of view, he was just collecting the payment he was promised for his services to the king of Elam.
SKL DYNASTIES 4-12
The SKL continues, after the destruction of Awan, to list several more consecutive (but not really consecutive) dynasties; Kish II, Hamazi, Uruk II, Ur II, Adab, Mari, Kish III and Akshak before finally getting back to the central dynasties with Kish IV and Uruk III.
Many of these 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 were roughly concurrent or interacted fall at roughly the right time – even though they were presented consecutively.
Most historians who use the SKL at all agree that Kish I, II, and III and IV were essentially consecutive, albeit with some gaps here and there, as were Uruks I through IV, and Ur I and Ur II (but not Ur III).
It’s also generally agreed that the dynasty breaks probably were not totally arbitrary, and they represent either the time when power was lost to another dynasty, or at least there was a change in the actual dynasty to a new family.
That being said, given their placement and the synchronisms between them, all of these dynasties almost certainly flourished between the end of Uruk I and Kish I (-2000, -2100 respectively) and the rise of Sargon (-1900).
All of the main dynasties (Uruk, Ur, Kish) easily fit, with their respective conclusions all terminating around Sargon. In fact after dynasties 4-12 on the list, dynasties 13-14 are Kish IV and Uruk III, whose rulers we know for certain were conquered by Sargon; this strongly implies that at least the terminal members of dynasties 4-12 fall in the time span between -2000 and -1900.
Interestingly, there are more foreign dynasties in this section of the SKL than in any other part; Mari is significantly 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 others were not ever 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 the fact, 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 extra tribute; which explains why the SKL brings them into the story.
Finally, the most important dynasty for our Biblical narrative is Adab, whose sole SKL-listed king, Lugal-anne-mundu, established an empire reaching as far “as the Amorite cities along the Jordan” – Sodom and Gomorrah. To find out where he belongs, we’ll need to jump ahead and work back.
SARGON OF AKKAD
Sargon was the founder of an immensely powerful dynasty that ruled all of Sumer for about a century. He is crediting 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 built it for the first time 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 them all 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 2nd 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).
So 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 working back from Sargon, the previous “ruler over all Sumer” would be Lugal-zage-si. He is said in the king list to have ruled 25 years, and Sargon is said to have reigned 56; but if we add these reigns together, with the fact that young Sargon had to be at least twenty, more likely older, to be in a position of such trust in Ur-Zababa’s court, it makes Sargon’s life implausibly long for the time.
But we needn’t put the reigns end-to-end. In fact, we have every reason to believe a significant overlap existed between their reigns. Ur-Zababa was president to Sargon’s chief of staff. So when Lugal-zage-si conquered Kish and killed Ur-Zababa, 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.
He would have avoided challenging Lugal-zage-si until he had rebuilt his power, which might have easily taken a decade or more – and may have even 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.
Shortly after securing Sumer, Sargon embarked on a series of campaigns to subjugate the entire Fertile Crescent. According to the Chronicle of Early Kings, a later Babylonian historiographical text:
“[Sargon] had neither rival nor equal. His splendor, over the lands it diffused. He crossed the sea in the east. In the eleventh year he conquered the western land to its farthest point. He brought it under one authority…”
In the east, Sargon defeated four leaders of Elam, led by the king of Awan. Their cities were sacked; the governors, viceroys, and kings of Susa, Waraḫše, and neighboring districts became vassals of Akkad.
Thus, if he conquered Sumer and killed Lugal-zage-si in his 16th year (counting from his long reign), then in his 11th year after that, or his 27th year of 56, he led an expedition as far as the Mediterranean. This would have been one of his lowest priorities, after conquering Elam, Mari, and other nearby states that might pose a threat.
Note that the king of Awan whom he subjugated was from Awan II, Awan I having been terminated some years earlier by Abraham.
LUGAL-ZAGE-SI
So knowing that Sargon conquered Lugal-zage-si, we should learn more about him.
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)
Before becoming king of Uruk and suzerain over Sumer, Lugalzagesi ruled at Umma for at least eight years. It was in precisely this period that Lugalzagesi defeated ri(’e)nimgennak [Urukagina] and conquered Lagaš (see above, sub C.10) (ARCANE)
Eri(’e)nimgennak … ruled for at least eleven years. During his eighth regnal year, the city of Lagaš was conquered by Lugalzagesi, who was, at that time, the ruler of Umma, but not yet king of Uruk; Eri(’e)nimgennak continued to rule over Ĝirsu only, with the title lu g a l ĝ i r 2 -s u k i , {formatting looks weird} “king of Ĝirsu”. (ARCANE)
Lugal-zage-si was in power for 25 years, but not necessarily king of all Sumer for 25 years. He was king of Umma for 7 years before conquering Uruk and Lagash; thus, for the purposes of the king list, we should give him only 18, since that’s how long he ruled in Uruk, i.e., outside of his hometown of Umma.
So in the 8th year of Urukagina, as his name is spelled most places, he was defeated by Lugal-zage-si who was in his 7th year of 25 (which is also the first year of the 18years we’re going to give him on the timeline); and at this time, Ur-Zababa was still in control of Kish.
It typically happens that powerful kings want to keep the ball rolling with conquests – you have an army, use it or lose it – so it’s likely he proceeded to attack and conquer Kish in the following year or two.
So it’s telling that if, based on the 40/56 difference in the reign of Sargon, Sargon conquered Lugal-zage-si in his 16th year; and if we start counting Lugal-zage-si’s 25 years from seven years before he conquered Uruk, then the conquest of Kish, death of Ur-Zababa, and beginning of Sargon’s kingdom of Akkad, falls in the 9th year of Lugal-zage-si!
Is this math right?
THE RISE OF LUGAL-ZAGE-SI
‘Indeed a great conqueror [Lugal-zage-si] 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-zage-si; and it seems he, in turn, may have inherited it from a predecessor. The scholar above suggested Enshakushana, who was a key figure but not the immediate processor from whom he inherited the empire…
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)
The last quote cites an original text which states “Meskigalla being the ruler of Adab and Lugalzagesi being the king (of the country)” (cf. n. 133 below). Thus, Meskigalla was governor of Adab, subject to King Lugal-zage-si. What is interesting is that this Meskigalla claims to have been to Lebanon!
“In a fragmentary inscription, he claimed to have been on an expedition to the “Mountain of the Cedar forests” (𒆳𒄑𒂞, KURg̃eš-erin, Lebanon), perhaps together with Sargon I:”
Note I have underlined the word “perhaps” together with Sargon; there is no evidence for this whatsoever. The only reason scholars suggest that is that they are reluctant to admit that Lugal-zage-si actually did have an empire that reached that far, despite his own claims to the contrary. The inscription actually 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[3]
Now you know as much about the subject as any scholar does. They, of course, claim as always “there is no corroboration of Lugal-zage-si’s controlling areas as far as the Mediterranean”… and yet here there is corroboration! Corroboration which is then promptly dismissed and reassigned to Sargon, a generation later.
Lugal-Zage-Si claimed in his inscription that Enlil gave to him “all the lands between the upper and the lower seas”, that is, between the Mediterranean Sea and the Persian Gulf: When Enlil, the king of all the lands, gave the kingship of the Land to Lugalzagesi, he justified “eyes” of the Land; he made all the lands throw themselves at his feet; from the rising of the sun to the setting of the sun, he made them prostrate before him.” (Wiki, Lugalzagesi)
What is interesting about Lugal-zage-si is that, after his initial warring with Lagash and Kish, his reign is presented as a peaceful golden age. Note the language he uses in his boasting – Enlil made the lands throw themselves at Lugalzagesi’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-zage-si’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 lands did submit, they did so because it was continuing an existing and accepted arrangement established, by force or treaty, by earlier kings. But which one? That’s obvious.
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
Outstanding indeed; for it meant the toppling of the previous emperor, Lugal-anne-mundu of Adab!
ADAB
Scholars, as always, claim this person mentioned in the SKL did not exist, or if he did, he was wildly inflating his claims. However, it turns out there is an archeologically-attested person who ruled Adab at precisely this point in history, whose name is plausibly similar to Lugal-anne-mundu – Enme’annu! The word “Lugal” just means king, it isn’t part of a proper name; and according to this historian:
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…
Lugal-kinishe-dudu was the immediate predecessor of Lugal-zagesi, with one king ruling between them briefly. This puts Enme’annu in the right spot to be conquered by Lugal-zage-si when he conquered Adab, as apparently his very first act of business!
Noting the priority of conquering Adab, the prestige associated with conquering it, and the fact that the governor whom Lugal-zage-si installed in Adab was in Lebanon during the time of Lugal-zage-si (or at most, Sargon a few years later).
Given this, we would be foolish to utterly reject Lugal-anne-mundu’s claim to rule as far as Lebanon, just as Lugal-zage-si and Sargon would go on to do. He describes his own reign thus:
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.
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 controlled Uruk, which would have been ruled by Lugal-kinishe-dudu (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!
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 a much less nazi approach 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, although it’s not impossible.
But the simplest interpretation is that he, too, inherited this empire from his predecessor, and 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?
ENTEMENA OF LAGASH
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.
Note his connection to Lugal-kinishe-dudu, who had been a minor king during the hegemony of Lugal-anne-mundu before the time of Lugal-zage-si. 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 “reestablished” and “reconstructed” 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, such as an Elamite one; and the rebuilding and reestablishing must have been to repair the damage done by Tidal of nations and his mercenaries after the death of KL!
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 after conquering the previous (foreign) occupier. And who might that be?
KL, of course – of the first dynasty of Awan.
EANNATUM
So now we can see that there is a direct link between the empires of Sargon, Lugal-zage-si, Lugal-anne-mundu, and KL – with a few decades of weakness after KL to rebuild Sumer after the damaged caused by his downfall. But to get the whole story of this empire we have to go back one more generation, before KL, 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? 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
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 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
So this tells us that before Eannatum of Lagash ruled over all Sumer, a significant part of it was ruled over by Akshak – which is exactly what the SKL tells us.
“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
Thus, before KL invaded Sumer, Eannatum had subdued Elam by invading them and destroying the city of Susa! This, most likely in the time of KL’s father whose name we don’t know, 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, when Abraham was in his 40s 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.
Since Lagash did not record reign lengths 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 KL!
Hence, I expect his reign to have been at least 10 years, perhaps more, beginning with KL’s reign. Because KL couldn’t rule over Sumer until the existing emperor, Eannatum, was dead! So then his brother (not his son) ruled in his place. This is not unknown, but rare; it suggests either foreign meddling (2 Kings 24:17), or a child too young to rule.
Regardless, after his death, his son Entemena inherited the vassalage, powerless to do anything until the death of KL after which he promptly set about REestablishing Lagash’s power and rebuilding the temples sacked by the Elamites and Hitties!
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.
So it was important to know that 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 – the pieces of which scholars are well aware, but which they never connect into a narrative, not having the Bible to help them fill in the gaps – we can now see that each of these five generations ruled over a recognizably similar area of territory, demonstrably successively in time, spanning the course of less than a century.
The consistent thread between these rulers – Eannatum, Kudur-lagamal, Lugal-anne-mundu, Lugal-zage-si, 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.
For then, this becomes not so much five empires, as it is a single empire ruled over by five dynasties across a century or even less. These men may not have ruled over all of these lands in the strictest sense, but they had power there and received tribute from them – just as KL did in Sodom in Genesis 14.
It’s doubtful that KL put his governors on the throne of Sodom when Abraham was 71, although it’s possible. It’s certain he had no real input in the day-to-day workings of the city. But he could claim rulership over them if they paid tribute on time.
So knowing this, we would synchronize the end of the Adab dynasty with the beginning of Lugal-zage-si’s conquest of it. Most likely after the death of Lugal-anne-mundu, given that Lugal-zage-si makes no mention of him when conquering his home city.
The SKL gives Lugal-anne-mundu 90 years of reign; this is implausible, but remember how we dealt with the long reigns in the earliest part of the king list by dividing by 60? That stops working around this part of the list – the reigns are long, but not that long. However, this part responds well to dividing by 6; while it might not be right, I consider it a better starting point than guessing at random. Hence, we will assign him 15 years.
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-zage-si.
But they shouldn’t worry – he’s part of the story too. In fact, he’s the last missing piece!
LEGITIMATE KINGDOM OF AWAN
Before Sargon, Lugal-zage-si ruled in Uruk, and over the domains of Sumer as far as the Mediterranean. Before him, Lugal-anne-mundu ruled from Adab – and at that point the king of Uruk was Lugal-kinishe-dudu.
Lugal-kinishe-dudu had been installed in Uruk by Entemana of Lagash after he “freed” the citizens of Uruk from some foreign occupier. And according to the SKL, the prior ruler of Uruk was named Enshakushanna.
En-šakušuana was a king of Uruk around the mid-3rd 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 gave them some presents and agreed to send tribute, and that was that. Only this king felt it was necessarily to burn Kish to the ground:
“… 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.[9]
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.[10] 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”
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 invading 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. He explained his actions thus, in a bowl offered to Enlil after he conquered Nippur, Enlil’s holy city:
“For Enlil, king of all lands [I offer this bowl], 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.”
Note that he identifies himself “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 governor for someone else.
Yet what his home nation might be is not clearly stated. Elam, perhaps? Because as it happens… 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 of Shakush as sounding Elamite (compare the Elamite god “Inshushinak” for example), and 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. For if it had been Enlil, he would have simply said “I destroyed Kish at thy command, O Enlil!” Besides, Enlil would certainly not ask for his own temple to be robbed and the holiest city in Sumer to be burnt to the ground!
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 Lagamar, whose name literally means “merciless”! And who was, by the way,Chedorlaomer’s patron saint, whose name literally means “servant of lagamal”.
THE LATE BABYLONIAN SPIN
As I said, Enlil would not have commanded the destruction of his own temple, nor the holiest city in Sumer. At least, that’s what makes sense to me. But from the perspective of his own worshippers, there is nothing that happens that Enlil doesn’t command; thus, the fact that his temple was sacked means Enlil had commanded it.
Which 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.”
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! Which means the Elamite must have conquered Nippur violently.
[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.
Thus, it was Enlil who called for this destruction after the robbing of his temple by KL prior to leaving for Canaan – money KL desperately needed to bribe the Hittite mercenaries of Tidal. And after the death of KL, Enshakushanna king of Elam now, and governor of Sumer, 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.
Note that the Elamite was an “improvident (unwise) sovereign”. He warred with the son of Arioch, and killed him; presumably without KL, 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…
It’s difficult to understand what the bold line there means, but clearly the king of Elam – not KL – 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. He managed to hang on to power after the death of KL, according to the SKL for 60 years – dividing by six yields a plausible 10 years – before either chased out or killed by Entemena of Lagash, who finally freed the cities of Sumer from the “vile Elamite”.
ONE LAST TIME
So the sequence of events is as follows; Abraham is born in Ur, in the midst of a centuries long border war between nearby Lagash and Umma. Eventually, Eannatum of Lagash becomes dominant over not just Umma, but manages to push back the encroaching powers of Mari, Akshak and Elam.
But Elam strikes back, kills Eannatum in battle and installs his weak brother as puppet king. The Elamite king, now KL, conquers not just Sumer but lands as far as Canaan; making treaties with conquered enemies as a way of extending his power.
Over time, this foreign king is 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.
Somehow, the kings of Jordan 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? And it works – for a year, while KL puts down civil disobedience at home.
Then he’s free to reinvade Canaan, leaving behind Arioch’s son Dur-sil-ilani and Enshakushanna to keep the peace. Only he makes a fatal mistake while in Canaan, and kidnaps the nephew of the friend of God, who then kills him.
When the news reaches home, civil war breaks out between Arioch’s son and Enshakushanna, who in the end wins out and kills Dur-sil-ilani. Just then Tidal, his Hittite mercenary ally, having lost all the booty he was promised in the Jordanian campaign – Abraham having confiscated it and given a tenth of it to Melchizedek – arrives in Sumer to collect what he is owed. With a vengeance.
Whether he is defeated or simply gets what he came for – gold – he leaves and Enshakushanna tries to hold down an 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 KL and with Tidal, but it’s no use – he can’t live down the “vile Elamite” name.
In the end Entemena, kills 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 ruled for 50 years and restored peace to Sumer, leaving Lugal-kinishe-dudu as heir apparent of the empire.
He manages to rule for 20 years before Lugal-anne-mundu of Adab – either through violence or a natural death – inherits the metaphorical throne, leaving Kinishe-dudu’s son Lugal-kisalsi on the throne of Ur and Uruk, presumably as vassal.
Until Lugal-anne-mundu in his turn dies, after having restored the empire to its former glory under KL, whereupon Lugal-zage-si is emboldened to attack the newly leaderless Adab and claim the rulership himself for 25 years.
In his 9th year he, to establish his own legitimacy, attacks Kish and kills Ur-zababa, inadvertently freeing Sargon to flee far afield and begin his own empire in a new city – but never forgetting Lugal-zage-si’s offence.
Having nursed his grievance (and built his power) for 16 years, he attacks Lugal-zage-si, captures him, and brings him to Nippur with his neck in the stocks, humiliating him as vengeance for his murder of Ur-Zababa.
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 56 years, 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 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-zage-si, etc. – are well known to archaeologists and historians as fact. It’s 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 civilization on the brink of war; barbarians without, civil war within, which tore the fabric of society apart for a century.
It was not unlike Europe in the 19th century, where every single nation in Europe (except England) experienced a revolution and they all were involved in wars most of the time. It was a bad time to be a peasant in Europe. And the 21st century BC was likewise a bad time to be a peasant in Sumer.
So, just as happened in 19th century Europe, settlers emigrated to the frontiers, seeking religious freedom, political freedom, and the right not to be conscripted into endless petty wars between fiefdoms.
So it was a particularly good time to not be in Sumer; and by going to Canaan, Abraham managed to avoid what was a very tumultuous and dangerous time for civilization. The wilderness didn’t seem quite so bad by comparison.
One early inscription for an “Elulu (or Elili), king of Ur” was found at nearby Eridu, stating that this king had built up the abzu ziggurat for Enki.[3]
Some scholars have further connected Elulu with the “Elilina” who was said to be the father of the later king Enshakushanna of Uruk, but this theory is uncertain, owing to chronological difficulties. The inscription states that Enshakushanna’s father was “Elilina”, possibly King Elulu of Ur:[4]
What if Balulu is enshakushanna under the domination of KL? Then he would be son of Elulu, from his own hometown and father.
EN-SHAKUSH-ANNA
Before that, we would place the death of KL and the end of Awan I; the total reign length of Awan I was said to be 356, which divided by 6 yields about 60 for the total reign of the three kings.We have no way to verify this, since the text is so badly damaged, but 36 years for KL as given in the SKL would leave an average of 12 each for his ancestors.
KL, as an Elamite who conquered Sumer and extended his empire as far as Jordan would have needed a lengthy reign to get that done. So 36 seems appropriate to leave him.
Enšagkušu’anak – run this through AI translate
enšagkušu’anak [= Enshakushana]. Son of a certain Elili,65 who was probably the self-same king of Ur (see above, sub A.09). For the transcription of en- š a g 4 -kuš2-a n-na as Enšagkušu’anak, see Marchesi 2010: 237 n. 38. In his inscriptions, Enšagkušu’anak calls himself en k i- en- g i lu g a l k a l a m-ma , “prince (lit., eminent one) of Sumer, king of the country”.66 According to the Sumerian King List, he ruled for sixty years.67 However, a reign this long is quite unlikely, especially considering that the same official, one Uranne (u r-ra-ne 2),68 appears to have been active at Nippur in the time of both Enšagkušu’anak and Śarrumkēn. It is in fact only certain that Enšagkušu’anak ruled two years, as evidenced by the two known year-names that refer to his military campaigns in the Pre-Sargonic texts from Nippur.70 For synchronisms between Enšagkušu’anak and other rulers, see below, sub B.14 and F.11.71
There is no hard physical evidence tying enshakushanna to anyone but Enbi-eshtar and maybe his father elulu of Ur
It’s interesting that exactly at this juncture in history, precisely where his reign would fall, both Uruk (Lugal-Kitun), Ur (Balulu), and Elam (KL) have rulers with reigns lasting 36 years long, which begin at the exact same time!
(Enbi-ishtar) Appears on a version of the SKL as one of the last kings of the Kish II dynasty; however, his reign may have immediately preceded that of Ur-Zababa from the Kish III and/or IV dynasty[63]
We know from the spartoli tablets that the death of KL and other kings in Canaan at the hands of Abraham caused chaos in sumer. Not only because of Tidal’s ransacking the nation, but just because of the power vacuum, which in sumer is a big deal.
See, Sumer is extremely fertile, and produces an immense amount of food – but, uniquely in the world – it requires an immense amount of coordinated effort from an organized government to create and maintain canals, planting, and harvesting against a deadline of floods and seasonal droughts. It’s not the kind of climate where you can plant your own garden in your own backyard and survive.
So in the aftermath of barbarians taking everything of value and killing every head of state they could find, far worse than the loss of gold was the loss of coordination to bring about the planting and harvest for the next years.
Enakalle in the cone of Entemena
His predecessor Ush, ruler of Umma, attacked nearby Lagash after ripping out the stele of Mesilim, trying to take Gu-Edin, as recording in the Cone of Entemena.[2][3] Ush was severely defeated by Eannatum of Lagash, in a battle recorded in the Stele of the Vultures, losing 3,600 men in battle. Ush was then toppled and put to death by his own people.[4]
Enakalle, his successor, finally made a peace treaty with Eannatum of Lagash, as described in the Cone of Entemena:[2][3][4]
Lugalkišarešdudûd [= Lugalkigenedudu/Lugalkineshdudu]. King of Uruk and Ur, contemporary of Enmetênnak of Lagaš (see below, sub C.06) and Enme’annu of Adab. … An indirect synchronism between Lugalkišarešdudûd and Enme’annu of Adab is provided by the attestations of the chief scribe Ayadiĝirĝu of Adab in association with either Lugalkišarešdudûd (in CUSAS 11, 68) or Enme’annu (in MS 3029
A little known fragment of an inscription of Lugalkišarešdudûd has been found in the ruins of the so-called Stampflehmgebäude at Uruk; it is possible that this huge building complex dates to Lugalkišarešdudûd’s reign rather than Lugalzagesi’s
AMRAPHEL
There is no one in this part of recorded history with a name anything like Amraphel; most scholars who tackle this subject at all try to make it fit Hammurabi, but linguistically it’s a big stretch, nor does it match the historical narrative at all (Hammurabi wouldn’t be caught dead serving Elamites), and finally… it’s 400 years too late!
The Bible tells us that he is king of “shinar”. This is, Biblically, used primarily if not exclusively for the central part of Sumer – Babel, Kish, Accad, Uruk, (Genesis 10:10) etc; definitely not Elam or Assyria (Isaiah 11:11). Almost always it refers to Babylon itself.
Unfortunately, at this point in history there are no king lists for kings of Babylon (nor for about 500 years after). So the best we can do is look at the time in history where Amraphel should be, and find a similar name in one of the cities it might plausibly be.
So far, the best answer I can find is the king of Umma called “Il”, which could be the last element of the name “Amra-phel”. Names are often shortened drastically in one language to another; (compare to the Biblical “Pharaoh So” of 2 Kings 17:4, which most scholars think is short for Osorkon). So at least it’s possible.
What we do know about Il fits what we know of Amraphel pretty well;
Il. Cited sometimes as “Ila”, but the spelling il -le of the ergative makes the reading Il certain. Nephew of En’akale and governor (s a ĝ ĝ a) of Zabala(m) under Urlummak, Il became ruler of Umma after the latter was defeated by Enmetênnak of Lagaš. He ruled for at least twelve and possibly fifteen years (“Toward a chronology of early dynastic rulers”, ARCANE project).
A king of Kish, Mesilim, appears to have ruled at Adab, based on inscriptions found at Bismaya. One inscription, on a bowl fragment reads “Mesilim, king of Kish, to Esar has returned[this bowl], Salkisalsi being patesi of Adab”.
The ethnic content of these cities seems to have changed over time, and frankly I can’t track it thoroughly, but over the succeeding 800 years there is a general trend that these cities ceased to be purely ethnic Sumerian cities and gradually became more and more inhabited by Akkadians, and later an increase in Amorite (Canaanite) and Elamite inhabitants as we near -1600.
All of these cities were ethnic Sumerians, not the Semetic Akkadians of the north who it seems mostly were not involved in the squabbles of this period. One notable Semitic exception is the Elamites, who it seems – although this relies heavily on the author of the SKL – to have invaded and dominated a considerable portion of Sumeria between the first and second dynasties of Kish, approximately -2020.
It was into roughly this environment that Abraham was born, in the year -2022.
The earliest known mention of Babylon as a small town appears on a clay tablet from the reign of Shar-Kali-Sharri (2217–2193 BC) of the Akkadian Empire. References to the city of Babylon can be found in Akkadian and Sumerian literature from the late third millennium BC. One of the earliest is a tablet describing the Akkadian king Šar-kali-šarri laying the foundations in Babylon of new temples for Annūnı̄tum and Ilaba. Babylon also appears in the administrative records of the Third Dynasty of Ur, which collected in-kind tax payments and appointed an ensi as local governor.[15][79]
The so-called Weidner Chronicle (also known as ABC 19) states that Sargon of Akkad, c. 23rd century BC in the short chronology, had built Babylon “in front of Akkad” (ABC 19:51). A later chronicle states that Sargon “dug up the dirt of the pit of Babylon, and made a counterpart of Babylon next to Akkad”. (ABC 20:18–19). Van de Mieroop has suggested that those sources may refer to the much later Assyrian king Sargon II of the Neo-Assyrian Empire, rather than Sargon of Akkad.[30]
Classical dating
Ctesias, quoted by Diodorus Siculus and in George Syncellus‘s Chronographia, claimed to have access to manuscripts from Babylonian archives, which date the founding of Babylon to 2286 BC, under the reign of its first king, Belus.[80] A similar figure is found in the writings of Berossus, who, according to Pliny,[81] stated that astronomical observations commenced at Babylon 490 years before the Greek era of Phoroneus, indicating 2243 BC. Stephanus of Byzantium wrote that Babylon was built 1002 years before the date given by Hellanicus of Lesbos for the siege of Troy (1229 BC), which would date Babylon’s foundation to 2231 BC.[82] All of these dates place Babylon’s foundation in the 23rd century BC. However, cuneiform records have not been found to correspond with these classical, post-cuneiform accounts.
And yet, oddly, Terah did make it into Canaan one day; because Abraham carried his body there after he died!
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;
This is an awkward translation; every translator gets it wrong because the pronouns are ambiguous; what does “he removed him” mean? “God moved Abraham”? “Abraham moved himself”? Or, as makes the most sense given the immediate context… Abraham removed his dead father’s body and brought it to Canaan!(Compare to Joseph’s bones in Exodus 13:19).
This is not mere supposition; the chronology actually requires it. Consider; Abraham was born to Terah at 70 years of age. Terah died at 205 years of age. And Abraham left Haran at 75 years of age, presumably after his father died.
But that requires that Abraham was born when Terah was 130 years old; contradicting the Biblical narrative. 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 God at the idea. Hence, this is not possible; the only alternative is the most reasonable one – that Terah’s bones were moved to Canaan, fulfilling his original wish to “move to Canaan” expressed in Genesis 11:31.
There is no direct evidence God had appeared to Abraham before this point, while he was in Ur; it simply says that God brought him out of Ur:
Genesis 15:7 He said to him, “I am Yahweh who brought you out of Ur of the Chaldees, to give you this land to inherit it.”
Here follows a translation of the obverse from line 7 onwards. For the lines the reading of which has been established in the past, my indebtedness to Foster’s (and Lambert’s) elegant rendering will be obvious.
“The enemy approached the Great Gate; he tore out the gate of Istar-of-ac ceptance and toppled it over. Like Erra the unsparing he entered into the Great Court; he stood in the Great Court gazing at Ekur. He spoke, addressing (his) followers; he spat a blasphemous command to all his warriors: ‘bring out the booty of Ekur, take its possessions; disrupt its order, interrupt its rites.’
The enemy approached Iku, the seat of Ea. He destroyed [its] wall […] before it/him. […] Esarra, […] its protective spirit took fright. He vandalized [ESarra] and carried off its cultic paraphernalia. He entered Eadgigi and removed what was supposed to remain hidden. The enemy approached the god Ennundagala with the worst of intentions. But when faced with him the god started to radiate light, he flashed like lightning, he shook on (his) pedestal! The enemy became afraid and fled.
There came his (the god’s) nesakku-pnest, and (the Elamite king) said to him, ‘can it really be that the god started to radiate light and flashed like lightning and shook on (his) pedestal? [Appro]ach En nundagalla, remove his ornaments! [Take] his [.. ,]s, lead him away.’ [The prie]st had no fear and was not mindful of (his own) life, [he did not] approach Ennundagalla, he did not remove (the god’s) diadems. [(Therefore)] the Elamite enemy spoke what he thought necessary.
The Elamite, a vile man, ordered torture. The enemy repeated the command to an officer, ‘Let them bring the terrors 82 M. Jursa and C. Déboursé of the wooden rack into Ekur. […] … in the Great Court I shall torture the nesakku-priest!’ […] the officer executed the [order; in the Great Court he tor]tured the priest […] yelling at him [… demanding evil of him [(gap)]” In his edition,
(an alternate translation of the spartoli tablets)
5. Sargon did not change the wine . . . Instead he was careful to . . . with haste … to Esagil. Marduk, King of all heaven and earth (B & C: son of the Prince of the Apsu), looked favourably on him and gave him sovereignty over the Four Quarters. He made provision for Esagil; all those who dwell in palaces … their tribute to Babylon . . . He [neglected] the word which Bel spoke; he took earth from his pit and a city opposite Babylon; and called its name Agade; (all four mss read here: built a city opposite Agade and called its name Babylon) Enlil changed what he had said, and from east to west they rebelled against him and he had no rest any more. Naram-Sin defiled the people of Babylon. Twice he called up the horde of Gutium against it. … his people as with a goad … he gave his sovereignty to the horde of Gutium. Gutium was an oppressive people. They did not know divine worship; rites and regulations they did not know how to perform properly. (Weidner chronicle)
death of Shamshiadad *197 = Hammurapi 18
This ties in with eponym lists too