Abraham is considered the ancestor of the Israelites and Arabs, holding a very important place in Judaism, Islam and Christianity, which is why these religions are called „Abrahamics„. Originally named Avram, biblical scholars place him around 2000 BC. According to the Bible, he was born 1200 years before the construction of the Temple of Solomon (fixed by Jewish tradition at 968 BC), that is in 2168 BC, and lived to be 175 years old. Jewish tradition does not seem to care much for biblical calculations, considering that Abraham was born in the year 1948 from the creation of the world or 1813 BC. Jewish legends do not provide evidence of the prophet’s existence, but that evidence could come from Babylon. Chapter 14 of the biblical Genesis states that „in the days of Amraphel king of Shinar (i.e. Sumer), Arioch king of Ellasar, Chedorlaomer king of Elam, and Tidal king of nations; That these made war with Bera king of Sodom, and with Birsha king of Gomorrah, Shinab king of Admah, and Shemeber king of Zeboiim, and the king of Bela, which is Zoar„, in which Abraham also participated. None of these kings had historical coverage, so they were all considered mythological characters until 1987, when a series of Babylonian tablets changed the researchers’ opinion. Their discovery was announced that year by Theophilus Pinches in a conference at the Victoria Institute in London. They said that the king of Elam, Kudur-Lagamar, led an alliance of kings that included Eri-Aku from Larsa and Tud-ghula from Gutium. The equivalence of Kudur-Lagamar with Chedorlaomer (Kedorla’omer in Hebrew), Eri-Aku with Arioch (Aryok) and Tud-ghula with Tidal was not difficult. Additionally, the period of these kings’ war was established after „Amraphel, king of Shinar” was identified. In 1875, while comparing the traditional reading of the name with its pronunciation in early biblical translations, Assyriologist and archaeologist François Lenormant suggested in La Langue Primitive de la Chaldée („The Primitive Language of Chaldea”) that it would be correct to read Amrapel (Amraphel’s Hebrew name) as Amar-Pal, how it is phonetically written in the Septuagint (the 2nd century BC translation of Torah into Greek). Two years later, Victorian scholar Daniel Henry Haigh, who also adopted the „Amar-Pal” version, stating in Zeitschrift fur Agyptische Sprache und Altertumskunde („Journal for Egyptian Language and Antiquity”) that „the second element (of king’s name) is a name of the moon-god (i.e. Sin)”, declared: „I have long been convinced of Amar-Pal’s identity as one of the kings of Ur„. In 1916, Franz Bohl also suggested in Die Konige von Genesis 14 („The Kings of Genesis 14”) that the king’s name be read the same as in the Septuagint, „Amar-Pal„, explaining that it meant „Seen by the Son„, a royal name in the spirit of others in the Near East, like the Egyptian Thothmes („Seen by Thoth”). These results of researchers lead to the conclusion that the biblical Amraphel, Amrapel or Amar-Pal is Amar-Sin, the ruler of the Neo-Sumerian Empire between 2048 and 2039 BC. Historical documents describe an alliance between the Sumerians and their neighbors just a few years before Amar-Sin’s reign. In the twenty-eighth year of his reign (2066 BC), King Shulgi, Amar-Sin’s father, gave his daughter in marriage to the viceroy of Elam, offering him the city of Larsa as a dowry. In exchange, the viceroy provided Shulgi with a legion of Elamite troops. Those troops were used by the Sumerian king to subdue western provinces, including Canaan, in his forty-first year of reign, i.e. in 2053 BC. Therefore, in the last years of Shulgi’s reign and the early years of his successor, Amar-Sin, we find the historical timeframe in which the war of the kings recorded in the Old Testament took place, in which Abraham also fought.
Biblical Genesis states that Terah, a descendant of Shem (one of Noah’s three sons), who lived in Ur, had three sons: Abram, Nahor (who had the name of his grandfather, Terah’s father) and Haran. The latter, who had a son named Lot, died before his father and was buried in the city of Ur. Abram took Sarai as his wife and Nahor took Milcah, Haran’s daughter. At some point, „Terah took Abram his son, and Lot the son of Haran his son’s son, and Sarai his daughter in law, his son Abram’s wife; and they went forth with them from Ur of the Chaldees, to go into the land of Canaan; and they came unto Haran, and dwelt there” (Genesis 11:31). Harran in northern Mesopotamia (written as Haran in the Bible) is the city where Terah died. When Abram was 75 years old, Yahweh told him to take his family and go to Canaan, a territory that he would give to him and his descendants. Abram obeyed and left Sumer. Why was he chosen by Yahweh? Who was Abram really?
According to the Bible, Abram was a descendant of Shem, the ancestor of the Semitic race. Therefore, he was not a pure-blooded Sumerian or Aryan, but was part of the Semitic race. In Genesis 14:13 he is called „Abram the Hebrew„, the biblical term being „ibri„, a word coming from „ebr” – the name of one of his ancestors, Eber. The biblical suffix „i” applied to a person means „born in”. As the prefix „n” was often removed in Semitic translations from Sumerian, „ibri” could originally be „nibri„, meaning „born in Nibru”, which was the Sumerian name for the city of Nippur. Abram was an „ibri” or a „nibri„, meaning he was originally from Nippur, the city of Enlil. The Bible does not claim that Terah and his family were from Ur (it is mentioned only as Haran’s birth place), but only that they lived there at some point. This means that, according to the epithet „ibri„, they originated from Nippur, where their clan lived beginning with Eber, and later moved to Ur. The Old Testament provides no information about Abram’s father. The Jewish collection Midrash considers him an idolatrous priest, an idols maker; Abram, who did not share his father’s religious beliefs, one day smashed all the idols in his father’s shop. A similar story is found in the Quran, where Abram smashed his community’s idols. Terah’s name in Akkadian is Tirhu, which means an artifact or vessel with magical purposes. According to writer Zecharia Sitchin, the Sumerian cuneiform sign for Tirhu originated from the word „dugnamtar„, which translates to „speaker of fate”. Putting these pieces of information together, we can assume that Terah was an oracle priest in Nippur, who spoke with god Enlil, one of the most important priestly functions. Thus we can find out why he moved from Nippur to Ur and from there to Harran.
In 2112 BC, Ur-Nammu ascended to the throne of Sumer and turned the city of Ur into the capital of the Neo-Sumerian Empire. Most likely, Terah left Nippur at that time to be near the king, probably at Enlil’s request to have a trusted spy at the royal court, as Ur-Nammu’s affiliation with one of Enki’s cults was known. Furthermore, the king boasted of receiving a law code from god Utu (Marduk), Enki’s son. The coronation ceremony took place in Nippur, where he was anointed as king by Enlil’s priests (among whom Terah was probably included). The new monarch, considered goddess Ninsun’s „beloved son„, as the legendary Gilgamesh, transformed the city of Ur not only into the administrative capital of the empire, but also into the religious one, to Nippur’s detriment. Therefore, the move from Nippur to Ur by the oracle priest was natural. The connection between Terah’s family and royalty also emerges from the female characters’ names mentioned in the Bible: Haran’s daughter and Terah’s granddaughter was named Milcah („Queen”) and Abram’s wife was named Sarai („My Princess”). If indeed Terah moved to Ur with his family in 2112 BC, where Haran was born to him when he was at least 70 years old according to the Bible („Terah lived seventy years, and begot Avram, Nahor, and Haran” – Genesis 11:26), it means that Enlil’s priest was born before 2182 BC. We will find out his exact birth year, but until then another connection between Terah’s family and Akkadian royalty, unnoticed by researchers, must be mentioned.
The Bible doesn’t say anything about Abraham’s mother. The Babylonian Talmud names her Amathlaah or Amsalai, daughter of Carnebo. We know nothing about this Carnebo or his daughter, but we can deduce the truth ourselves. Naram-Sin, ruler of the Akkadian Empire from 2255 to 2218 BC and grandson of Sargon the Great, looted Enlil’s temple in Nippur. After the reign of his son, Shar-Kali-Sharri (2218 – 2193 BC), anarchy began, weakening the empire. The Gutians attacked Akkad and the throne was occupied by four kings – Igigi, Imi, Nanum and Ilulu – whose reigns amounted to only three years. Dudu came to power after them and, during his 21-year reign, he failed to restore order in his famine and revolt-stricken empire. The last ruler of the Akkadian Empire was Shu-turul / Shu-durul (2169 – 2154 BC), who managed to restore some centralized authority but could not prevent his empire from collapsing in the face of the Gutian raids brought to Mesopotamia by Enlil. Undoubtedly, in his attempt to restore order, he tried to reconcile with Enlil’s priests in Nippur, especially because they promoted the idea of the chaos in the empire as a punishment from the god, who wanted revenge, as texts from that period suggest, such as The Curse of Akkad. Reconciliation between the Akkadian royal house and the Sumerian priesthood of Nippur, which would have represented a powerful alliance, could only be achieved in one way: the marriage of a Nippurian priest to a descendant of the profaner Naram-Sin. Inscriptions from that time show that three of Naram-Sin’s daughters had held the position of high priestess until that time: Tutanapshum in Nippur, Enmenanna in Ur and Shumshoni in Sippar. Before them, Enheduanna, Sargon’s daughter and Naram-Sin’s aunt, held this position in Ur. Also, Sargon’s mother was high priestess in the city of Azupiranu. The inclination of women from the Akkadian royal house toward the priesthood was natural and even traditional. The one chosen for the arranged marriage was named Amsalai by the Talmud. The first part of her name, „am„, is the Hebrew version of the Sumerian „en„, which indicates the position of high priestess in Ur, as seen in the names Enheduanna and Enmenanna. And „salai” is a version of the Hebrew name „sarai” („my princess”), also worn by Abram’s wife, which comes from the Akkadian „shar” („king”). Therefore, her real name could be Enshar or a derivative of it, although we cannot be sure. Her father is named Carnebo / Karnebo in the Talmud, meaning „Nabu’s lamb” in Akkadian. The only princess from that period who fits the description is the daughter of Shar-Kali-Sharri and his queen, Tuta-Shar-Ibbis. We notice that both their names contain the particle „shar” („king”), which is also found in the name of Abram’s mother. We know from the inscriptions of the time that before ascending to the throne of the Akkadian Empire, Shar-Kali-Sharri was the governor of Nippur, installed in that position by his father to control the priesthood. Being Semitic and therefore a follower of the Watchers, Naram-Sin’s son could adopt the title Carnebo, meaning „Nabu’s lamb”, who was Marduk’s son and heir. It is possible that he appointed Semites as priests in Nippur at that time to control the priesthood. We already know that his sister, Tutanapshum, was the high priestess in Nippur. It is likely that this position was later taken over by Shar-Kali-Sharri’s daughter, another natural move to continue holding control over Enlil’s priests. The particle „en” in her name suggests that she also held this position in Ur. At that time, Nahor, Serug and Reu – Terah’s father, grandfather and great-grandfather – were in Nippur. It is highly likely that at least one of them (if not all) became priests under Shar-Kali-Sharri’s order, which would explain how Terah became Enlil’s oracle priest, with the position passing from father to son. The one who decided the arranged marriage of the princess-priestess, Naram-Sin’s granddaughter, was undoubtedly Shu-turul, the last ruler of the Akkadian Empire, in an attempt to restore order in the country. Terah, the Semitic priest from Nippur, was chosen as Princess Amsalai’s husband. And perhaps Princess Amsalai was the reason why Terah’s family moved to Ur when Ur-Nammu was crowned in 2112 BC. Once Sumer was liberated from the Gutians and Ur became the capital again, the Akkadian princess could return home, where she had been the high priestess, to try to regain her ancestors’ throne. The descent of Abram and his brothers from the Akkadian royal house could explain the names Milcah („Queen”) and Sarai („My Princess”), the wealth they possessed and the small army led by Abram since leaving Sumer, as well as his connections with the kings of the Jordan plain, the Philistine king, the king of Salem and the pharaoh of the Lower Egypt. However, the best evidence is found in the biblical account. When Sarah died, the Hittite sons of Hebron offered Abram the best burial place for his wife because, as they confessed to him, „thou art a mighty prince among us” (23:6).
An additional evidence of Abram’s Akkadian origin is represented by his own name and that of his wife. Initially named Abram and Sarai, their god changed their names to Abraham and Sarah while they were in Canaan. Some scholars believe that in doing so, the couple gave up their Sumerian names in favor of Semitic ones, officially becoming Semitic. This seems logical given that, at that time, the Sumerians were on the brink of extinction, while the Semites were preparing to occupy the entire Middle East. Abraham and his family, originally Semitic, were forced to give up everything that connected them to Sumer, including their names, and adapt to the times and to Canaaninte way of life. As logical as this hypothesis may seem, the reality is quite different. Abram is not a Sumerian name, but an Akkadian one. It is made up of „ab” („father”) and „ram” („great, supreme”) and translates to „Supreme Father”, a fitting name for a member of a royal house. His wife also had a Semitic name, specifically Hebrew, made up of „sar” („prince”) and „ai” („my”), correctly translated as „My Princess”. As Hebrew did not exist at that time and was derived from Akkadian much later, it means that the biblical editors preferred to replace the Akkadian names with their Hebrew equivalents. In Canaan, their god offered them so-called Semitic names, Abraham and Sarah („Princess”). In reality, the names they received were Abraam and Sarra, one hundred percent Sumerian names, which the editors of the Old Testament modified to make sense in their language. In Sumerian, „sar” means „banished” and among the multiple meanings of the word „ra” is „to lead”, which was also used by the Egyptians to name their god at the head of the pantheon. Therefore, Sarra means „The Banished Leader”, a name that suits her given that she was forced to leave her country to settle in Canaan after several years of wandering. For Abraam, things are a bit more complicated. Written in cuneiform, the Sumerian word „ab” („window, opening, niche”) was represented by the same sign used for „esh” („to anoint”) and „aba” („lake, sea”). Therefore, the first syllable of his name could be any of these three variants. „Ra” means „to accompany, to lead, to wear”. The last syllable, „am„, written after a noun means „to be”. Otherwise, it has the same meaning as „aga„, namely „diadem, crown” (a symbol of royalty). Thus, the most accurate translation of the name Abraam is „The One Anointed to Wear the Crown”, a very fitting name. He belonged to the Akkadian royal house, being a descendant of Sargon, the divine Kug-Bau and even Marduk. The name given to him most likely by his mother shows us that the Akkadian princess desired the throne of Sumer, if not for herself, then at least for her youngest son. Therefore, this seems to be the true reason for Terah’s family moving to Ur upon the enthronement of Ur-Nammu in 2112 BC.
Who really was Abram’s wife? Genesis 11:29 tells us: „And Abram and Nahor took them wives: the name of Abram’s wife was Sarai; and the name of Nahor’s wife, Milcah, the daughter of Haran, the father of Milcah, and the father of Iscah„. This is the only biblical mention of Iscah (Yiskah in Hebrew), Haran’s daughter, Milkah’s and Lot’s sister. Some scholars have concluded from the Talmud and other rabbinic sources that Iscah is nothing more than a title or nickname for Sarai. The word „yiskah” is derived from the Aramaic root for „to see”, therefore the name of Haran’s daughter was translated as „She who sees”, a reference to clairvoyance. In Jewish tradition, based on this epithet, Sarah is considered a prophet just as great or even greater than Abraham, because she could see the future. Consequently, Iscah is considered an alter ego of Abraham’s wife, referring only to her prophetic aspect. Rabbi Yitzhak Ben Sh’lomo Lurya Ashkenazi, considered the father of contemporary Kabbalah, wrote in the 16th century: „Iscah was Sarah, but why was she called Iscah? Because she saw the future thanks to divine inspiration„. In modern times, American folklorist Howard Schwarz considers Iscah an „extension of Sarah’s personality beyond its normal limits„.
If Sarai and Iscah are one and the same, a problem arises. Iscah is Haran’s daughter and Abram’s niece. In Genesis 20:12, Abram says of Sarai: „yet indeed she is my sister; she is the daughter of my father, but not the daughter of my mother; and she became my wife„. Was she really Terah’s daughter? In Genesis 11:31 it is written: „And Terah took Abram his son, and Lot the son of Haran his son’s son, and Sarai his daughter in law, his son Abram’s wife; and they went forth with them from Ur of the Chaldees, to go into the land of Canaan; and they came unto Haran, and dwelt there„. If Sarai was Terah’s daughter, the biblical author would have mentioned this as he did with Abram. Instead, he refers to her as his daughter in law„. Abram’s statement is suspicious if we observe the context in which it was made. The Bible says that in both Egypt and Gerar, Abram stated that Sarai was his sister, not his wife, for fear of being killed by her potential suitors. After Yahweh appeared to him in a dream and asked him to return Abram’s wife, King Abimelech asked the patriarch why he did not tell the truth. Caught in his lie, it was natural for Abram to try to defend himself in some way. So he may have offered the king a new lie, which included some truth. Therefore, the statement that Sarai is his paternal sister, in this context, can only be viewed with suspicion. Although we must also consider the possibility that it could be true. In this case, how could Sarai be both Terah’s and Haran’s daughter?
Considering that Haran died first, long before the others, he seems to have been the oldest of Terah’s sons. Abram, who lived the longest among the brothers, seems to be the youngest. In the biblical Genesis, where it says that „Terah lived seventy years, and begat Abram, Nahor, and Haran„, the order in which the three are listed was not established based on age, but on importance. Abram is one of the most important figures in Judaism, Islam and Christianity, being considered the father of both the Israelites and the Arabs. Therefore, it is normal for him to be listed first. Haran is the least important of the brothers, considering that he died first and did not participate in the family’s pilgrimages. Therefore, he was listed last. After Haran’s death, Sarai and Milcah were orphaned and were adopted by their grandfather, Terah. The laws of the time specified that every family needed a head, who was always the father of the children. When the father died, the new head of the family or father of the children became, legally, the deceased’s father or the children’s grandfather on their father’s side. In this way, Sarai and Milcah became Terah’s adopted daughters. Terah’s two remaining sons, Abram and Nahor, married them, as was required by the traditions of the time. Their weddings probably took place at the same time, as it was a marriage of two brothers with two sisters. After the wedding, the girls no longer legally needed a father because their husbands became the heads of their new families. This explains why later, when they left Ur for Harran, Sarai is referred to as Terah’s daughter-in-law and not his daughter. With the help of the two girls’ names we can also establish their birth order. Since Milcah („Queen”) represents a higher rank than Sarai („My Princess”), it means that she was Haran’s first daughter. Like her husband, Sarai was the youngest. Now we understand how the two couples were established: Nahor, the older brother, chose Milcah, the older sister, while Abram, the youngest, took Sarai, the younger sister. It seems to have been the perfect match, at least for the younger brother: Abram could communicate with the gods, like his father, and his wife was clairvoyant, having the ability to see the future. Their parents were priests (his mother even held the highest position), just like their ancestors, who were descended from Queen Kug-Bau: Sargon, his daughter and Naram-Sin’s daughters. Under these circumstances, it is no wonder that Abram and Sarai received a divine mission.
King Ur-Nammu died in 2094 BC. During a battle, he fell from his chariot, which was stuck in the mud, and was left behind, „abandoned like a broken vessel„. Even after his death he did not escape bad luck, as the boat that was bringing his lifeless body back to Sumer „sank in an unknown place; the waves swallowed it with him on board„. Upon hearing the news of the king’s death, the Sumerians were very disappointed: „Why didn’t Nanna hold his hand?” they wondered. „Why didn’t Inanna, the Lady of Heaven, put her noble arm around him? Why wasn’t the courageous Utu by his side?„. Their conclusion was that the great gods, who had helped Ur-Nammu until then (the king boasted of receiving a „divine weapon that turned rebels into heaps” from Enlil), had changed their minds and broken their promises: „How the hero’s fate has changed! An has broken his sacred word. The deceitful Enlil has changed his decision!„. Probably the only one who rejoiced at Ur-Nammu’s death was his son, Shulgi, who ascended to the throne of Sumer. Although in the early years he was involved in temple construction and even completed the ziggurat of Nanna (Enki) started by his father, Shulgi was not a devout man. On the contrary, he intervened in the temples’ affairs throughout Sumer. Der is one of the cities in whose affairs Shulgi intervened in the first part of his reign and which he destroyed in 2075 BC, apparently as a punishment at the gods’ will. Early chronicles, such as the Weidner Chronicle, criticized the king’s wrongdoings: „he did not perform the rituals correctly and he defiled the purification rituals„. Text CM 48 accuses him of improperly influencing the rites, composing „false steles, insolent writings„. The Chronicle of Early Kings accuses him of „criminal tendencies and he took the property of Esagila and Babylon as plunder„. Shulgi proclaimed himself a god in his twenty-third year of reign and spent his time composing self-praising hymns. It seems that these „wrongdoings” were pleasing to the Watchers, as Ishtar invited him to Uruk, where she made him „a chosen man for Inanna’s vulva„. They had sex in Anu’s temple after a private party attended by Marduk, as Shulgi boasted:
„With the brave Utu (i.e. Marduk), friend as well as brother,
I drank strong liquor in the temple founded by An.
Minstrels sang to me the seven love songs.
Inanna (i.e. Ishtar), the queen, the vulva of heaven and Earth,
Was with me, feasting in the temple.„
The defiant sexual act in the sacred temple of a Celestial god was not unnatural for Shulgi, who himself was conceived on the altar of Enlil’s temple in Nippur, through a union between King Ur-Nammu and the god’s high priestess. And we cannot but applaud the inspiration (or perhaps the clairvoyant abilities) of Terah’s wife to leave Nippur once Ur-Nammu was enthroned, thus avoiding her being raped by the king like the high priestess. A ruler like Shulgi could not be pleasing to a priest devoted to Enlil, like Terah. Knowing what was to come, or perhaps prompted by his god, in 2094 BC, when Shulgi ascended the throne, Terah and his family left for Harran, the twin city of Ur. He did not take his entire family with him, as the Bible asserts, but was accompanied only by Abram, Sarai and Lot, Haran’s son. We do not know what happened to Terah’s wife, whether she stayed in Ur or also left for the northern city of Sumer. It is highly likely that she was also the reason for leaving Ur after the death of Ur-Nammu and the coronation of the new king, the arrogant Shulgi lacking his father’s tolerance for foreigners, especially members of the former Akkadian royal family. Most likely, to avoid danger, Princess Amsalai took her family and fled to Harran, away from the royal palace. Or perhaps, with Shulgi’s coronation, the princess realized she had no chance of taking over her ancestors’ throne and left.
When Shulgi died in 2048 BC, Yahweh spoke to Abram for the first time. The god asked him to leave Harran and head towards Canaan, the land he had promised to give to Abram’s descendants. It was three years after Enki’s death, when Amar-Sin, the first of the three who adopted the god’s Akkadian epithet as a tribute, became the king of Sumer. Also, Amar comes from Amar Utu, Marduk’s Sumerian name, so the new king’s affiliation with the Watchers’ cult is evident. The Bible says that Abram was 75 years old when he left Harran, therefore he was born in 2123 BC while his parents were living in Nippur. His father lived in Harran for 60 years, dying at the age of 205. Thus, Terah died in 1988 BC and was born in 2193 BC, a year full of events of particular importance: King Shar-Kali-Sharri (Naram-Sin’s son and Sargon’s great-grandson) died and the throne of the Akkadian Empire was taken over by four kings (Igigi, Imi, Nanum and Ilulu) who ruled simultaneously, while the Gutians invaded Mesopotamia. At Yahweh’s command, in 2048 BC, Abram took „Sarai his wife, and Lot his brother’s son, and all their substance that they had gathered, and the souls that they had gotten in Haran; and they went forth to go into the land of Canaan; and into the land of Canaan they came” (Genesis 12:5). His affiliation with the former royal house brought him benefits: wealth, servants and soldiers. The biblical term used to refer to Abram’s people is „naar„, which has been translated in various ways, such as „servants”, „young men” or „people”. However, in the Hurrian language, this word meant „horsemen”. In fact, among the soldiers in Mesopotamian military texts, the swift horseback riders „lunar” („nar-men”) are found among charioteers and cavalry. Moreover, in the 1 Samuel in the Old Testament, King David attacked the camp of the Amalekites „and there escaped not a man of them, save four hundred young men („Ish-Naar” in the original, meaning „nar-men” or „lunar„), which rode upon camels, and fled” (30:17). By calling Abram’s people „nar-men”, the Bible suggests that Terah’s youngest son left Sumer with a cavalry force that probably used camels instead of horses, which were much more suitable for the arid regions of Canaan and Sinai.
The presence of soldiers under his command suggests that after Shulgi’s death, Prince Abram wanted to attack the capital Ur to forcibly take over his ancestors’ throne. He may have even dreamed of restoring the Akkadian Empire. During his time in Harran, he gathered his small army, which he never got to use. His god changed his plans, sending him to Canaan. To convince him to accept, he promised him a new territory: „Get thee out of thy country, and from thy kindred, and from thy father’s house, unto a land that I will shew thee: And I will make of thee a great nation, and I will bless thee, and make thy name great; and thou shalt be a blessing” (Genesis 12:1-2). Abram was persuaded and, thinking of the new land, gave up his dream of ruling over Sumer.
In Canaan, the god appeared to him again at a place called Shechem, near the oak tree of Mamre, and Abram built an altar. The only reason the god appeared was to show him the promised land: „Unto thy seed will I give this land” (Genesis 12:7). Then Abram journeyed towards the future city of Jerusalem, called Salem in those days, to Mount Moriah, „on the east of Bethel„, where he built another altar. From there he journeyed south, to Egypt, which at that time was divided: the Upper Egypt (southern) ruled by Mentuhotep II from Thebes and the Lower Egypt (northern) by Merikare from Heracleopolis. Most likely, Abram, Sarai and Lot, coming from Canaan, located north of Egypt, arrived at Merikare’s court. Enchanted by Sarai’s beauty, the pharaoh took her as his wife, believing she was Abram’s sister. He bought her from Abram, giving him „sheep, and oxen, and he asses, and menservants, and maidservants, and she asses, and camels„. The Jewish tradition says they stayed in Egypt for five years. In the Bible, „Yahweh plagued Pharaoh and his house with great plagues because of Sarai Abram’s wife„. Scared, Merikare returned Abram’s wife and drove them out of Egypt, allowing them to keep the wealth they had received. It is possible that the departure of Abram, Sarai and Lot from Egypt was not due to a pharaoh who was afraid of Yahweh, but rather due to the conflict between the dynasties of Thebes and Heracleopolis that had just started. In an attempt to conquer the Thinis region, Merikare desecrated the sacred necropolis of Osiris (Enki) in Abydos. Mentuhotep II of Thebes (a follower of Amun / Enki, the supreme god of the city) could not leave this sacrilege unpunished, so he sent his army north, defeated Merikare and then unified Egypt. It is highly likely that Merikare died in the battle with Mentuhotep, which took place around 2040 BC. This seems to be the most plausible reason for Abram’s departure from Egypt: fear of the armed conflict in which the pharaoh under whose protection he had been until then was involved. If the account in the Book of Jubilees is true, they left Egypt five years later (i.e. in 2042 BC) because of the war between the royal dynasties of Thebes and Heracleopolis.
Returning to where he came from, Abram arrived at Mount Moriah, where he had erected an altar to Yahweh. There, he parted ways with his nephew, Lot, who went to Sodom in the Jordan Plain, while Abram and his wife remained in Canaan. After Lot’s departure, the god appeared to the prophet again, asking him to survey the territory, reminding him that he would leave it to his descendants. The patriarch returned to his oak tree at Mamre in Hebron, where he built another altar. He did not stay there long because „in the days of Amraphel king of Shinar” the military expedition of the eastern kings against the Canaanites took place. This seems to have taken place in 2039 BC, in the last year of Amar-Sin’s reign. Genesis 14:5 states that the war occurred 14 years after the Elamites, under Chedorlaomer / Kudur-Lagamar’s leadership, had subjugated the Canaanite kings. Indeed, 14 years had passed since the Sumerian king Shulgi, Amar-Sin’s predecessor, launched a military campaign in Canaan in 2053 BC at the advice of god Nanna (Enki)’s oracle, led by the Elamites. After defeating the Rephaim, Zuzim, Emim, Horites, Amalekites and Amorites, Chedorlaomer / Kudur-Lagamar, Arioch / Eri-Aku, Tidal / Tud-ghula and Amraphel / Amar-Sin fought in the Valley of Siddim with five kings from the Jordan Plain: Bera, Birsta, Shinab, Shemeber and the king of Bela / Zoar. The Mesopotamian kings emerged victorious, plundering Sodom and Gomorrah and returned home, taking Lot with them, whom they captured in Sodom. Upon learning that his nephew had been enslaved, Abram gathered 318 „naar” horsemen and caught up with the Mesopotamian kings in Dan, where he attacked and defeated them during the night, thus freeing Lot and recovering the spoils of war taken from Sodom. For this incredible victory he was congratulated by both Bera, the king of Sodom, and Melechizedek, the king of Salem. Furthermore, his god appeared to him in a dream at night to assure him once again that he would inherit that land. After their defeat, the Mesopotamian kings were dethroned. Amar-Sin lost his life on the way home, killed by a scorpion sting, and the throne of Sumer passed to his brother, Shu-Sin. Through his victory over Amar-Sin and his allies, Abram avenged himself on the one who occupied the throne that rightfully belonged to him (in his opinion), that of Sumer.
According to the Bible, ten years after arriving in Canaan, in 2038 BC, because Sarai was barren, Abram slept with her maidservant, the Egyptian Hagar. This happened a few months after Amar-Sin’s death and the enthronement of his brother, Shu-Sin, on the Neo-Sumerian Empire’s throne. From Abram’s desire to have a child immediately after learning of Amar-Sin’s death, we understand that he wanted a son to ascend to the throne of Sumer. He had this right considering that he was part of the Akkadian royal family, whose ancestors had ruled Mesopotamia for two centuries. The timing was right, with Sumer being weakened, especially after the breakdown of alliances with its neighbors. Even the mother of his future child was not chosen by chance; although the Bible states that she was a mere handmaid, an old Jewish legend, mentioned by Louis Ginzberg in Legends of Jews, considers Hagar to be the pharaoh’s daughter, given by Merikare to Abram in exchange for Sarai, along with „sheep, and oxen, and he asses, and menservants, and maidservants, and she asses, and camels„. It becomes increasingly obvious that Abram desired a son on the throne of Sumer who had both parents of royal blood, even though Yahweh (Marduk) had promised him Canaan. After nine months, Hagar gave birth to a son whom she named Ishmael, as commanded by an angel. „And she called the name of the Lord that spake unto her, Thou God seest me (Ata-El-Roi in Hebrew): for she said, Have I also here looked after him that seeth me?” (Genesis 16:13), indicating that the divinity who imposed her child’s name was a Watcher. The event took place in 2037 BC, when Abram was 86 years old.
Ascending the throne of Sumer in 2039 BC, Shu-Sin found the great alliance of Mesopotamian kings broken apart and his former allies attacking his crumbling empire. The king had no choice but to ask for help from his gods, the Watchers. At the beginning of his reign, he boasted in an inscription that „the Holy Inanna (Ishtar), gifted with amazing qualities, the first daughter of Sin (Enki)” had given him weapons to „attack the enemy land that is unsubmissive„. However, the goddess’ help was insufficient and Shu-Sin offered his loyalty to the other divine faction. As the pressures from the west mounted, the king began to ask for forgiveness and help from the great gods of Nippur, Enlil and his wife, Ninhursag. Texts from that time and archaeological excavations have revealed that Shu-Sin undertook massive reconstruction works in Nippur. Desperate, he even raised a stela for Enlil and his wife, „a stela as no king had done before„. The god, however, was not present to answer him, only Ninlil (Ninhursag) hearing his pleas. Overcomed with compassion, „to prolong Shu-Sin’s prosperity, to extend the duration of his reign„, the goddess gave him a „weapon that strikes with radiation (…) whose frightening flash reaches up to the heavens„. A Shu-Sin’s text, classified as Collection B, states that after he made Harran „tremble in fear of his weapons„, the king wanted peace. He sent his daughter as a bride, probably to the leader of the region. The girl returned to Sumer, „establishing a city for Enlil and Ninlil on the border of Nippur„. It was the first time „from the days when fate was decided, that a king should build a city for Enlil and Ninlil„, as Shu-Sin boasted. The king even assigned himself the role of high priest in Nippur, but all his efforts were in vain. Enlil refused to help him and the Neo-Sumerian Empire was approaching an imminent end. In a last desperate attempt to attract the Celestials’ protection, Su-Sin built „a great cruise ship, suitable for the widest rivers” for Enlil and Ninhursag, which he „decorated perfectly with precious stones„, fitted with oars made of the finest wood and furnished with all the comforts, including a bridal bed. Then he „put the cruise ship in the wide basin in front of the House of Pleasures of Ninlil„. It seems that the king finally found the winning formula; Enlil was persuaded and returned to Nippur:
„When Enlil heard
From one horizon to the other he hurried,
From south to north he traveled;
Through the air, over the earth, he hastened,
To rejoice greatly with his beloved queen, Ninlil.„
Some lines are missing towards the end of the tablet, so we cannot know what happened next. However, the last lines of the text refer to „Ninurta, Enlil’s great warrior, who stunned the intruder” after he discovered on the ship „an inscription, a wicked writing„, probably a magical formula used to cast a curse on Enlil and Ninhursag. No text has been found about Enlil’s reaction to this plot, but it seems that he left Nippur again, this time taking his consort with him. Not long after, a total lunar eclipse in February 2031 BC was interpreted by the priests of Nippur as a bad omen. They wrote to Shu-Sin that it was a prophecy „to the king who reigns over the four regions: his wall will be destroyed, Ur will remain desolate„. Having nothing left to lose, rejected by the Celestials, Shu-Sin defied them for the last time. He built a temple for a young god, son of Ishtar, named Shara („Prince”) in Nippur, Enlil’s city. In an inscription left in the temple, Shu-Sin declared himself the father of the young god: „To the divine Shara, heavenly hero, beloved son of Inanna: his father, Shu-Sin, the powerful king, king of Ur, king of the four regions, built the temple Sagipada, his beloved altar; long live the king„. The king did not live much longer, that being the last year of his reign.
Neither did the last ruler of Sumer, Ibbi-Sin, succeed in stopping the decline of his empire. Ascending to the throne after his father’s death in 2030 BC, he could only accelerate the construction of walls and fortifications in the center of Sumer, around Ur and Nippur, the rest of the country remaining defenseless. Loyalty messages from subordinate urban centers ceased to arrive, one after another. In his second year of reign he appointed himself the high priest of Ishtar’s temple in Uruk, but he received from oracles only messages of destruction and punishment. In the fourth year of his reign he was told that „The Son of the West will rise (…) it is a sign for Ibbi-Sin: Ur will be judged„. In the fifth year, the king became the high priest of Ishtar’s temple in Ur, but even this position was of no use to him. It was the last year in which the cities of Sumer sent the traditional sacrificial animals to Enki’s temple in Ur. The central authority in Ur, its Watcher gods and its great temple-ziggurat were no longer recognized. In the sixth year of his reign, that is in 2024 BC, the end seemed increasingly imminent. „When the sixth year arrives, the inhabitants of Ur will be trapped„, announced one of the oracles. The calamity was to come „when, for the second time, he who calls himself Supreme, as one whose chest has been anointed, comes from the west„. In the same year, as indicated by messages that the king received from the western border, „hostile people from the west had entered the plain” of Mesopotamia without encountering any resistance. Soon they „entered the interior of the country, occupying one great fortress after another„. Just before the end of the sixth year, the inscriptions honoring the king of Ur stopped in Nippur. The enemy of Sumer, „he who calls himself Supreme„, had reached the heart of the empire. This could only be the new king of the Earth, Marduk, who was returning to Mesopotamia to be crowned in his beloved Babylon.
In his autobiography, Marduk claims that he was exiled for 24 years in the land of Hatti:
„In the land of Hatti, I asked an oracle
[About] my throne and reign;
In an oracle: ‘Until when?
Twenty-four years, in an oracle, I have nested.’
After the twenty-fourth year
My days [of exile] were over
To my city [I set out];
My temple Esagila, like a mountain [to raise it up],
My eternal dwelling to [reestablish].
I went on foot
Through […] lands to my city
To […] establish it,
To crown a king in Babylon
In my covenant house […]
In Esagil, like a mountain […]
Created by Anu […]
In Esagil […]
A platform to raise […]
In my city […]
Joy […]”.
The damaged tablet then lists the cities Marduk passed through on his way to Babylon. He had indeed entered Mesopotamia from the west, as the oracles had predicted, accompanied by his Amorite Semites. However, things did not go smoothly for him. A god „had unleashed his wrath” against Babylon. His name is stated at the beginning of a column of text, from which only the first part can be distinguished: „The Divine Nin…”, which can only be Ninurta, Enlil’s son. Unfortunately, the tablet’s deterioration does not allow us to learn about Ninurta’s actions against Babylon. However, we find Marduk’s reply in the third tablet of the Kedarlaomer Texts, where his Amorite troops invaded Nippur, a city where the Elamites mobilized by Ninurta were waiting for them. Nippur was devastated during the confrontation and Ekur, Enlil’s temple, was desecrated again. Ninurta accused Marduk’s soldiers of this act, but the text considers Enlil’s son, named Erra here, as the true author:
„Erra, the merciless,
Entered the sacred precinct.
Stopped in the sacred precinct,
He looked at Ekur.
He opened his mouth, told his young men:
‘Take the loot from Ekur,
Take the treasures,
Destroy its foundation,
Break the fence of the altar!’„
When Enlil found out that his temple had been desecrated and that „the veil in the Holy of Holies had been torn„, he quickly returned to Nippur. „Gods clothed in rays raced before him” and he himself „radiated a brightness like lightning” when he descended from the sky. „He shook the holy place” when he landed in the temple, then asked his son, „Prince Ninurta„, who had defiled his holy place. Of course Ninurta did not confess his guilt, but pointed at Marduk and the Amorites. The text also claims that Ninurta did not show proper respect to his father: „Without fear for his own life, he did not take off his tiara„; he „spoke hatefully” to Enlil, „there was no justice; destruction was being plotted„.
Why would Ninurta desecrate his father’s temple? Undoubtedly, to draw him into the fight against Marduk. Ninurta, who should have inherited the throne of Earth, was not satisfied with Anu’s decision to offer Marduk the leadership of Earth. Moreover, he was not at all pleased that his father had accepted the emperor’s decision, giving up the throne without a fight. Ninurta was a warrior, trained to fight to the end, not to give up in under any circumstances. He could not accept defeat, especially before the Watchers, with whom he had fought his entire life. Especially before Marduk, his direct rival for the throne. He learned to fight to the end from his father, who was now giving up. This caused his respect for Enlil to diminish, which is why „he did not take off his tiara” and „spoke hatefully” to him. It was not fair for Marduk to receive what rightfully belonged to him, Enlil’s heir. And it was not fair for his father to do nothing about it. However, Enlil continued to obey emperor Anu’s orders, even after his temple in Nippur was devastated.
In the Epic of Erra, the Council of the Gods met and discussed „without interruption for a day and a night„. The Anunnaki, the great gods, reminded Ninurta of Anu’s decision: „Now that Prince Marduk has risen, now that humans have raised his image for the second time, why does Erra continue to resist?„. Furious, seeing that he was receiving support from no one, Ninurta decided to take matters into his own hands. „Consulting with himself„, the god decided to unleash some terrible weapons. „I will destroy the lands, make them into a heap of dust; I will destroy the cities, turn them into wastelands; I will level the mountains, make the animals disappear; I will stir up the seas, decimate their inhabitants; I will cause men to perish, transform their souls into vapors; no one will be spared„, he said. From a text catalogued with the index CT-xvi-44/46 we learn that a minor god informed Marduk of Erra / Ninurta’s destructive plan. One night, while the great gods had retired to rest, the god „spoke these words to Marduk„, regarding „seven terrible weapons that were created by Anu (…) Preparing to use these seven weapons against you„. Alarmed, Marduk wanted to know where the weapons were: „Where were these seven created?„. The unknown revealed to him that they were hidden underground:
„These seven dwell in the mountains,
In a cavity in the soil they are found.
From that place with radiance they will surge,
From Earth to heaven, in terror clothed.„
Not being satisfied, Marduk insisted on knowing the exact location of the weapons, but was told that „even to the wise gods it is unknown„.
Furthermore, in the Epic of Erra a god named Ishum appears. His identity is unknown, but his name would be translated in Sumerian as „The Wise Teacher of the Mountain”. We only know that the Sumerians also called him Endursaga („The friendly and obedient Lord of the bond”), considering him the messenger of the gods and Marduk’s brother. This can only be Nabu, the god of wisdom after Enki’s death and the messenger of the gods, whom some consider Enki’s son and others Marduk’s son. From myths we know that Nabu left the Watchers’ side after the Deluge, joining the Celestials after Enlil offered him immortality and a place in the Garden of the Gods. We also know that in the second war of the gods he often played the role of mediator between the two conflicting sides. The same role is played here, trying to convince Ninurta to abandon the plan of using terrible weapons against innocent people:
„Will you destroy the righteous, the just?
Will you destroy those who have sinned against you,
Together with those who have not sinned against you?„
However, Ninurta, full of hatred, was determined. „I will annihilate the son and leave the father to bury him; then I will kill the father without letting anyone bury him!„, he shouted. In the end, Ishum (Nabu) convinced him. Ninurta agreed to exclude Mesopotamia from the attack, promising to strike only the places where Marduk could be hiding:
„I will send an emissary from city to city;
The son, the father’s seed, will not escape;
His mother will stop laughing (…)
He will not have access to the place of the gods.„
It seems that Ninurta’s plan was approved by Enlil. Without wasting any more time, Ninurta and Nabu decided to take action, although the latter agreed to participate only to ensure that Enlil’s son would keep his word:
„Then the hero Erra came before Isum,
Remembering his words;
And Ishum came forward, as promised,
With a heavy heart.„
The first one to launch one of the bombs was Nabu:
„Ishum set out for the mighty mountain;
The terrifying Seven, unmatched,
Crawled behind him.
To the mighty mountain the hero came;
He raised his hand,
The mountain was shattered;
Then he wiped out the plain near the mighty mountain;
No tree trunk remained standing in its forests.„
Ninurta kept up with him:
„Then, following Ishum’s lead,
Erra pursued the Way of Kings.
He brought about the end of cities,
Turning them into wastelands.
In the mountains he caused starvation,
And made the animals perish.„
A document known as K.5001, published in the Oxford Edition of Cuneiform Texts, vol. VI, written in Sumerian and Akkadian and addressed to an unidentified god, confirms the devastating attack:
„Lord, bearer of the Scorcher,
Who has burned the enemy to ashes;
Who has destroyed the disobedient land;
Who has withered the life of the followers of the Evil Word;
Who has rained stones and fire upon the enemies.„
Such terrible weapons, like Ninurta’s seven, similar to modern atomic bombs, are also described in Indian scriptures. In Bhagavad Gita, „a single projectile charged with all the power of the Universe” destroyed three cities, leaving behind „a glowing column of smoke and fire, shining like a thousand suns„, which „rose in all its splendor over the entire land„. Drona Parva maintains that „a fiery projectile, with the brilliance of a smokeless flame, was launched. A thin darkness suddenly surrounded the skies. The clouds rose as high as possible, letting fall a shower of blood. The world, burned by the heat of this weapon, seemed seized in fever„. In Mahabharata there is mention of a weapon that caused a 12-year drought in a country, while another destroyed „the fetus in the mother’s womb„. In the eighth book, „from aboard a powerful vimana, flying at a great height, Gurkha threw a single projectile at the enemy city. A bright white smoke, ten thousand times brighter than the Sun, rose up with an unbearable heat (…) It all happened as if it were an unleashed elemental force: the Sun spun in circles. Burnt by the heat of the weapon, the world walked dazed in the heat. Elephants, burnt by the heat, ran crazed in all directions, seeking an escape from the terrible scourge. Water boiled, animals died and enemies were mowed down; the blaze engulfed the trees, which fell in rows like a forest on fire. Roaring horribly, elephants collapsed defeated. Horses and battle chariots burned and everything looked like after a giant fire. Thousands of houses were destroyed and then, on land and sea, there was total silence (…) The sight was terrifying. The bodies of the fallen had shrunk so much due to the unprecedented heat that they no longer looked like humans„. In Ramayana, during the war between Rama and Ravana, „hundreds of meteors fell from the sky” and „spears, axes and shields whirled around. A persistent smoke as thick as mud suffocated people and animals trying to leave the streets. The burning city of Lanka illuminated the sea„. The Ancestor’s Weapon, which Prince Rama received from Agastya and „kept for the supreme occasion„, was an unparalleled weapon: „this arrow, which contained the energy of all beings, shone like the Sun. It could pierce a mountain, then strike a hundred elephants and then turn another hundred chariots into powder, and finally, at a distance of ten yojanas, it could shatter a granite city„. After Rama launched the weapon, „both armies believed that the end of the world had come. The shaking of the air brought them down. The Earth trembled to its fiery depths. Many stars fell from the sky„. In the chapter Victory, Khara used an equally destructive weapon against Rama: „a black disc covered the Sun (…) Immediately, day was replaced by total darkness (…) Fish remained motionless in the ponds where the lotus began to wither. All the trees lost their leaves. The Earth shook„.
Not only ancient texts confirm the use of atomic weapons, but also archaeological discoveries. There are many places in the world that show traces of nuclear attacks. In Peru, 300 meters from a giant monolith in the fortifications of Sacsayhuaman, which weighs over 20,000 tons, many vitrified rocks can be seen stretching for several hundred meters in six different directions. In Iraq and the Gobi Desert, near Hara-Hoto, glassy vitrified sands have been found, which could only form at fantastic temperatures. In Lebanon, hundreds of large black tektites were found containing radioactive aluminum isotopes, some with plants inside at the time of vitrification. In France, Scotland, Chile, India, Australia and South Africa, numerous very hard, black, aluminum- and beryllium-rich glassy tektites have been found. Analysis has shown that they underwent powerful radioactive bombardment thousands of years ago, exposed to temperatures of about 5-6000 degrees Celsius. Near the Dead Sea there are areas with a high level of soil radioactivity where no vegetation or animals can be found. In Nevada’s Death Valley there are the ruins of an ancient city that was destroyed by a great catastrophe several millennia ago. An extremely strong blast knocked down the stone buildings, sand was vitrified, rocks were transformed into tektites and strange black silhouettes, like smoke shadows, were impregnated on some walls. In the area there are no volcanoes, chemical analyses have shown that it cannot be a meteorite and a fire could not vitrify rocks and sand. There are no animal or plant life forms in the area, except for some microorganisms. The temperature of over 6000 degrees Celsius, required to vitrify rocks, can only be obtained through a nuclear explosion. In Mohenjo-Daro, in southern Pakistan, a city with a high level of radiation, 44 perfectly preserved skeletons were found buried under the street, face down, holding hands, which animals refused to approach. British researcher David Davenport claimed in 1997 to have found an epicenter of nearly 50 meters, where everything was melted through vitrification. In the 1940s and 1950s, archaeologists discovered the same thing in the Indian cities of Kot Diji and Harrapa (located on the 30th parallel, just like Eridu and Giza, places where „gates of heaven” were once found). Also in Luana’s Country of the Buzau Mountains (in Romania), on a large plateau, the ruins of an ancient giant citadel were found; researchers have determined that the settlement was instantly destroyed by a raging fire, with the soil burned to a depth of about half a meter. Plants do not grow in the area, animals refuse to approach and radiation levels are high. A local legend says that long ago there was a citadel with immense walls there, which was destroyed by invaders from the sky.
Sumerian oracles announced that in „the sixth year (of Ibbi-Sin’s reign, that is in 2024 BC), the inhabitants of Ur will be trapped” because „he who calls himself Supreme (Marduk), as one who has been anointed (as a king), will come from the west„. Then, Marduk and his Amorite followers attacked Nippur, defended by Ninurta and the Elamites, and at the same time Enlil’s son decided to attack the Semitic cities of his rival with seven terrible weapons. Exactly in that year, according to the biblical Genesis („when Abram was ninety years old and nine„), his god appeared to him again. As always, Yahweh reminded him that he would leave Canaan to his descendants, then changed his name from Abram to Abraham, and his wife’s name from Sarai to Sarah. Then Abraham learned that his son, Ishmael, would not be his heir. „Behold, I have blessed him, and will make him fruitful, and will multiply him exceedingly; twelve princes shall he beget, and I will make him a great nation. But my covenant will I establish with Isaac, which Sarah shall bear unto thee at this set time in the next year” (17:20-21), said the god. He did not leave without asking Abraham to be circumcised; not only him, but „every man child in your generations, he that is born in the house, or bought with money of any stranger, which is not of thy seed„. This practice of circumcision was an Egyptian one. Myths say that the supreme god Ra (Anu) cut off his penis, and from his blood and semen dropped onto the soil he gave birth to Shu, the god of air, and Tefnut, the goddess of moisture, who were none other than Enlil and Enki. Shu-Sin, the next to last king of Sumer, took on this god of air’s name, proving that the Egyptian religion extended beyond the country’s borders. Circumcision was a symbolic gesture of solidarity with the supreme god, meant to bring forth offspring like him. The Egyptian myth derives from the episode of Sophia’s attack on Anu, which the Greeks and Hittites symbolized through castration (Uranus was castrated by Cronus in Greek mythology, and Anu by Kumarbi in Hittite mythology).
Right after „all the men of his house, born in the house, and bought with money of the stranger, were circumcised with him” (17:27), three gods appeared before Abraham as „he sat in the tent door in the heat of the day” (18:1). It seems they were just passing by, without intending to visit him. Abraham „ran to meet them from the tent door, and bowed himself toward the ground” (18:2). He convinced them to stop for a while, to eat and rest. The three were served bread, butter, milk and a cooked calf, just as Noah and Utnapishtim offered sacrifices to the gods after the waters of the Deluge receded. The calf served at the table is a clue to decipher the identity of one of the three gods, as it is the symbol of the one often called „the Bull of Heaven„, namely Enlil. After they finished eating, the god reminded Abraham that he would have a son in a year. Then he revealed the reason for his visit: „Because the cry of Sodom and Gomorrah is great, and because their sin is very grievous; I will go down now, and see whether they have done altogether according to the cry of it, which is come unto me; and if not, I will know” (18:20-21). After the god of storm’s companions left for Sodom, Abraham tried to convince Enlil not to commit such a genocide, just as Nabu did to Ninurta in the Epic of Erra: „That be far from thee to do after this manner, to slay the righteous with the wicked: and that the righteous should be as the wicked, that be far from thee: Shall not the Judge of all the earth do right?” (18:25). He even tried to persuade him using the number assigned to Enlil, the equivalent of the title of king: „Peradventure there be fifty righteous within the city: wilt thou also destroy and not spare the place for the fifty righteous that are therein?” (18:24). Receiving a satisfactory response, Abraham continued negotiating, decreasing the number of „righteous” more and more, eventually reaching ten. „I will not destroy it for ten’s sake„, Enlil assured him, then „went his way, as soon as he had left communing with Abraham: and Abraham returned unto his place” (18:33).
Why did Enlil come near Sodom? We know from the Sumerian myth that Ninurta received his father’s approval to launch the bombs, on the condition that they be used only in places where the presence of Marduk was confirmed. In the biblical story, Enlil confessed to Abraham the reason why he accompanied the two „angels” (most likely Ninurta and Nabu) near Sodom: „I will go down now, and see whether they have done altogether according to the cry of it, which is come unto me; and if not, I will know„. In other words, to verify whether their enemy was really hiding there before allowing the launch of atomic bombs.
Chapter 19 of Genesis tells us that it was already evening when Enlil’s two messengers arrived in Sodom. There, they were met by Lot, Abraham’s nephew, who invited them to his home. Initially they refused, preferring to stay on the street. However, at Lot’s insistence, they finally accepted. What were the two gods doing on the street? In the Epic of Erra, Ninurta said: „From city to city an emissary will I send; The son, the seed of the father, shall not escape„. Most likely, they were checking whether Marduk was in Sodom. Only after receiving confirmation did they enter Lot’s house. It seems that Marduk learned of the their presence and sent his subjects, „the men of the city, even the men of Sodom, compassed the house round, both old and young, all the people from every quarter” (19:4), to capture them. „Where are the men which came in to thee this night? bring them out unto us, that we may know them” (19:5), they shouted to Lot after surrounding the house where the gods were. In vain Lot offered his two daughters to the Sodomites, they only wanted the newcomers. However, Ninurta and Nabu could not be defeated by a crowd of mere mortals; when the mob tried to break down the door, the two gods pulled Lot inside „and they smote the men that were at the door of the house with blindness, both small and great” (19:11). Then they informed Lot of the plan to destroy the city, advising him to take his family and flee. In the morning, the two urged him to hurry. „And while he lingered, the men laid hold upon his hand, and upon the hand of his wife, and upon the hand of his two daughters” (19:16). After they brought them outside, they advised them to flee: „Escape for thy life; look not behind thee, neither stay thou in all the plain; escape to the mountain, lest thou be consumed” (19:17). Because they did not have time to reach the mountain, Lot and his family chose to hide in a place called Zoar.
Why were the two „angels” in a hurry at dawn? What were they doing in the street before entering Lot’s house? And why does the decrease in the number of „righteous” in Abraham’s negotiation resemble a countdown (50, 45, 40, 30, 20, 10)? Did the two plant a time bomb in Sodom? It seems not, as the Bible states that the attack came from above: „Yahweh rained upon Sodom and upon Gomorrah brimstone and fire from Yahweh out of heaven; And he overthrew those cities, and all the plain, and all the inhabitants of the cities, and that which grew upon the ground” (19:24-25). Hesiod described similar effects of a divine weapon in his Theogony: „A scorching blast wrapped the Titans, sons of Earth, while a giant vapor rose to the divine cloud, and despite their strength, they felt their eyes blinded when the lightning and thunderbolt flashed. A fierce blaze crossed the Earth. The sight in their eyes and the sound in their ears were the same as would be caused by the meeting of Earth and sky above (…) And all around the Earth, the source of life, flickered in flames„. So does a Norwegian myth recounted in the New Larousse Encyclopedia of Mythology: „Flames shot out from the cracks in the rocks; everywhere the hiss of steam could be heard. All living things, all plants were consumed. Only the bare dust remained but, like the sky itself, the ground was nothing but cracks and crevices„. Looking towards Sodom and Gomorrah, Abraham „beheld, and, lo, the smoke of the country went up as the smoke of a furnace” (19:28), the place remaining „a perpetual desolation„, as stated in the Book of Zephaniah 2:9. The effect of divine punishment was devastating, even Lot’s wife turning into a pillar of salt, the Hebrew term being „netsiv melah„.
In an article presented to the American Oriental Society in 1918 and in a continuation in Beiträge zur Assyriologie („Contributions to Assyriology”), Assyriologist Paul Haupt demonstrated that since the first sources of salt in Sumer were the pools near the Persian Gulf, the Sumerian term „nimur” branched out, coming to mean both „salt” and „vapors”. Since the Dead Sea is called the Salt Sea in Hebrew, the Jewish narrator of the biblical story probably misinterpreted the Sumerian term and wrote „pillar of salt” when Lot’s wife actually became a „column of vapor„. In Ugaritic texts, such as the Canaanite story of Aghat, the death of a mortal at the hands of a god was described as „the escape of the soul like steam, like smoke from the nostrils„. In the Epic of Erra, the death of humans was similarly described by Ninurta: „I will make them burn up, I will turn their souls into vapor„. Although Abraham was about 80 kilometers away, he did not feel safe and the Bible tells us that he packed up his tent and moved further west, settling in Gerar. And he never ventured into the Sinai Peninsula again. Even years later, when Isaac wanted to go to Egypt because of the famine in Canaan, his god prevented him, maybe because the radiation in the area was still dangerous.
Researchers believe that Sodom and Gomorrah were located in the southern part of the Dead Sea, which still bears the local nickname of „Lot’s Sea„. In the 1920s, the area was explored by a scientific mission sponsored by the Pontifical Biblical Institute of the Vatican, as Alexis Mallon claimed in Voyage d’Exploration au sud-est de la Mer Morte („Exploration Trip to the Southeast of the Dead Sea”) from 1924. Reputable archaeologists, such as William Foxwell Albright and James Penrose Harland, discovered that the settlements in the surrounding mountains were abruptly abandoned in the 21st century BC, without being reoccupied for several centuries. And even to this day, radioactive contamination has been found in the springs around the Dead Sea „sufficient to cause sterility and other related diseases in all animals and humans that absorb them over a number of years„, as Ian M. Blake noted in The Palestine Exploration Quarterly. All the evidence indicates that the area of Sodom and Gomorrah was destroyed by a nuclear bomb. The Epic of Erra also seems to describe the creation of the new southern portion of the Dead Sea by breaking the southern shore and eliminating all forms of life:
„It dug through the sea,
It divided its entirety.
Everything that lived in it,
Even the crocodiles,
It withered.
Like with fire it scorched the living beings,
It condemned the grains to become dust.„
According to the Epic of Erra, Ninurta and Nabu destroyed several places with the help of seven terrible weapons, most likely atomic ones, in search of Marduk. In the Bible, Abraham witnessed the destruction of Sodom and Gomorrah in 2024 BC, which shows that the southern Dead Sea was devastated by the two gods. The launch method of weapons is identical: in the Sumerian tablet K.5001 „it rained stones and fire over enemies„, while in the Bible a god „rained upon Sodom and upon Gomorrah brimstone and fire from Yahweh out of heaven„. Similarly, the effects of the weapons, in both texts, left the places deserted, „a heap of dust” avoided by animals, with mountains cut off and seas agitated. Nabu’s presence in Sodom is confirmed by a Mesopotamian text in which the god „set forth toward the great sea„. Then,
„But when Marduk’s son
Was in the land on the coast,
He of the Evil Wind
Burned the plain country with scorching heat.„
In vain, however. Marduk managed to escape again and Ninurta, after the useless consumption of the seven bombs, was forced to accept defeat, just like his father.
After the catastrophe, „Lot went up out of Zoar, and dwelt in the mountain, and his two daughters with him; for he feared to dwell in Zoar: and he dwelt in a cave, he and his two daughters” (Genesis 19:30). The Old Testament tells that one day the daughters decided to get their father drunk and have sex with him to have children because „there is not a man in the earth to come in unto us after the manner of all the earth” (19:31), said the older one. They did as they planned and, after sleeping with Lot when he was drunk, they became pregnant. Each of them gave birth to a son; the first one was named Moab and became the ancestor of the Moabites, and the second one was named Ben-Ammi, the ancestor of the Ammonites. If this biblical story is true, it was certainly distorted by the Jewish scripture editors to hide Lot’s descent from the Akkadian royal family of Sargon. This is easily inferred from the inadvertencies in the story. The Bible says that the daughters chose incest out of fear of being left without descendants, as there were no other men in the area. However, just one verse earlier, we learned that Lot left Zoar, a city unaffected by the nuclear bomb, out of fear: „Lot went up out of Zoar, and dwelt in the mountain, and his two daughters with him; for he feared to dwell in Zoar„. Why was Lot afraid? Or of whom? Was it not perhaps of the city’s inhabitants? Since Zoar was protected from the bomb’s effects, one of the gods assuring Lot that „I have accepted thee concerning this thing also, that I will not overthrow this city, for the which thou hast spoken” (19:21), it follows that the city’s inhabitants survived. If Zoar was not populated only by women, an absolutely impossible thing, Lot’s daughters could not possibly consider that „there is not a man in the earth to come in unto us after the manner of all the earth„. And secondly, how did Lot manage to have sex, being old and so drunk that he couldn’t remember anything from the two nights of incest? „And he perceived not when she lay down, nor when she arose„, says the Bible. If he was in such an advanced state of drunkenness that he couldn’t realize what he was doing or remember anything afterwards, how could he have an erection under those circumstances? Especially considering his advanced age, when sexual problems are inevitable? These two absurdities hide an unholy reality: the incest was knowingly performed. Royal houses used to keep their „blue blood” in the family, so their members married each other. Being part of the Akkadian royal house, Lot kept the tradition. Without a wife, to ensure that he would have heirs to carry on the divine genes of Sargon and Marduk, he could only mate with his daughters. This custom already existed in his family, as even the Bible confirms: Abraham and Nahor married their nieces. Later on, Isaac, Abraham’s son, married his cousin’s daughter, Rebekah. Jacob, Isaac’s son, married his cousin’s daughters, Leah and Rachel. The only reason for the practice of these marriages between members of the same family was to preserve Marduk’s divine genes, transmitted through the leaders of the Akkadian Empire.
Because of the irradiated area, Abraham „journeyed from thence toward the south country, and dwelled between Kadesh and Shur, and sojourned in Gerar” (Genesis 20:1), the land of the Philistines. In that place, the story from Lower Egypt repeated itself: Abraham claimed that Sarah was his sister, not his wife, and King Abimelech took her. Just like in Egypt, Abraham’s god appeared to the king in a dream, struck the land with sterility and asked him to return the woman to the prophet. Terrified, Abimelech took „a thousand pieces of silver” (20:16), „sheep, and oxen, and menservants, and womenservants, and gave them unto Abraham, and restored him Sarah his wife” (20:14). Although the Bible claims that the king „had not come near her„, Sarah gave birth to a son shortly thereafter, who was named Isaac. Quite a coincidence, considering that Abraham had been unable to impregnate her for decades of marriage, but she gave birth after spending at least one night with Abimelech… It was the year 2023 BC, when Abraham was a hundred years old and Sarah, his wife, was ninety. Shortly after Isaac’s birth, Abraham expelled Hagar and Ishmael at his wife’s request, who wanted her son to be the only heir. In the desert of Beersheba, „the angel of Yahweh” caused a well to appear so that the mother and child would not die of thirst. They lived for a time in the wilderness of Paran and, after Ishmael grew up, his mother found him a wife from Egypt, with whom he had 12 sons and a daughter. Also in Beersheba, Abraham and Abimelech made a covenant and Abraham took credit for digging the well made by the angel to save Hagar and Ishmael. „For these seven ewe lambs shalt thou take of my hand, that they may be a witness unto me, that I have digged this well” (21:30), he told the Philistine king. After the covenant with Abimelech, Abraham „planted a grove in Beersheba, and called there on the name of Yahweh, the everlasting God” (21:33).
After living in the land of the Philistines for a few years, Abraham was contacted again by his god. He was asked to sacrifice Isaac on Mount Moriah, where Abraham had built an altar after leaving Harran in 2048 BC. We do not know how old the boy was at that time, but we can infer that he was old enough, since Abraham took „the wood of the burnt offering” and „laid it upon Isaac his son” (22:6), wood that was neither few nor light. After binding his son to the altar, as he was preparing to stab him, „the angel of Yahweh called unto him out of heaven” and asked him to stop, because the god was convinced of his faithfulness. Abraham and Isaac returned to Beersheba, but they did not find Sarah there. A Jewish legend says that the fallen angel Samael informed her that Abraham had sacrificed their son and she died of grief. In another version of the legend, disguised as an old man, Satan informed her of the same thing. Hearing this, Sarah left to find her husband. She arrived in Hebron, where Satan appeared to her again, still in human form, to tell her that Isaac had not been killed and would soon return with his father. And Sarah died… of joy. Not finding her at home in Beersheba, Abraham and Isaac followed her to Hebron, where they found her dead. The Old Testament states that Sarah died at the age of 127. Being ten years younger than Abraham, who was born in 2113 BC, it means that she died in 1986 BC. And so we have solved another mystery: at the time he was about to be sacrificed, Isaac was 37 years old. And this happened two years after Terah’s death, who stayed in Harran.
The sacrifice of Isaac is one of the most controversial episode of the Bible. Why would a higher entity subject Abraham to such a trial? Why was it necessary for the patriarch to prove his loyalty? Was this really the reason for the sacrifice? Or was it another unsuspected reason? To understand who was the god who asked him to kill his son, and then changed his mind, we only need to follow the biblical story, which suggests that not one, but two gods were involved! The first one, who gave the order, is called Yahweh by the Bible‘s redactor: „And it came to pass after these things, that Yahweh did tempt Abraham, and said unto him…” (22:1). The one who stopped him before the sacrifice was not the same god, but another: „And the angel of Yahweh called unto him out of heaven, and said…” (22:11). The same „angel” saved Hagar and Ishmael in 2037 BC. In 2024 BC, before the destruction of Sodom and Gomorrah, Abraham was visited by three deities, which we have identified as Enlil, Ninurta and Nabu. Considering that there are multiple divinities involved, to understand the episode of the sacrifice of Isaac we need to find out who was Abraham’s god, the one who took him from Mesopotamia to offer him Canaan.
It could be Enlil, his father’s god, who thus rewarded Terah for his loyalty by saving his family from the Sumerian civilization on the brink of collapse? As we have seen, Enlil appeared to him in 2024 BC. But can we be sure that he is the god who took him from Harran? There is almost no chance that Abraham was chosen by Enlil since, according to Jewish and Islamic folklore, he did not share his father’s religious beliefs. Both the Jewish Midrash and the Quran recount that Abraham smashed the statues of Terah’s gods. Undoubtedly, Enlil would have chosen a faithful follower. Furthermore, leaving Sumer for Canaan does not fit with the god’s plans. It happened three years after Enki’s death, when Emperor Anu had decided that Marduk would receive the throne of Earth and Enlil would pack his bags to return home. As the god of storm was about to leave, he had no reason to make plans for Canaan or entrust a mission to a follower of the Watchers. Therefore, he cannot be Abraham’s god.
The Old Testament claims that he is Yahweh (Marduk), a version supported by the Quran as well. In Surah 6 it is written about Abraham: „When the night grew dark upon him, he saw a star and said, ‘This is my Lord!’ (…) Then when he saw the moon rising, he said, ‘This one is my Lord!’ (…) Then when he saw the sun shining, he said, ‘This must be my Lord – it is the greatest!’” (76-78). How could the Moon, the Sun and a star be Abraham’s god? Initially, Marduk was considered the sun-god, called Utu by the Sumerians and Shamash by the Akkadians. When he sided with his father, Enki, he became a member of the group symbolized by the Moon, that of the Watchers. Yahweh actually means „He who became the Moon„. Marduk was assigned the planet Mars, symbolized by a six rayed star, being the sixth planet in our solar system. Therefore, Abraham’s statement in the Quran describes Marduk, thus confirming the biblical version. The god spoke to Abraham for the first time in 2048 BC, when the prophet was with his family in Harran, an important city in northern Mesopotamia, the „twin brother” of Ur, both cities being dedicated to the moon-god Nanna (Enki). In both Ur and Harran, the cult of the god’s children, Utu (Marduk) and Inanna (Ishtar), was highly respected. In a city belonging to the Watchers it was normal for one of these deities to appear, not one from the rival sode. The god contacted Abraham in 2048 BC, the year in which, according to his autobiography, Marduk began his 24-year exile in the land of Hatti. As Harran was on the border between Sumer and Hatti, it means that Marduk was exactly where Abraham was and at the exact moment when his god spoke to him for the first time. This is confirmed by Marduk’s own autobiography: „For twenty-four years I dwelt in the midst of Harran„. Therefore, there can be no doubt about which deity it was Abraham’s god.
From Jewish and Muslim legends it appears that Abraham did not get along very well with his father, probably because of their religious differences. Instead, he was his mother’s favorite, an advantage that youngest children often have. Without a doubt, he learned from her the history of their family, their descent from Marduk, the century-long reign of Queen Kug-Bau, the founding of the Akkadian Empire by Sargon and its destruction following Enlil’s curse. These things only had the effect of making the boy desire to one day ascend to the throne, just like his ancestors, and perhaps even to restore the dead Akkadian Empire. At the same time, he was instilled with aversion towards the Celestials and loyalty to the Watchers, his mother’s gods. The princess, former King Shar-Kali-Sharri’s daughter and Naram-Sin’s granddaughter, made sure that her son followed the gods of her family, not those of Terah, as demonstrated by the name she gave him. Abram, which translates as „The Great / Supreme Father”, has also a hidden meaning. When read backwards it becomes Marba, a Sumerian word made up of „mar„, the first syllable of the name Marduk, and „ba” (sometimes also spelled „bar„), which means „soul” (adopted by the Egyptians with the same meaning). To everyone else, her youngest son was „The Great Father”; to her, he was „Marduk’s Soul”. Under these circumstances it is no wonder that Marduk chose Abraham to entrust him with a mission.
In 2112 BC, after Utu-Hengal’s death, who had taken power from the Gutians, his son-in-law, Ur-Nammu, was crowned and moved the capital of Sumer to Ur. At that time, Princess Amsalai returned with her family from Nippur to Ur, where she had been the high priestess. This move was aimed at approaching the throne, which she sought to obtain for Abram, the Akkadian kings’ successor. At the time, the youngest member of the family was only 11 years old and his future wife, Sarai, Haran’s daughter, had just turned one year old. Eighteen years later, the king died and was succeeded by his son, Shulgi. Realizing that she had no chance of seizing power, the princess took her family and left for Harran, the twin city of Ur. She could do nothing against the new king, who was protected by the Watchers, her gods. In 2048 BC, when Abram learned of Shulgi’s death, he decided to go to Ur with a cavalry corps to take over the throne of Sumer by force. However, god Marduk, who had just arrived in the area, stopped him and sent him to Canaan. To persuade him to give up the throne of Sumer, the god promised him a new territory. „For all the land which thou seest, to thee will I give it, and to thy seed for ever” (Genesis 13:15), the god promised. Moreover, he also assured him of his protection: „Fear not, Abram: I am thy shield, and thy exceeding great reward” (15:1). The two made a pact: „In the same day Yahweh made a covenant with Abram, saying, Unto thy seed have I given this land, from the river of Egypt unto the great river, the river Euphrates” (15:18). In exchange for his loyalty, Abraham was to receive a kingdom that would not suffer the fate of his ancestors’ empire, but would remain his family’s forever: „And I will give unto thee, and to thy seed after thee, the land wherein thou art a stranger, all the land of Canaan, for an everlasting possession; and I will be their god” (17:8). To assure his new prophet of the seriousness of his offer, Marduk later changed his name to „The Anointed One to Wear the Crown” and his wife’s name to „The Exiled Ruler”. The Akkadian prince accepted and relinquished Sumer for Canaan. To prove his loyalty to the Watchers, he named both of his children after Ishtar, Marduk’s sister; the first syllable of Ishmael’s and Isaac’s names is identical to that of the goddess’ name. He took care to increase his wealth at the expense of Pharaoh Merikare and Philistine king Abimelech, from whom he received countless riches. The same was later done by his son, Isaac, also with Abimelech of the Philistines. Abraham chose his victims well, as both kings were part of the opposing side, followers of the Celestials. Merikare resided in Heracleopolis, a city dedicated to Ninurta, while Abimelech was a Philistine, meaning he was part of the Aryan race, which worshipped the Celestials. In 2039 BC, after the war of the kings in the Valley of Siddim, Abraham had the chance to get revenge on Naram-Sin, who had taken the throne of Sumer after Shulgi’s death, a throne that the Akkadian prince desired. Fifteen years later, before the destruction of Sodom and Gomorrah, when he met Enlil, Abraham treated him with the respect due to a god. In turn, due to Terah’s loyalty, Enlil accepted his invitation to dine and even shared his plan for the destruction of those cities.
Abraham carefully chose the women who would bear him sons, heirs of the Akkadian Empire’s leaders, princes who were to inherit a kingdom from Marduk. Hagar, the mother of his first son, Ishmael, had royal blood, being the Pharaoh of Lower Egypt’s daughter. And Sarai, Isaac’s mother, also came from a royal dynasty, that of Akkad. The heir to the kingdom of Canaan, offered by Marduk, had to preserve his divine genes or „blue blood”. Therefore, when it was time to marry Isaac, Abraham sent his servant to find him a wife from his own clan in Harran: „thou shalt go unto my father’s house, and to my kindred, and take a wife unto my son” (24:38). The servant brought him Rebekah, „who was born to Bethuel, son of Milcah, the wife of Nahor, Abraham’s brother” (24:15). Isaac gave his son, Jacob, the same command, to marry a relative: „Arise, go to Padanaram, to the house of Bethuel thy mother’s father; and take thee a wife from thence of the daughters of Laban thy mother’s brother” (28:2). These repeated matings between members of the same family had an unintended effect: sterility. Until she was 89 years old, Sarah, Abraham’s wife, was barren. The same was true for Rebekah, Isaac’s wife: „And Isaac intreated Yahweh for his wife, because she was barren: and Yahweh was intreated of him, and Rebekah his wife conceived” (25:21) after 20 years of marriage. Their daughters-in-law, Jacob’s wives, did not escape sterility either: Leah was barren for seven years, until Yahweh „opened her womb: but Rachel was barren” (29:31). After four sterile women in the same family, we can conclude that something in their genetic code was defective, requiring direct intervention from the god to alleviate their sterility.
Why did Marduk send Abraham to Canaan? His target was a specific location, Mount Moriah in present-day Jerusalem, located near the city of Salem. Upon arriving in Canaan, Abraham first raised an altar near the oak tree of Mamre in Shechem and then headed towards Mount Moriah, „on the east of Bethel” („House of the god”), where he built another altar. It was also on this same mountain where he intended to sacrifice Isaac. According to the Bible, King David’s god appeared to him in the same place and Solomon later built there a temple, where the Ark of the Covenant was kept, a device through which priests communicated with Yahweh. For Muslims, prophet Muhammad ascended to heaven from this mountain. In the early years of Islam, the prophet instructed his followers to pray facing Mount Moriah, now also known as Zion or the Temple Mount. In the Book of Isaiah 8:18, Yahweh „dwelleth in mount Zion„. It is possible that Marduk chose this location because it was an important energy center. Kabbalah considers Mount Zion a spiritual point from which reality is born. Its coordinates add up to 66°60′ (31°47′ N + 35°13′ E), a number with a negative connotation that represents the supreme triad of Watchers. Considering that Jerusalem is the place where the most blood has been shed throughout the history of the world, it seems that the negative energy emanating from that energy center is real. And Marduk needs it for a reason that remains unknown. At least for now… It is likely that the god gave Abraham’s clan Canaan to protect Mount Moriah / Zion from potential enemies, followers of the Celestials.
Did Marduk ask Abraham to sacrifice his son? Enki’s son would not have had a reason to do so. Marduk made a pact with Abraham, through which he and his descendants would have been in charge of Canaan. Isaac was the most suitable successor for this mission; both of his parents were descended from Queen Kug-Bau, Marduk’s daughter. If the boy had died, Abraham’s heir would have been Ishmael, whose mother was the Egyptian princess Hagar. Like the rest of the Egyptian royal houses, she was also part of the Aryan race, which worshipped the Celestials at that time. In addition, he came from Heracleopolis, a city under Ninurta’s tutelage. Even Ishmael named one of his sons Hadad, after Baal Hadad, Enlil’s name in Canaan. Marduk would not have accepted such an heir in any way, so he had every interest in keeping Isaac alive and multiplying. Those who would have benefited from Isaac’s death and Ishmael’s elevation to heir would have been the Celestials, who could thus control Abraham’s descendants loyal to them, not to the Watchers. However, the event took place in 1986 BC, when Enlil had left the Earth. A few Celestials remained here, to continue guarding the Watchers, their leader being Ninurta. Given that Ishmael’s mother was one of his followers, it becomes increasingly possible that Ninurta was the god who ordered Abraham to kill Isaac. Abraham was then 137 years old and his wife was 127; if Isaac had died, his parents would not have been able to give birth to another son at such an advanced age, no matter how much Marduk tried. And Ishmael would have been Abraham’s heir, therefore he would have received Canaan and would have ruled Mount Moriah in Ninurta’s name. It would have been a terrible blow for the new king of the Earth, whose entire plan for that area would have collapsed. And Ninurta would have been satisfied to some extent. However, Marduk found out and managed to save Isaac in time. Nevertheless, Ninurta had a small satisfaction. Most likely, he is the fallen angel from Jewish legends who caused Sarah’s death, announcing that her son had died. But her death was not to change anything. Isaac remained Abraham’s heir and was to fulfill Marduk’s plan.
We cannot fail to notice that Abraham’s family was not an ordinary one. The main characteristic seems to be longevity, especially of his ancestors on his father’s side. He himself lived 175 years; his sons, 137 and 180; his father lived to be 205 years old and his grandfather, Nahor, to 204. Their predecessors had even longer lives: Serug – 330 years, Reu – 339 years, Peleg – 339 years, Eber – 504 years, Salah – 460 years, Cainan – 460 years, Arphaxad – 465 years and Shem – 600 years. The same seems to be true in his mother’s family, with Queen Kug-Bau reigning for 100 years. All copies of the Sumerian King List claim that her nephew, Ur-Zababa, reigned for four centuries, except for one copy, accepted by researchers, which attributes to him only six years. In addition to longevity, it seems that the members of this family had an extremely attractive physical appearance. The Bible states that Rebekah, niece of Nahor, Abraham’s brother, „was very fair to look upon„. The same goes for Rachel, Nahor’s great-granddaughter, who „was beautiful and well favoured„. Joseph, Abraham’s great-grandson, was also „was a goodly person, and well favoured” in the King James Bible and „well-built and handsome” in the New International Version. He was so attractive that the wife of the Egyptian who bought him wanted to sleep with him. According to the Quran, because of his beauty, the women of the city „when they saw him, they marveled at him, and cut their hands. They said, ‘Good Allah, this is not a human, this must be a precious angel’” (12:31). Let’s not forget Sarah, Abraham’s wife, whose beauty at the age of 66 drove pharaoh Merikare insane, and at the age of 89 did the same to King Abimelech. In the Dead Sea Scrolls, a text attributed to Abraham tells the story of „three prominent Egyptians” who came to them „and continued to speak flattering words to Sarah about her wonderful grace and wisdom„. Upon their return to the royal palace, those nobles spoke to the pharaoh about Sarah: „How delicate is her face, how […] and how thin are her locks! How beautiful are her eyes! How delicate is her nose and her entire appearance! How beautiful are her breasts and how white is her face! How delicate are her arms, how perfect her hands, how charming her feet, how delicate her palms, how long and thin her fingers! No virgin or bride is more wonderful than her! Her beauty is above that of any other woman! Beyond beauty, she is wise and her hands are truly wonderful!„. Even though the description seems to be of a goddess, in reality it is of a 66-year-old woman! And we note that not only her beauty is praised, but also her wisdom. This quality is also found in her great-grandson, Joseph, to whom a pharaoh confessed: „there is none so discreet and wise as thou art„. Additionally, she was also called Iscah („She who sees”), gifted with the ability of clairvoyance. Extrasensory abilities were not uncommon in Abraham’s family. Terah was an oracle priest who received messages from the gods. Abraham, Isaac and Jacob were all prophets, all capable of communicating with divinities. On the way from Harran, Jacob saw the gate of heaven in a dream in which his god spoke to him, and „the angels of Yahweh ascending and descending„. Joseph, Abraham’s great-grandson, had the ability to foretell the future through dream interpretation. Chapter 32 of the biblical Genesis claims that Jacob wrestled with Yahweh „until the breaking of the day” and Abraham defeated the Mesopotamian kings’ alliance in 2039 BC, which the armies of the five Jordanian kings could not overcome.
Longevity, extraordinary beauty, wisdom and strength superior to that of ordinary people, highly developed extrasensory abilities… All these traits, found only in demigods, indicate a family of superhumans. We know that through his mother, Abraham inherited Marduk’s genes, due to his descent from the god’s daughter, Queen Kug-Bau. His father’s family traced its lineage from Noah / Nabu, as the Old Testament claims. However, it is possible that not only those genes were responsible for the superhuman qualities. Allah / Marduk said in the Quran about Abraham’s son and grandson: „And we granted him Isaac and Jacob as a gift; and each we made righteous. And we made them leaders, guiding by our command; and we inspired them to do good works, and to observe the prayer, and to give out charity. They were devoted servants to us” (21:72-73). The Bible shows that due to the sterility of women in Abraham’s family, Marduk’s intervention was often necessary to provide offspring. Undoubtedly, it was a medical intervention. In the Quran, the god boasts that he created Isaac and Jacob and we understand that Marduk, their creator, was often involved in genetic interventions, giving them divine genes responsible for superhuman qualities. Even the physical appearance of this family’s members betrays them, as exceptional beauty is an attribute of gods and demigods. Moreover, according to the Dead Sea Scrolls, Sarah did not have the slightly dark skin like the rest of the Semites, and the Egyptian nobles were amazed at „how white her face was„, a skin color obtained through divine genes. Perhaps Marduk used his own DNA to enhance his chosen humans (who already had his genes through their descent from Kug-Bau). If so, we finally understand why Abraham was called „Marduk’s Soul” by his mother.
Ibbi-Sin was the last king of Sumer. From the early years of his reign, which began in 2030 BC, he faced disasters that struck his empire. First, he lost the financial support of the Sumerian cities, which eventually declared their independence. Then he suffered from the Amorites’ invasion, Marduk’s western Semites, who conquered Mesopotamia for the new king of the Earth. Because of them, famine began to grip the country again. And the final blow was the destructive storm of Enlil, who did not want to let Marduk rule the whole kingdom. In 2004 BC the Amorites conquered and destroyed the capital Ur, marking the end of Sumer. Ibbi-Sin managed to escape and died in exile in the country of Anshan, which he had devastated shortly before. Once Sumer was destroyed, Enlil left Earth at his father’s command and Marduk ascended to the planet’s throne in Babylon.
Abraham died at the age of 175 in 1948 BC. The Jewish tradition has pinpointed the year, but gave it a different meaning, considering that Abram was born in the 1948th year since the creation of the world. As this seems to be too much of a coincidence, the Jews probably did as usual, offering the masses a false version and keeping the real one for the initiated. Abraham’s sons, Isaac and Ishmael, buried him next to Sarah „in the cave of Machpelah, in the field of Ephron the son of Zohar the Hittite, which is before Mamre„. Isaac married Rebekah, „who was born to Bethuel, son of Milcah, the wife of Nahor, Abraham’s brother„, who gave birth to twins: Esau and Jacob. Jacob, who was named Israel (Yisra’el in Hebrew) by Marduk, stole his father’s blessing from his brother and deceived him into giving him his birthright. He married his cousins, Leah and Rachel, daughters of Laban (his mother’s brother) from Harran, who bore him eight sons (Reuben, Simeon, Levi, Judah, Issachar, Zebulun, Joseph and Benjamin) and a daughter (Dinah). Jacob also had four sons from his wives’ maidservants, Zilpah and Bilhah: Dan, Naphtali, Gad and Asher. His favorite was Joseph, one of Rachel’s two sons, which drew the envy of the other children. When Joseph was 17 years old (Genesis 37:2), his brothers sold him to a caravan of Ishmaelites, who took him to Egypt. Thirteen years later he became the vizier of Egypt after interpreting Pharaoh’s dreams (Genesis 41:46). Nine years later, due to famine, Jacob and his clan moved to Egypt (Genesis 47:9). As the second in command after the pharaoh, Joseph gave his relatives the land of Goshen in the Nile Delta. Jacob died in 1816 BC (Genesis 47:28) and vizier Joseph died 54 years later, at the age of 110 (Genesis 50:22). The Book of Jubilees claims that he was born on 1 Tammuz, which means 21st June 1872 BC according to the Gregorian calendar.
According to the biblical chronology, Joseph arrived in Egypt in 1855 BC and became vizier in 1842 BC. At that time, the pharaoh was Senusret III of the 12th Dynasty, who shared the throne with his son, Amenemhat III. Senusret died in 1839 BC, leaving Amenemhat as the sole ruler of Egypt; most likely he was the pharaoh who entrusted Joseph with the position of vizier. Genesis states that one of the two pharaohs (probably Amenemhat III) changed the name of Jacob’s son: „And Pharaoh called Joseph’s name Zaphnathpaaneah; and he gave him to wife Asenath the daughter of Potipherah priest of On” (41:45). Researchers have not been able to establish either the etymology or the exact translation of this name, which appears to be Egyptian. It is possible that the true name given to Joseph was unknown to the editors of the Bible, who replaced it with an made up one. A fragment from a papyrus dating to Amenemhat III’s reign mentions a vizier named Kheti; in The Installation of the Vizier text is mentioned Kheti, a famous vizier who discriminated against his own relatives in favor of the Egyptians, so as not to be accused of subjectivity, thereby setting an example of impartiality and correctness. This Kheti, with relatives of a different nationality from that of the Egyptians, seems to be the Israelite Joseph. „Kheti” is a word of Sanskrit origin, meaning „agriculture”; in the Bible, after becoming vizier, Joseph took care of agriculture so that Egypt would not suffer from the famine that was to come. This name, in the form of „Khety„, was also used by some pharaohs of the 9th and 10th dynasties, among them two distant relatives of Joseph, albeit through alliance: Wahkare Khety and his son, Merikare Khety (father of Princess Hagar, who bore Ishmael to Abraham). During Merikare’s reign, there was a governor of an Egyptian nome named Khety II; his grandfather, Khety I, held the same position. Moreover, the treasurer of Mentuhotep II of the 11th Dynasty, the pharaoh who killed Merikare, was named Kheti.
The biblical Genesis recounts that after Joseph’s appointment as vizier, seven years of abundance followed, then seven years of famine (beginning in 1835 BC). Two years after the start of the calamity (45:6), when he was 130 years old (47:9), Jacob moved with his entire family from Canaan to Egypt, where Joseph gave them the land of Goshen in the Nile Delta. Egyptologists have even established that a group of Semites migrated from Canaan to the Nile Delta shortly before 1800 BC, thus confirming the biblical story. Jacob died in 1816 BC; his descendants remained in the Delta until around 1550 BC, when they were expelled along with the Hyksos by the army of Ahmose I, the founder of the 18th Dynasty. A papyrus from the 12th Dynasty, currently in the Dutch National Museum of Antiquities, contains a text entitled Ipuwer’s Lamentations, which describes the chaos that seized Egypt during the famine period mentioned in the Bible, between 1835 and 1828 BC. Law and order have been destroyed, „the gatekeepers plunder, the washerman refuses to carry his load (…) robbery is everywhere (…) dust has covered the land completely (…) the deserts stretch out (…) women are barren, no one can conceive (…) the dead are simply thrown into the river (…) the river is blood„, the roads have become unsafe, trade has ceased, „there is civil war (…) barbarians from other parts have come to Egypt (…) everything is in ruins„. There is a strong possibility that the big clan of Jacob represents „the barbarians from other parts” who „have come to Egypt„. The unknown Ipuwer also complains that the temples have been abandoned and desecrated, „the Place of Secrets has been left uncovered, the writings of the great enclosure have been scattered, the common man tears them apart in the streets (…) magic is exposed to the sight of one who has not known it (…) the religious data are disturbed (…) the priests are unjustly driven out„. After calling on the Egyptians „to offer incense in the temples (…) to continue to bring offerings to the gods” and to „remember to immerse themselves” (to be baptized), Ipuwer speaks of „a time that will come„, when a god-king will appear. About that deity „people will say: he brings peace to the heart, he is the shepherd of all people. Although his flocks may be small, he will spend his days caring for them (…) Then he will overthrow evil, he will stretch out his arm against it„. The Egyptians will wonder: „where is he today? Is he asleep? Why is his power not seen?” but, although „his radiance cannot be seen, authority, intuition and justice are with him„. The return of the god will occur in a period when „confusion will reign everywhere, in noisy tumult one will kill another, the many will kill the few„. And „after years of struggles, justice and proper prayer will triumph„. That unseen god, awaited to save the land of the pharaohs, is Amun, whose name means „The Hidden One”. Another prophecy, made to King Snefru of the 4th Dynasty by a „great priest-seer” named Nefer-Rohu, „a man of rank, a skilled scribe with his fingers„, also refers to Amun’s return:
„Behold, there is something that people talk about;
It is terrifying…
What will be done has never been done before.
The soil is completely destroyed.
The land is destroyed, there are no remnants.
There is no Sun that people can see,
No one can live with the clouds covering everything,
The south wind fights with the north wind.
The rivers of Egypt are empty (…)
Then it will happen that a sovereign will come
The Victoriously he will be called.
Son of Man will be his name forever…
Evil will be put aside;
Justice will come in its place;
The people of his time will rejoice.„
Ahmose I, the founder of the 18th Dynasty, who drove the foreigners out of Egypt around 1550 BC, came from Thebes, a city dedicated to Amun. Ahmose claimed that he defeated the Hyksos only with the help of his god, for which reason Amun became the national deity of Egypt. This means that the ancient prophecies were fulfilled.
One year after Jacob / Israel’s death, Pharaoh Amenemhat III shared the throne of Egypt with his son, Amenemhat IV. Amenemhat III died one year later, leaving Amenemhat IV as the sole king of the country. Amenemhat IV died in 1806 BC and the throne of Egypt was taken over by his sister, Sobekneferu, who, according to the Turin King List, ruled the country for 3 years, 10 months and 24 days. As noted by the Danish Egyptologist Kim Ryholt, Sobekneferu did not adopt the title of queen, but only that of the king’s daughter. Under these circumstances, one year after her coronation, the 14th Dynasty began in the Nile Delta, made of the Semitic rulers who had emigrated from Canaan. This means that the Semites in the Delta refused the rule of the Theban royal house, proclaiming their independence from Egypt. We can only assume that they either did not accept to be led by a woman, or considered her too weak, given that she did not even adopt the title of queen, let alone try to assert herself in any way before her subjects. Under these circumstances, the Semites who came from Canaan took advantage of the moment and decided to govern themselves in the Nile Delta. Their first leader was Sekhaenre Yakbim. His name was never written in a cartouche, as was the case with the pharaohs. We understand that Sekhaenre Yakbim did not consider himself a king, but only a leader of the Semites in the Delta. We know nothing about this Semitic leader, but his name reveals his origin. „Im” indicates the plural in the West-Semitic languages and „Yakb” bears a striking resemblance to Ya’aqob, Jacob’s Hebrew name. Therefore, Sekhaenre Yakbim was one of the Jacobites, that is a member of Jacob’s clan, the Semites who came from Canaan to the Nile Delta. The other rulers of the dynasty did not hesitate to adopt the title of king, probably remembering that they were descendants of the Akkadian royal family. The Quran even states that Allah raised up kings from among the Israelites. Yakareb or Yak’reb, another unknown ruler with a similar name, followed in leadership. Among the Semitic kings of the 14th Dynasty there is Sa Ra Meruserre Jaqub-Har, whose name contains that of Jacob, that of Abraham’s wife Sarra / Sarah, and that of their god, Marduk, called Haru / Hor in Egypt. Furthermore, a seal ring bearing the biblical patriarch’s name of „Yakov / Yakub” was discovered in Avaris in the Delta. It thus becomes clear that the Semites of the Delta, including their leaders of the 14th Dynasty, were members of the Jacobite clan, descendants of Abraham’s grandson, Jacob. Moreover, from the names of their leaders it is obvious that the patriarch did not adopt the name Israel, which his god had offered him, preferring the one he received at birth. This is also obvious in the Bible, where Yahweh (Marduk) prefers to call him by his old name, even though he had given him a new one: „And Yahweh spake unto Israel in the visions of the night, and said, Jacob, Jacob. And he said, Here am I” (Genesis 46:2). We thus advance the hypothesis that Jacob may not have been named Israel and the biblical editors made up this aspect to explain the name adopted by the Jews in homage to Ishtar (Israel or Yisra’el meaning „Ishtar, the ruling goddess”).
With the death of Joseph in 1762 BC, Marduk completely ignored the Jacobite clan. Forgetting his covenant with Abraham, he left his descendants in Egypt, preferring to turn his attention to the Amorite king Hammurabi, who had just established the Babylonian Empire in Mesopotamia, conquering his neighbors. As the king claimed in an inscription, his military success was due to a weapon received from Marduk. Hammurabi transformed Babylon from a small town into the capital of his empire, raising the city walls and building temples for the main gods, Marduk, Ea / Enki and Ishtar, who replaced the Sumerian supreme triad of An, Enlil and Enki. Like the Akkadians in the past, he decreed Babylon to be „the holiest city„, a title usually held by Enlil’s Nippur. Also, he placed Marduk at the head of the pantheon, attributing all the titles of the other gods to him, except those of his father and sister, Ea and Ishtar. Marduk’s cult, imposed on the Mesopotamians by Hammurabi, spread rapidly and developed so much that the god soon became unrivaled. This means that he had finally taken the throne of the Earth, beginning his reign as the sole ruler of the planet. To rule his subjects according to his own rules, he offered Hammurabi around 1755 BC a code of laws for all citizens of the Babylonian Empire. The king ordered the moment when the god entrusted him with the laws to be sculpted and the episode to be specified in the prologue of the code: „The gods Anu and Bel called me by name, Hammurabi, a skillful ruler, fearing Marduk, to give the power of justice to the country, to destroy the evil and cunning, so that the strong do not oppress the weak, to appear to people like the Sun to illuminate the country – me, Hammurabi, the shepherd called by god Bel, who gives wealth and riches (…) When god Marduk entrusted me with the helm of the world and to bring justice to the countries, then I myself made law and justice in the language of the country, making people happy„. And everything seemed to be heading in the right direction for Marduk, but his plans were countered by his sister, Ishtar, with whom he had to fight until today.
Abandoned by their god in Egypt, the Jacobites governed themselves in the Nile Delta, living in peace with the Egyptians of the 13th Dynasty for about a century and a half. In the 17th century BC, the north of Egypt (including the Nile Delta) was invaded by the Hyksos, Semites from northwestern Mesopotamia. They established their capital at Zarw, which they renamed Avaris, located on the eastern borders of Egypt, in the northeast of the Delta. Over time they conquered all of Lower Egypt and their invasion led to the end of the Egyptian 13th Dynasty and the Jacobite dynasty in the Delta. The Hyksos established their own dynasty, the 15th, which began with Salitis, as noted by the Jewish historian Flavius Josephus in Against Apion. The collapse of the 13th Dynasty led to the emergence of the 16th and 17th dynasties, which had their capital in Thebes, formed by vassals of the Hyksos. After ruling the north and center of Egypt for nearly a century, around 1550 BC, the Semites were expelled by an alliance of Egyptian princes from Thebes. Josephus claimed that Thutmose (who was identified with Ahmose I, the founder of the 18th Dynasty) besieged them with an army of 480,000 soldiers and forced them to leave Egypt. Thus, 40,000 Hyksos families crossed the Sinai Desert and settled in Judea, where they built the city of Jerusalem. Referring to the same Semitic invaders, Greek philosopher, historian and novelist Hecataeus of Abdera wrote in the 4th century BC in The History of Egypt that the Egyptians drove the foreigners out of their country, most of whom emigrated to Judea, where they founded many cities (the most important being Hierosolyma), divided themselves into 12 tribes, established their own laws and religion and they are the ones we call Israelites today. Another group of Hyksos, led by Cadmus, arrived in Greece. According to Greek mythology, Cadmus is the founder of Thebes in Greece, whose name is undoubtedly inspired by that of the homonymous Egyptian city.
Not much is known about the Hyksos, who were Semitic people that first conquered the area of the Jacobites, and then the entire northern and central part of Egypt. Flavius Josephus believed that their name meant „shepherd kings”. The Egyptians called them „heqa khaseshet„, which was translated as „rulers of foreign lands”, contradicting Josephus’ interpretation. We now know that they were a group with mixed Asian origins, with a predominance of Semitic origins. Their supreme deity was the West Semitic Baal Hadad, the god of storms who was matched by the Egyptians with their Seth. Upon arriving in Egypt, they first took over the Nile Delta from the Jacobites and later conquered the entire north and central parts of Egypt. For a century they lived together with the Jacobites (but maintaining their position as leaders), and then, after being expelled by the alliance of Theban princes, they divided into two groups: one returned to Canaan, and the other headed towards Greece. We can assume that the Jacobites were also expelled with the Hyksos; their aversion to Semites caused by the Hyksos most likely prevented the Egyptians from making any distinction between the peaceful Semites and the invading ones. Since there were two groups expelled in 1550 BC, the Jacobites and the Hyksos, we should not be surprised that for Hecataeus of Abdera the Semites were divided into two groups, one heading towards Greece and the other towards Canaan. Most likely, the Jacobites are those who returned to Canaan, to take possession of the territory inherited from the covenant between Marduk and their ancestors, and the Hyksos are those who migrated to Greece. Especially if we take into account Hecataeus’ opinion, who considered that the Semites who arrived in Judea were Israelites, none other than the Jacobites, Jacob / Israel’s descendants; just like the Jacobites in the Old Testament, these Israelites were divided into 12 tribes, confirming the identity of the group. For Flavius Josephus, the Jacobites / Israelites built the city of Jerusalem; according to Hecataeus, they founded Hierosolyma, an alternative name for the same city. Which actually existed at that time, being called Salem, which leads to the conclusion that the Jacobites conquered Salem and rebuilt it, just as the Amorite Hammurabi did with Babylon, on which occasion they also changed its name to Jerusalem. Why did they settle in that city? Perhaps to fulfill the mission their ancestors received from Marduk, that of guarding Mount Moriah, on which Jerusalem stands. It is worth mentioning that Moriah was originally located near the city of Salem; Jerusalem was extended to include the holy mountain of the Jews.
Upon arriving in Egypt, the Hyksos occupied the Nile Delta and took control of the area from the Jacobites, which led to the end of the 14th Dynasty. It took some time for them to decide to occupy other areas of Egypt; if their mission was to conquer the land of the pharaohs, they would have acted immediately. This suggests that their initial target was the Jacobites, and the conquest of the Lower Egypt was a later plan born out of opportunism. If they had come for Jacob / Israel’s descendants, it means that the Hyksos knew their target. Who was this group of Semites really? According to the Old Testament, there are three possible variants.
The first could be that of the Ishmaelites. Their ancestor, Ishmael, was the son of Abraham, successor of the Akkadian kings, and the Egyptian Hagar, daughter of Pharaoh Merikare Khety of the 10th Dynasty. As the first son, according to the laws of the time, he was the rightful heir. However, Marduk preferred his younger brother, Isaac. Furthermore, Ishmael and his mother were driven out by Abraham, being forced to live in the desert for a while. The loss of his inheritance and his expulsion made him reject his father’s deity, preferring those on the rival side. Like the other members of the Egyptian royal houses, his mother belonged to the Aryan race, the one worshiping the Celestials, and came from Heracleopolis, a city under Ninurta’s tutelage. Most likely, Hagar influenced the boy’s religious preferences. Why would Ishmael choose a god who took away his inheritance, of a father who drove him out, and not the gods of his mother, who had always been with him and suffered as he did? Moreover, according to the Bible, an „angel” saved him from death in the desert and probably the same character tried to convince Abraham to kill Isaac, which would have made Ishmael the sole heir. For him, that „angel” was one of his mother’s gods, which is why he even named one of his sons Hadad, after Baal Hadad, the name attributed by the Canaanites to Enlil. There is no doubt that his descendants also worshiped the same deities. We know that the supreme deity of the Hyksos was indeed Baal Hadad, known by the Egyptians as Seth, the god of Ishmael’s clan. It is natural to assume that there was an aversion of Ishmael towards the one who unjustly took his inheritance, most likely existing among his descendants towards those of Isaac. Therefore, the Ishmaelites could be the Hyksos, who took the power from the Jacobites’ hands in the Nile Delta as revenge. In the Bible Ishmael had 12 sons and a daughter (just like Jacob), who „dwelt from Havilah unto Shur, that is before Egypt, as thou goest toward Assyria” (Genesis 25:18). Several Assyrian, Babylonian and Arabian royal inscriptions from the 16th – 9th centuries BC mention a king of the Arabs and Ishmaelites. Such an Assyrian royal inscription lists the tribes of „Nabat, Kedar, Abdeel, Dumah, Massa and Teman” which bear the names of six of Ishmael’s sons. However, Islamic, pre-Islamic and Jewish traditions claim that Ishmael’s descendants are the Arabs, so the Ishmaelites can neither be the Hyksos who settled in Canaan, nor those who went to Greece.
The biblical Genesis also mentions a group of possible rivals of the Jacobites, Ishmael and Isaac not being the only sons of Abraham: „Then again Abraham took a wife, and her name was Keturah. And she bare him Zimran, and Jokshan, and Medan, and Midian, and Ishbak, and Shuah. And Jokshan begat Sheba, and Dedan. And the sons of Dedan were Asshurim, and Letushim, and Leummim. And the sons of Midian; Ephah, and Epher, and Hanoch, and Abida, and Eldaah. All these were the children of Keturah” (25:1-4). Abraham treated them the same way he treated his first son – he expelled them, so that Isaac would not have any rivals: „And Abraham gave all that he had unto Isaac. But unto the sons of the concubines, which Abraham had, Abraham gave gifts, and sent them away from Isaac his son, while he yet lived, eastward, unto the east country” (25:5-6). We do not know what happened to the descendants of these sons of Abraham, but we can assume that they also had an aversion to Isaac, which they may have passed down to their own descendants, making them possible Hyksos.
The third possibility is the tribe of Esau, also known as Edom („Red”), Isaac’s son, who had a fate similar to that of Ishmael. Like Ishmael he was the firstborn, but his inheritance was taken away by his younger brother. However, his story differs, the Bible claiming that he was his father’s favorite. One day, when he was hungry, he gave his birthright to his brother, Jacob, for a bowl of lentil stew. The Talmud states that this happened immediately after Abraham’s death, when the boys were 15 years old. It seems that Esau did not care much about Marduk’s promise, his descent from the Akkadian royal family or inheriting a mostly desert land. When Isaac grew old and his vision weakened considerably, Jacob tricked him into giving him the blessing reserved for his brother. Losing both his birthright and his father’s blessing, Esau began to hate his brother and decided to solve the problem himself: „The days of mourning for my father are at hand; then will I slay my brother Jacob” (27:41). To escape, Jacob fled to Harran, to his mother’s brother, Laban. He returned after many years and reconciled with Esau, who forgave him. After a while, Esau took his family and went to Mount Seir, the Horites’ territory, living with them until his descendants, called Edomites, managed to rule the Horites.
Could the Edomites be the Hyksos who attacked Egypt? Researchers have established that the Hyksos were an Asiatic group with mixed origins, predominantly Semitic, including Hurrian elements. In the Old Testament, Esau’ descendants were not pure Akkadians, but a mixture. At the age of 40, Esau married two Hittite women: Judith, the daughter of Beeri the Hittite, and Basemath, the daughter of Elon the Hittite (Genesis 26:34). Later, he also married Mahalath, one of Ishmael’ daughters (28:9). Chapter 36 of Genesis becomes confusing, changing the names of the women; here his wives are Adah, the daughter of Elon the Hittite, Aholibamah, the granddaughter of Zibeon the Hivite, and Basemath, Ishmael’s daughter. Their names are not important, but what matters is that the Edomites did not only have Akkadian blood, but also Hittite, Egyptian and Horite blood. The biblical Horites, with whom the Edomites mixed, may have been the Hurrians. The Talmud states that due to the anger caused by Abraham’s death, Esau committed five sins: he killed a man, raped a young engaged woman, gave up his birthright, denied the resurrection of the dead and denied Yahweh. This would explain why the supreme god of the Hyksos was Baal Hadad (Enlil), Marduk’s rival. Flavius Josephus interpreted the name Hyksos as meaning „shepherd kings”; in Genesis, when Jacob gives him some flocks, Esau boasts that he has enough: „I have enough, my brother; keep that thou hast unto thyself” (33:9). Although the two brothers reconciled in the biblical story, their descendants resumed the conflict, with the Edomites being among Israelites’ greatest enemies. In the Book of Jubilees, Esau was convinced by his sons to hire mercenaries and attack Jacob to take his wealth. It does not seem impossible that the Edomites managed to gather an army like that of the Hyksos; in the biblical Genesis, Esau went to meet his brother with 400 men (32:6). And this happened before they subjugated the Horites and hired mercenaries. The Bedouin Shasu from the Egyptian chronicles were also descendants of Esau, a people from northern Edom who used to organize raids in the Sinai Peninsula. Their warlike character is also obvious from Isaac’s prophecy to Esau: „And by thy sword shalt thou live, and shalt serve thy brother; and it shall come to pass when thou shalt have the dominion, that thou shalt break his yoke from off thy neck” (27:40). Perhaps the Hyksos attack represents that time when the Edomites rose up to break the traditional yoke of the Jacobites. Or perhaps their reason was revenge, if the story from the Babylonian Talmud is true, which claims that Esau was killed by Husim, one of Jacob’s grandsons, because the ancestor of the Edomites tried to prevent the burial of the Jacobites’ father in the cave of Machpelah with Abraham, Sarah, Isaac and Rebekah.
We cannot know if the Hyksos were truly descendants of Esau. It may be possible that the Edomites and the Horites allied with the Ishmaelites (an alliance sealed through Esau’s marriage to Ishmael’s daughter), the Hittites (he also married two Hittite women) and perhaps even with the descendants of the other banished sons of Abraham, thus leading to the huge group of the Hyksos. Regardless of whether we have correctly identified their identity or not, it is certain that there are a series of curiosities. One is the similarity between the name of one of the Hyksos kings, Qareh, and that of one of Esau’s sons, Qorah. Another is related to the name of the founder of the 15th Dynasty, the leader of the Hyksos who invaded Egypt. His name was Salitis according to Flavius Josephus, while the historian Sextus Julius Africanus called him Saites. Neither of these variants represents his true name, considering that Salitis comes from „Shallit„, a title received by Jacobite Joseph in Egypt (which means „Holder of power”), while Saites indicates a connection with the city of Sais in the western Delta of the Nile, called Saw or Zaw by the Egyptians and Sa el-Hagar today. One of Abraham’s sons, named Shuah in the Old Testament and Sous by Flavius Josephus, also seems to have a connection with the same city. The current name of the city is interesting, as it includes the name of Hagar, the biblical Ishmael’s mother. As the hieroglyph „sa” meant „protection” and „el” is the West-Semitic word for „god”, the name of the city may refer to the protection offered to Ishmael’s mother by her god. Herodotus wrote that Osiris’ tomb was located in Sais, a city patronized by the goddess Neith. Diodorus Siculus noted that Sais was built by goddess Athena before the flood that destroyed the city of Athens and the island of Atlantis. In Timaeus and Critias, Plato recounted that the sage Solon learned the story of Atlantis in Sais, whose inhabitants attacked Egypt and Greece and was eventually destroyed by a catastrophe. Were the Hyksos the Atlanteans who attacked Egypt and then the Thracian tribes in Greece? The story of destruction fits, considering that most researchers attribute the sinking of Atlantis to the eruption of the Santorini volcano around 1550 BC, exactly during the Hyksos migration from Egypt.
The first to try to free Egypt from the Hyksos was the Theban Seqenenre Tao of the 17th Dynasty, who was killed in battle. His son, Kamose, attacked the Hyksos capital, Avaris, but he was also unsuccessful. His younger brother, Ahmose, who succeeded him on the throne, eventually managed to conquer Avaris and drive the Semitic people led by Khamudi out of Egypt. The Hyksos spread out, most likely not only in Greece and Canaan but in many other directions, considering that history still records the Ishmaelites, Edomites and the other peoples who are descendants of Abraham. Cadmus (Kadmos in Greek), who led a part of the Hyksos to Greece according to Hecataeus of Abdera, where he founded the city of Thebes, seems to have taken his name from Kamose, one of the Theban princes who fought against the Hyksos. This means that the Greeks attributed the slightly modified name of one of the Theban pharaohs who tried to expel them to the leader of the immigrants. It is possible that this Kadmos was actually Khamudi, the last king of the Hyksos, who disappeared from history after only one year of reign. Some of the Hyksos took refuge in the city of Sharuhin in the Negev Desert (located in southern Israel today), where they were besieged for three years by Pharaoh Ahmose I. However, as I previously mentioned, it is possible that they were not Hyksos, but Jacobites who went to Canaan to take over the territory promised by Marduk to the patriarchs Abraham, Isaac and Jacob. This is also suggested by the Old Testament, which states in the Book of Joshua 19:6 that Sharuhin was occupied by the tribe of Simeon, one of the Jacob’s sons. It seems that the Jacobites did not enter Canaan peacefully; it is estimated that the walls of Jericho fell around 1549 BC, one year after the expulsion of the Hyksos and Jacobites from Egypt. Since the Jacobites were the ones who arrived in the area at that time, it follows that they were the conquerors of the city, which means that they may have also attacked other towns. The Bible‘s editors attributed the Exodus from Egypt and the conquest of Jericho to the Israelites led by Moses around 1300 BC. However, archaeological discoveries show that the true Israelite exodus was the one of the Jacobites expelled from Egypt along with the Hyksos, which happened around 1550 BC. It seems that not everyone was satisfied with the inherited territory, a small portion of them returning to Egypt after a while, being taken out of there by Moses, known in history as the rebel pharaoh Akhenaten.
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