Further linking Esarhaddon, Ashurbanipal



by

 

Damien F. Mackey

 

 

 

 

“… there is a clear parallel between the Inscription of Esarhaddon and a text of Assurbanipal [who] … says that he has brought the peoples that live in the sea and those that inhabit the high mountains under his yoke, and this reference, as we understand it, is very like Esarhaddon’s text, since it is also “a general summary”.”

 

Arcadio Del Castillo and Julia Montenegro

 

 

 

 

Why this particularly interests me is due to my identification of Esarhaddon and Ashurbanipal as one and the same king, as well as being alter egos of the mighty Nebuchednezzar:  

 

Aligning Neo-Babylonia with Book of Daniel. Part Two: Merging late neo-Assyrians with Chaldeans

 

https://www.academia.edu/38330399/Aligning_Neo-Babylonia_with_Book_of_Daniel._Part_Two_Merging_late_neo-Assyrians_with_Chaldeans

 

Arcadio Del Castillo and Julia Montenegro have made a valiant effort to identify the elusive biblical “Tarshish” in their article:

 

THE LOCATION OF TARSHISH: CRITICAL CONSIDERATIONS

Revue Biblique, 123, 2016, pp. 239-268

https://www.academia.edu/35529906/THE_LOCATION_OF_TARSHISH_CRITICAL_CONSIDERATIONS?auto=download

 

But what struck me when reading through this article is yet another case of, as it seems to me, a ‘historical’ duplication, Ashurbanipal claiming what Esarhaddon claimed.

Writing of the neo-Assyrian sailing efforts, the authors tell as follows (pp. 252-254):

 

… the only record we have of them sailing the Mediterranean is when Sargon II gained control of Cyprus, which was further secured by his successors, Sennacherib, Esarhaddon, and Assurbanipal, 668-627 BC….

 

My comment: As Esarhaddon, Ashurbanipal, is just the one king according to my article above, so, too, with:

 

Assyrian King Sargon II, Otherwise Known As Sennacherib

 

https://www.academia.edu/6708474/Assyrian_King_Sargon_II_Otherwise_Known_As_Sennacherib

 

The authors continue:

 

Of course, the text of the Assyrian Inscription of Esarhaddon defines the extent of the Assyrian king’s domain, in maritime terms, from one area in the direction of the other, but we believe its extent would have been within maritime limits of the Assyrian Empire itself, in which case Tarshish would very probably have been in the Red Sea or the Indian Ocean. Thus, the text is perfectly consistent with King Solomon’s policy of procuring the products he needed in the regions to the South and East of his kingdom, which in Antiquity formed a vast emporium of all kinds of luxury goods; and since these regions had to be reached by sea, Solomon ordered a fleet to be built in Ezion-geber on the Gulf of Akaba with ships of Tarshish, for which he sought the aid of Hiram I of Tyre, who sent his men, the unrivalled seafarers of Antiquity, because the Israelites had not, until then, had any contact with the sea. It is difficult to imagine the Phoenicians helping Solomon reach places with which he had no contact using routes only known to themselves, such as the Far West; however, helping him reach destinations nearer home by routes that were generally known does seem reasonable. What is conclusive is the fact that in Esarhaddon’s Inscription the reference to the kings of the middle of the sea comes after enumerating his conquests, which are listed as: Sidon … Arza … Bazu … Tilmun … Shubria … Tyre … Egypt and Pathros … and Kush.

 

And, since Bazu seems to be situated in the northwest of Arabia and Tilmun on the Persian Gulf, very possibly Bahrain … what seems more logical is to assume that it is a delimitation in both seas of the cosmic ocean, this is the Upper Sea and the Lower Sea. So it would be a broad area that extended beyond the Mediterranean; and reference is made to it just before saying that the Assyrian king had established his power over the kings of the four regions of the Earth … which is an obvious parallel with the part of the text studied in reference to his maritime empire.

 

What can of course be readily accepted, as we have said, is that there is a clear parallel between the Inscription of Esarhaddon and a text of Assurbanipal, which is inscribed on Prism B: after stating that he ruled from the Upper Sea to the Lower Sea and that the kings of the rising sun and the setting sun brought him heavy tribute, Assurbanipal says that he has brought the peoples that live in the sea and those that inhabit the high mountains under his yoke … and this reference, as we understand it, is very like Esarhaddon’s text, since it is also “a general summary”. And in this case, everything appears to indicate that the peoples referred to were to be found in both seas. Esarhaddon’s text defines the maritime dominion of the Assyrian king from one area to another, but of course it must fall within the actual maritime limits of the Assyrian Empire itself, so its boundary cannot be defined in the Far West, since we would soon leave the area under Assyrian rule. Therefore Tarshish would very probably be on the Red Sea or the Indian Ocean ….

 [End of quote]

 

More to the Iliad and the Odyssey than meets the eye?

 

by

 

Damien F. Mackey

  

 

 

 

Scholars variously find Homer’s classics to be replete with astronomical detail,

or bursting with biblical allusions, or serving as accurate navigational guides. 

Perhaps they encompass all of this and more.

 

 

 

 

 

I must admit to having been completely enthralled by Florence and Kenneth Wood’s:

 

Homer's Secret Iliad

 

The Epic of the Nights Skies Decoded.

 

 

 

According to one review of this book:

https://archive.schillerinstitute.com/fid_97-01/fid_012_sjk_homer.html

 

Not New Age Kookery

 

Homer's Secret Iliad is rich in the elaboration of its hypotheses, such as its discussion of the gods and goddesses as planets, able to wander throughout the ecliptic band of the skies and, thus, influence the fate of the mortals, who are the fixed stars, and hence fixed in their actions. The book provides dozens of examples to bolster each of its arguments, which are extensive. Florence and Kenneth Wood spent years, following the death of Edna Leigh in 1991, working through her hypothesis, and fitting [hundreds] …. of examples into the architecture which Leigh had created.

 

In the introduction to the book, Kenneth Wood describes the cold reception received by himself and his wife, when they presented their analysis to establishment academia. Fortunately, they came in contact with serious scholars, such as Giorgio de Santillana and Hertha von Deschend, authors of the 1983 Hamlet's Mill, who are themselves investigating how the knowledge of precession shaped ancient civilizations; their studies have already pushed the calendar of civilization much farther back than the oligarchy would like.

 

Work of this sort is very different from the school of outright New Age kooks, who have many popular books currently in circulation, which present the evidence of ancient societies' knowledge of precession and astronomy, as magical, mysterious, or even coming from aliens from outer space. (One might call this the "Edgar Cayce" school of history, after the agent who claimed that his knowledge of the extreme antiquity of Egypt came from his ability to "channel" the knowledge directly from ancient Egyptians.) Instead, Homer's Secret Iliad joins the growing list of serious contributions in many disciplines piling up each year, which demonstrate that mankind has advanced, through his powers of cognition and discovery, throughout tens of millennium--rather than stumbling from one cultish civilization to the next over the last 2,500 years. ….

 

[End of quote]

 

One ought to acquire and read this terrific book.

 

My own little contribution has been of a biblical nature, regarding mainly The Odyssey:

 

Similarities to The Odyssey of the Books of Job and Tobit

 

https://www.academia.edu/8914220/Similarities_to_The_Odyssey_of_the_Books_of_Job_and_Tobit

 

Similarities to The Odyssey of the Books of Job and Tobit. Part Two: Tobit's Dog and 'Argus' in Homer

 

https://www.academia.edu/36181776/Similarities_to_The_Odyssey_of_the_Books_of_Job_and_Tobit._Part_Two_Tobits_Dog_and_Argus_in_Homer

 

this fortuitous apparent connection (Job and Tobit) seeming also to support my view that the prophet Job was Tobias, son of Tobit. See e.g. my article:

 

Job's Life and Times

 

https://www.academia.edu/3787850/Jobs_Life_and_Times

 

Much earlier:

 

St Jerome saw resemblance of Tobit to Homer's 'The Odyssey'

 

https://www.academia.edu/35896787/St_Jerome_saw_resemblance_of_Tobit_to_Homers_The_Odyssey

 

Felice Vinci (in Athens Journal of Mediterranean Studies - Volume 3, Issue 2 – Pages 163-186) has, for his part, argued for:

https://www.athensjournals.gr/mediterranean/2017-3-2-4-Vinci.pdf

 

The Nordic Origins of the Iliad and Odyssey: An Up-to-date Survey of the Theory

 

The Northern Features of Homer’s World

 

Northern Features of Climate, Clothes, Food, and Vessels

 

Homer’s world presents northern features. The climate is normally cold and unsettled, very different from what we expect in the traditional Mediterranean setting. The Iliad dwells upon violent storms (i.e., in Il. IV: 275-278, XI: 305-308, XIII: 795-799), torrential rain and disastrous floods (Il. V: 87-91, XI: 492-495, XIII: 37-141, XVI: 384-388), and often mentions snow (Il. XII, 156-158), even on lowlands (Il. XII: 278-286, X: 6-8, XV: 170-171; XIX: 357-358, III: 222). Fog is found everywhere, e.g., in the "misty sea" (Od. V, 281), and also in Troy (Il. XVII: 368), Scherie (Od. VII, 41-42), Ithaca (Od. XIII: 189), the Cyclopes’ land (Od. IX: 144), and so on.

 

As regards the sun, the Iliad hardly ever refers to its heat or rays; the Odyssey never mentions the sun warmth in Ithaca, though it refers to the sailing season. As to the seasons, there is a parallel between Homer, who mentions only three seasons: winter, spring and summer, and Tacitus’s Germans, for whom "winter, spring and summer have meaning and names, but they are unaware of the name and produce of autumn" (Germania, 26: 4). Vol. 3, No. 2 Vinci: The Nordic Origins of the Iliad and Odyssey... Clothes described in the two poems are consistent with a northern climate and the finds of the Nordic Bronze age. In the episode of the Odyssey in which Telemachus and Peisistratus are guests at Menelaus’s house in Sparta, the two young men get ready for lunch after a bath: "They wore thick cloaks and tunics" (Od. IV: 50–51). The same is said of Odysseus when he is a guest at Alcinous’s house (Od. VIII: 455-457). Similarly, Nestor’s cloak is "double and large; a thick fur stuck out" (Il. X: 134) and, when Achilles leaves for Troy, his mother thoughtfully prepares him a trunk "filled with tunics, wind-proof thick cloaks and blankets" (Il. XVI: 223-224). Those "thick cloaks and tunics" can be compared to the clothes of a man found in a Danish Bronze Age tomb: "The woolen tunic comes down to the knees and a belt ties it at the waist. He also wears a cloak, which a bronze buckle pins on his shoulder" (Bibby 1966: 245). Also Odysseus wears "a golden buckle" (Od. XIX: 226) on his cloak, and "a shining tunic around his body like the peel on a dry onion" (Od. XIX: 232-233); all of this fit what Tacitus says of Germanic clothes: "The suit for everyone is a cape with a buckle (…) The richest are distinguished by a suit (...) which is close-fitting and tight around each limb" (Germania 17: 1).

 

Regarding food, it’s remarkable that fruit, vegetables, olive oil, olives, figs never appear on the table of Homer’s heroes. Their diet was based on meat (beef, pork, goat, and game), much like that of the Vikings, who "ate meat in large quantities, so much so that they seemed to regard the pleasure of eating meat as one of the joys of life" (Pörtner 1996: 207). Homer’s characters had a hearty meal in the morning: "In the hut Odysseus and his faithful swineherd lit the fire and prepared a meal at sunrise" (Od. XVI: 1–2), like Tacitus’s Germans: "As soon as they wake up (…) they eat; everyone has his own chair and table" (Germania 22: 1). This individual table (trapeza) is typical of the Homeric world, too (Od. I: 138).

 

One should also note that, while pottery tableware was prevalent in Greece, the Nordic world was marked by "a stable and highly advanced bronze founding industry" (Fischer-Fabian 1985: 90), which squares with Homer’s poems, which mention only vessels made of metal: "A maid came to pour water from a beautiful golden jug into a silver basin" (Od. I, 136-137); wine was poured "into gold goblets" (III: 472) and "gold glasses" (I: 142). When a vessel felt to the ground in Odysseus’ palace, instead of breaking it "boomed" (bombēse, Od. XVIII: 397). Also lamps (XIX: 34), cruets (VI: 79), and urns (Il. XXIII: 253) were made of gold. As to the poor, Eumaeus the herdsman pours wine for his guests "into a wooden cup" (kissybion, Od. XVI: 52), like the cup Odysseus gives Polyphemus (Od. IX: 346). Wood, of course, is the cheapest material in the north (Estonia and Latvia have an ancient tradition of wooden beer tankards). Athens Journal of Mediterranean Studies April 2017

 

Nordic Customs and Archaism of Homer’s World

 

There are many remarkable parallels between the Homeric Achaeans and the Nordic world, in the fields of their social relations, interests, lifestyles, and so on, despite the time gap.

E.g., Homer’s habit of giving things and slaves a value in "oxen" – a new vase, decorated with flowers, was worth "the price of an ox" (Il. XXIII, 885); a big tripod was worth twelve oxen (Il. XXIII: 703); Ulysses’ nurse Eurycleia had cost twenty oxen (Od. I: 431), and so on – is comparable to the fact that, during the first Viking Age, cows were still used "as the current monetary unit" (Pörtner 1996: 199). A statement from Tacitus bridges these two distant epochs: "Cattle and oxen (...) are the Germans’ only and highly valued wealth" (Germania, 5, 1). Besides, the prominence of oxen in the economy of the Homeric world is another argument in favour of the Nordic setting, while in the Greek world other kinds of livestock are more important (one should also consider how important were beef and pork in Achaeans’ diet).

 

Still on Tacitus, Karol Modzelewski, by quoting a custom reported in Germania, 11, writes: "The mention of assembly decisions taken by a peculiar acclamation method, consisting in brandishing spears, is confirmed by the codifications, dating back to the 12th century, of the Norwegian juridical traditions, where this rite is called vapnaták" (Modzelewski 2008: 33). It is remarkable that the custom of going armed with spear to the assembly is found in Homer: Telemachus "went to the assembly, he held the bronze spear" (Od. II: 10). Thus a custom dating back to the Homeric world was still present in Viking Norway of the 12th century.

 

One should also note that Odysseus’ ship had a removable mast, a feature typical of all Homeric vessels: both the Iliad (I: 434, 480) and Odyssey (II: 424, VIII: 52) confirm that setting up and taking down the mast were customary at the beginning and the end of each mission. This feature was also typical of the Viking ships, which lowered the mast whenever there was the risk of sudden gusts or ice formation, which could cause the ship to capsize. Another structural feature typical of Viking ships, the flat keel, is found also in Homeric ones, as one can infer from the passage narrating Ulysses’ arrival in Ithaca, where the Phaeacian ship "mounted the beach by half the length" (Od. XIII: 114).

 

Another peculiar custom of the Homeric heroes is that they got off the chariots and left them aside during the duels: e.g., the Trojan hero Asius used to fight "on foot in front of his puffing horses, which the charioteer kept all the time behind him" (Il. XIII: 385–386). Scholars agree that this way of using the chariots seems to be absurd and senseless: "No one has ever fought like the heroes of Homer. They are led to battle in chariot, then they jump off to fight against the enemy. All that we know about the battle chariots in Eastern Mediterranean protests against this view of things" (Vidal-Naquet 2013: 573). However, what looks odd in the Mediterranean fits the Nordic world: according to Diodorus of Sicily, the Celts "employed two-horse chariots, each with his coachman and warrior, and, when they confronted each other in war, Vol. 3, No. 2 Vinci: The Nordic Origins of the Iliad and Odyssey... they used to throw the javelin, then they came down from the chariot and fought with the sword" (Historical Library 5: 29). Still Diodorus writes that "Brittany is said to be inhabited by native tribes conforming to their ancient way of life. In war they use chariots, like the ancient Greek heroes in the Trojan war" (Historical Library 5: 21). Julius Caesar adds other details upon the Britains: "When they have worked themselves in between the troops of horse, leap from their chariots and engage on foot. The charioteers in the mean time withdraw some little distance from the battle, and so place themselves with the chariots that, if their masters are overpowered by the number of the enemy, they may have a ready retreat to their own troops. Thus they display in battle the speed of horse, together with the firmness of infantry" (De bello Gallico IV: 33).

So, the chariot fightings narrated by the Iliad are not absurdities due to the supposed ignorance of the poet; instead, Homer must be considered the only extraordinary witness of the Nordic Bronze Age, whose archaic customs survived in Britain until Caesar’s age.

This confirms what Stuart Piggott writes: "The nobility of the [Homeric] hexameters should not deceive us into thinking that the Iliad and the Odyssey are other than the poems of a largely barbarian Bronze Age or Early Iron Age Europe. There is no Minoan or Asiatic blood in the veins of the Grecian Muses (...) They dwell remote from the Cretan-Mycenaean world and in touch with the European elements of Greek speech and culture (...) Behind Mycenaean Greece (...) lies Europe" (Piggott 1968: 126). Besides, according to Geoffrey Kirk, the Homeric poems "were created (...) by a poet, or poets, who were completely unaware of the techniques of writing," (Kirk 1989: 78) and "a recent linguistic argument suggests that the Homeric tmesis, i.e. the habit of separating adverbial and prepositional elements that were later combined into compound verbs belongs to a stage of language anterior to that represented in the Linear B tablets. If so, that would take elements of Homer’s language back more than five hundred years before his time" (Kirk 1989: 88-89).

 

That’s why "there is an absolute difference both in extension and quality between the Mycenaean society and Iliad’s" (Codino 1974: IX): Homer’s civilization appears more archaic than the Mycenaean one. There is also the odd case of Dionysus, who is an important god both in the Mycenaean period and in classical Greece, but is almost unknown in Homer: Homer’s world, therefore, probably preceded the Mycenaean civilisation, instead of following it. ….

 

 

Meeting of the wise – Arioch and Daniel

 

by

 

Damien F. Mackey

 

 

Part One:

Refreshing our minds about Ahikar

 

 

Tobit tells us that this Ahikar was the son of his brother Anael (Tobit 1:21, 22, CEB).

 

Previously I have written about this fascinating character of Bible and legend:

 

Ahikar’s Importance

 

Biblical scholars could well benefit from knowing more about AHIKAR (or Ahiqar/Akhikar), the Rabshakeh of Sennacherib, Great King of Assyria (c. 700 BC, conventional dating), and who was retained in power by Esarhaddon (Gk. Sacherdonos) (Tobit 1:22).

 

This Ahikar … was a vitally important eye-witness to some of the most extraordinary events of Old Testament history.

Ahikar was, at the very least …:

 

1.      a key link between the Book of Judith and those other books, Kings, Chronicles and Isaiah [KCI] that describe Sennacherib’s rise to prominence and highly successful first major invasion of Israel (historically his 3^rd campaign), and then

2.      Sennacherib’s second major invasion of Israel and subsequent disastrous defeat there; and he was

3.      an eyewitness in the east, as Tobit’s own nephew, to neo-Assyrian events as narrated in the Book of Tobit.

 

May I, then (based on my research into historical revision), sketch Ahikar’s astounding life by knitting together the various threads about him that one may glean from KCI, Tobit, Judith, secular history and legends. I shall be using for him the better known name of Ahikar, even though I find him named in the Book of Judith (and also in the Vulgate version of Tobit) as Achior, presumably, “son of light” (and as Achiacharus in the Septuagint).

 

Here is Ahikar:

 

His Israelite Beginnings

 

Tobit tells us that this Ahikar was the son of his brother Anael (Tobit 1:21, 22, CEB):

 

Within forty days Sennacherib was killed by two of his sons, who escaped to the mountains of Ararat. His son Esarhaddon became king in his place. He hired Ahikar, my brother Hanael’s son, to be in charge of all the financial accounts of his kingdom and all the king’s treasury records.

Ahikar petitioned the king on my behalf, and I returned to Nineveh. Ahikar had been the chief officer, the keeper of the ring with the royal seal, the auditor of accounts, and the keeper of financial records under Assyria’s King Sennacherib. And Esarhaddon promoted him to be second in charge after himself. Ahikar was my nephew and one of my family.

 

Ahikar, nephew of Tobit, was therefore the cousin of the latter’s son, Tobias, whom I have identified, in his mature age, as the holy Job. See my article:

 

Job’s Life and Times

 

http://www.academia.edu/3787850/Jobs_Life_and_Times

 

Presumably then Ahikar had, just like Tobit and his son, Tobias, belonged to the tribe of Naphthali (cf. Tobit 1:1); though he was possibly, unlike the Tobiads, amongst the majority of his clan who had gone over to Baal worship.

Ahikar may thus initially have been a scoffer (1:4) and a blasphemer.

Tobit tells us about his tribe’s apostasy (1:4-5):

 

When I was young, I lived in northern Israel. All the tribes in Israel were supposed to offer sacrifices in Jerusalem. It was the one city that God had chosen from among all the Israelite cities as the place where his Temple was to be built for his holy and eternal home. But my entire tribe of Naphtali rejected the city of Jerusalem and the kings descended from David. Like everyone else in this tribe, my own family used to go to the city of Dan in the mountains of northern Galilee to offer sacrifices to the gold bull-calf which King Jeroboam of Israel had set up there.

 

This was still the unfortunate situation during the early reign of the great king Hezekiah of Judah (2 Chronicles 30: 1, 10): “And Hezekiah sent letters to all Israel and Judah … to come to Jerusalem … and keep the Passover …. So the posts passed from city to city through the country of Ephraim … but they laughed them to scorn …”.

 

Whilst Tobit and his family, and Ahikar’s presumably also, were taken into captivity during the reign of “King Shalmaneser” [V] (Tobit 1:2), the northern kingdom of Samaria went later. Samaria, due to her apostasy, was taken captive in 722 BC (conventional dating) by Sargon II of Assyria, whom I have actually equated with Sennacherib:

 

Assyrian King Sargon II, Otherwise Known As Sennacherib

 

https://www.academia.edu/6708474/Assyrian_King_Sargon_II_Otherwise_Known_As_Sennacherib

 

As Sennacherib’s Cupbearer-in-Chief (Rabshakeh)

 

Ahikar’s rapid rise to high office in the kingdom of Assyria may have been due in part to the prestige that his uncle had enjoyed there; because Tobit tells us that he himself was, for the duration of the reign of “Shalmaneser … the king’s purveyor”, even entrusted with large sums of money (1:14): “And I [Tobit] went into Media, and left in trust with Gabael, the brother of Gabrias, at Rages a city of Media ten talents of silver”. …. This is apparently something like $1.2 million dollars!

http://www.enduringword.com/commentaries/1205.htm

 

….

Sennacherib’s description of his official, Bel-ibni, who he said had “grown up in my palace like a young puppy” [as quoted by G. Roux, Iraq, p. 321], may have been equally applicable to Ahikar. The highly talented Ahikar, rising quickly through the ranks, attained to Rabshakeh (thought [by some] to equate to Cup-bearer or Vizier).

 

Whatever the exact circumstances of Ahikar’s worldly success, the young man seems to have enjoyed a rise to power quite as speedy as that later on experienced by the prophet Daniel in Babylon; the latter trusting wholeheartedly in his God, whereas Ahikar may possibly have, at first, depended upon his own powers. {Though Tobit put in a good word for his nephew when he recalled that “Ahikar gave alms” (14:10), that being his salvation}.

 

Merodach-baladan, the wily survivor during the first half of Sennacherib’s reign, was the latter’s foe, Arphaxad, of the Book of Judith, defeated by Sennacherib (there called Nebuchadnezzar) - this incident occurring next, as I have argued, after Sennacherib’s successful 3^rd campaign, the one involving king Hezekiah of Judah.

Thus we read in Judith 1:1, 5-6:

 

While King Nebuchadnezzar was ruling over the Assyrians from his capital city of Nineveh, King Arphaxad ruled over the Medes [sic] ….

In the twelfth year of his reign King Nebuchadnezzar went to war against King Arphaxad in the large plain around the city of Rages. Many nations joined forces with King Arphaxad—all the people who lived in the mountains, those who lived along the Tigris, Euphrates, and Hydaspes rivers, as well as those who lived in the plain ruled by King Arioch of Elam. Many nations joined this Chelodite [Chaldean] alliance.

 

Whilst “King Arioch” mentioned here will be discussed later, I have explained the use of the name ‘Nebuchadnezzar’ for Sennacherib in the Book of Judith in my article:

 

Book of Judith: confusion of names

 

https://www.academia.edu/36599434/Book_of_Judith_confusion_of_names

 

Sennacherib’s Third campaign

 

Biblically, we get our first glimpse of Ahikar in action, I believe, as the very vocal Rabshakeh of KCI, the mouthpiece of Sennacherib himself when the Assyrian army mounted its first major assault upon the kingdom of Judah (2 Kings 18:13): “In the fourteenth year of King Hezekiah, Sennacherib king of Assyria came up against all the fortified cities of Judah and took them”.

Now, it would make perfect sense that the king of Assyria would have chosen from amongst his elite officials, to address the Jews, one of Israelite tongue (vv. 17-18):

 

And the king of Assyria sent the Tartan, the Rabsaris, and the Rabshakeh with a great army from Lachish to King Hezekiah at Jerusalem. And they went up and came to Jerusalem. When they arrived, they came and stood by the conduit of the upper pool, which is on the highway to the Fuller’s Field. And when they called for the king, there came out to them Eliakim the son of Hilkiah, who was over the household, and Shebnah the secretary, and Joah the son of Asaph, the recorder.

 

And these are the bold words that Rabshakeh had apparently been ordered to say to the Jews (vv. 19-25):

 

And the Rabshakeh said to them, “Say to Hezekiah, ‘Thus says the great king, the king of Assyria: On what do you rest this trust of yours? Do you think that mere words are strategy and power for war? In whom do you now trust, that you have rebelled against me? Behold, you are trusting now in Egypt, that broken reed of a staff, which will pierce the hand of any man who leans on it. Such is Pharaoh king of Egypt to all who trust in him. But if you say to me, “We trust in the Lord our God,” is it not he whose high places and altars Hezekiah has removed, saying to Judah and to Jerusalem, “You shall worship before this altar in Jerusalem”? Come now, make a wager with my master the king of Assyria: I will give you two thousand horses, if you are able on your part to set riders on them. How then can you repulse a single captain among the least of my master’s servants, when you trust in Egypt for chariots and for horsemen? Moreover, is it without the Lord that I have come up against this place to destroy it? The Lord said to me, Go up against this land, and destroy it’. ….

 

King Hezekiah’s officials, however, who did not want the people on the walls to hear these disheartening words, pleaded with Rabshakeh as follows (v. 26): “Then Eliakim the son of Hilkiah, and Shebnah, and Joah, said to the Rabshakeh, ‘Please speak to your servants in Aramaic, for we understand it. Do not speak to us in the language of Judah within the hearing of the people who are on the wall’.”

 

Could the fact that the Jewish officials knew that Sennacherib’s officer was conversant with the Aramaïc language indicate that Ahikar, of whom they must have known, was of northern – and perhaps Transjordanian (like Tobit and Tobias) – origin?

 

Now Ahikar, who as said above is named ‘Achior’ in the Vulgate version of Tobit, I have identified as the important Achior of the Book of Judith in Volume Two of my post-graduate thesis. So it was rather intriguing to discover, in regard to the Rabshakeh’s famous speech, that B. Childs (Isaiah and the Assyrian Crisis) had discerned some similarity between it and the speech of Achior in the Book of Judith. I wrote on this in my thesis (Vol. 2, p. 8):

 

… Childs - who has subjected the Rabshakeh’s speech to a searching form-critical analysis, also identifying its true Near Eastern genre - has considered it as well in relation to an aspect of the speech of … Achior [to be identified with] this Rabshakeh in Chapter 2, e.g. pp. 46-47) to Holofernes (Judith 5:20f.). ….

 

A legend had been born, Ahikar the Rabshakeh!

The Israelite captive had proven himself to have been a most loyal servant of Sennacherib’s during the latter’s highly successful 3^rd campaign, playing his assigned rôle to perfection.

 

Sennacherib, upon his return to the east, quickly turned his sights upon the troublesome Merodach-baladan.

And it is at this point in history that the Book of Judith opens.

After the defeat of Merodach-baladan, the aforementioned ‘young puppy’, Bel-ibni, was made sub-king of Babylon in his stead.

 

 

The Vizier (Ummânu)

 

With what I think is a necessary merging of the C12th BC king of Babylon, Nebuchednezzar I, with the potent king of neo-Assyria, Esarhaddon (or Nebuchednezzar ‘the Great’), we encounter during the reign of ‘each’ a vizier of such fame that he was to be remembered for centuries to come.

It is now reasonable to assume that this is one and the same vizier.

I refer, in the case of Nebuchednezzar I, to the following celebrated vizier [the following taken from J. Brinkman’s A Political History of Post-Kassite Babylonia. 1158-722 B.C. Roma (Pontificium Institutum Biblicum, 1968, pp. 114-115]:

 

… during these years in Babylonia a notable literary revival took place …. It is likely that this burst of creative activity sprang from the desire to glorify fittingly the spectacular achievements of Nebuchednezzar I and to enshrine his memorable deeds in lasting words. These same deeds were also to provide inspiration for later poets who sang the glories of the era …. The scribes of Nebuchednezzar’s day, reasonably competent in both Akkadian and Sumerian…, produced works of an astonishing vigor, even though these may have lacked the polish of a more sophisticated society. The name Esagil-kini-ubba, ummânu or “royal secretary” during the reign of Nebuchednezzar I, was preserved in Babylonian memory for almost one thousand years – as late as the year 147 of the Seleucid Era (= 165 B.C.)….

 

To which Brinkman adds the footnote [n. 641]: “Note … that Esagil-kini-ubba served as ummânu also under Adad-apla-iddina and, therefore, his career extended over at least thirty-five years”.

 

So perhaps we can consider that our wise sage was, for a time, shared by both Assyria and Babylon.

 

Those seeking the historical Ahikar tend to come up with one Aba-enlil-dari, this description of him taken from:

http://www.aakkl.helsinki.fi/melammu/database/gen_html/a0000639.php:

 

The story of Ahiqar is set into the court of seventh century Assyrian kings Sennacherib and Esarhaddon. The hero has the Akkadian name Ahī-(w)aqar “My brother is dear”, but it is not clear if the story has any historical foundation. The latest entry in a Seleucid list of Seven Sages says: “In the days of Esarhaddon the sage was Aba-enlil-dari, whom the Aramaeans call Ahu-uqar” which at least indicates that the story of Ahiqar was well known in the Seleucid Babylonia.

 

Seleucid Babylonia is, of course, much later removed in time from our sources for Ahikar. And, as famous as may have been the scribe Esagil-kini-ubba – whether or not he were also Ahikar – even better known is this Ahikar (at least by that name), a character of both legend and of (as I believe) real history.

Regarding Ahikar’s tremendous popularity even down through the centuries, we read [The Jerome Biblical Commentary, New Jersey (Prentice-Hall, Inc., 1968), 28:28]:

 

The story of Ahikar is one of the most phenomenal in the ancient world in that it has become part of many different literatures and has been preserved in several different languages: Syriac, Arabic, Armenian, Greek, Slavonic, and Old Turkish. The most ancient recension is the Aramaic, found amongst the famous 5th-cent. BC papyri that were discovered at the beginning of the 20th cent. on Elephantine Island in the Nile. The story worked its way into the Arabian nights and the Koran; it influenced Aesop, the Church Fathers as well as Greek philosophers, and the Old Testament itself.

 

Whilst Ahikar’s wisdom and fame has spread far and wide, the original Ahikar, whom I am trying to uncover in this article, has been elusive for some. Thus J. Greenfield has written (http://ebooks.cambridge.org/chapter.jsf?bid=CBO9780511520662&cid=CBO9780511520662A012):

 

The figure of Ahiqar has remained a source of interest to scholars in a variety of fields. The search for the real Ahiqar, the acclaimed wise scribe who served as chief counsellor to Sennacherib and Esarhaddon, was a scholarly preoccupation for many years. He had a sort of independent existence since he was known from a series of texts – the earliest being the Aramaic text from Elephantine, followed by the book of Tobit, known from the Apocrypha, and the later Syriac, Armenian and Arabic texts of Ahiqar. An actual royal counsellor and high court official who had been removed from his position and later returned to it remains unknown. E. Reiner found the theme of the ‘disgrace and rehabilitation of a minister’ combined with that of the ‘ungrateful nephew’ in the ‘Bilingual Proverbs’, and saw this as a sort of parallel to the Ahiqar story. She also emphasized that in Mesopotamia the ummânu was not only a learned man or craftsman but was also a high official. At the time that Reiner noted the existence of this theme in Babylonian wisdom literature, Ahiqar achieved a degree of reality with the discovery in Uruk, in the excavations of winter 1959/60, of a Late Babylonian tablet (W20030,7) dated to the 147th year of the Seleucid era (= 165 BCE). This tablet contains a list of antediluvian kings and their sages (apkallû) and postdiluvian kings and their scholars (ummânu). The postdiluvian kings run from Gilgamesh to Esarhaddon.

 

As a Ruling ‘King’ (or Governor)

 

The Elamite Connection

 

Chapter 1 of the Book of Tobit appears to be a general summary of Tobit’s experiences during the reigns of a succession of Assyrian kings: Shalmaneser, Sennacherib and Esarhaddon.

I, in my thesis and subsequent writings, may have misread some of the chronology of the life of Tobit, whose blindness, as recorded in Chapter 2, I had presumed to have occurred after the murder of Sennacherib.

I now think that it occurred well before that.

Ahikar will assist Tobit in his miserable state (“Ahikar gave alms”, 14:10), for two years, before his appointment as ruler of Elam. Here is Tobit’s account of it (2:10-11):

 

For four years I could see nothing. My relatives were deeply concerned about my condition, and Ahikar supported me for two years before he went to the land of Elam. After Ahikar left, my wife Anna had to go to work, so she took up weaving, like many other women.

 

Another thing that probably needs to be re-considered now, in light of my revised view of the chronology of Tobit, concerns the previously mentioned “King Arioch” as referred to in Judith 1:6: “Many nations joined forces with King Arphaxad … as well as those who lived in the plain ruled by King Arioch of Elam”. Arioch in Elam I had (rightly I think) identified in my thesis, again, as Achior (Ahikar) who went to Elam. But, due to my then mis-reading of Tobit, I had had to consider the mention of Arioch in Judith 1:6 as a post-Sennacherib gloss, added later as a geographical pointer, thinking that our hero had gone to Elam only after Sennacherib’s death. And so I wrote in my thesis (Vol. II, pp. 46-47):

 

I disagree with Charles [The Apocrypha and Pseudepigrapha of the Old Testament] that: “The name Arioch is borrowed from Gen. xiv. i, in accordance with the author’s love of archaism”. This piece of information, I am going to argue here, is actually a later gloss to the original text. And I hope to give a specific identification to this king, since, according to Leahy [‘Judith’]: “The identity of Arioch (Vg Erioch) has not been established …”.

 

What I am going to propose is that Arioch was not actually one of those who had rallied to the cause of Arphaxad in Year 12 of Nebuchadnezzar, as a superficial reading of [Book of Judith] might suggest, but that this was a later addition to the text for the purpose of making more precise for the reader the geographical region from whence came Arphaxad’s allies, specifically the Elamite troops.

In other words, this was the very same region as that which Arioch had ruled; though at a later time, as I am going to explain.

 

Commentators express puzzlement about him. Who was this Arioch?

And if he were such an unknown, then what was the value of this gloss for the early readers?

 

Arioch was, I believe, the very Achior who figures so prominently in the story of Judith.

He was also the legendary Ahikar, a most famous character as we have already read.

Therefore he was entirely familiar to the Jews, who would have known that he had eventually governed the Assyrian province of Elam.

Some later editor/translator presumably, apparently failing to realise that the person named in this gloss was the very same as the Achior who figures so prominently throughout the main story of [Judith], has confused matters by calling him by the different name of Arioch. He should have written: “Achior ruled the Elymeans”.

From there it is an easy matter to make this comparison:

 

“Achior … Elymeans” [Judith]; “Ahikar (var. Achior) … Elymaïs” [Tobit].

 

Suffice it to say here that this ubiquitous personage, Ahikar/Achior, would have been the eyewitness extraordinaire to the detailed plans and preparations regarding the eastern war between the Assyrians and the Chaldean coalition as described in Judith 1.

 

 

 

 

 

Part Two:

Merging Judith’s ‘Arioch’ with Daniel’s ‘Arioch’

 

 

Some later editor/translator … apparently failing to realise that the person [“Arioch”] named in this gloss [Judith 1:6] was the very same as the Achior who figures so prominently throughout the main story of [Judith], has confused matters by calling him by the different name of Arioch. He should have written: “Achior ruled the Elymeans”.

 

 

With my revised shunting of the neo-Assyrian era into the neo-Babylonian one, and with an important official, “Arioch”, emerging early in the Book of Daniel, early in the reign of “Nebuchednezzar”, then the possibility arises that he is the same as the “Arioch” of Judith 1:6.

In Part One I multi-identified the famous Ahikar (var. Achior), nephew of Tobit, a Naphtalian Israelite, with Sennacherib’s Rabshakeh; with the Achior of the Book of Judith; and with a few other suggestions thrown in.

Finally, my identification of Ahikar (Achior) also with the governor (for Assyria) of the land of Elam, named as “Arioch” in Judith 1:6, enabled me to write this very neat equation:   

 

“Achior … Elymeans” [Judith]; “Ahikar (var. Achior) … Elymaïs” [Tobit].

 

 

Arioch in Daniel

 

Arioch is met in Daniel 2, in the highly dramatic context of king Nebuchednezzar’s Dream, in which Arioch is a high official serving the king. The erratic king has firmly determined to get rid of all of his wise men (2:13): “So the decree was issued to put the wise men to death, and men were sent to look for Daniel and his friends to put them to death”.

And the king has entrusted the task to this Arioch, variously entitled “marshal”; “provost-marshal”; “captain of the king’s guard”; “chief of the king’s executioners” (2:14): When Arioch, the commander of the king’s guard, had gone out to put to death the wise men of Babylon, Daniel spoke to him with wisdom and tact”.

 

This is the customary way that the wise and prudent Daniel will operate.

 

Daniel 2 continues (v. 15): “[Daniel] asked the king’s officer [Arioch], ‘Why did the king issue such a harsh decree?’ Arioch then explained the matter to Daniel”.

Our young Daniel does not lack a certain degree of “chutzpah”, firstly boldly approaching the king’s high official (the fact that Arioch does not arrest Daniel on the spot may be testimony to both the young man’s presence and also Arioch’s favouring the Jews since the Judith incident), and then (even though he was now aware of the dire decree) marching off to confront the terrible king (v. 16): “At this, Daniel went in to the king and asked for time, so that he might interpret the dream for him”.

 

Later, Daniel, having had revealed to him the details and interpretation of the king’s Dream, will re-acquaint himself with Arioch (v. 24):

“Then Daniel went to Arioch, whom the king had appointed to execute the wise men of Babylon, and said to him, ‘Do not execute the wise men of Babylon. Take me to the king, and I will interpret his dream for him’.”

Naturally, Arioch was quick to respond - no doubt to appease the enraged king, but perhaps also for the sake of Daniel and the wise men (v. 25): “Arioch took Daniel to the king at once and said, ‘I have found a man among the exiles from Judah who can tell the king what his dream means’.”

 

Part Three:

Ahikar and Daniel Comparisons

 

 

“There are also some curious linguistic parallels between Ahikar and Daniel”

 

 

 

Books and articles abound comparing Ahikar and Daniel.

 

For instance, there is George A. Barton’s “The Story of Aḥiḳar and the Book of Daniel” (The American Journal of Semitic Languages and Literatures, Vol. 16, No. 4, 1900, pp 242-247):

 

Aḥiḳar, a vizier of Sennacherib, was possessed of wealth, wisdom, popularity, and ....

 

Lastly the description of Aḥiḳar with his nails grown like eagles’ talons and his hair matted like a wild beast … not only reminds one strongly of the of the description of the hair and nails of Nebuchadnezzar (Dan. 4.30), but appears, as Harris has shown … in a more original form [sic] than in the book of Daniel. He further points out that the fact that in Aḥiḳar’s description of the wise men “Chaldeans” had not yet become a technical term for a sage, as it has in Daniel, is a further argument for the priority of Aḥiḳar.

All these points the acute critic of Aḥiḳar has admirably taken; but one wonders why he did not go on a step farther; for when we come to the more fundamental parallels between plots and methods of treatment, the story of Aḥiḳar becomes even more vitally interesting to the student of Daniel than before.

The first of these points to be noted is that Daniel was a wise man, like Aḥiḳar, excelling all others in wisdom, and, like him, vizier to his sovereign, whoever that sovereign might be. Granting the priority of Aḥiḳar, is there not a sign of dependence here?

The story of Aḥiḳar’s fall from the pinnacle of power, his unjust incarceration in a pit … his deliverance, and the imprisonment of his accuser in the same pit, is exactly the same as Daniel’s fall from like power, his imprisonment in the lions’ den, his deliverance, and the casting of his accusers to the lions ….

[End of quote]

 

Vol. 16, No. 4 (Jul., 1900), pp. 242-247 (6 pages)

 

F. C. Conybeare et al. provide more such comparisons in “The Story of Ahikar”:

https://archive.org/stream/HarrisConybeareLewis1913TheStoryOfAhikar.../Harris%2C%20Conybeare%2C%20%26%20Lewis%201913_The%20Story%20of%20Ahikar..._djvu.txt

 

We turn now to a book which appears to belong to the same time and to the same region as Ahikar, in search of more exact coincidences.

We refer to the book of Daniel.

 

First of all there are a good many expressions describing Assyrian life, which appear also in Daniel and may be a part of the stock-in-trade of an Eastern story-teller in ancient times. I mean such expressions as, '0 king, live for ever! 5 'I clad him in byssus and purple \ and a gold collar did I bind around his neck/ (Armenian, p. 25, cf. Dan. v. 16.)

More exact likeness of speech will be found in the following sentence from the Arabic version, in which Ahikar is warned by the ' magicians, astrologers and sooth-sayers ' that he will have no child. Something of the same kind occurs in the Arabic text, when the king of Egypt sends his threatening letter to the king of Assyria, and the latter gathers together his ' nobles, philosophers, and wise men, and astrologers/

The Slavonic drops all this and says, 'It was revealed to me by God, no child will be born of thee/ ' He caused all the wise men to be gathered together/ In the Armenian it is, 'there was a voice from the gods 5 ; ' he sent and mustered the satraps/ The language, however, in the Arabic recalls certain expressions in Daniel : e.g.

 

Dan. ii. 2. c The king sent to call the magicians, the astrologers, the sorcerers and the Chaldeans/

 

So in Dan. ii. 27 : in Dan. v. 7, ( astrologers, Chaldeans, and soothsayers/ &c.

 

It will be seen that the expressions in Daniel are closely parallel to those in the Arabic Ahikar.

 

Again, when the king of Assyria is in perplexity as to what he shall answer to the king of Egypt, he demands advice from Nadan who has succeeded to his uncle's place in the kingdom.

Nadan ridicules the demands of the Pharaoh. 'Build a castle in the air ! The gods themselves cannot do this, let alone men!'

We naturally compare the reply of the consulted Chaldeans in Daniel ii. 11, 'There is no one who can answer the matter before the king, except the gods, whose dwelling is not with flesh/

 

When Ahikar is brought out of his hiding-place and presented to the king, we are told that his hair had grown very long and reached his shoulders, while his beard had grown to his breast.

'My nails/ he says, 'were like the claws of eagles and my body had become withered and shapeless/

 

We compare the account of Nebuchadnezzar, after he had been driven from amongst men (see iv. 30); 1 until his hairs were grown like eagles' [feathers] and his nails like birds' [claws].'

 

The parallelism between these passages is tolerably certain; and the text in Ahikar is better [sic] than that of Daniel. The growth of the nails must be expressed in terms of eagles' talons, and not of the claws of little birds: and the hair ought to be compared with wild beasts, as is the case in some of the Ahikar versions.

 

There are also some curious linguistic parallels between Ahikar and Daniel ….

 

It seems, then, to be highly probable that one of the writers in question was acquainted with the other; for it is out of the question to refer all these coincidences to a later perturbation in the text of Ahikar from the influence of the Bible. Some, at least, of them must be primitive coincidences. But in referring such coincidences to the first form of Ahikar, we have lighted upon a pretty problem. For one of the formulae in question, that namely which describes the collective wisdom of the Babylonians, is held by modern critics to be one of the proofs of late date in the book of Daniel:

 

Accordingly Sayce says 1 , 'Besides the proper names [in Daniel] there is another note of late date. "The Chaldeans" are coupled with the "magicians/ 7 the "astrologers'' and the "sorcerers/* just as they are in Horace or other classical writers of a similar age. The Hebrew and Aramaic equivalent of the Greek or Latin "Chaldeans" is Kasdim (Kasdayin), a name the origin of which is still uncertain.

But its application in the earlier books of the Bible is well known.

It denoted the Semitic Babylonians.... After the fall of the Baby-lonian empire the word Chaldean gradually assumed a new meaning . . .it became the equivalent of " sorcerer " and magician.. . . In the eyes of the Assyriologist the use of the word Kasdim in the book of Daniel would alone be sufficient to indicate the date of the work with unerring certainty.'

 

Now it is certainly an interesting fact that in the story of Ahikar the perplexing Chaldeans are absent from the enumeration.

This confirms us in a suspicion that Ahikar has not been borrow-ing from Daniel, either in the first form of the legend or in later versions. For if he had been copying into his text a passage from Daniel to heighten the narrative, why should he omit the Chaldeans? The author had not, certainly, been reading Prof.

Sayce's proof that they were an anachronism. The hypothesis is, therefore, invited that in Ahikar we have a prior document to Daniel: but we will not press the argument unduly, because we are not quite certain as to the text of the primitive Ahikar … .