While Tobit and Hosea name Shalmaneser and Sennacherib, both of them fail to name Sargon

by Damien F. Mackey “Now the terrors of war will rise among your people. All your fortifications will fall, just as when Shalman destroyed Beth-arbel. Even mothers and children were dashed to death there”. Hosea 10:14 The prophet Hosea names two Assyrian kings, “Yareb” (5:13) and “Shalman” (10:14), whose identities Heath D. Dewrell has completely nailed, so I believe, in the Abstract to his article, “Yareb, Shalman, and the Date of the Book of Hosea” (2016): https://www.jstor.org/stable/43900899 …. This article examines two enigmatic figures mentioned in the Book of Hosea – King Yareb and Shalman. I suggest that the former is to be identified as the Assyrian king Sennacherib and the latter as Shalmaneser V. This has significant implications for the date of the core of the Book of Hoshea; it requires a date at least two decades later than the current scholarly consensus. …. For conventional minded scholars the whole thing is a bit of a puzzle. Thus F. C. Eiselen writes, in “Shalman”: https://www.biblestudytools.com/encyclopedias/isbe/shalman.html A name of uncertain meaning, found only once in the Old Testament (Hosea 10:14), in connection with a place-name, equally obscure, "as Shalman destroyed Betharbel." Shalman is most commonly interpreted as a contracted form of Shalmaneser, the name of several Assyrian kings. If this explanation is correct, the king referred to cannot be identified. Some have thought of Shalmaneser IV, who is said to have undertaken expeditions against the West in 775 and in 773-772. Others have proposed Shalmaneser V, who attacked Samaria in 725. This, however, is improbable, because the activity of Hosea ceased before Shalmaneser V became king. Shalman has also been identified with Salamanu, a king of Moab in the days of Hosea, who paid tribute to Tiglath-pileser V of Assyria; and with Shalmah, a North Arabian tribe that invaded the Negeb. The identification of BETH-ARBEL (which see) is equally uncertain. From the reference it would seem that the event in question was well known and, therefore, probably one of recent date and considerable importance, but our present historical knowledge does not enable us to connect any of the persons named with the destruction of any of the localities suggested for Beth-arbel. The ancient translations offer no solution; they too seem to have been in the dark. [End of quote] Less “in the dark” may we be if we, like Heath D. Dewrell has considered necessary, re-date the core of the Book of Hosea. But we also need a revised Assyria, according to which the reign of Sennacherib, Yareb (erib), immediately follows that of Shalmaneser, with no extra Sargon in between, because Sargon II was Sennacherib: Sargon II and Sennacherib: More than just an overlap (5) Sargon II and Sennacherib: More than just an overlap | Damien Mackey - Academia.edu This conventionally shocking conclusion is reinforced, however, by the Book of Tobit, a man who actually served the great Assyrian king, Shalmaneser - so he knew what he was writing about - whose immediate successor was Sennacherib (Tobit 1:15): “When Shalmaneser died, his son Sennacherib succeeded him as emperor”. No Sargon mentioned there either - because Sargon was Sennacherib. We also need to multi-identify Shalmaneser, for example as the highly important Tiglath-pileser so-called III. By so doing, it may facilitate our understanding of Hosea 10:14, connecting Shalman(eser) with the destruction of Beth-arbel, “a place-name, equally obscure”, “uncertain”. My tentative suggestion for the “obscure” town would be Tiglath-pileser’s taking of Abel-Beth Maacah (2 Kings 15:29), with Beth-arbel as Abel-Beth (Maacah?).

Ahikar once a mouthpiece for the Assyrian king Sennacherib

by Damien F. Mackey 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. 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, see below). This Ahikar, it will be found, was a vitally important eye-witness to some of the most extraordinary events of Old Testament history. Ahikar was, at the very least, as we shall find: 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 3rd campaign), and then 2. Sennacherib’s second major invasion of Israel and subsequent disastrous defeat there; and he was 3. an eyewitness 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 e.g. 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 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 (Chief of the Officers). 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}. A Possible Babylonian Connection It may even be that the youthful Ahikar was appointed for a time as the governor of Babylon whilst Merodach-baladan II was ruling there contemporaneously with Sennacherib at Nineveh. For indeed a governor there at the time had a name that may, as it seems to me, incorporate the name Achior. Thus I wrote in a post-graduate thesis (2007) on this period: A Revised History of the Era of King Hezekiah of Judah and its Background http://hdl.handle.net/2123/5973 (Vol. I, p. 187): Perhaps even the name Achior – whether or not the very same person – can be found in Bel-akhi-erba (i.e. Bel-AKHI-ERba = AKHIOR), the governor of Babylon during the reign of Merodach-baladan II. A relief on the Merodach-baladan Stone depicts the latter making a grant of land to this Bel-akhi-erba, governor of Babylon. Whatever about that, according to the historical reconstruction of this post-graduate thesis, the very same 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 3rdcampaign, 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 (3) Book of Judith: confusion of names | Damien Mackey - Academia.edu 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 3rd campaign, playing his assigned rôle to perfection. Sennacherib, following on from his victory over Judah, 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. Now, in Chapter 7 of my thesis (Volume I) I had introduced what I considered to be a necessary folding of Middle Assyro-Babylonian history, leading to my conclusion that Sennacherib was the same as Nebuchednezzar I. And that, then, had been my explanation for why the Assyrian Great King in the Book of Judith had the name, “Nebuchadnezzar”. My preference now, though, would be the explanation that I have given in my article, “Book of Judith: confusion of names”. Nebuchednezzar I, I had argued, was Sennacherib as a mighty ruler of Babylon, a scenario that also enabled me to merge Merodach-Baladan I and II additionally with Adad-apla-iddina. Now, I had believed that this restructuring may also have provided further possible ramifications for Ahikar the sage: The Vizier (Ummânu) One indication that I may be on the right track in attempting to merge the C12th BC king of Babylon, Nebuchednezzar I, with the C8th BC king of Assyria, Sennacherib, is that one finds 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 this high official was, for a time, shared by both Assyria and Babylon. Whilst I have proposed a variety of possible names for Ahikar, not all being entirely harmonious, the names Merodach-baladan and Adad-apla-iddina merge most satisfactorily; whilst Nebuchednezzar (my earlier view) can be regarded as Sennacherib’s Babylonian name. But, most stunningly of all I find, as laid out in Table I of my thesis (Vol. I, p. 180), “the names of three of [the Elamite Shutrukid] kings [of the C12th BC contemporaneous with Merodach-baldan I] are identical to those of Sargon II’s/Sennacherib’s Elamite foes, supposedly about four centuries later”. 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 orginal 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. For a revised re-locating of the land of Elam, see Royce (Richard) Erickson’s brilliant article (2020): A PROBLEM IN CHALDAEAN AND ELAMITE GEOGRAPHY (5) A PROBLEM IN CHALDAEAN AND ELAMITE GEOGRAPHY | Richard Erickson - Academia.edu 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 war between the Assyrians and the Chaldean coalition as described in Judith 1. As a convert to Yahwism “When Achior heard all that the God of Israel had done, he became a firm believer. He was circumcised and made a member of the Israelite community, as his descendants are to the present day”. Judith 14:10 Recalling from above The young and highly talented Ahikar, or Achior, a product of the northern Israelite tribe of Naphtali that had largely apostatised from Yahwism (but also a nephew of holy Tobit who had not followed his tribe in this regard), had risen rapidly – perhaps from being a young favourite in king Sennacherib’s palace – to the high office in Assyria of Rabshakeh. As such, Ahikar had become a key player in Sennacherib’s 3rd campaign, to the west, having been the very mouthpiece for the king of Assyria before the officials of king Hezekiah of Judah – a natural choice in that situation because of the young man’s ability to speak the Hebrew language. Now, still during the reign of Sennacherib, Ahikar (whom Tobit would later praise as an almsgiver) had assisted his uncle Tobit for two years whilst the latter was suffering from blindness, after which time Ahikar was assigned to the rulership of Elam (Elymaïs). This, I believed, has been taken up in Judith 1:6 (but presumably with the name later mis-copied) where we read of “King Arioch of Elam”. All of this led us to the following key connection between the books of Judith and Tobit: “Achior … Elymeans” [Judith]; “Ahikar (var. Achior) … Elymaïs” [Tobit] thereby anchoring the highly problematical history of the Book of Judith to the reign of king Sennacherib of Assyria! And that very location for the Judith drama, historically, became the subject matter of Volume Two of my post-graduate thesis. Under the influence of uncle Tobit Undoubtedly the highly zealous and prayerful holy man, Tobit, would have – in his miserable state of blindness – utilised the two years of his nephew Ahikar’s attendance upon him to instruct the young, presumably Baal-worshipping (and whatever Assyrian gods as well), king’s official (to whatever extent he could) in the history of Israel and in pure Yahwism. Soon, Ahikar was also to be a witness to the phenomenon of Tobit’s being cured from his condition of blindness. For, apparently after Ahikar had gone to Elam, with Tobit still blind, Tobit’s son, Tobias (that is, the prophet Job) had journeyed to Ecbatana (= Bashan) and had, under the most unusual circumstances, gained himself a wife, Sarah, and some substantial wealth (Tobit 6-9). Subsequently, old Tobit was miraculously cured of his blindness (11:11-14), and afterwards he and his wife Anna held an impressive wedding feast for the young couple. It is at this point that we hear about Ahikar again, who, with his nephew, Nadin (Nadab), came along “to share in Tobit’s happiness” (11:18). Scholars have in fact commented upon the apparent dependence of the Maxims of Ahikar upon those of Tobit. J. Marshall, for instance (‘Tobit, Book of’, A Dictionary of the Bible, ed. J. Hastings, Charles Scribner’s Sons, New York, 1902, pp. 789, 2): “There are many features of resemblance between Ahikar’s moral teaching to Nadan, and Tobit’s to Tobias”. (Cf. J. Miller and J. Hayes have listed “Parallels Between Esarhaddon’s Vassal Treaty and Deuteronomy”, A History of Ancient Israel and Judah, pp. 395-397). The influence of Tobit and his family, and the amazing events of their lives of which Ahikar was so well aware, must have conspired to prepare the way for Ahikar’s ultimate conversion to Yahwism as Achior in the Book of Judith, upon learning of Judith’s triumph over Holofernes, and due to Achior’s own personal viewing of the decapitated head. Judith had called for Achior specifically for him to identify the head as belonging to Holofernes, whom he well knew, the heroine demanding (Judith 14:5-10): … send Achior the Ammonite to me. I want to see if he recognizes Holofernes, the man who spoke of Israel with contempt and sent Achior to us, thinking he would be killed along with the rest of us. So they called Achior from Uzziah’s house. But when he came and saw the head of Holofernes in the hands of one of the men, Achior fainted and fell to the floor. When they had helped him up, Achior bowed at Judith’s feet in respect. ‘May every family in the land of Judah praise you’, he said, ‘and may every nation tremble with terror when they hear your name’. Please tell me how you managed to do this. While all the people were gathered around, Judith told him everything that she had done from the day she left the town until that moment. When she had finished her story, the people cheered so loudly that the whole town echoed with sounds of joy. When Achior heard all that the God of Israel had done, he became a firm believer. He was circumcised and made a member of the Israelite community, as his descendants are to the present day. Whoops, did Judith just call Achior an “Ammonite”? If that is what was his actual nationality, and indeed he is called that in various places in the Book of Judith as we now have it, then that would put paid to my claim that Achior was Ahikar, the nephew of Tobit, and it would also raise a nasty theological problem for the Book of Judith. I discussed this situation as follows in my thesis (Volume Two, pp. 57-58): … there now arises that problem with my actual reconstruction of Achior as an Israelite in the Assyrian army, and it is this verse: “Then Achior, the leader of all the Ammonites, said to [Holofernes] …” (5:5). Achior is said in this verse to have been an ‘Ammonite’; a matter we discussed in some detail (beginning on p. 23), when considering why [the Book of Judith] was not accepted into the Hebrew canon. Whilst this does immediately loom as a major problem, there is one factor – apart from what has already been said about Achior – that makes his being an Ammonite highly unlikely, and this is that Achior will later, in [Judith] 14, be converted to Judaïsm and will be circumcised. The author of [Judith], who is an absolute stickler for the Mosaïc Law, and who writes in fact like a priest or Levite … would hardly have countenanced so flagrant a breach of the Law as having an Ammonite received by pious Jews into the assembly of faith, when this was clearly disallowed by Moses (Deuteronomy 23:3, 4). Judith herself, who would so scrupulously observe all of the religious ordinances of the Law even whilst in the camp of the Assyrians [Judith] (… 12), would hardly (if she were real) have been a party to this forbidden situation. The final word that we hear about Ahikar in some versions of the Book of Tobit is that Nadin had set a trap for his mentor, but had himself fallen into the trap and was subsequently slain (14:13). For a fuller explanation of this, see my: “Nadin” (Nadab) of Tobit is the “Holofernes” of Judith https://www.academia.edu/36576110/_Nadin_Nadab_of_Tobit_is_the_Holofernes_of_Judith We have found that Ahikar was an important eye-witness to so many significant events that occurred during this most fascinating of historical eras. He, as king Sennacherib’s Rabshakeh during the Assyrian king’s 3rd campaign, knew also all about the war of Judith chapter 1, against Arphaxad (= Merodach-baladan, I believe). Assyria eventually won this hard-fought war, and then determined to vent her revenge upon the subject nations that had failed to assist her against Merodach-baladan. The war in Judith 1 is but the prelude to the main incident of the book, the second Assyrian invasion of the West. Possibly, Ahikar may also have been a privileged one present at the victorious Assyrian king’s “secret council” in which “Nebuchadnezzar” (= Sennacherib) planned his revenge on the west. “So he called unto him all his officers, and all his nobles, and communicated with them his secret counsel, and concluded the afflicting of the whole earth out of his own mouth”. [Judith 2:2; SEPT] Although, if he were then in Elam, he could have learned all about it from fellow officers. Either way, Ahikar is already the key witness for many such events recorded in the Book of Judith that could not have been known first-hand either by Judith or by her fellow Israelites, and the Jews, then living in the west. Ahikar as ‘Achior’ of Book of Judith Chapter 2 of the Book of Judith first introduces us to the historically problematical (like many characters in the book) “Holofernes”. He, who will serve as the commander-in-chief, may not have been at Sennacherib’s “secret council” because, as the story is narrated, the king calls him immediately after it (v. 4): “When the council was over, Nebuchadnezzar king of the Assyrians sent for Holofernes, general-in-chief of his armies and subordinate only to himself”. The Great King of Assyria now gives his subordinate this terrifying (from the perspective of those who will be the suffering recipients of it) commission: He said to him, ‘Thus speaks the Great King, lord of the whole world, “Go; take men of proven valour, about a hundred and twenty thousand foot soldiers and a strong company of horse with twelve thousand cavalrymen; then advance against all the western lands, since these people have disregarded my call. Bid them have earth and water ready, because in my rage I am about to march on them; the feet of my soldiers will cover the whole face of the earth, and I shall plunder it. Their wounded will fill the valleys and the torrents, and rivers, blocked with their dead, will overflow. I shall lead them captive to the ends of the earth”. Now go! Begin by conquering this whole region for me. If they surrender to you, hold them for me until the time comes to punish them. But if they resist, look on no one with clemency, hand them over to slaughter and plunder throughout the territory entrusted to you. For by my life and by the living power of my kingdom I have spoken. All this I shall do by my power. And you, neglect none of your master’s commands, act strictly according to my orders without further delay’. Typical Assyrian war-speak, but it was no mere bravado as the Assyrian Wehrmacht had the werewithal to carry out all of the Great King’s dreadful threats. And Holofernes will be, for a time, totally effective. Who was he? Who really was the “Holofernes” of the Book of Judith? I, in my thesis, in which I radically revised neo-Assyrian history (Volume One, Chapter 6), even to identifying Sargon II – supposed father of Sennacherib – with Sennacherib himself (more recently in): Assyrian King Sargon II, Otherwise Known As Sennacherib http://www.academia.edu/6708474/Assyrian_King_Sargon_II_Otherwise_Known_As_Sennacherib had multi-identified Holofernes from several sources. I have since changed some of this, see my “Nadin” article (above). Thus I had written a bit tortuously (Volume Two, pp. 79-80): In this verse we learn that a certain Nadab had set a trap for Ahikar, to kill him, but had fallen into that trap himself with fatal consequences. The description of this intriguing bouleversement fits exactly the story of Holofernes and Achior at Bethulia, thus I think providing a further confirmation of my reconstruction. In the legends of Ahikar, the betrayer can be called Nadan … instead of Nadab, and this is important; for commentators can presume that Ahikar’s betrayer is the same as Ahikar’s very nephew, Nadab. In [Tobit] we are told that “Ahikar and his nephew Nadab were also present …” at the celebration of the wedding of the young Tobias and Sarah in Nineveh (11:18). And, because Tobit will, three chapters later, when recalling Ahikar’s betrayal, name the betrayer, ‘Nadab’ (14:10), then it is not unreasonably assumed that Ahikar was betrayed by his very own nephew. The next part of my thesis can be amended to read as follows: Here, then, is my reconstructed version of verse 14:10, with my name substitutions added in square brackets: ‘See, my son [Tobias], what Nadab [Nadin] did to Ahikar [Achior] who had reared him. Was he not, while still alive, brought down into the earth? For God repaid him to his face for his shameful treatment. Ahikar came out into the light, but Nadab went into the eternal darkness, because he tried to kill Ahikar. Because he gave alms, Ahikar escaped the fatal trap [at Bethulia] that Nadab had set for him, but Nadab fell into it himself, and was destroyed’. This verse is quite mystifying in the context of [the Book of Tobit] alone, which had, until this, told us nothing whatsoever about any misdeed on the part of Ahikar’s nephew, but only that he, with his uncle, had been “present [at the celebration] to share Tobit’s joy” (11:18). Whilst the name Nadab itself, as the betrayer, does not appear to add any relevance to my reconstruction, the variant form of it, Nadin, surely does. Nadin can be connected with the Assyrian name, Ashur-nadin-shumi, the eldest son of Sennacherib. The name connection can be deduced from the following passage [Interpreter’s Dictionary of the Bible, ‘Ahikar, Book of’, p. 69]. Some of the persons mentioned [in the Aramaic book of Ahikar] may even be historical. A high official named Nabu-sum-iskun is known to have served under Sennacherib. While the person of Ahikar has not been found as yet [sic], his name is Assyrian (Ahi-yaqar, “the brother is precious”). The name Nadan (better, Nadin) is a short form of some name like Adad-nadin-shum. Chronologically Ashur-nadin-shumi, ruling Babylon for six years, from the 12th to the 18th year of Sennacherib, and then mysteriously disappearing, fits perfectly for Holofernes, for it was in the Great King’s 18th year that he was said to have summoned his officials to commence the war of revenge (Judith 2:1-2, 4): In the eighteenth year, on the twenty-second day of the first month, a rumour ran through the palace that Nebuchadnezzar king of the Assyrians was to have his revenge on all the countries, as he had threatened. Summoning his general staff and senior officers, he held a secret conference with them, and with his own lips pronounced utter destruction on the entire area. …. When the council was over, Nebuchadnezzar king of the Assyrians sent for Holofernes, general-in-chief of his armies and subordinate only to himself. …. If Nadin (my Ashur-nadin-shumi/Holofernes) were a son of the Assyrian king, Sennacherib, then in what sense could he have been called a “nephew” of the Israelite Ahikar? I am not entirely sure at this stage. According to legend, Nadin was the son of Ahikar’s sister. Now, the mother of Ashur-nadin-shumi was apparently Tashmetum-Sharrat, the daughter of Merodach-baladan. Or was Nadin his “nephew” in a different sense, as being under the tutelage of Ahikar? I had followed this line in my thesis (ibid.): We also learn from the legends that Ahikar had been Nadan’s actual tutor, taking many pains with the latter’s instruction (hence having “reared him”, according to Tobit 14:10 above). It is quite possible that the wise Ahikar, whose moral maxims seem to have been lifted straight from the sayings of Tobit … – the latter being well-known to a succession of Assyrian kings (1:13-19, 21-22) – had been appointed as steward, or tutor, of Sennacherib’s son, just as the wise Senenmut had been ‘tutor’ or ‘steward’ of Egypt’s Thutmose [III], as a child, and of Hatshepsut’s daughter, Neferure. …. [See my “Solomon and Sheba”: http://www.academia.edu/3660164/Solomon_and_Sheba]. In that sense, could Tobit say that Ahikar “had reared him [Nadin]”. Holofernes storms into Israel Judith 2 narrates the formidable march of Holofernes and his massive army through northern Syria, then (2:17-18): “… down into the plains of Damascus in the days of the harvest, [where] … he set all the corn on fire, and he caused all the trees and vineyards to be cut down. And the fear of them fell upon all the inhabitants of the land”. Finally, with just Samarian cities like Judith’s Bethulia (= Shechem) facing Dothan, as well as Jerusalem, left for the Assyrians to conquer, we encounter Ahikar as the Achior of the Book of Judith, subordinate to Holofernes, the commander-in-chief of the Assyrian army that had cut off the water supplies of Bethulia. Here Achior is called “leader of all the Ammonites” (Judith 5:5). But this, as suggested above, cannot be correct. It must be a copyist’s mistake for Ephraïmites (northern Israelites), or perhaps Elamites (over whom Ahikar had ruled) because in 6:2 Holofernes contemptuously refers to Achior as “you hireling of Ephraïm”. It is at this crucial stage, with the Bethulians languishing from lack of water, that Ahikar makes his incredible apologia on behalf of the Israelites. This came as a total shock to all present. So insignificant were these mountain people in the eyes of Holofernes that he had even had to ask the locals who they were. Achior had volunteered the information, giving the commander a run-down of Israel’s history from Abraham, through the Exodus, to the present time. (Would an Ammonite have been likely to have known Israel’s history in detail?). Moreover he added that, whenever their God favoured this people, they always proved to be unbeatable. Tobit’s teachings were now setting in. This speech absolutely stunned the soldiery who were by now all for tearing Achior “limb from limb” (5:22). Holofernes, for his part, was absolutely furious with Achior. Having recently succeeded in conquering the entire west, he was hardly about to suffer hearing that some obscure mountain folk – “this brood of fugitives from Egypt” as he contemptuously called them in response to Achior’s speech (cf. 6:6)- might be able to offer him any meaningful resistance. Holofernes thereupon commanded his orderlies to take the insolent Achior and bind him beneath the walls of Bethulia, so that he could suffer, with the people he had just verbally defended, their inevitable fate when the city fell to the Assyrians. When the Assyrian brigade had managed to secure Achior at Bethulia, and had then retreated from the walls under sling-fire from the townsfolk, the Bethulians went out to fetch him. As I wrote in my thesis (ibid.): Aspects of the legendary story of Ahikar’s condemnation and release can perhaps be seen as distortions of the original Bethulia incident. For instance, the tale of the executioner’s sparing Ahikar’s life, and imprisoning him in a cellar under his house, after which he was eventually released, might be a distortion of [Holofernes’] deferring the execution of Achior until the defeat of the Bethulians, and having him bound below (under) the hill of Bethulia, from which he was liberated. For in [Judith] 6:13 we read: “So [Holofernes’ slaves] having taken shelter below the hill …”. Once safely inside the city of Bethulia, Achior told the citizens his story, and no doubt Judith was there to hear it. Later she would use bits and pieces of information supplied by Achior for her own confrontation with Holofernes, to deceive him. The subsequent defeat and rout of the Assyrian army of 185,000 – so enigmatically treated in Kings, Chronicles and Isaiah – is narrated in detail in the Book of Judith. It was not simply an instant blast by God – or a sudden bubonic plague – that consumed the entire Assyrian army on the spot, as some like to suggest: Ignis de Caelo, Velikovsky, and Sennacherib's 185,000 (5) Ignis de Caelo, Velikovsky, and Sennacherib's 185,000 | Damien Mackey - Academia.edu It was rather a complete rout, set in motion by the ruse of Judith. As Isaiah had predicted, the Assyrian would fall “by the sword, not of a man” (31:8); for it was actually “by the hand of a woman” that the victory was achieved (Judith 16:7). Achior’s Conversion When Judith returned to her city after having deceived the Assyrians, her maid carrying in her bag the gory trophy of the head of Holofernes, the heroine told her fellow-citizens the whole story of what had taken place in the Assyrian camp. Judith then asked the townspeople to fetch Achior, who, upon seeing the head of the world-famous Assyrian general, defeated by this woman, fainted on the spot. Upon recovering, Achior greatly praised Judith: ‘May you be blessed in all the tents of Judah and in every nation; at the sound of your name men will be seized with dread’ (14:31). Afterwards, Achior submitted to the circumcision that he had apparently neglected as a young Naphtalian, and converted fully to Yahwism (14:8-10). Is not the story of Judith, including Holofernes and Achior, one of the most thrilling stories of the entire Old Testament era! Reality (true history) can often be more dramatic than fiction.

H. Tadmor and Y. Levin come close to identifying Sennacherib’s Rabshakeh

by Damien F. Mackey “Both Tadmor and Cogan mention Ahiqar, the Aramean adviser who served in the court of Esarhaddon, Sennacherib’s son. …. Machinist, in his article on Rabshakeh, writes of “Hayim Tadmor’s now celebrated view,” … and they all cite the Babylonian Talmud tractate b. Sanh. 60a, which suggests that “Rabshakeh was an apostate Israelite”.” Yigal Levin Sennacherib’s Rabshakeh, who verbally taunted king Hezekiah’s chief officials and those Jews manning the walls of Jerusalem during Assyria’s invasion of Judah, was indeed the historical and biblical Ahiqar (Ahikar). And, at that particular point in time, Ahiqar was apparently also, as according to the Babylonian Talmud, “an apostate Israelite”: Achior the Ephraïmite (DOC) Achior the Ephraïmite | Damien Mackey - Academia.edu For this Ahiqar was the nephew of a northern Israelite, the pious Tobit, who, unlike his Naphtalian brethren, had remained faithful to Yahwism. Sennacherib may well have chosen Ahiqar for his western (Judah) campaign because of the fact that the latter, as an Israelite, spoke, not only Aramaïc, but also Yehudit, which was akin to Hebrew, the spoken language of the Jews in Jerusalem. The high officials, led by Eliakim the son of Hilkiah, who had now replaced Shebna as high priest (“over the Tabernacle”), also - unlike the mass of people - spoke Aramaïc, which Ahiqar, as an exile in Nineveh, obviously knew. King Hezekiah’s officials almost certainly knew of the Rabshakeh and knew that he spoke a form of Hebrew. Yigal Levin has discussed the various view about Rabshakeh in his useful article (2015): How Did Rabshakeh Know the Language of Judah? (PDF) How did Rabshakeh Know the Language of Judah? | Yigal Levin - Academia.edu

Mighty Assyro-Chaldean kings mistaken for Hittite emperors

by Damien F. Mackey And this brings in the possibility, now, that Dr. I. Velikovsky was almost right in identifying Hattusilis with Nebuchednezzar. But I think that, instead, Hattusilis was Sennacherib. Responding to a Brazilian researcher concerning a series of letters of Sennacherib that are generally thought to constitute his correspondence, as Crown Prince, with the Assyrian king, Sargon II, I concluded that Sennacherib (who actually is my Sargon II) must instead have been writing, as King of Assyria, to a contemporary foreign brother-king of equal power with whom he shared a treaty: Some Letters from Sennacherib (3) Some Letters from Sennacherib | Damien Mackey - Academia.edu I then followed up this article with one on: Ramses II’s confrontations with Assyria’s Sargon II and Chaldea’s Nebuchednezzar (3) Ramses II’s confrontations with Assyria’s Sargon II and Chaldea’s Nebuchednezzar | Damien Mackey - Academia.edu which enabled me to establish, for Sargon II/Sennacherib of Assyria, a “contemporary foreign brother-king of equal power with whom he shared a treaty”, namely pharaoh Ramses II ‘the Great’. He, the great pharaoh, would be, I believe, the only contemporary of Sennacherib (Sargon II) to whom the Assyrian king would deign to have shown such deference as to write (Letter # 029): [To] the king, my lord: [your servant] Sin-ahhe-riba [Sennacherib]. Good health to the king, my lord! [Assyri]a is well,[the temp]les are well, all [the king's forts] are well. The king, my lord, can be glad indeed …. in such a way as could suggest a treaty had been established between the mighty pair. Now, with the mention of Ramses II and a treaty with another Great King, one must think only of the famous treaty made between Ramses II and Hattusilis so-called III. And this brings in the possibility, now, that Dr. I. Velikovsky was almost right in identifying Hattusilis with Nebuchednezzar. But I think that, instead, Hattusilis was Sennacherib. Obviously there is a lot that must be worked out to solidify this identification. But there appears to be a parallel scenario between (a) Hattusilis, his formidable wife, (b) Pudu-hepa and (c) Tudhaliya so-called IV, on the one hand, and – {in my revision, according to which Sennacherib was succeeded by his (non-biological) son, Esarhaddon, a Chaldean, who is my Nebuchednezzar} - (a) Sennacherib, his formidable wife, (b) Naqī’a (Zakūtu) and (c) Esarhaddon (Nebuchednezzar). I need to note here that I have multi-identified each (a-c) of this second set. Thus: Sargon II/Sennacherib is, all at once, Tukulti-ninurta; Shamsi-Adad [not I]; Esarhaddon is, all at once, Ashur-bel-kala; Ashurnasirpal; Ashurbanipal; Nebuchednezzar [I and II]; Nabonidus; Artaxerxes of Nehemiah; Cambyses’; Naqia/Zakutu is, all at once, Semiramis (of Tukulti-ninurta’s era); Sammu-ramat; Adad-Guppi. But how can an Assyrian king, or a Chaldean king, become confused as a Hittite? Well, perhaps we may consider a few things here. For example: No such people as the Indo-European Hittites (3) No such people as the Indo-European Hittites | Damien Mackey - Academia.edu In this article I referenced Brock Heathcotte as follows: Brock Heathcotte has written on this in his article “Tugdamme the Hittite” (January 28, 2017): The theory espoused here is that Mursili II and Tugdamme were the same person. This does not mean that his subjects, euphemistically called the “Hittite” people in modern times were ethnic Cimmerians. They almost certainly were a people of many ethnicities including prominently Luwian, based on language. The cold hard fact that has been distorted by decades of talking about the Hittites is that there is no such people as the Hittites. The tablet people we spoke of never called themselves Hittites, and nobody else called them Hittites either at the time. This is actually not controversial. It is just obscured by convention. Academics could argue all day and night about the ethnic composition of the people who lived in Anatolia, and which of them were the rulers we know as the Hittite kings. The argument is not susceptible to resolution, especially not in the current mistaken historical context the Hittites are placed. The rulers called themselves the Great Kings of Hatti. They could be any ethnicity. We should think of “Hittite” as the same sort of location-based moniker for a people as “American.” It doesn’t make sense to say there is an American ethnicity, and it doesn’t make sense to say there is a “Hittite” ethnicity. Americans come in many different ethnicities, as did the Hittites. …. [End of quote] Moreover, some time before I wrote any of this, I had already penned this article about Ashurnasirpal, who is my Esarhaddon (Nebuchednezzar), a Chaldean: Hittite elements in art and warfare of Ashurnasirpal (3) Hittite elements in art and warfare of Ashurnasirpal | Damien Mackey - Academia.edu These Assyro-Chaldean kings, who conquered the lands of the Hittites, could easily have assumed titles akin to King of the Hittites. Tudhaliya’s accession like that of Esarhaddon Esarhaddon, Tudhaliya, had no real prospect of succeeding to the throne. The ancient term for someone in that position, not of the royal line, was “son of nobody”. And I found this characteristic in Esarhaddon’s alter egos, having written: …. Another common key-word (buzz word), or phrase, for various of these king-names would be ‘son of a nobody’, pertaining to a prince who was not expecting to be elevated to kingship. Thus I previously introduced Ashurbanipal-as-Nebuchednezzar/Nabonidus with the statement: “Nabonidus is not singular either in not expecting to become king. Ashurbanipal had felt the same”. …. And we read in the following Abstract that that was also the former status of Tudhaliya: https://academic.oup.com/book/36172/chapter-abstract/314550786?redirectedFrom=fulltext Abstract In his early years, the prince Tudhaliya could have had little thought that he would one day become king. But he was installed by Hattusili ‘in kingship’, that is, Tudhaliya probably now assumed the role of crown prince. This chapter examines the career path which Hattusili had mapped out for Tudhaliya in preparation for his becoming king of the Hittites, Puduhepa's effort to arrange her daughter's marriage to Tudhaliya, problems and potential crises inherited by Tudhaliya from Muwattalli as Hittite ruler, political developments in western Anatolia during Tudhaliya's reign, the impact of establishment of a pro-Hittite regime in Milawata on Ahhiyawan enterprise in western Anatolia, political problems that arose from the marriage alliance contracted between the royal families of Ugarit and Amurru, Tudhaliya's war with Assyria, possible coup instigated by Kurunta to wrest the throne from his cousin Tudhaliya, Tudhaliya's conquest of Alasiya, and the achievements of Tudhaliya IV as ruler of the Hittite kingdom. The whole thing seems to have been arranged by the formidable Queen, as was the case again with Esarhaddon and his mother Naqī’a/Zakūtu: Naqia of Assyria and Semiramis (3) Naqia of Assyria and Semiramis | Damien Mackey - Academia.edu https://www.britannica.com/biography/Naqia “[Esarhaddon’s] energetic and designing mother, Zakutu (Naqia), who came from Syria or Judah [sic?], used all her influence on his behalf to override the national party of Assyria”. I would expect now to begin finding many parallels between Esarhaddon/ Nebuchednezzar, in his various guises (alter egos), and the so-called Hittite emperor, Tudhaliya.

Oh my, the Umayyads! Deconstructing the Caliphate

by Damien F. Mackey “… Haaretz reported that during a dig in Tiberias, archaeologist Moshe Hartal “noticed a mysterious phenomenon: Alongside a layer of earth from the time of the Umayyad era (638-750), and at the same depth, the archaeologists found a layer of earth from the Ancient Roman era (37 B.C.E.-132). ‘I encountered a situation for which I had no explanation — two layers of earth from hundreds of years apart lying side by side,’ says Hartal. ‘I was simply dumbfounded”.” Gunnar Heinsohn The major Caliphates of Islam are listed as these five (1-5): • 1 Rashidun Caliphate (632–661) • 2 Umayyad Caliphate (661–750) • 3 Abbasid Caliphate (750–1258) • 4 Mamluk Abbasid dynasty (1261–1517) • 5 Ottoman Caliphate (1517–1924) It will be my purpose here - abstracting from the immense problems already associated with the Qur’an (Koran) itself (e.g.): Dr Günter Lüling: Christian hymns underlie Koranic poetry (2) Dr Günter Lüling: Christian hymns underlie Koranic poetry | Damien Mackey - Academia.edu Islam according to Jay Smith (6) Islam according to Jay Smith | Damien Mackey - Academia.edu Durie’s verdict on Prophet Mohammed (DOC) Durie's verdict on Prophet Mohammed | Damien Mackey - Academia.edu Sven Kalisch out to expose true nature of Islam (6) Sven Kalisch out to expose true nature of Islam | Damien Mackey - Academia.edu - to show that virtually none (if any at all) of this presumed history of the successive Caliphates is properly historical, and, hence, underpinned by a reliable archaeology. Abbasid Caliphate Aiming right at the centre, the middle one (No. 3 above), the famed Abbasid Caliphate: “The Abbasid caliphs established the city of Baghdad in 762 CE. It became a center of learning and the hub of what is known as the Golden Age of Islam”: https://www.khanacademy.org/humanities/world-history/medieval-times/cross-cultural-diffusion-of-knowledge/a/the-golden-age-of-islam I have already disposed of this supposedly the most glorious age of Islam by arguing that early Baghdad (not the modern city of that name), known as Madinat-al-Salam, “City of Peace”, was actually Jerusalem, meaning just that, “City of Peace”: Original Baghdad was Jerusalem (6) Original Baghdad was Jerusalem | Damien Mackey - Academia.edu In the same article I noted that the imagined early Baghdad had, unsurprisingly, left no discernible archaeological trace. There I wrote: The first thing to notice about ancient Baghdad is that it has left “no tangible traces”: “Built of the baked brick, the city’s walls have long since crumbled, leaving no trace of Madinat-al-Salam today”. “While no tangible traces have yet been discovered of the eighth-century Madinat-al-Salam, and as it is currently impossible to conduct excavations in Baghdad, one can only hope that one day material evidence may be discovered”. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_Baghdad “The Round City was partially ruined during the siege of 812–813, when Caliph al-Amin was killed by his brother,[a] who then became the new caliph. It never recovered;[b] its walls were destroyed by 912,[c] nothing of them remains,[d][6] there is no agreement as to where it was located.[7]” [End of quotes] And just as I have shown, time and time again, that the Prophet Mohammed was a fictitious, largely biblical, composite, so, too, basically, I believe, were the luminaries of the so-called Abbasid Golden Age. Thus, for instance, the fairytale (Arabian Nights), Hārūn al-Rashīd, who is said to have built the House of Wisdom in Baghdad, is an appropriation of the great king, Hiram, ally of Solomon, who helped the wise king of Israel build the Temple of Yahweh and Solomon’s Palace in Jerusalem, “City of Peace”. And in the names of a handful of presumed Islamic scholars of the Golden Age, the polymathic Al-Kindi (c. 800); Al-Farabi (c. 900); Avicenna (c. 1000); and Averroes (c. 1150), I found what I would consider to be elements of Ahikar’s (Tobit’s nephew) Assyro-Babylonian names: respectively, Aba-enlil-dari and Esagil-kinni-ubba. Thus: AL-KINDI – ESAGIL-KINNI; AL-FARABI – ENLIL-DAR-AB(I); AVICENNA – UBB-KINNI(A); AVERROES – ABA-(D)AR(I) In these famous names is largely encompassed Islamic philosophy, science, astronomy, cosmology, history, demography, medicine and music for the Golden Age. Melting down the fake Golden Age of Islamic intellectualism (8) Melting down the fake Golden Age of Islamic intellectualism | Damien Mackey - Academia.edu If the glorious and lengthy Abbasid Caliphate can be thus expunged from history, and the very originator of Islam, Mohammed, found to have been an artificial construct - not to mention Loqmân and Abu Lahab (see below) - then we appear to have no firm archaeological foundations upon which to erect a plausible history of the Caliphate. And things, apparently, do not get much better. Rashidun Caliphate Let us go back for a moment to Mohammed and his presumed era, more than a century before the so-called Abbasids. Not only has Mohammed been shown to have been a non-historical entity, a fictitious composite based upon real historical (biblical) characters: Mohammed, a composite of Old Testament figures, also based upon Jesus Christ (3) Mohammed, a composite of Old Testament figures, also based upon Jesus Christ | Damien Mackey - Academia.edu but the historicity of some of Mohammed’s supposed contemporaries, too, is highly suspect. Mohammed’s very uncle, Abu Lahab, for instance, has been found to have had suspiciously (biblical) Ahab-like traits, as, correspondingly, does Abu-Lahab’s unbelieving wife, Umm Jamīl, somewhat resemble Queen Jezebel: Abu Lahab, Lab'ayu, Ahab (8) Abu Lahab, Lab'ayu, Ahab | Damien Mackey - Academia.edu And Mohammed’s supposed contemporary, Nehemiah ben Hushiel, would seem to be a direct pinch from the biblical Nehemiah: Two Supposed Nehemiahs: BC time and AD time (3) Two Supposed Nehemiahs: BC time and AD time | Damien Mackey - Academia.edu And their (Mohammed and Nehemiah’s) contemporary, the Byzantine emperor, Heraclius, is a most bizarre character, somewhat like a frog in a blender, whom I have described as being “a composite of all composites”: Heraclius and the Battle of Nineveh (3) Heraclius and the Battle of Nineveh | Damien Mackey - Academia.edu Again, there is the Islamic sage Loqmân (Luqman) of the Qur’an (31st sura), who quotes from the wisdom of Ahikar, an Israelite nephew of the biblical Tobit: Ahiqar, Aesop and Loqmân (2) Ahiqar, Aesop and Loqmân | Damien Mackey – Academia.edu Ahikar’s influence, as we read above, also permeates the Abbasids. But Loqmân has been compared as well with the venal biblical seer, Balaam, more than half a millennium before Ahikar: Islam’s Loqmân based on biblical Balaam (3) Islam’s Loqmân based on biblical Balaam | Damien Mackey - Academia.edu Oh yes, of course, the story of Mohammed also has (like Balaam) a talking donkey: A funny thing happened on the way to Mecca (2) A funny thing happened on the way to Mecca | Damien Mackey - Academia.edu With so insecure an archaeologico-historical base, beginning with Mohammed himself, the entire Caliphate period, from, say, 650-1250 AD (Rashidun to Abbasid), must needs be looking very shaky indeed. At this stage I have not analysed the four caliphs closely associated with Mohammed (the Rashidun Caliphate), Abū Bakr (reigned 632–634), ʿUmar (reigned 634–644), ʿUthmān (reigned 644–656), and ʿAlī (reigned 656–661). But, based on the cases of Mohammed and Abu Lahab, I would strongly suspect that these four, too, can be identifiable with one or more biblical characters ranging from, say, Moses to Tobit (possibly also embracing the New Testament). Let us switch now to the Umayyads (661-750 AD). Umayyad Caliphate As with the 1 Rashidun Caliphate (632–661), so, too, in the case of the 2 Umayyad Caliphate (661–750), I have not yet analysed the various caliphs with an eye to biblical comparisons. But the great shock about the Umayyads came at the very beginning of this article, with archaeologist Moshe Hartal’s observation that the Umayyads existed on the same stratigraphical level as the Romans of the period approximating to Jesus Christ. How shattering! According to professor Gunnar Heinsohn’s interpretation of the Umayyads, these were none other than the Nabataeans (era of Maccabees and Jesus Christ): https://heinsohn-gunnar.eu/mt-content/uploads/2021/08/arab-coinage-hiatus-between-nabataean-1st-c-and-jewish-style-of-umayyad-8th-c-heinsohn-21-august-2021.pdf Professor Heinsohn is followed in this by The First Millennium Revisionist (2021) https://stolenhistory.net/threads/revision-in-islamic-chronology-and-geography-unz-review.5581/ I do not necessarily agree with every detail (e.g. date) of the following. …. “Archeologists have no way of distinguishing Roman and Byzantium buildings from Umayyad buildings, because “8th-10th Cent. Umayyads built in 2nd Cent. technology” and followed Roman models”. The First Millennium Revisionist In Heinsohn’s SC chronology, the rise of Christianity in the first three centuries AD and the rise of Islam from the 7th to the 10th century are roughly contemporary. Their six-century chasm is a fiction resulting from the fact that the rise of Christianity is dated in Imperial Antiquity while the rise of Islam is dated in the Early Middle Ages, two time-blocks that are in reality contemporary. The resynchronizing of Imperial Antiquity and Early Middle Ages provides a solution to some troublesome archeological anomalies. One of them concerns the Nabataeans. During Imperial Antiquity, the Nabataean Arabs dominated long distance trade. Their city of Petra was a major center of trade for silk, spice and other goods on the caravan routes that linked China, India and southern Arabia with Egypt, Syria, Greece and Rome. In 106 AD, the Nabataean Kingdom was officially annexed to the Roman Empire by Trajan (whose father had been governor of Syria) and became the province of Arabia Petraea. Hadrian visited Petra around 130 AD and gave it the name of Hadriane Petra Metropolis, imprinted on his coins. Petra reached its urban flowering in the Severan period (190s-230s AD).[18] Mackey’s comment: I actually date the Trajan-Hadrian period to the Maccabean age, not c. 106 AD: Hadrianus Traianus Caesar - Trajan transmutes to Hadrian (5) Hadrianus Traianus Caesar - Trajan transmutes to Hadrian | Damien Mackey - Academia.edu And yet, incredibly, these Arab long-distance merchants “are supposed to have forgotten the issuing of coins and the art of writing (Aramaic) after the 1st century AD and only learned it again in the 7th/8th century AD (Umayyad Muslims). ” …. It is assumed that Arabs fell out of civilization after Hadrian, and only emerged back into it under Islam, with an incomprehensible scientific advancement. The extreme primitivism in which pre-Islamic Arabs are supposed to have wallowed, with no writing and no money of they own, “stands in stark contrast to the Islamic Arabs who thrive from the 8th century, [whose] coins are not only found in Poland but from Norway all the way to India and beyond at a time when the rest of the known world was trying to crawl out of the darkness of the Early Middle Ages.”…. Moreover, Arab coins dated to the 8th and 9th centuries are found in the same layers as imperial Roman coins. “The coin finds of Raqqa, for example, which stratigraphically belong to the Early Middle Ages (8th-10th century), also contain imperial Roman coins from Imperial Antiquity (1st-3rd century) and Late Antiquity (4th-7th century).” …. “Thus, we have an impressive trove of post-7th c. Arab coins lumped together with pre-7th c. Roman coins of pre-7th c. Roman times. But we have no pre-7th c. Arab coins from the centuries of their close alliance with Rome in the pre-7th c. periods.” …. The first Islamic Umayyad coins, issued in Jerusalem, “continue supposedly 700 years earlier Nabataean coins.” …. Often displaying Jewish menorahs with Arabic lettering, they differ very little from Jewish coins dated seven centuries earlier; we are dealing here with an evolution “requiring only years or decades, but not seven centuries.” …. Architecture raises similar problems. Archeologists have no way of distinguishing Roman and Byzantium buildings from Umayyad buildings, because “8th-10th Cent. Umayyads built in 2nd Cent. technology” and followed Roman models. …. “How could the Umayyads in the 8th c. AD perfectly imitate late Hellenistic styles,” Heinsohn asks, “when there were no specialists left to teach them such sophisticated skills?” …. Moreover, “Umayyad structures were built right on top of Late-Hellenistic structures of the 1st c. BCE/CE.” …. One example is “the second most famous Umayyad building, their mosque in Damascus. The octagonal structure of the so-called Dome of the Treasury stands on perfect Roman columns of the 1st/2nd century. They are supposed to be spolia, but . . . there are no known razed buildings from which they could have been taken. Even more puzzling are the enormous monolithic columns inside the building from the 8th/9th c. AD, which also belong to the 1st/2nd century. No one knows the massive structure that would have had to be demolished to obtain them.” …. Far from rejecting the Umayyads’ servile “imitation” of Roman Antiquity, their Abbasid enemies resumed it: “8th-10th c. Abbasids bewilder historians for copying, right down to the chemical fingerprint, Roman glass.” Heinsohn quotes from The David Collection: Islamic Art / Glass, 2014: The millefiori technique, which takes its name from the Italian word meaning “thousand flowers”, reached a culmination in the Roman period. . . . The technique seems to have been rediscovered by Islamic glassmakers in the 9th century, since examples of millefiori glass, including tiles, have been excavated in the Abbasid capital of Samarra. …. I included in “How Long Was the First Millennium?” one of Heinsohn’s illustrations of identical millefiori glass bowls ascribed respectively to the 1st-2nd century Romans and to the 8th-9th century Abbasids. Here is another puzzling comparison: …. Heinsohn concludes that, “the culture of the Umayyads is as Roman as the culture of early medieval Franks. Their 9th/10th century architecture is a direct continuation of the 2nd c. AD. The 700 years in between do not exist in reality.” …. “The Arabs did not walk in ignorance without coinage and writing for some 700 years. Those 700 years represent phantom centuries. Thus, it is not true that Arabs were backward in comparison with their immediate Roman and Greek neighbours who, interestingly enough, are not on record for having ever claimed any Arab backwardness. . . . the caliphs now dated from the 690s to the 930s are actually the caliphs of the period from Augustus to the 230s.” …. This explains why archeologists often find themselves puzzled by the stratigraphy. For example, Haaretz reported that during a dig in Tiberias, archaeologist Moshe Hartal “noticed a mysterious phenomenon: Alongside a layer of earth from the time of the Umayyad era (638-750), and at the same depth, the archaeologists found a layer of earth from the Ancient Roman era (37 B.C.E.-132). ‘I encountered a situation for which I had no explanation — two layers of earth from hundreds of years apart lying side by side,’ says Hartal. ‘I was simply dumbfounded.’” …. Heinsohn argues that the Umayyads of the Early Middle Ages are not only identical with the Nabataeans of Imperial Antiquity, but are also documented in the intermediate time-block of Late Antiquity under the name of the Ghassanids. “Nabataeans and Umayyads not only shared the same art, the same metropolis Damascus, and the same stratigraphy, but also a common territory that was home to yet another famous Arab ethnicity that also held Damascus: the Ghassanids. They served as Christian allies of the Byzantines during Late Antiquity (3rd/4th to 6th c. AD). Yet, they were already active during Imperial Antiquity (1st to 3rd c. AD). Diodorus Siculus (90-30 BC) knew them as Gasandoi, Pliny the Elder (23-79 AD) as Casani, and Claudius Ptolemy (100-170 AD) as Kassanitai.” …. In the Byzantine period, the Ghassanid caliphs had “the same reputation for anti-trinitarian monotheism as the Abbasid Caliphs now dated to 8th /9th centuries.” …. They also, like the Islamic Arabs, preserved some Bedouin customs such as polygamy. …. [End of quotes] In a most interesting twist, Taycan Sapmaz identifies: THE NABATAEANS AND LYCIANS (6) THE NABATAEANS AND LYCIANS | taycan sapmaz - Academia.edu Who could argue against the Nabataeans and Lycians at least sharing commonalities? Ottoman Caliphate For further apparent anachronisms, this time with the early (only) Ottoman Caliphate, I simply refer the reader to my article: King Solomon and Suleiman (6) King Solomon and Suleiman | Damien Mackey - Academia.edu with more, hopefully, to be written on this subject in the future. Conclusions The Prophet Mohammed is clearly a non-historical, composite entity based on a bunch of real historical figures from a vast range of eras. Mohammed’s relatives, contemporaries, likewise are biblico-historically-based, e.g. uncle Lahab as Ahab; Nehemiah ben Hushiel as the biblical Nehemiah; emperor Heraclius as possibly literature’s most composite of composites. This necessitates that the closely associated Rashidun Caliphate could have no real historical reality in AD time. This view being totally reinforced by the next Caliphate, The Umayyad as belonging archaeologically to a Roman period, some six centuries prior to the supposed era of Mohammed. This being totally reinforced by the next Caliphate, The Abbasid, as having no archaeological trace for its epicentre, ancient Baghdad, Madinat al-Salam, which is really ancient Jerusalem.

Achior a true Israelite

by Damien F. Mackey “… Achior, the leader of all the Ammonites” (Judith 5:5), should read, instead, “… Achior, leader of all the Elamites”. Not that Achior was ethnically an Elamite, but because king Esarhaddon had assigned him to govern Elam. For Achior was the same person as the famous Ahikar, governor of Elam, of whom the blind Tobit tells (2:10): “… Ahikar took care of me for two years before he went to Elymais [Elam]”. Although Biblical critics claim to find whom they call “enlightened pagans” all through the Bible (Old and New Testaments), I am not so sure that they always get this right. I took a sample of characters: MELCHIZEDEK; RAHAB; RUTH; ACHIOR; JOB and concluded - in some cases following other researchers - that none of these was in reality a pagan character. Keeping it very simple by way of summary here: MELCHIZEDEK was, according to Jewish tradition, the great Shem, righteous son of Noah. Whilst that does not make him a Hebrew (Israelite/Jew), which tribal concepts did not exist at that early stage, he, truly blessed as he was (cf. Genesis 9:26-27), was not, as is commonly thought, an enlightened Canaanite (hence pagan) king. Melchizedek was the eponymous Semite (Shem-ite), a master of Canaan (9:26). RAHAB the prostitute, in the Book of Judges, was truly enlightened (Hebrews 11:31): “By faith the prostitute Rahab, because she welcomed the spies, was not killed with those who were disobedient”, but she, actually Rachab, may need to be distinguished from (the differently named) Rahab of Matthew’s Genealogy of Jesus the Messiah (Matthew 1:5). RUTH was a Moabite only geographically, but not ethnically, otherwise she would have encountered this ban from Deuteronomy 23:3-4: No Ammonite or Moabite or any of their descendants may enter the assembly of the LORD, not even in the tenth generation. For they did not come to meet you with bread and water on your way when you came out of Egypt, and they hired Balaam son of Beor from Pethor in Aram Naharaim to pronounce a curse on you. ACHIOR. The same comment would thus apply to Achior ‘the Ammonite’, presuming that he truly was an Ammonite. He wasn’t. Achior needs some special extra treatment (see further on). JOB was, in my firm opinion, Tobias, the son of Tobit, a genuine Israelite from the tribe of Naphtali, in Ninevite captivity. I suspect that his given pagan name in captivity was the Akkadian ‘Habakkuk’ (also shortened to Haggai), the prophet of that name. And I suspect, too, that others could be added to the list, as Israelites, not pagans. The Magi, for one. See e.g. my article: A Nativity Shining Light of relevance to Israelite Magi (13) A Nativity Shining Light of relevance to Israelite Magi | Damien Mackey - Academia.edu Delilah, a presumed Philistine. Whilst she may not deserve the epithet, “enlightened”, Delilah most probably was an Israelite - as brilliantly explained by George Athas: https://withmeagrepowers.wordpress.com/2016/07/11/samson-and-delilah-the-israelite-woman/ Achior, his conversion and circumcision Various significant misconceptions abound about this important character, ACHIOR. First of all, Achior of the Book of Judith (and the Douay Tobit) was not an Ammonite. The Book of Judith, as we now have it, suffers from an unfortunate confusion of names (people and places), making it most difficult to make sense of it. “… Achior, the leader of all the Ammonites” (Judith 5:5), should read, instead, “… Achior, leader of all the Elamites”. Not that Achior was ethnically an Elamite, but because king Esarhaddon had assigned him to govern Elam. For Achior was the same person as the famous Ahikar, governor of Elam, of whom the blind Tobit tells (2:10): “… Ahikar took care of me for two years before he went to Elymais [Elam]”. To confuse matters even further, the Book of Judith has a gloss (1:6), in which Achior/Ahikar is now called “Arioch”: “Rallying to [the king] were all who lived in the hill country, all who lived along the Euphrates, the Tigris, and the Hydaspes, as well as Arioch, king of the Elamites …”. As noted, had Ruth been a Moabite, or Achior an Ammonite – as is commonly thought – then the Deuteronomical ban against these two nations (23:3-4) would disallow either from being received into the Assembly of Israel – which, in fact, Achior was, after the triumphant Judith had shown him the head of his Commander-in-chief, “Holofernes” (Judith 14:6-7, 10): When [Achior] came and saw the head of Holofernes … he fell down on his face in a faint. When they raised him up he threw himself at Judith’s feet and did obeisance to her and said, ‘Blessed are you in every tent of Judah! In every nation those who hear your name will be alarmed’. …. When Achior saw all that the God of Israel had done, he believed firmly in God. So he was circumcised and joined the House of Israel, remaining so to this day. The unfortunate misconception that Achior was an Ammonite, who converted to the House of Israel despite the Deuteronomical ban, is one of the primary reasons why the Jews (Protestants) have not accepted the Book of Judith into their scriptural canons. The confusion of names (people and places), as already mentioned, is another reason. But this, too, can be rectified. Tobit himself tells us precisely who was this Ahikar (Achior) (Tobit 1:21-22): But not forty days passed before two of Sennacherib’s sons killed him, and when they fled to the mountains of Ararat, his son Esarhaddon reigned after him. He appointed Ahikar, the son of my brother Hanael, over all the accounts of his kingdom, and he had authority over the entire administration. …. Now Ahikar was chief cupbearer, keeper of the signet, and in charge of administration and accounts under King Sennacherib of Assyria, so Esarhaddon appointed him as second-in-command. He was my nephew and so a close relative.

Chaldean contemporaries of Ramses II ‘the Great’

by Damien F. Mackey Dr. Immanuel Velikovsky was correct in identifying Ramses II as a contemporary of King Nebuchednezzar the Chaldean. In my previous article: Assyrian contemporaries of Ramses II ‘the Great’ (5) Assyrian contemporaries of Ramses II 'the Great' | Damien Mackey - Academia.edu a partner to this present one, I had concluded that: • Pharaoh Ramses II ‘the Great’ was a younger contemporary of Shalmaneser; and he was • an older contemporary of Sargon II/Sennacherib. Ramses II was also to be identified as: Ramses III; Psibkhenno (Šilkanni); Shabako; “So king of Egypt” His famous son, Khaemwaset, was all of: Khaemwaset, son of Ramses III; Si’be (turtan); Shebitku Khaemwaset; Shabataka (Tang-i Var) Sargon II/Sennacherib, for his part, was also Tukulti-ninurta (and, as identified elsewhere) Shamsi-Adad (not I of that name). The reign of Ramses II was so long (66-67 years), however, that it - having spanned the latter part of the reign of Shalmaneser and the entire reign of Sargon II/ Sennacherib - still had some approximately three further decades to run after that. Now, according to Tobit 1, whose neo-Assyrian sequence I firmly follow, Sennacherib was succeeded by Esarhaddon, he being the king whose statue appeared alongside that of Ramses II at Nahr el-Kalb. Unlike convention and Dr. Velikovsky, I had Esarhaddon as a younger contemporary of Ramses II. I explained this in the companion article: The Nahr el-Kalb inscription juxtaposes a statue of Ramses II alongside a statue of Esarhaddon. - Conventional scholars presumably might argue that Ramses II is worn because he (c. 1280 BC, conventional dating) is much older than Esarhaddon (c. 680 BC, conventional dating). - Dr. I. Velikovsky, who made Ramses II a contemporary of Nebuchednezzar (c. 580 BC, conventional dating), would have considered Ramses II as ruling later than Esarhaddon. - I (Damien Mackey) have Ramses II as an older contemporary of Esarhaddon’s predecessor, Sargon II/Sennacherib. Esarhaddon, for his part, likely scratched out his foe, Ramses II, from the Nahr el-Kalb inscription. This last point, Ramses II’s being contemporaneous with the Assyrian king, Sargon II/ Sennacherib, now needs to be explained. …. [End of quote] My Esarhaddon is also different in other ways from the conventional and Velikovskian versions of him. For one, I do not believe that Esarhaddon was a biological son of Sennacherib, the Assyrian, but was a Chaldean, thereby commencing a new dynasty. And, secondly, I have identified Esarhaddon as Nebuchednezzar the Chaldean: Esarhaddon a tolerable fit for King Nebuchednezzar (6) Esarhaddon a tolerable fit for King Nebuchednezzar | Damien Mackey - Academia.edu Dr. Velikovsky’s thesis in Ramses II and His Time (1978), that Ramses II was a contemporary of Nebuchednezzar, accords perfectly with my own reconstruction, insofar as I have Ramses II as a contemporary of Esarhaddon, my Nebuchednezzar. Despite my manifold identifications of Ramses II (as given above), I have not followed Dr. Velikovsky, though, in his view that Ramses was the same as pharaoh Necho of Egypt’s Twenty-Sixth Dynasty, also a contemporary of Nebuchednezzar. In my article, “The Complete Ramses II”, I had identified Ramses II, instead, as Tirhakah of the Twenty-Fifth Dynasty, who is also Piankhi. Two more mighty identifications of Ramses II to be added to the list. Nor have I been able to accept Dr. Velikovsky’s ingenious thesis that Nebuchadnezzar was Hattusilis, the Hittite emperor, who famously made a treaty with Ramses II. The Chaldean dynasty consisted only of Nebuchednezzar and his son, Belshazzar. The latter, who is also Amēl-Marduk, is referred to in Baruch 1:11, 12: … and pray for the life of King Nebuchadnezzar of Babylon and for the life of his son Belshazzar, so that their days on earth may be like the days of heaven. The Lord will give us strength and light to our eyes; we shall live under the protection of King Nebuchadnezzar of Babylon and under the protection of his son Belshazzar, and we shall serve them many days and find favor in their sight. Ramses II was thus a contemporary also of the second Chaldean king, Belshazzar, but only while Belshazzar was yet a prince. King Belshazzar was subsequently succeeded by the Medo-Persian king (Daniel 5:31).