Battle of the Vale of Siddim
Encyclopedia
The Battle of Siddim, or Battle of the Vale of Siddim refers to an event in the Hebrew Bible
book of that occurred in the days of Abram and Lot. The Vale of Siddim
was the battleground for the cities of the Jordan Plain
revolting against the Elamite empire and its Mesopotamia
n allies.
, The Elamite empire occupied the Land of Canaan
which included all of the Jordan River Plain and many surrounding tribes and cities. The occupation was under the rule of King Chedorlaomer
for twelve years. In the thirteenth year, five kings of the cities of the Jordan plain revolted against Elamite rule. According to Jewish tradition, the revolt started with refusing to pay tribute to the Elamite empire. This triggered Chedorlaomer to assemble forces from the four main directions of Mesopotamia. Chedorlaomer's campaign to the Jordan plains began with sacking and looting every city along the way.
s that littered the vale. Those who escaped, fled to the mountains including the kings of Sodom and Gomorrah. The cities of Sodom of Gomorrah were then spoiled of their goods and provisions as well as the taking of captives. Among the captives was Abram's nephew, Lot.
When word reached Abram, he immediately mounted a rescue operation, arming 318 of his trained servants who went in pursuit of the Mesopotamian armies that were returning to their homelands. They caught up with them in the city of Dan
, flanking the enemy on multiple sides, during a night raid. The attack ran its course as far as Hobah, north of Damascus
where he defeated Chedorlaomer and his forces. Abram recovered all the goods, even the captives who included Lot.
has been thought by some scholars such as the writers of the catholic Encyclopedia and the Jewish Encyclopedia to be an alternate version of the name of the famed Hammurabi
. The name is also associated with Ibal Pi-El II of Esnunna.
Arioch
has been thought to have been a king of Larsa
(Ellasar being an alternate version of this). It has also been suggested that it is URU KI, meaning "this place here".
Following the discovery of documents written in the Elamite language
and Babylonian language, it was thought that Chedorlaomer is a transliteration of the Elamite compound Kudur-Lagamar, meaning servant of Lagamaru - a reference to Lagamaru, an Elamite deity whose existence was mentioned by Assurbanipal. However, no mention of an individual named Kudur Lagamar has yet been found; inscriptions that were thought to contain this name are now known to have different names (the confusion arose due to similar lettering). David Rohl
identifies Chedorlaomer with an Elamite king named Kutir-Lagamar.
Tidal has been considered to be a corruption or transliteration of Tudhaliya - either referring to the first king of the Hittite
New Kingdom
(Tudhaliya I
) or the proto-Hittite king named Tudhaliya
. With the former, the title king of Nations would refer to the allies of the Hittite kingdom such as the Ammurru and Mittani; with the latter the term "goyiim" has the sense of "them, those people". al ("their power") gives the sense of a people or tribe rather than a kingdom. Hence td goyim ("those people have created a state and stretched their power").
The alliance of four states would have ruled over cities/countries that were spread over a wide area: from Elam at the extreme eastern end of the Fertile Crescent
to Anatolia at the western edge of this region. Because of this, there is a limited range of time periods that match the Geopolitical context of Genesis 14. In this account, Chedorlaomer is described as the king to whom the cities of the plain pay tribute. Thus, Elam must be a dominant force in the region and the other three kings would therefore be vassals of Elam and/or trading partners.
There were periods when Elam was allied with Mari through trade. Mari also had connections to Syria and Anatolia, who, in turn, had political, cultural, linguistic and military connections to Canaan. The earliest recorded empire was that of Sargon
, which lasted until his grandson, Naram Sin.
According to Kenneth Kitchen
, a better agreement with the conditions in the time of Chedorlaomer is provided by Ur Nammu. Mari had had links to the rest of Mesopotamia by Gulf trade as early as the Jemdet Nasr period
but an expansion of political connections to Assyria did not occur until the time of Isbi-Erra. The Amorites or MARTU were also linked to the Hittites of Anatolia by trade.
Trade between the Harappan
culture of India and the Jemdet Nasr flourished between c 2000-1700BC. As Isin declined, the fortunes of Larsa - located between Eshnunna and Elam - rose until Larsa was defeated by Hammurabi. Between 1880 and 1820 BC there was Assyrian trade with Anatolia, in particular in annakum or tin.
The main trade route between Ashur and Kanesh running between the Tigris and Euphrates passed through Haran. The empire of Shamshi-Adad I
and Rim-Sin I
included most of northern Mesopotamia. Thus, Kitchen concludes that this is the period in which the narrative of Genesis 14 falls into a close match with the events of the time of Shamsi Adad and Chedorlaomer
The relevant rulers in the region at this time were:
was first deciphered in the 19th century Theophilus Pinches
translated some Babylonian tablets which were part of the Spartoli collection in the British Museum
and believed he had found in the Chedorlaomer Text the names of three of the "Kings of the East" named in Genesis 14. As this is the only part of Genesis which seems to set Abraham in wider political history, it seemed to many 19th and early 20th century exegetes and Assyriologists to offer an opening to date Abraham, if the kings in question could only be identified.
In 1887, Schrader
was the first to propose that Amraphel could be an alternate spelling for Hammurabi
. The terminal -bi on the end of Hammurabi's name was seen to parallel Amraphel since the cuneiform symbol for -bi can also be pronounced -pi. Tablets were known in which the initial symbol for Hammurabi, pronounced as kh to yield Khammurabi, had been dropped, so that Ammurapi was a viable pronunciation. If Hammurabi were deified in his lifetime or soon after (adding -il to his name to signify his divinity), this would produce something close to the Bible's Amraphel. A little later Jean-Vincent Scheil
found a tablet in the Imperial Ottoman Museum in Istanbul
from Hammurabi to a king named Kuder-Lagomer of Elam, which he identified with the same name in Pinches' tablet. Thus by the early 1900s many scholars had become convinced that the kings of Gen. 14:1 had been identified, resulting in the following correspondences:
Today these dating attempts are little more than a historical curiosity. On the one hand, as the scholarly consensus on Near Eastern ancient history moved towards placing Hammurabi in the late 18th century (or even later), and not the 19th, confessional and evangelical theologians found they had to choose between accepting these identifications or accepting the biblical chronology; most were disinclined to state that the Bible might be in error and so began synchronizing Abram with the empire of Sargon I
, and the work of Schrader, Pinches and Scheil fell out of favour. Meanwhile, further research into Mesopotamia and Syria in the second millennium BCE undercut attempts to tie Abraham in with a definite century and to treat him as a strictly historical figure, and while linguistically not implausible, the identification of Hammurabi with Amraphel is now regarded as untenable.
There is rarely ever consensus on any matters involving Bible interpretation; one modern interpretation of Genesis 14 is summed up by Michael Astour in The Anchor Bible Dictionary (s.v. "Amraphel", "Arioch" and "Chedorlaomer"), who explains the story as a product of anti-Babylonian propaganda during the 6th century Babylonian captivity
of the Jews:
The Chedorlaomer tablets are now thought to be from the 6th or 7th century BCE, a millennium after the time of Hammurabi
, but at roughly the time when the main elements of Genesis are thought to have been set down. Another prominent scholar considers a relationship between the tablet and Genesis speculative, but identifies Tudhula as a veiled reference to Sennacherib of Assyria, and Chedorlaomer, i.e. Kudur-Nahhunte, as "a recollection of a 12th century BCE king of Elam who briefly ruled Babylon."
The last serious attempt to place a historical Abraham in the second millennium resulted from discovery of the name Abi-ramu on Babylonian contracts of about 2000 BCE, but this line of argument lost its force when it was shown that the name was also common in the first millennium, leaving the patriarchal narratives in a relative biblical chronology but without an anchor in the known history of the Near East.
A few evangelical scholars continue to argue against the consensus: Kitchen asserts that the only known historical period in which a king of Elam
, whilst allied with Larsa, was able to enlist a Hittite king and a King of Eshunna as partners and allies in a war against Canaanite cities is in the time of Old Babylon c 1822-1764 BC. This is when Babylon is under Hammurabi and Rim Sin I controls Mari, which is linked through trade to the Hittites and other allies along the length of the Euphrates. This trade is mentioned in the Mari letters, a source which documents a geo-political relationship back to when the ships of Dilmun, Makkan and Meluhha docked at the quays of Agade in the time of Sargon. In the period of Old Babylon
, c 1822-1764 BC, Rim Sin I brought together kings of Syro-Anatolia whose kingdoms were located on the Euphrates
in a coalition focused on Mari
whose king was Shamsi Adad. Kitchen uses the geo-political context, the price of slaves and the nature of the covenants entered into by Abraham to date the events he encounters. He sees the covenants, between Abraham and the other characters encountered at various points in Abraham's journeys, as datable textual artifacts having the form of legal documents which can be compared to the form of legal documents from different periods. Of particular interest is the relationship between Abraham and his wife, Sarah. When Sarah proves to be barren, she offers her handmaiden, Hagar
, to Abraham to provide an heir. This arrangement, along with other aspects of the covenants of Abraham, lead Kitchen to a relatively narrow date range which he believes aligns with the time of Hammurabi.
Hebrew Bible
The Hebrew Bible is a term used by biblical scholars outside of Judaism to refer to the Tanakh , a canonical collection of Jewish texts, and the common textual antecedent of the several canonical editions of the Christian Old Testament...
book of that occurred in the days of Abram and Lot. The Vale of Siddim
Vale of Siddim
Vale of Siddim or Valley of Siddim is a Hebrew bible place name mentioned in the book of Genesis Chapter 14....
was the battleground for the cities of the Jordan Plain
Cities of the Plain
Cities of the Plain is the final volume of American novelist Cormac McCarthy's "Border Trilogy", published in 1998. A film adaptation to be directed by Andrew Dominik has been announced for release in 2012...
revolting against the Elamite empire and its Mesopotamia
Mesopotamia
Mesopotamia is a toponym for the area of the Tigris–Euphrates river system, largely corresponding to modern-day Iraq, northeastern Syria, southeastern Turkey and southwestern Iran.Widely considered to be the cradle of civilization, Bronze Age Mesopotamia included Sumer and the...
n allies.
Background
In the days of Lot, before the destruction of Sodom and GomorrahSodom and Gomorrah
Sodom and Gomorrah were cities mentioned in the Book of Genesis and later expounded upon throughout the Hebrew Bible, the New Testament and Deuterocanonical sources....
, The Elamite empire occupied the Land of Canaan
Land of Canaan
Land of Canaan is a Mystery-thriller film and is directed by Reginald LaFrance, it stars Christina Applegate, Robert Englund, Juliet Landau and Neve Campbell.-Plot:...
which included all of the Jordan River Plain and many surrounding tribes and cities. The occupation was under the rule of King Chedorlaomer
Chedorlaomer
Chedorlaomer "a handful of sheaves", was a king of Elam according to the Hebrew Bible book of Genesis Chapter 14. He ruled fourteen years, from the East in southwestern Persia, occupying the regions east of the Jordan river, in the days of Abram...
for twelve years. In the thirteenth year, five kings of the cities of the Jordan plain revolted against Elamite rule. According to Jewish tradition, the revolt started with refusing to pay tribute to the Elamite empire. This triggered Chedorlaomer to assemble forces from the four main directions of Mesopotamia. Chedorlaomer's campaign to the Jordan plains began with sacking and looting every city along the way.
Four kings of Mesopotamia
In response to the uprising of several kings that Chedorlaomer ruled over, he ensured victory by calling together three other nations, to align with the Kingdom of Elam. These four aligned kings were:- King ChedorlaomerChedorlaomerChedorlaomer "a handful of sheaves", was a king of Elam according to the Hebrew Bible book of Genesis Chapter 14. He ruled fourteen years, from the East in southwestern Persia, occupying the regions east of the Jordan river, in the days of Abram...
, ruler of the Persian empire of ElamElamElam was an ancient civilization located in what is now southwest Iran. Elam was centered in the far west and the southwest of modern-day Iran, stretching from the lowlands of Khuzestan and Ilam Province, as well as a small part of southern Iraq...
, to the East and commander of the alliance. - King AmraphelAmraphelIn the Tanakh or Old Testament, Amraphel was a king of Shinar in Genesis xiv.1 and 9, who invaded the west along with Chedorlaomer, king of Elam, and others, and defeated Sodom and the other Cities of the Plain in the Battle of the Vale of Siddim.Beginning with E...
, ruler of ShinarShinarShinar was a geographical locale of uncertain boundaries in Mesopotamia. The name may be a corruption of Shene nahar , Shene or , or Sumer .It has been suggested that Shinar must have been confined to the northern part of Mesopotamia Shinar (Hebrew Šin`ar, Septuagint Σεννααρ Sennaar) was a...
from the southern regions of BabylonBabylonBabylon was an Akkadian city-state of ancient Mesopotamia, the remains of which are found in present-day Al Hillah, Babil Province, Iraq, about 85 kilometers south of Baghdad...
. - King AriochAriochArioch is a Hebrew name that means "fierce lion". It originally appears in the Book of Genesis chapter 14 as the name of the "King of Ellasar", part of the confederation of kings who did battle with the kings of Sodom and Gomorrah and with Abraham in the Battle of the Vale of Siddim...
, ruler of Ellasar, from AssurAssurAssur , was one of the capitals of ancient Assyria. The remains of the city are situated on the western bank of river Tigris, north of the confluence with the tributary Little Zab river, in modern day Iraq, more precisely in the Al-Shirqat District .Assur is also...
to the North. - King Tidal, leader of the HittitesHittitesThe Hittites were a Bronze Age people of Anatolia.They established a kingdom centered at Hattusa in north-central Anatolia c. the 18th century BC. The Hittite empire reached its height c...
from the West.
Five kings of the Jordan plain
The five kings from the Jordan River Plain rebelled against Elam rule, during Chedorlaomer's thirteenth year of reign over them. Their rebellion caused a domino effect that pushed Chedorlaomer to campaign against at least seven other nearby tribes and cities. The five kings of the plain were:- BeraBera (Bible)Bera is the king of Sodom in Genesis 14. There is no mention of this monarch outside this biblical passage, and no trace of the city of Sodom has ever been found. In the story, Bera joins other Canaanite city kings in rebelling against Chedorlaomer, an Elamite king who rules a vast empire...
king of SodomSodom and GomorrahSodom and Gomorrah were cities mentioned in the Book of Genesis and later expounded upon throughout the Hebrew Bible, the New Testament and Deuterocanonical sources.... - Birsha king of GomorrahSodom and GomorrahSodom and Gomorrah were cities mentioned in the Book of Genesis and later expounded upon throughout the Hebrew Bible, the New Testament and Deuterocanonical sources....
- Shinab king of AdmahAdmahAdmah was one of the pentapolis of the Vale of Siddim. It was destroyed along with Sodom and Gomorrah. It is supposed by some to be the same as the "Adam" of Joshua 3:16, the name of which still lingers in Damieh, a ford of the Jordan river....
- Shemeber king of Zeboyim
- the king of BelaBelaBela may refer to:Trick-taking card games* Klaberjass, popular in Jewish communities* Belot, popular in CroatiaPlaces* Bela, on the banks of river Satluj, district Rupar, Punjab, India*Bela, Ajdovščina, Slovenia*Bela, Kamnik, Slovenia*Bela, Nepal...
(renamed ZoarZoaraZoara, the biblical Zoar, previously called Bela, was one of the five cities of the plain of Jordan in Genesis in the Tanakh or Old Testament, which escaped the "brimstone and fire" which destroyed Sodom and Gomorrah, for having sheltered Lot and his daughters...
when Sodom destroyed)
Aftermath
The Mesopotamian forces overwhelmed the kings of the Jordan plain driving some them into asphalt or tar pitTar pit
A tar pit, or more accurately known as an asphalt pit or asphalt lake, is a geological occurrence where subterranean bitumen leaks to the surface, creating a large area of natural asphalt.-Known tar pits:...
s that littered the vale. Those who escaped, fled to the mountains including the kings of Sodom and Gomorrah. The cities of Sodom of Gomorrah were then spoiled of their goods and provisions as well as the taking of captives. Among the captives was Abram's nephew, Lot.
When word reached Abram, he immediately mounted a rescue operation, arming 318 of his trained servants who went in pursuit of the Mesopotamian armies that were returning to their homelands. They caught up with them in the city of Dan
Dan (ancient city)
Dan , is a city mentioned in the Bible, described as the northernmost city of the Kingdom of Israel, belonging to the Tribe of Dan. The city is identified with the tel known as Tel Dan , or Tel el-Qadi in...
, flanking the enemy on multiple sides, during a night raid. The attack ran its course as far as Hobah, north of Damascus
Damascus
Damascus , commonly known in Syria as Al Sham , and as the City of Jasmine , is the capital and the second largest city of Syria after Aleppo, both are part of the country's 14 governorates. In addition to being one of the oldest continuously inhabited cities in the world, Damascus is a major...
where he defeated Chedorlaomer and his forces. Abram recovered all the goods, even the captives who included Lot.
Identifying the kings
AmraphelAmraphel
In the Tanakh or Old Testament, Amraphel was a king of Shinar in Genesis xiv.1 and 9, who invaded the west along with Chedorlaomer, king of Elam, and others, and defeated Sodom and the other Cities of the Plain in the Battle of the Vale of Siddim.Beginning with E...
has been thought by some scholars such as the writers of the catholic Encyclopedia and the Jewish Encyclopedia to be an alternate version of the name of the famed Hammurabi
Hammurabi
Hammurabi Hammurabi Hammurabi (Akkadian from Amorite ʻAmmurāpi, "the kinsman is a healer", from ʻAmmu, "paternal kinsman", and Rāpi, "healer"; (died c...
. The name is also associated with Ibal Pi-El II of Esnunna.
Arioch
Arioch
Arioch is a Hebrew name that means "fierce lion". It originally appears in the Book of Genesis chapter 14 as the name of the "King of Ellasar", part of the confederation of kings who did battle with the kings of Sodom and Gomorrah and with Abraham in the Battle of the Vale of Siddim...
has been thought to have been a king of Larsa
Larsa
Larsa was an important city of ancient Sumer, the center of the cult of the sun god Utu. It lies some 25 km southeast of Uruk in Iraq's Dhi Qar Governorate, near the east bank of the Shatt-en-Nil canal at the site of the modern settlement Tell as-Senkereh or Sankarah.-History:According to...
(Ellasar being an alternate version of this). It has also been suggested that it is URU KI, meaning "this place here".
Following the discovery of documents written in the Elamite language
Elamite language
Elamite is an extinct language spoken by the ancient Elamites. Elamite was the primary language in present day Iran from 2800–550 BCE. The last written records in Elamite appear about the time of the conquest of the Persian Empire by Alexander the Great....
and Babylonian language, it was thought that Chedorlaomer is a transliteration of the Elamite compound Kudur-Lagamar, meaning servant of Lagamaru - a reference to Lagamaru, an Elamite deity whose existence was mentioned by Assurbanipal. However, no mention of an individual named Kudur Lagamar has yet been found; inscriptions that were thought to contain this name are now known to have different names (the confusion arose due to similar lettering). David Rohl
David Rohl
New Chronology is the term used to describe an alternative Chronology of the ancient Near East developed by English Egyptologist David Rohl and other researchers beginning with A Test of Time: The Bible - from Myth to History in 1995...
identifies Chedorlaomer with an Elamite king named Kutir-Lagamar.
Tidal has been considered to be a corruption or transliteration of Tudhaliya - either referring to the first king of the Hittite
Hittites
The Hittites were a Bronze Age people of Anatolia.They established a kingdom centered at Hattusa in north-central Anatolia c. the 18th century BC. The Hittite empire reached its height c...
New Kingdom
History of the Hittites
Hittites were an ancient people who spoke an Indo-European language and established a kingdom centered in Hattusa in northern Anatolia from the 18th century BC. In the 14th century BC, the Hittite Kingdom was at its height, encompassing central Anatolia, south-western Syria as far as Ugarit, and...
(Tudhaliya I
Tudhaliya I
Tudhaliya I was a king of the Hittite empire ca. the early 14th century BC .- Identity :...
) or the proto-Hittite king named Tudhaliya
Tudhaliya
Tudhaliya is the name of several Hittite kings*Tudhaliya is a hypothetic pre-Empire king of the Hittites. He would have reigned in the late 17th century BC . Forlanini conjectures that this king corresponds to the great-grandfather of Hattusili I.*Tudhaliya I , ruled ca...
. With the former, the title king of Nations would refer to the allies of the Hittite kingdom such as the Ammurru and Mittani; with the latter the term "goyiim" has the sense of "them, those people". al ("their power") gives the sense of a people or tribe rather than a kingdom. Hence td goyim ("those people have created a state and stretched their power").
Geopolitical context
It was common practise for vassals/allies to accompany a powerful king during their conquests. For example, in a letter from about 1770 BC reporting a speech aimed at persuading the nomadic tribes to acknowledge the authority of Zimri-Lim of Mari:There is no king who can be mighty alone. Ten or fifteen kings follow Hammurabi the man of Babylon; as many follow Rim-Sin the man of Larsa, Ibal-pi-El the man of Eshnunna, and Amut-pi-El the man of Quatna and twenty kings follow Yarim-Lim the man of Yamhad.
The alliance of four states would have ruled over cities/countries that were spread over a wide area: from Elam at the extreme eastern end of the Fertile Crescent
Fertile Crescent
The Fertile Crescent, nicknamed "The Cradle of Civilization" for the fact the first civilizations started there, is a crescent-shaped region containing the comparatively moist and fertile land of otherwise arid and semi-arid Western Asia. The term was first used by University of Chicago...
to Anatolia at the western edge of this region. Because of this, there is a limited range of time periods that match the Geopolitical context of Genesis 14. In this account, Chedorlaomer is described as the king to whom the cities of the plain pay tribute. Thus, Elam must be a dominant force in the region and the other three kings would therefore be vassals of Elam and/or trading partners.
There were periods when Elam was allied with Mari through trade. Mari also had connections to Syria and Anatolia, who, in turn, had political, cultural, linguistic and military connections to Canaan. The earliest recorded empire was that of Sargon
Sargon of Akkad
Sargon of Akkad, also known as Sargon the Great "the Great King" , was an Akkadian emperor famous for his conquest of the Sumerian city-states in the 23rd and 22nd centuries BC. The founder of the Dynasty of Akkad, Sargon reigned in the last quarter of the third millennium BC...
, which lasted until his grandson, Naram Sin.
According to Kenneth Kitchen
Kenneth Kitchen
Kenneth Anderson Kitchen is Personal and Brunner Professor Emeritus of Egyptology and Honorary Research Fellow at the School of Archaeology, Classics and Egyptology, University of Liverpool, England...
, a better agreement with the conditions in the time of Chedorlaomer is provided by Ur Nammu. Mari had had links to the rest of Mesopotamia by Gulf trade as early as the Jemdet Nasr period
Jemdet Nasr period
The Jemdet Nasr period is an archaeological culture in southern Mesopotamia that is generally dated to 3100–2900 BCE. It is named after the type-site Jemdet Nasr, where the assemblage typical for this period was first recognized. Its geographical distribution is limited to south–central Iraq...
but an expansion of political connections to Assyria did not occur until the time of Isbi-Erra. The Amorites or MARTU were also linked to the Hittites of Anatolia by trade.
Trade between the Harappan
Indus Valley Civilization
The Indus Valley Civilization was a Bronze Age civilization that was located in the northwestern region of the Indian subcontinent, consisting of what is now mainly modern-day Pakistan and northwest India...
culture of India and the Jemdet Nasr flourished between c 2000-1700BC. As Isin declined, the fortunes of Larsa - located between Eshnunna and Elam - rose until Larsa was defeated by Hammurabi. Between 1880 and 1820 BC there was Assyrian trade with Anatolia, in particular in annakum or tin.
The main trade route between Ashur and Kanesh running between the Tigris and Euphrates passed through Haran. The empire of Shamshi-Adad I
Shamshi-Adad I
Shamshi-Adad I Shamshi-Adad I Shamshi-Adad I (fl. late 18th century BC (short chronology) was an Assyrian king. He rose to prominence when he carved out an empire encompassing much of Mesopotamia, Syria and Asia Minor...
and Rim-Sin I
Rim-Sin I
Rim-Sin I ruled the ancient Near East city-stateof Larsa from 1758 BC to 1699 BC or 1822 BC to 1763 BC . His sister En-ane-du was high priestess of the moon god in Ur. Rim-Sin I was a contemporary of Hammurabi of Babylon and Irdanene of Uruk.-Reign:Rim-Sin’s reign of Larsa started sometime around...
included most of northern Mesopotamia. Thus, Kitchen concludes that this is the period in which the narrative of Genesis 14 falls into a close match with the events of the time of Shamsi Adad and Chedorlaomer
The relevant rulers in the region at this time were:
- The last king of Isin, Damiq-ilishu, ruled 1816-1794 BC.
- Rim Sin I of Larsa ruled 1822-1763
- The last king of Uruk, Nabiilishu, ruled 1802
- In Babylon, Hammurabi ruled 1792-1750
- In Eshnunna Ibal Pi-El II ruled c 1762
- In Elam there was a king Kuduzulush
- In Ashur, Shamsi Adad I ruled c 1813-1781
- In Mari, Yasmah-Adad ruled 1796-1780 followed by Zimri-Lin 1779-1757.
Dating of events
When cuneiformCuneiform
Cuneiform can refer to:*Cuneiform script, an ancient writing system originating in Mesopotamia in the 4th millennium BC*Cuneiform , three bones in the human foot*Cuneiform Records, a music record label...
was first deciphered in the 19th century Theophilus Pinches
Theophilus Pinches
Theophilus Goldridge Pinches M.R.A.S. , was a pioneer British assyriologist.Pinches was originally employed in father's business as a die-sinker, but, following an amateur interest in cuneiform inscriptions, joined the staff of the British Museum in 1878, working there as assistant then curator...
translated some Babylonian tablets which were part of the Spartoli collection in the British Museum
British Museum
The British Museum is a museum of human history and culture in London. Its collections, which number more than seven million objects, are amongst the largest and most comprehensive in the world and originate from all continents, illustrating and documenting the story of human culture from its...
and believed he had found in the Chedorlaomer Text the names of three of the "Kings of the East" named in Genesis 14. As this is the only part of Genesis which seems to set Abraham in wider political history, it seemed to many 19th and early 20th century exegetes and Assyriologists to offer an opening to date Abraham, if the kings in question could only be identified.
In 1887, Schrader
Eberhard Schrader
Eberhard Schrader , was a German orientalist primarily known for his achievements in Assyriology.-Biography:He was born at Braunschweig, and educated at Göttingen under Ewald. In 1858 he won a university prize for a treatise on the Ethiopian languages, and in 1863 became professor of theology at...
was the first to propose that Amraphel could be an alternate spelling for Hammurabi
Hammurabi
Hammurabi Hammurabi Hammurabi (Akkadian from Amorite ʻAmmurāpi, "the kinsman is a healer", from ʻAmmu, "paternal kinsman", and Rāpi, "healer"; (died c...
. The terminal -bi on the end of Hammurabi's name was seen to parallel Amraphel since the cuneiform symbol for -bi can also be pronounced -pi. Tablets were known in which the initial symbol for Hammurabi, pronounced as kh to yield Khammurabi, had been dropped, so that Ammurapi was a viable pronunciation. If Hammurabi were deified in his lifetime or soon after (adding -il to his name to signify his divinity), this would produce something close to the Bible's Amraphel. A little later Jean-Vincent Scheil
Jean-Vincent Scheil
Father Jean-Vincent Scheil was a French Dominican scholar and Assyriologist. He was one of the discoverers of the Code of Hammurabi in Persia...
found a tablet in the Imperial Ottoman Museum in Istanbul
Istanbul
Istanbul , historically known as Byzantium and Constantinople , is the largest city of Turkey. Istanbul metropolitan province had 13.26 million people living in it as of December, 2010, which is 18% of Turkey's population and the 3rd largest metropolitan area in Europe after London and...
from Hammurabi to a king named Kuder-Lagomer of Elam, which he identified with the same name in Pinches' tablet. Thus by the early 1900s many scholars had become convinced that the kings of Gen. 14:1 had been identified, resulting in the following correspondences:
| Name from Gen. 14:1 | Name from Archaeology |
|---|---|
| Amraphel Amraphel In the Tanakh or Old Testament, Amraphel was a king of Shinar in Genesis xiv.1 and 9, who invaded the west along with Chedorlaomer, king of Elam, and others, and defeated Sodom and the other Cities of the Plain in the Battle of the Vale of Siddim.Beginning with E... king of Shinar Shinar Shinar was a geographical locale of uncertain boundaries in Mesopotamia. The name may be a corruption of Shene nahar , Shene or , or Sumer .It has been suggested that Shinar must have been confined to the northern part of Mesopotamia Shinar (Hebrew Šin`ar, Septuagint Σεννααρ Sennaar) was a... |
Hammurabi Hammurabi Hammurabi Hammurabi Hammurabi (Akkadian from Amorite ʻAmmurāpi, "the kinsman is a healer", from ʻAmmu, "paternal kinsman", and Rāpi, "healer"; (died c... (="Ammurapi") king of Babylonia Babylonia Babylonia was an ancient cultural region in central-southern Mesopotamia , with Babylon as its capital. Babylonia emerged as a major power when Hammurabi Babylonia was an ancient cultural region in central-southern Mesopotamia (present-day Iraq), with Babylon as its capital. Babylonia emerged as... |
| Arioch Arioch Arioch is a Hebrew name that means "fierce lion". It originally appears in the Book of Genesis chapter 14 as the name of the "King of Ellasar", part of the confederation of kings who did battle with the kings of Sodom and Gomorrah and with Abraham in the Battle of the Vale of Siddim... king of Ellasar |
Eri-aku king of Larsa Larsa Larsa was an important city of ancient Sumer, the center of the cult of the sun god Utu. It lies some 25 km southeast of Uruk in Iraq's Dhi Qar Governorate, near the east bank of the Shatt-en-Nil canal at the site of the modern settlement Tell as-Senkereh or Sankarah.-History:According to... |
| Chedorlaomer Chedorlaomer Chedorlaomer "a handful of sheaves", was a king of Elam according to the Hebrew Bible book of Genesis Chapter 14. He ruled fourteen years, from the East in southwestern Persia, occupying the regions east of the Jordan river, in the days of Abram... king of Elam Elam Elam was an ancient civilization located in what is now southwest Iran. Elam was centered in the far west and the southwest of modern-day Iran, stretching from the lowlands of Khuzestan and Ilam Province, as well as a small part of southern Iraq... (= Chodollogomor in the LXX) |
Kudur-Lagamar king of Elam |
| Tidal, king of nations (i.e. goyim, lit. 'nations') | Tudhulu, son of Gazza |
Today these dating attempts are little more than a historical curiosity. On the one hand, as the scholarly consensus on Near Eastern ancient history moved towards placing Hammurabi in the late 18th century (or even later), and not the 19th, confessional and evangelical theologians found they had to choose between accepting these identifications or accepting the biblical chronology; most were disinclined to state that the Bible might be in error and so began synchronizing Abram with the empire of Sargon I
Sargon I
Sargon I or Sharru-ken reigned as king of the old-Assyrian Kingdom from ca. 1920 BC to 1881 BC. The name 'Sargon' means 'the king is legitimate' in Akkadian. He is known for his work refortifying Assur. The name "Sargon I" has also been used to refer to Sargon of Akkad, and the Assyrian Sargon...
, and the work of Schrader, Pinches and Scheil fell out of favour. Meanwhile, further research into Mesopotamia and Syria in the second millennium BCE undercut attempts to tie Abraham in with a definite century and to treat him as a strictly historical figure, and while linguistically not implausible, the identification of Hammurabi with Amraphel is now regarded as untenable.
There is rarely ever consensus on any matters involving Bible interpretation; one modern interpretation of Genesis 14 is summed up by Michael Astour in The Anchor Bible Dictionary (s.v. "Amraphel", "Arioch" and "Chedorlaomer"), who explains the story as a product of anti-Babylonian propaganda during the 6th century Babylonian captivity
Babylonian captivity
The Babylonian captivity was the period in Jewish history during which the Jews of the ancient Kingdom of Judah were captives in Babylon—conventionally 587–538 BCE....
of the Jews:
After Böhl's widely accepted, but wrong, identification of mDis- Academic institutions :* DIS – Danish Institute for Study Abroad, an English language study abroad program located in Copenhagen, Denmark* Dili International School, DIS an International School in Dili, Timor Leste - Companies :...
Tu-ud-hul-a with one of the Hittite kings named TudhaliyaTudhaliyaTudhaliya is the name of several Hittite kings*Tudhaliya is a hypothetic pre-Empire king of the Hittites. He would have reigned in the late 17th century BC . Forlanini conjectures that this king corresponds to the great-grandfather of Hattusili I.*Tudhaliya I , ruled ca...
s, Tadmor found the correct solution by equating him with the Assyrian king Sennacherib (see Tidal). Astour (1966) identified the remaining two kings of the Chedorlaomer texts with Tukulti-Ninurta I of Assyria (see AriochAriochArioch is a Hebrew name that means "fierce lion". It originally appears in the Book of Genesis chapter 14 as the name of the "King of Ellasar", part of the confederation of kings who did battle with the kings of Sodom and Gomorrah and with Abraham in the Battle of the Vale of Siddim...
) and with the Chaldean Merodach-baladan (see AmraphelAmraphelIn the Tanakh or Old Testament, Amraphel was a king of Shinar in Genesis xiv.1 and 9, who invaded the west along with Chedorlaomer, king of Elam, and others, and defeated Sodom and the other Cities of the Plain in the Battle of the Vale of Siddim.Beginning with E...
). The common denominator between these four rulers is that each of them, independently, occupied Babylon, oppressed it to a greater or lesser degree, and took away its sacred divine images, including the statue of its chief god Marduk; furthermore, all of them came to a tragic end ... All attempts to reconstruct the link between the Chedorlaomer texts and Genesis 14 remain speculative. However, the available evidence seems consistent with the following hypothesis: A Jew in Babylon, versed in Akkadian language and cuneiform script, found in an early version of the Chedorlaomer texts certain things consistent with his anti-Babylonian feelings.
The Chedorlaomer tablets are now thought to be from the 6th or 7th century BCE, a millennium after the time of Hammurabi
Hammurabi
Hammurabi Hammurabi Hammurabi (Akkadian from Amorite ʻAmmurāpi, "the kinsman is a healer", from ʻAmmu, "paternal kinsman", and Rāpi, "healer"; (died c...
, but at roughly the time when the main elements of Genesis are thought to have been set down. Another prominent scholar considers a relationship between the tablet and Genesis speculative, but identifies Tudhula as a veiled reference to Sennacherib of Assyria, and Chedorlaomer, i.e. Kudur-Nahhunte, as "a recollection of a 12th century BCE king of Elam who briefly ruled Babylon."
The last serious attempt to place a historical Abraham in the second millennium resulted from discovery of the name Abi-ramu on Babylonian contracts of about 2000 BCE, but this line of argument lost its force when it was shown that the name was also common in the first millennium, leaving the patriarchal narratives in a relative biblical chronology but without an anchor in the known history of the Near East.
A few evangelical scholars continue to argue against the consensus: Kitchen asserts that the only known historical period in which a king of Elam
Elam
Elam was an ancient civilization located in what is now southwest Iran. Elam was centered in the far west and the southwest of modern-day Iran, stretching from the lowlands of Khuzestan and Ilam Province, as well as a small part of southern Iraq...
, whilst allied with Larsa, was able to enlist a Hittite king and a King of Eshunna as partners and allies in a war against Canaanite cities is in the time of Old Babylon c 1822-1764 BC. This is when Babylon is under Hammurabi and Rim Sin I controls Mari, which is linked through trade to the Hittites and other allies along the length of the Euphrates. This trade is mentioned in the Mari letters, a source which documents a geo-political relationship back to when the ships of Dilmun, Makkan and Meluhha docked at the quays of Agade in the time of Sargon. In the period of Old Babylon
Babylon
Babylon was an Akkadian city-state of ancient Mesopotamia, the remains of which are found in present-day Al Hillah, Babil Province, Iraq, about 85 kilometers south of Baghdad...
, c 1822-1764 BC, Rim Sin I brought together kings of Syro-Anatolia whose kingdoms were located on the Euphrates
Euphrates
The Euphrates is the longest and one of the most historically important rivers of Western Asia. Together with the Tigris, it is one of the two defining rivers of Mesopotamia...
in a coalition focused on Mari
Mari, Syria
Mari was an ancient Sumerian and Amorite city, located 11 kilometers north-west of the modern town of Abu Kamal on the western bank of Euphrates river, some 120 km southeast of Deir ez-Zor, Syria...
whose king was Shamsi Adad. Kitchen uses the geo-political context, the price of slaves and the nature of the covenants entered into by Abraham to date the events he encounters. He sees the covenants, between Abraham and the other characters encountered at various points in Abraham's journeys, as datable textual artifacts having the form of legal documents which can be compared to the form of legal documents from different periods. Of particular interest is the relationship between Abraham and his wife, Sarah. When Sarah proves to be barren, she offers her handmaiden, Hagar
Hagar (Bible)
Hagar , according to the Abrahamic faiths, was the second wife of Abraham, and the mother of his first son, Ishmael. Her story is recorded in the Book of Genesis, mentioned in Hadith, and alluded to in the Qur'an...
, to Abraham to provide an heir. This arrangement, along with other aspects of the covenants of Abraham, lead Kitchen to a relatively narrow date range which he believes aligns with the time of Hammurabi.