The Era of Abraham

Late Chalcolithic-Ghassul IV-Early Bronze I
Early Dynastic II
Uruk I Dynasty (Mesopotamia)
Pre-dynastic Egypt; and Hyksos (15th dynasty)
Conventional date: c. 3150 BC (& 1650 BC for Hyksos)
TCAO date: c. 1960 BC
(Toledôt: Genesis 11:10b-11:27a &11:27b-25:19a)

There is real historical evidence for Abraham and his clan.

The first important point is to recall, from the article at the beginning of this book about Archeological and historical evidence of Biblical accuracy, that real, ancient historical documents, the Ebla tablets, refer to Abram (Ab-ra-mu or Abarama), and also to other biblical people and places:

"The names of cities thought to have been founded much later, such as Beirut and Byblos, leap from the [Ebla] tablets. Damascus and Gaza are mentioned, as well as two of the Biblical cities of the plain, Sodom and Gomorrah. ... Most intriguing of all are the personal names found on the Ebla tablets. They include Ab-ra-mu (Abraham), E-sa-um (Esau)...."[5]

And Herb Storck has shown, in an article "The Early Assyrian King List ... and the 'Greater Amorite' Tradition" (Proc. of the 3rd Seminar of Catastrophism & Ancient History, C&AH Press, Toronto, 1986, p. 43), that there is a genealogical link among (i) Abraham; (ii) the genealogy of king Hammurabi; and (iii) the Assyrian King List.
Storck commences his important article with the following explanation:

The Assyrian Kinglist (AKL) is one of the most important chronographic texts ever uncovered. Initially it was thought to represent a long unbroken tradition of rulership over Assyria. A closer look at the AKL by Benno Landsberger (1890-1968) ... however, dispelled this somewhat facile approach to AKL tradition. Subsequent studies by Kraus ... and Finkelstein ... have demonstrated a common underlying Amorite tradition between parts of the AKL and the Genealogy of Hammurapi (GHD). Portions of this section of the AKL containing 17 tent-dwelling kings have also been compared to biblical ... and Ugaritic ... Amorite traditions.
Storck's purpose will be "to take a closer look at the 17 Assyrian tent dwellers and the greater Amorite tradition, as evidenced primarily in the genealogy of the Hammurapi [Hammurabi] Dynasty and other minor traditions" [380]. The names of all 17 tent-dwelling kings are preserved in various lists. They are:

1. Tudija
3. Janqi
5. Harharu
7. Imsu
10. Hanu
12. Nuabu
14. Belu
16. Ushpia
8. Harsu 2. Adamu
4. Sahlamu
6. Mandaru
9. Didanu
11. Zuabu
13. Abazu
15. Azarah
17. Apiashal

What is striking is that many of these names can be linked with names in the GHD, which gives the names in couplet form. Thus, for example, names 3 & 4, Janqi(Janqu) & Sahlamu are given in GHD as Ya-am-qu-us-ha-lam-ma. Name 11, Zuabu, may be connected with Sumuabi, an ancestor of Hammurabi. Thus Herbert A. Storck [400]:

Poebel sought to connect the name with Su-mu-a-bi, the name of the first king of the first dynasty of Babylon, even though in our list it is written with the sign ZU. .... Kraus, however, expressed his personal doubts as to whether this would work .... But in a recently published fragment of this portion of the AKL (E) this name was indeed written with an initial SU for ZU, thus supporting Poebel's contention somewhat. "Nevertheless, the genealogy edited by J.J. Finkelstein has Zu-um-ma-bu in the apparently parallel line, hinting that the reverse may be the case. The presence of ma as restored eases the interpretation of the name Sumu-abu" ....
Storck concludes the first part of his study by claiming that: "Nine of the 17 tent-dwelling AKL kings can reasonably be identified with GHD ancestors of Hammurapi. This would appear to be sufficient to establish that these two genealogies drew upon a common `Amorite' tradition." [420]
He has also found various important connections with name 9, Didanu [430]:
This name is mentioned in the pre-Sargonic inscriptions of Lagash; it appears to be the oldest known West Semitic (WS) tribal name ... and is almost synonymous with Amurru .... Furthermore, mention of this term is made by Shu-Sin of Ur in his fourth year name and in the time of Gudea. "Tidanum a mountain district of Amurru" .... - Poebel also connects this form with the Biblical Dedan .... Finally and most interestingly, an "assembly of Didanu" .... is mentioned in a kinglist of Ugarit recently treated by K.A. Kitchen. He proposes that Didanu was a shared common ancestor with Assyria and Babylon's Amorite tradition.
Storck, "in the light of these interconnecting pieces of evidence", proceeds to consider the biblical genealogies [440]:
The first is Genesis 25:2-4 .... Here late in life Abraham takes a second wife by the name of Keturah. This name is definitely cognate with the Arabian tribal name Qetura .... But couched here in the language of physical relationships appears to be an ancestor line reminiscent of AKL and GHD. Keturah bore Abraham the following sons (partially excerpted):

Keturah > Jokshan - Medan - Midian - Ishbak - Shuah
Jokshan > Sheba and Dedan
Dedan > Asshurim - Letushim - Leummim
Midian > Ephah - Epher - Hanoch - Abdiah – Eldaah

Poebel pointed out that there exists "at least the possibility that these Assurim, a subdivision of the better known tribe of Dedan, are in some way connected with the Assyrian nomads" ....
Storck, who had previously argued that personal names can be used to denote tribal names and toponyms, shows how three of these names from the Genesis list may be treated in the same way, to forge a connection with AKL names [450]:



A. Dedan =
B. Hanoch =
C. Ishbak = Didanu
Hanu
Ushpia AKL 9
AKL 10
AKL 16
Other names in the AKL seem to occur in place names that we referred to above, at the time of Abraham, in regard to the Genesis 14 conflict between the coalitions of kings in the Valley of Siddim, and would as Storck says, "almost seem to force the concept of partial contemporaneity [of the tent-dwelling kings] upon our sometimes reluctant minds" [470]. These are Admah (Adamu) [Joshua 19:36], Zeboim (Zuabu) [Nehemiah 11:34] and Bela (Belu) [Genesis 14:2; Zoar?], names that, as we saw, also occur in the Ebla tablets as actual trading partners with that Syrian city.
[End of quotes]

Soon I shall make the suggestion that Abram himself may be referred to as No. 10 above, Hanu.

Abram (later Abraham) and his wife Sarai (later Sarah) were also to become an integral part of Hindu mythology, as, respectively, Brahman and Saraisdati.
(See e.g. http://hindufocus.wordpress.com/2009/09/20/abraham-brahma-sarah-saraswati & also our site “Lost Cultural Foundations of Eastern Civilsation”: http://easterncivilisationamaic.blogspot.com) When did this likely happen?
I think probably after the Jews had been exiled to Babylonia (c. 530 BC, revised dates), and whose toledôt histories later came to influence India through the Persian empire that succeeded the Babylonian (Chaldean) one.

Abram may be somewhat difficult to pin down archaeologically, since he was basically nomadic. Some have wrongly identified he and his family as the nomadic Middle Bronze I (MBI) people (c. 2100 BC, conventional date), who will become most important in Chapter Eight, as in fact the wandering Israelites of the Exodus. This superficially plausible scenario (Abram and MBI) has actually disastrous consequences for a biblically compatible archaeology (stratigraphy).
Nor did Abram-Abraham personally sign off a toledôt history, as did some of the other famous Patriarchs, though his sons Ishmael (Genesis 25:12) and Isaac (25:19) did.
The great man, Abraham, must remain somewhat obscure at this stage.
But Dr. Osgood has made a pretty good fist of what evidence there is to be had in his article, “The Times of Abraham” (Journal of Creation 2:77–87 April 1986, http://creation.com/the-times-of-abraham), for at least providing an archaeological era for Abram. Particularly impressive is Osgood’s archaeology for the attack on Palestine by the Mesopotamian coalition at the time that Abram was in Palestine.
Taking the biblical account of the route of conquest by these four kings, Osgood has shown that they attacked Hazezon-tamar, or Engedi, west of what is now the Dead Sea.



Now the only archaeological occupations for this site, Osgood informs us, are:

(i) Chalcolithic;
(ii) Roman; and
(iii) Byzantium,

with the latter two being quite irrelevant to this period. Thus, by a process of elimination, Osgood will opt for the Chalcolithic phase at Engedi as being that of the time of Abram and the four kings, and he is able to reconstruct the scenario of flight by the locals and their stashing of their valuables in a secret location.

But for us the really crucial historical question now is: Who was the pharaoh whom Abram encountered in Egypt? (Genesis 12:10-20)
And, along similar lines: Who were the four coalitional kings who attacked Palestine from the east at about this time? (Genesis 14:1-16)

David Rohl and I had, quite independently, arrived at basically the same conclusions to both questions (Both wrongly, I now think). Read on.

1. Abram and Egypt
We had both identified Abram’s ill-fated pharaoh as a 10th Egyptian dynasty pharaoh Khety. Rohl numbers him as Khety IV Nebkaure, whereas I had numbered him as Khety III (though N. Grimal has a Khety II Nebkaure, A History of Egypt, pp. 144, 148). If the so-called 10th Egyptian dynasty were really to be located this early in time, then this would have had major ramifications for any attempted reconstruction of Egyptian history. Anyway, I had thought that having Abram’s pharaoh in the 10th Egyptian dynasty fitted well with my view that Joseph, who came about two centuries after Abram, had belonged to (among others) the 11th Egyptian dynasty.
But I have recently rejected this placement and have written a new version of Abram’s pharaoh. Here is the relevant part of it (slightly modified):

Does the Bible Name Abram’s “Pharaoh”?
Yes it does.

….
Now here is my new view about Abram’s pharaoh (*****).
The Book of Genesis gives us two accounts of an attempted seizure of Abram’s-Abraham’s wife, Sarai-Sarah. As is apparent from the following chart, these accounts have their basic elements in common (Taken from: http://www.jcu.edu/bible/200/Readings/AncestressParallels.htm).

{11} When he was about to enter Egypt, he said to his wife Sarai, "I know well that you are a woman beautiful in appearance; {12} and when the Egyptians see you, they will say, 'This is his wife'; then they will kill me, but they will let you live. {13} Say you are my sister, so that it may go well with me because of you, and that my life may be spared on your account." While residing in Gerar as an alien, {2} Abraham said of his wife Sarah, "She is my sister."
{14} When Abram entered Egypt the Egyptians saw that the woman was very beautiful. {15} When the officials of Pharaoh saw her, they praised her to Pharaoh. And the woman was taken into Pharaoh's house. {16} And for her sake he dealt well with Abram; and he had sheep, oxen, male donkeys, male and female slaves, female donkeys, and camels. And King Abimelech of Gerar sent and took Sarah.
{17} But the LORD afflicted Pharaoh and his house with great plagues because of Sarai, Abram's wife. {3} But God came to Abimelech in a dream by night, and said to him, "You are about to die because of the woman whom you have taken; for she is a married woman." {4} Now Abimelech had not approached her; so he said, "Lord, will you destroy an innocent people? {5} Did he not himself say to me, 'She is my sister'? And she herself said, 'He is my brother.' I did this in the integrity of my heart and the innocence of my hands." {6} Then God said to him in the dream, "Yes, I know that you did this in the integrity of your heart; furthermore it was I who kept you from sinning against me. Therefore I did not let you touch her. {7} Now then, return the man's wife; for he is a prophet, and he will pray for you and you shall live. But if you do not restore her, know that you shall surely die, you and all that are yours." {8} So Abimelech rose early in the morning, and called all his servants and told them all these things; and the men were very much afraid.
{18} So Pharaoh called Abram, and said, "What is this you have done to me? Why did you not tell me that she was your wife? {19} Why did you say, 'She is my sister,' so that I took her for my wife? Now then, here is your wife, take her, and be gone." {20} And Pharaoh gave his men orders concerning him; and they set him on the way, with his wife and all that he had. {9} Then Abimelech called Abraham, and said to him, "What have you done to us? How have I sinned against you, that you have brought such great guilt on me and my kingdom? You have done things to me that ought not to be done." {10} And Abimelech said to Abraham, "What were you thinking of, that you did this thing?" {11} Abraham said, "I did it because I thought, There is no fear of God at all in this place, and they will kill me because of my wife. {12} Besides, she is indeed my sister, the daughter of my father but not the daughter of my mother; and she became my wife. {13} And when God caused me to wander from my father's house, I said to her, 'This is the kindness you must do me: at every place to which we come, say of me, He is my brother.'" {14} Then Abimelech took sheep and oxen, and male and female slaves, and gave them to Abraham, and restored his wife Sarah to him. {15} Abimelech said, "My land is before you; settle where it pleases you." {16} To Sarah he said, "Look, I have given your brother a thousand pieces of silver; it is your exoneration before all who are with you; you are completely vindicated." {17} Then Abraham prayed to God; and God healed Abimelech, and also healed his wife and female slaves so that they bore children. {18} For the LORD had closed fast all the wombs of the house of Abimelech because of Sarah, Abraham's wife.
In common: The Patriarch claims that his beautiful wife is his sister; the ruler takes her for his wife (but does not lay hands on her because); plagues intervene; the ruler confronts the Patriarch for his apparent deception; but he nevertheless lets him go, loaded with wealth.

I now submit that these are two different accounts of the very same incident, and that Abram’s un-named “Pharaoh” is simply Abimelech, the presumably Philistine (?) king, who then ruled over Philistia and Egypt at this time. And whose army captain had the name of Phicol.

It should not surprise us that the contributions of two authors are present here, because this part of Abraham’s story was written by his sons, Ishmael and Isaac.

When we examine the Toledoth structure of this narrative, we find that it concludes with the Toledoth (“family histories”) of Ishmael (Genesis 25:12) and of Isaac (Genesis 25:19). Thus two hands were at work here, Ishmael’s and Isaac’s. They have rendered us two different accounts of the one incident. In fact one perhaps ought to be able to determine which account belongs to whom – presumably the second story, the one pertaining to Abimelech, belongs to the author of the second Toledoth, Isaac – especially since Isaac will later have his own encounter with this Abimelech and Phicol (Genesis 26:1-31). That would mean that the first Toledoth belonged to Ishmael, which again is fitting since Ishmael’s mother was an Egyptian, Hagar (16:1-15; cf. second account, 21:9-21), and the story has an obvious Egyptian flavor.
So here we have the two accounts of the one story. The name Sarai and Abram are correctly used in the first account, but Isaac used their later names, Sarah and Abraham; the names by which he knew them.
The incident must have occurred in pre-dynastic times, after Babel, when the Mizraïmites (from which came the Philistines) were ruling the country, and before its unification.

So my answer is: Yes, the Book of Genesis does name Abram’s Pharaoh.
He is ABIMELECH.
[End of article]

A reader, Ken Griffith, has further confirmed the merging of “Pharaoh” with “Abimelech”, when kindly providing the following chiastic structure, respectively B and B’, for this part of the Book of Genesis:

Genesis 12-

A - Promise, Test (leave father's house), Worship
Promise of Blessing
Leave and go to another land.
Abraham & Lot Depart
Promise of Land
Builds Altar

B - Crisis, Attack, Conflict, Child

1 - Attack on Woman (Pharoah)
Famine
Goes down to Egypt
Call yourself my sister
Plagues
Abram leaves with wealth

2 - Crisis with Lot and Canaanites ( Sodom plundered )

Abraham "comes up" from Egypt
Great Wealth
Parts the land with Lot
God promises all the Land he can see.
dwelt by Terebinth trees of Mamre
Amraphel 4 kings invade
Abram Rescues Lot
Melchizedek blesses Abram
Bread and Wine
Plunderestored

3 - Promise Hagar Sarah Conflict I

Vision "I am your shield and reward"
Abram - I have no children
Your descendants shall be as stars
Proof of giving land
Covenant with halved animals
Prophesy of Egyptian bondage
God goes between pieces
Promise of land from Nile to Euphrates

Sarai No children
Gives Hagar in 10th year
Child Conceived
Hagar offends Sarai

Hagar flees pregnant, prophecy of Ishmael
Hagar returns, bears Ishmael, Abram 86

C.

Abram 99, God makes new covenant
Abram -> Abraham, father many nations, very fruitful
Circumcision
Sarai -> Sarah, will have son
Abraham circumcised Ishmael, and household

B' – Crisis, Attack, Conflict, Child (Sodom destroyed)

2'. Crisis with Lot and Canaanites
Lord appears by terebinth trees of Mamre, judgment on Sodom
Son will appear in a year
Sarah laughs, his name shall be laughter (Isaac)

Abraham intercedes for Sodom
If there were 50 I would save it.
If there are 10 I would save it.
God & Abraham depart

Angels enter Sodom
Lot gives lodging
Men of City demand men
Angels blind them
Angels say, collect your family
Son in laws don't listen
Lot flees with family
Lot escapes to Zoar
God overthrows cities
Lot's wife turned to vapor
Abraham goes to where he had met with God
Sodom and Gomorrah and plain smoking like furnace
God remembered Abraham and delivered Lot

Lot with his daughters
Birth of Moab and Ammon

1' - Attack on Woman II leading to Child (Abimelech -> Isaac)
Abraham journeys South (goes down), delt between Kadesh and Shur
"she is my sister"

Abimelech King of Gerar sends for Sarah
God warns in dream
Abimelech judges Abraham sends him away with money.

Lord visits Sarah as promised,
Sarah conceived and bore Abraham a son, at set time.
Abraham calls his son Isaac.
Abraham circumcised Isaac.
Sarah rejoices.

3.' [ Promise + Sarah -> Hagar conflict II ] (This time Hagar gets the promise.)
Child weaned and feasted.
Ishmael scoffed and sent away.
Hagar meets God again in desert.
God promises great nation to Ishmael
Hagar finds water and gets a wife for her son from Egypt.

Abraham makes a covenant with Abimelech
Abraham finds his own well of water at Beersheeba.
Abraham planted a tamarisk tree in Beersheba, in land of Philistines.

A' Promise, Test, Worship
God calls Abraham, tells him to go to Land of Moriah
Abraham goes.
God tests him with Isaac.
Builds Altar
Abraham obeys.
God promises many descendants, stars of heaven and seashore, possess gates of enemies. Blessing.
Abraham returns to Beersheba and dwelt there.
[End of chiasmus]

B. 1 and B’. 1’ merge beautifully with “Pharaoh” in B. 1 reflecting “Abimelech in B’. 1’.
I should like to take this even a bit further and propose that this Abimelech, was a son of the man after whom Egypt was named, Mizraïm (or Egypt), a son of Ham (Genesis 10:6) - that the name Abimelech (thought to mean “father of the king”) is the same as Lehabim, the third son of Mizraïm (10:13). Lehabim, in turn, is often considered to have been the father of the Libyans.
This people was at least related to the Philistines (10:14).
The Libyans were later to be a leading group amongst the Indo-European tribes of “Sea Peoples” who attacked Egypt at the time of Ramses III (see Chapter Eighteen). One of these tribes was called Shikelesh. Now, in association with Abimelech was his commander, Phicol. And Abram had an ally called Eshcol (14:13). If Phicol and Eshcol be the same commander, then the amalgam, Phi-col-esh, reads very much like Shikelesh.

Finally, for a tentative identification of Mizraïm in the historical records, I should suggest an early king of Ur, the little known, Mesilim (Mesarim = Mizraïm?). Historians are coming to think that this Mesilim is the far better known Mesopotamian potentate, Mesa-anni-padda.

Abram and Mesopotamia
I had also concluded, like Rohl - based on Herb Stock’s “The Early Assyrian King List, The Genealogy of the Hammurapi Dynasty, and the ‘Greater Amorite’ Tradition”, Proceedings of the Third Seminar of C&AH held in Parma, Ohio, and Ontario, Canada, 1986, pp. 43-50 - that the four coalitional kings had belonged to the sophisticated Ur III dynasty (c. 2120 BC, conventional dating) of Mesopotamia, and that the biblical “King Amraphel of Shinar” (Genesis 14:1) was Amar-sin of that same Ur III.

I now reject both of these conclusions, regarding Abram and Egypt and Abram and Mesopotamia. I consider that both the 10th dynasty of Egypt and the Ur III dynasty of Sumer to have been way too late (especially in the latter case) for the time of Abram (even though Rohl had made a compelling case for a linguistic identification between Amraphel and Amar-sin).
In more recent times I had come to the view that Ur III was many centuries after Abram-Abraham. But that now left a gaping hole in my historical reconstruction of this era. Here is what I recently wrote as a result this new view of things (whilst still, at this stage, holding to the Khety-as-Abram’s-pharaoh view):

Until very recently [since dropping the Ur III = time of Abram idea], I had absolutely no idea who were the four coalitional kings of Abram’s era, revised: namely, Amraphel of Shinar; Arioch of Elasar; Chedorlaomer of Elam and Tidal of Goi-im (Genesis 14:1), except for a tradition that Amraphel was Nimrod (our Enmer-kar) himself (of many names and identities as we have read), though some tradition also has his father Cush as Amraphel. This tenuous clue had led me at least to substitute the era of Uruk I (Enmerkar’s) for the Ur III period that I had come to reject for Abram. But not to be able to find any of the other kings (though the Tudija named above by Herb Storck is like the name of one of these kings, Tidal), was extremely disappointing. It was the major hole in this entire reconstruction of history. Then, however, I read on the Internet that king Hammurabi himself had referred back to three of these kings. Here is the relevant part of the article:

Sunday, September 26, 2010

Biblical Amraphel Was Not Abraham But Lived Much Earlier

Taken from "The Wars of Gods and Men":
http://www.bibliotecapleyades.net/sitchin/sitchinbooks03_05.htm

Chapter Thirteen
ABRAHAM: THE FATEFUL YEARS

And it came to pass
in the days of Amraphel king of Shin’ar,
Ariokh king of Ellasar,
Khedorla’omer king of Elam,
and Tidhal king of Go’im -
That these made war
with Bera King of Sodom,
and with Birsha king of Gomorrah,
Shinab king of Admah,
and Shem-eber king of Zebi’im,
and with the king of Bela, which is Zoar.

"Thus begins the biblical tale, in chapter 14 of Genesis, of an ancient war that pitted an alliance of four kingdoms of the East against five kings in Canaan. It is a tale that has evolved some of the most intense debate among scholars, for it connects the story of Abraham, the first Hebrew Patriarch, with a specific non-Hebrew event, and thus affords objective substantiation of the biblical record of the birth of a nation.

"....For many decades the critics of the Old Testament seemed to prevail; then, as the nineteenth century was drawing to a close, the scholarly and religious worlds were astounded by the discovery of Babylonian tablets naming Khedorla’omer, Ariokh, and Tidhal in a tale not unlike the biblical one.

"The discovery was announced in a lecture by Theophilus Pinches to the Victoria Institute, London, in 1897. Having examined several tablets belonging to the Spartoli Collection in the British Museum, he found that they describe a war of wide-ranging magnitude, in which a king of Elam, Kudur-laghamar, led an alliance of rulers that included one named Eri-aku and another named Tud-ghula - names that easily could have been transformed into Hebrew as Khedor-la’omer, Ariokh, and Tidhal. Accompanying his published lecture with a painstaking transcript of the cuneiform writing and a translation thereof, Pinches could confidently claim that the biblical tale had indeed been supported by an independent Mesopotamian source.

"With justified excitement the Assyriologists of that time agreed with Pinches reading of the cuneiform names. The tablets indeed spoke of "Kudur-Laghamar, king of the land of Elam"; all scholars agreed that it was a perfect Elamite royal name, the prefix Kudur ("Servant") having been a component in the names of several Elamite kings, and Laghamar being the Elamite epithet-name for a certain deity. It was agreed that the second name, spelled Eri-e-a-ku in the Babylonian cuneiform script, stood for the original Sumerian ERI.AKU, meaning "Servant of the god Aku," Aku being a variant of the name of Nannar/Sin. It is known from a number of inscriptions that Elamite rulers of Larsa bore the name "Servant of Sin," and there was therefore little difficulty in agreeing that the biblical Eliasar, the royal city of the king Ariokh, was in fact Larsa. There was also unanimous agreement among the scholars for accepting that the Babylonian text’s Tud-ghula was the equivalent of the biblical "Tidhal, king of Go’im"; and they agreed that by Go’im the Book of Genesis referred to the "nation-hordes" whom the cuneiform tablets listed as allies of Khedorla’omer.

"Here, then, was the missing proof - not only of the veracity of the Bible and of the existence of Abraham, but also of an international event in which he had been involved!

"....The second discovery was announced by Vincent Scheil, who reported that he had found among the tablets in the Imperial Ottoman Museum in Constantinople a letter from the well-known Babylonian King Hammurabi, which mentions the very same Kudur-laghamar! Because the letter was addressed to a king of Larsa, Father Scheil concluded that the three were contemporaries and thus matched three of the four biblical kings of the East - Hammurabi being none other than "Amraphael king of Shin’ar."

"....However, when subsequent research convinced most scholars that Hammurabi reigned much later (from 1792 to 1750 B.C., according to The Cambridge Ancient History), the synchronization seemingly achieved by Scheil fell apart, and the whole bearing of the discovered inscriptions - even those reported by Pinches - came into doubt. Ignored were the pleas of Pinches that no matter with whom the three named kings were to be identified - that even if Khedorla’omer, Ariokh, and Tidhal of the cuneiform texts were not contemporaries of Hammurabi - the text’s tale with its three names was still "a remarkable historical coincidence, and deserves recognition as such." In 1917, Alfred Jeremias (Die sogenanten Kedorlaomer-Texte) attempted to revive interest in the subject; but the scholarly community preferred to treat the Spartoli tablets with benign neglect.

"....Yet the scholarly consensus that the biblical tale and the Babylonian texts drew on a much earlier, common source impels us to revive the plea of Pinches and his central argument: How can cuneiform texts, affirming the biblical background of a major war and naming three of the biblical kings, be ignored? Should the evidence - crucial, as we shall show, to the understanding of fateful years - be discarded simply because Amraphel was not Hammurabi?

"The answer is that the Hammurabi letter found by Scheil should not have sidetracked the discovery reported by Pinches, because Scheil misread the letter. According to his rendition, Hammurabi promised a reward to Sin-Idinna, the king of Larsa, for his "heroism on the day of Khedorla’omer." This implied that the two were allies in a war against Khedorla’omer and thus contemporaries of that king of Elam.

It was on this point that Scheil’s find was discredited, for it contradicted both the biblical assertion that the three kings were allies and known historical facts: Hammurabi treated Larsa not as an ally but as an adversary, boasting that he "overthrew Larsa in battle," and attacked its sacred precinct "with the mighty weapon which the gods had given him."

"A close examination of the actual text of Hammurabi’s letter reveals that in his eagerness to prove the Hammurabi-Amraphel identification, Father Scheil reversed the letter’s meaning: Hammurabi was not offering as a reward to return certain goddesses to the sacred precinct (the Emutbal) of Larsa; rather, he was demanding their return to Babylon from Larsa.

"....The incident of the abduction of the goddesses had thus occurred in earlier times; they were held captive in the Emutbal "from the days of Khedorla’omer"; and Hammurabi was now demanding their return to Babylon, from where Khedorla’omer had taken them captive. This can only mean that Khedorla’omer’s days were long before Hammurabi’s time.

"Supporting our reading of the Hammurabi letter found by Father Scheil in the Constantinople Museum is the fact that Hammurabi repeated the demand for the return of the goddesses to Babylon in yet another stiff message to Sin-Idinna, this time sending it by the hand of high military officers. This second letter is in the British Museum (No. 23,131) and its text was published by L.W. King in The Letters and Inscriptions of Hammurabi.

"....That the goddesses were to be returned from Larsa to Babylon is made clear in the letter’s further instructions.

"....It is thus clear from these letters that Hammurabi - a foe, not an ally, of Larsa - was seeking restitution for events that had happened long before his time, in the days of Kudur-Laghamar, the Elamite regent of Larsa. The texts of the Hammurabi letters thus affirm the existence of Khedorla-omer and of Elamite reign in Larsa ("Ellasar") and thus of key elements in the biblical tale. ….

End of article]

Amraphel himself may still be Nimrod as according to some traditions.

Now to Egypt.
Again, whilst still holding to the Khety-as-Abram’s-pharaoh scenario, I had sought an identification of Abraham himself in the historical records. And I came to conclude tentatively that Abraham, Isaac and Jacob were shepherd kings, or ‘Hyksos”. Here is a part of my reasoning:

Abram-Abraham became a rich and powerful man, strong enough to rout a coalition of raider kings. One would thus expect that there would be evidences of him from Egypt to Mesopotamia, despite his being nomadic.
The Book of Jasher (14:1-33) tells of a supposed contemporary of Abraham’s an intellectual from Shinar by the name of Rikayon, who went to Egypt and contributed to Egyptian learning, just as extra-biblical stories (e.g. Josephus above) say about Abraham. My new suggestion is that this Rikayon was in fact Abram-Abraham himself and that the kayon element in the name may derive from Khyan, a “Hyksos” or “Shepherd King” (as would befit Abraham); Khyan being a somewhat shadowy figure, but one nonetheless of very wide-ranging influence, who, according to N. Grimal (op. cit., p. 188):

[Khayan, Khyan or Khian]… cannot be said to have ruled an actual empire, although his name appears frequently – not only in Egypt, on an architectural fragment at Gebelein and at Bubastis, but also in foreign countries, on a stone vessel in the palace at Knossos [Island of Crete], scarabs and seal impressions in Palestine and a granite lion at Baghdad.

Khyan, of the 15th Egyptian dynasty (Hyksos, foreign rule) is currently thought to date to c. 1610-1580 BC.
The Danish Egyptologist, Kim Ryholt, who published an extensive catalogue of the monuments of all the numerous pharaohs of the Second Intermediate Period notes an important personal detail regarding this king's family. He states that (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Khyan):

…. a stela set up in Avaris contains the nomen and prenomen of Khayan and a now lost dedication … below which are inscribed the title and name of the Eldest King's Son Yanassi. The association of Khayan with those of his eldest son upon this stela suggests that the latter in fact was his designated successor, as also implied by his title.[1]

[End of quote]

If Abraham be Khayan, as I most tentatively suggest, then his son and designated successor, Yanassi, must be Isaac. Certainly the name, Khayan, appears to be Amorite, as was Abraham’s. “Ryholt notes that the name, Khyan, generally has been "interpreted as Amorite Hayanu (reading h-ya-a-n) which the Egyptian form represents perfectly, and this is in all likelihood the correct interpretation." [5]” And again, “The name Hayanu is recorded in the Assyrian king lists—see "Khorsabad List I, 17 and the SDAS List, I, 16"--"for a remote ancestor of Shamshi-Adad I (c.1800 BC [sic])."[5] Khyan's name is transcribed as Staan in Africanus' version of Manetho's Epitome”.
Abram, as Khayan-Hayanu, could thus now be the Hanu (= Henoch/Enoch?) listed as No. 10 of the “17 Assyrian tent dwellers” in Herb Storck’s above-mentioned article.
The 15th dynasty, comprised of foreign names, such as Sharek, Yaqub-Har and Khyan, may then be, in part, Abraham’s very own dynasty, that God promised would become so numerous. Elsewhere I have identified Sharek as Sharrukin, Sargon the Great, and, following Dean Hickman, as (Sargon of Akkad =) Cushan-rishathaim.