Quasi-royal influence of Joseph, Haman, and prophet Daniel, all entitled “Father”

 

by

 Damien F. Mackey

  

Just as Joseph the Dreamer was like the Sun, obfuscating the light of his parents and brothers (Genesis 37:9), so did his quasi-royal power, and that of Haman and Daniel, at times, even seem to overshadow, or usurp, that of the Pharaoh/king.

  

This is based on my most recent article:

 

King Nabonidus may have thought of wise Daniel, Nabu-balatsu-iqbi, as his “father”

 

(7) King Nabonidus may have thought of wise Daniel, Nabu-balatsu-iqbi, as his "father"

 

It was customary for ancient kings to refer to their wise mentors and counsellors, their second-in-command, as “Father”.

 

Here, I just want to reflect upon the enormous power and/or influence exerted by three high officials known as “Father”: viz. Joseph of Egypt; Haman; and the prophet Daniel.

 

Just as Joseph the Dreamer was like the Sun, obfuscating the light of his parents and brothers (Genesis 37:9), so did his quasi-royal power, and that of Haman and Daniel, at times, seem even to overshadow, or usurp, that of the Pharaoh/king.

 

Joseph

 

Joseph, son of Jacob, was apparently, in his character and temperament, rather different from the extremely mild Moses (Numbers 12:3): “Now Moses was a very humble man, more humble than anyone else on the face of the earth”.

 

Moses, of many different historical guises (alter egos), had tasted total power as Pharaoh - as Userkare of Egypt’s Sixth Dynasty - but decided that he did not want that (cf. Hebrews 11:24-25), and so he abdicated.

 

Joseph, also of many different historical guises (alter egos), ruled as a virtual Pharaoh, for instance, as Den (Udimu) of Egypt’s First Dynasty, who bore a royal cartouche.

 

On this, see my article:

 

Joseph also as Den, ‘he who brings water’

 

(11) Joseph also as Den, 'he who brings water'

 

And as Ankhtifi, the saviour of Egypt from a protracted Famine, Joseph even seemed to have excluded Pharaoh entirely. 

 

Previously I wrote on this (and note how dramatically he contrasts with the mild Moses):

 

Just who was this incredible character like no other, the mysterious Ankhtifi?

 

I asked this question right at the end of my recent article:

 

Egypt’s high official, Ankhtifi, outboasts even great Senenmut

 

(4) Egypt’s high official, Ankhtifi, outboasts even great Senenmut | Damien Mackey - Academia.edu

 

Who, indeed, was Ankhtifi, a high official of Egypt, seemingly a quasi-Pharaoh (see “ruled like a pharaoh” below), who, in his Autobiography, did not even bother to observe standard Egyptian protocol by mentioning the current Pharaoh?

Which means that Egyptologists cannot be exactly sure when Ankhtifi lived.

 

Bearing a host of impressive titles, Anhktifi - or whoever wrote his Autobiography - boasted of his having been like no other man ever born:

 

“I am a man without equal …. I am the front of people and the

back of people because (my) like will not exist; he will not exist.

(My) like could not have been born; he was not born”.

 

Could Ankhtifi have been the renowned Joseph, who likewise was front and centre involved in a terrible Famine?

Certainly Ankhtifi’s claim to have been the greatest ever to have been born seems to be echoed in the sage Sirach’s short praise of Joseph (Sirach 49:15):

 

“Nor was anyone ever born like Joseph …”.

Haman

 

Joseph, who was righteous, pure and honourable, and a faithful servant of the Lord, may also have inherited some of his father Jacob’s cunning, and that’s alright (Matthew 10:16): ‘Behold, I send you out as sheep in the midst of wolves; so be shrewd as serpents and innocent as doves’, was nothing, however, like the conspiratorial Haman, and his perhaps even shrewder wife:

 

Haman and his shrewd wife, Zeresh, remind us of Ahab and wife, Jezebel

 

(4) Haman and his shrewd wife, Zeresh, remind us of Ahab and wife, Jezebel

 

Right at the beginning, the machiavellian Haman had been involved in a conspiracy against King Ahasuerus (Xerxes) that was foiled by Mordecai. And this was one of the reasons for Haman’s fierce resentment against Mordecai. Haman had been planning to overthrow the Medo-Persian kingdom and return it to the Babylonians.

Some texts wrongly say “Macedonians” (Esther 16:13-14):

 

For with certain new and unheard of devices he hath sought the destruction of Mardochai [Mordecai], by whose fidelity and good services our life was saved, and of Esther the partner of our kingdom, with all their nation:

Thinking that after they were slain, he might work treason against us left alone without friends, and might transfer the kingdom of the Persians to the Macedonians.

 

Haman had weasled his way into respect and had thus completely captivated the admiration and hearts of the King and the people (vv. 10-12):

 

Now that you may more plainly understand what we say, Aman [Haman] the son of Amadathi [Hammedatha], a Macedonian [sic] both in mind and country, and having nothing of the Persian blood, but with his cruelty staining our goodness, was received being a stranger by us:

And found our humanity so great towards him, that he was called our father, and was worshipped by all as the next man after the king:

But he was so far puffed up with arrogancy, as to go about to deprive us of our kingdom and life.

 

This “father” of the Medo-Persians even authored a conspiratorial edict (decree) on behalf of the king, who gave Haman his signet ring (3:8-10):

 

Then Haman said to King Xerxes, ‘There is a certain people dispersed among the peoples in all the provinces of your kingdom who keep themselves separate. Their customs are different from those of all other people, and they do not obey the king’s laws; it is not in the king’s best interest to tolerate them. If it pleases the king, let a decree be issued to destroy them, and I will give ten thousand talents of silver to the king’s administrators for the royal treasury’.

So the king took his signet ring from his finger and gave it to Haman son of Hammedatha, the Agagite [Captive], the enemy of the Jews.

 

Contrast this with, the albeit shrewd, Joseph, who greatly respected his superiors and who would do nothing dishonourable against them, e.g. in the case of Potipher’s wife.

 

Joseph, was highly honoured by the ruler just as Haman would later be, but Joseph’s exaltation did nothing to harm the country in which he abode as a foreigner, unlike the foreign Haman, who intended to use his power to bring down the King and the Jews.

 

Daniel

 

The wise and holy Daniel was historically (as Nabu-balatsu-iqbi, see article above) called “father” by the eccentric and superstitious king, Nabonidus (Nebuchadnezzar).

 

So wise was he (cf. Ezekiel 28:3: “Are you wiser than Daniel? Is no secret hidden from you?”), having not only interpreted the King’s Dream, but having actually recalled it for the King (Daniel 2), that King Nebuchadnezzar fell down and virtually worshipped Daniel.

 

Once again, as with Joseph and Haman, the superior-ranked ruler was lowering himself before the inferior-ranked official.

 

Daniel 2:46-47:

Then King Nebuchadnezzar fell prostrate before Daniel and paid him honor and ordered that an offering and incense be presented to him. The king said to Daniel, ‘Surely your God is the God of gods and the Lord of kings and a revealer of mysteries, for you were able to reveal this mystery’.

Neanderthals were not a different species

 

 

“… some human populations such as Australian aboriginals indeed share with archaic humans like Neanderthals a robust skull with pronounced brow ridges, which [led] Darwin’s bulldog, Thomas Huxley (in Lyell 1863), to compare

them with Neanderthals”.

 Günter Bechly

 

 

This comes as no surprise whatsoever to me (Damien Mackey).

See e.g. my articles:

 

Neanderthals need to be re-written

 

(5) Neanderthals need to be rewritten

 

Messing with the Neanderthals

 

(5) Messing with the Neanderthals

 

Neanderthals could speak

 

(5) Neanderthals could speak

 

See also Dr. Jack Cuozzo’s book (Buried Alive).

 

We read at:

New Evidence for Human Nature of Neanderthals | Science and Culture Today

 

Fossil Friday: New Evidence for the Human Nature of Neanderthals

_{Günter Bechly}

_{February 2, 2024}

 

The reconstruction of Neanderthal appearance and behavior has quite a checkered history. After an initial controversy over whether the fossils really represent ancient humans or just malformed modern humans, Neanderthals were described in 1864 as distinct hominin species, Homo neanderthalensis. For a long time they were considered as brutish cavemen with a club and almost gorilla-like appearance.

 

Then the scientific opinion shifted and Neanderthals were more and more recognized as human-like and even as geniuses of the ice age (Husemann 2005, Finlayson 2019), based on an avalanche of new evidence for complex human behavior (Nowell 2023, Vernimmen 2023). We now know that Neanderthals used fire (Angelucci et al. 2023), buried their dead (Balzeau et al. 2020, Dockdrill 2020), created stone circles (Jaubert et al. 2016, Callaway 2016) and bone tools (Soressi et al. 2013), made jewellery from eagle talons (Radovčić et al. 2015, Rodríguez-Hidalgo et al. 2019) and used feathers as body decoration (Peresani et al. 2011, Finlayson et al. 2012), made cave art with paintings and engravings (Rodríguez-Vidal et al. 2014, Hoffmann et al. 2018a, Marquet et al. 2023), played music with bone flutes (Turk et al. 2018), used ochre as pigment (Roebroeks et al. 2012, Hoffmann et al. 2018b) and sophisticated fibre technology (Hardy et al. 2020), produced flour from processed plants (Mariotti Lippi et al. 2023), dived for seafood (Villa et al. 2020), cooked food and self-medicated with herbal painkillers and antibiotics (Hardy et al. 2012, Weyrich et al. 2017), and even produced glue from birch bark with a complex chemical procedure (Blessing & Schmidt 2021, Schmidt et al. 2023).

 

New Anatomic Data

 

But it is not just new evidence for Neanderthal behavior that overturned our previous crude image of Neanderthals as dumb brutes, but also new anatomic data. Contrary to earlier beliefs, more recent studies have demonstrated a fully upright posture with typical human spinal curvature called lordosis (Haeusler et al. 2019). The latter authors concluded that “after more than a century of alternative views, it should be apparent that there is nothing in Neandertal pelvic or vertebral morphology that rejects their possession of spinal curvatures well within the ranges of variation of healthy recent humans.” 

 

There even exists compelling new evidence for hearing and speech capacities (Conde-Valverde et al. 2021), which “demonstrates that the Neanderthals possessed a communication system that was as complex and efficient as modern human speech” (Starr 2021).

 

Correlated with this fundamental rethinking of Neanderthals (Nowell 2023) in terms of their anatomy, culture, and mental capabilities, their classification has also changed over time. At first they were considered as a different species, Homo neanderthalensis, then they were just considered as a subspecies of modern humans, Homo sapiens, and since the late 1990s again as “an unambiguously demarcated morphospecies” (Tattersall & Schwartz 2006; also see Harvati et al. 2004, Márquez et al. 2014, and Wynn et al. 2016). The new field of paleogenomics brought insight into their DNA (Green et al. 2010), which was considered as sufficiently dissimilar to warrant a separate species status again (Clarke 2016), even though there was also evidence for hybridization and genetic admixture with modern humans (Meneganzin & Bernardi 2023). Paleogeneticist and Nobel laureate Svante Pääbo (2014) called the controversy of the species status of Neanderthals as unresolvable, because of the arbitrariness and fuzziness of species concepts (also see Meneganzin & Bernardi 2023, Nowell 2023, and Stringer 2023). The controversy still continues as is evident from a recent article titled “Are Neanderthals and Homo sapiens the same species?” (Heidt 2023), which discusses the fact that “scientists have been vollying the question back and forth for more than a century”. Nowell (2023) wrote: “From their initial discovery until today, Neandertals have shifted between “being recognized as human or being pushed to the constitutive outside of humanness,” what Drell (2000, p. 15) describes as “the oscillating dichotomy of Same and Other.”

 

Of course, the undeniable evidence for significant and common genetic admixture (Kuhlwilm et al. 2016, Villanea & Schraiber 2019, Callaway 2021), which makes up 1-4 percent of the modern human genome (Reilly et al. 2022), would suggest that Neanderthals and modern humans shared a common gene pool and belonged to the same biospecies. Even the skeptic and ID opponent Michael Shermer (2010) agreed in an article for Scientific American that the genomic evidence suggests that our Neanderthal brethren were not a separate species. Strong reproductive isolation barriers that limited the amount of introgression were proposed by Overmann & Coolidge (2013), but many experts remain unconvinced. Paleoanthropologist Bence Viola from the University of Toronto said (quoted in Vernimmen 2023): “Homo sapiens clearly recognized Neanderthals as mating partners, which suggests they thought of them as humans — maybe ‘the weird guys living behind the mountains,’ but still, fellow humans.”

 

But what do we make of the anatomical differences between Neanderthals and modern humans? Don’t they support a separate species status? Actually, this would not follow even if the differences lay outside the range of variability of modern humans, because that is also the case in many other subspecies of living animals. However, some human populations such as Australian aboriginals indeed share with archaic humans like Neanderthals a robust skull with pronounced brow ridges, which [led] Darwin’s bulldog, Thomas Huxley (in Lyell 1863), to compare them with Neanderthals.

 

Of course this also had some typical Darwinist racist connotations. Just like Neanderthals, native Australians were considered primitive and inferior. Nevertheless, the similarities are real and have been confirmed by modern anatomical studies (e.g., Wolpoff & Caspari 1996), which concluded that “the interpretation of Neanderthals as a different species is very unlikely.” ….

 

 

Richard Erickson has thrown textbook Elam into Bedlam

 

 

Fig. 2 – Application of Prof. Steinkeller’s route to an experimental Anatolian context

 

“However despite this work, no city on this route beyond Der has ever been found, excavated, correlated with modern towns or ruins, or otherwise precisely located

in western Iran where they are supposed to be. There are no accurate points of latitude and longitude or modern geographic coordinates”.

 Richard Erickson

 

Another brilliant geographical article by Richard Erickson on this subject (2023):

 

The Great Trans-Elam Highway: Travel, Trade and Warfare Between Elam and Ur III Sumeria (2119 BC -2004 BC

 

(6) The Great Trans-Elam Highway: Travel, Trade and Warfare Between Elam and Ur III Sumeria (2119 BC -2004 BC

 

Richard Erickson has written (pp. 2-6):

 

….

 

Overview of Professor Steinkeller’s Route.  Ancient Elam had a long common border with the area later called Babylonia, which included the Ur III lands of Sumeria and Akkad.  There were two ways to access Elam from Babylonia; by land or by a combination of land and water.  The water route was across the Persian Gulf to Elamite seaports, and thence by canal to the major inland port cities of the Susian flatlands, an area now called Khuzhistan. 

 

This paper will first address in detail an important land-only route, defined by Prof. Steinkeller in his works, which extended from Nippur in Sumeria, crossed the border region and the Zagros mountains onto the Iranian plateau, eventually reaching the furthest end of Elam. This was the city and region of Šimaški, said to reach all the way to the “Northern Sea,” which Steinkeller interprets as a reference to the Caspian Sea.[1]  He provides a list of the cities and geographic features that reads like an itinerary for military, trade and diplomatic travel.  It consists of the following points:

 

Nippur                                                          An important Sumerian city; An administrative and religious center

Urusagrig                                                    A major stopping place on the road from Nippur to Elam

Der                                                                A border town between Sumeria and Elam, between Nippur and Harsi                     

Harsi                                                             A starting point for the arduous journey across the Zagros Mts., located in the foothills between the Elamite lowlands of Susiana and the high ranges of the Zagros.

Mt. Abullat, “The Gates”                      A high pass in the Zagros, the best and most used of the few available.  Suitable for armies, trade in bulk, and diplomats alike

Kimas                                                           A valuable mining town and region where copper and other precious metals and minerals were mined and exported, creating fabulous wealth by the standards of the day.  It was located on the far downslope of the Zagros or beyond on the Iranian/Elamite Plateau.  It was the object of several wars between Elam and the Ur III empire, and was a major control point for the entire route

Hurti                                                              An important city on the route very near Kimas

 

 

 

Huhunuri                                                     A major point on the route, considered to be the “doorway” to Anšan and a logical point on the road section for travel between Kimas/Hurti and Anšan

Anšan                                                           A major Elamite regional power and sometimes capital, known to be adjacent to, or between, Huhunuri and Šimaški

Šimaški                                                       Another regional Elamite power and sometimes capital, adjacent to Anšan on one side and the “Northern Sea” on the other

Zabšali                                                         A vassal state of Šimašk at the end of the road, also near the “Northern Sea”

 

This proposed route and itinerary is approximated by this author in Fig. 1 below, based on Steinkeller’s information and analysis, applied to a Western Iranian context as Steinkeller intended.  However it represents an interpretation of Steinkeller’s data by the author of this paper only.  For instance, Professor Steinkeller would most likely not agree with the author’s proposed location of Anšan and Huhunuri on the map.

 

Fig. 1 – The author’s interpretation of Prof. Steinkeller’s proposed land route from Nippur to the furthest point of Elam in a West Iranian geographic context

 

Comments Based on Prof. Steinkeller’s analysis and the accompanying map.

 

1.      This illustrates clearly  that a documented route of travel started in Nippur, proceeded via Urusagrig, and thence all the way to Zabšali across the length of Elam.

 

2.      Mt. Abullat was a mountain, a pass through the Zagros, and also the name of a particular mountain range within the Zagros.[2]

 

3.      Kimas and Hurti were very close together, documented as one place with no differentiation between them, other than Kimas was a source of copper.

 

4.      A close connection or geographic relationship between Kimas/Hurti and Huhunuri is not stated explicitly, but clearly implied by Steinkeller’s quote of Elamite King Puzur- Inshushinak, who states that he passed through Huhunuri with his army on the way from Anšan to conquer Kimas and Hurti, travelling of course in the opposite direction from that described from a Sumerian perspective.[3]

 

5.      The connection between Huhunuri and Anšan was quite certain, as Sumerian documents named Huhunuri as the “Lock of Anšan.” [4]

 

6.      From Steinkeller’s discussions of the physical and political relationships between Anšan, Šimaški and Zabšali, I conclude that during the period in question both Anšan and Zabšali were usually subordinates within a “Greater” Šimaški, and sometimes independent, but always adjacent to the core Šimaški territory.  Šimaški was generally, but not always, the dominant region in all of Elam. Anšan and Zabšali were political rivals. The geographic order of these city states at the far end of the route was Anšan – Šimaški – Zabšali.[5]

 

The existence of this route, and the order of the itinerary depicted, are very well supported by analysis provided three of Prof. Steinkeller’s papers, and are in the opinion of this author totally valid.  These papers are listed in the bibliography and referenced in the footnotes to this paper.  All of them draw heavily on original Ur III documents on military, trade, and diplomatic matters.  One additional document was authored by Puzur-Inshushinak, the great Elamite unifier and bane of the Akaddo-Sumerians.  Putting together all this data and synthesizing the route is an amazing accomplishment.  The historical knowledge that one city was on the way to another city, and so on, is of great value in itself.

 

However despite this work, no city on this route beyond Der has ever been found, excavated, correlated with modern towns or ruins, or otherwise precisely located in western Iran where they are supposed to be.  There are no accurate points of latitude and longitude or modern geographic coordinates. 

 

They have been roughly guessed at based on intelligent analysis, but the actual location of this route and the points along it are totally unknown, except that they are expected to lie somewhere within the overall geography of Elam in southwest Iran.  The same holds true for all but a very few named Elamite cities, among the dozens whose locations are totally unknown. 

 

Applying the route to Anatolia.  The intent for the current paper is to demonstrate how the previously described route developed by Prof. Steinkeller’s analyses fits in very well with an Anatolian location for Elam, and to suggest precise locations for modern cities correlating with the named stations along the route.  To put it more bluntly, the reason that this route, and the cities and features on it, cannot be precisely located in western Iran is that the entire land of Elam itself was not located in Western Iran, but actually in an entirely different part of the Near East: southwestern and southcentral Anatolia.

 

As stated in the Forward to this paper, this thesis is a follow-on to a paper the author posted on Academia.edu over two years ago, entitled “A Problem in Chaldaean and Elamite Geography.” 

 

That paper proposed that both ancient Chaldaea and Elamite place names, identified by Neo-Assyrian kings during extensive and frequent military campaigns in both these nations, were almost entirely unlocated by modern specialists in the areas they were supposed to be, i.e. at the northern end of the Persian Gulf and a large area of southwest Iran.  

 

However these names, or very close approximations to them, turned up by the dozens in a search of northern Syria and southwestern Anatolia, correlating very well with modern Turkish or Syrian place names or their classical, Armenian, or Kurdish equivalents.  For details on the locations of these named cities and their correlated modern equivalents, please see “A Problem in Chaldaean and Elamite Geography” at Academia.edu.

 ….

 

 

 

 

A PROBLEM IN CHALDAEAN AND ELAMITE GEOGRAPHY

 

(7) A PROBLEM IN CHALDAEAN AND ELAMITE GEOGRAPHY

---

[1] Steinkeller, “New Light on Sˇimasˇki and Its Rulers,” 217

[2] Steinkeller, “Puzur-Insusinak at Susa: A Pivotal Episode of Early Elamite History Reconsidered,” 308-310

[3] Steinkeller, “Puzur-Insusinak at Susa: A Pivotal Episode of Early Elamite History Reconsidered,” 294

[4] Steinkeller, “New Light on Sˇimasˇki and Its Rulers,” 223

[5] Steinkeller, “New Light on Sˇimasˇki and Its Rulers,” 217-223