Volume 2, Issue 6
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Volume 2, Issue 6 |
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Archives
Omri Goes to the Dogs: Published: 06/03/2004 Ancient Israel suffered a double death. The Assyrians conquered the land and then deported the people. Then in the judgment of the Bible, specifically the Books of Kings, Israel is condemned as unworthy and deserving of the fate that befell it. Why? As the following tale illustrates, bias and propaganda compounded over the ages can present us with a totally different picture of what was probably the reality of the first Kingdom of Israel. Egyptology and biblical archaeology are disciplines fraught with danger to the novice speculator. They are dangerous even for professionals. For example, modern archaeology was created by the Victorians intent on "illustrating the precepts of the Old Testament." There was never any question that archaeology, as conceived by Amilia Edwards, Reginald Poole and the others of the nineteenth century, was a tool to to illuminate what faith had already shown. Egyptology, for example was not focused on ancient Khemet in and of itself, but rather as a means to illustrate the events described in Exodus. Then towards the end of the 20th century we have an opposing viewpoint that states that the claims of the Tanaakh – the Hebrew Old Testament are pure fantasy. This is not merely an atheistic viewpoint; it is also propagated by Arab nationalists. As a result, objectivity gets thrown out and we end up with unedifying performances such as this by Zahi Hawass, Egypt's chairman of the Supreme Council of Antiquities. (BTW:Let's give the credit where it's due: The Jews did not build the pyramids. Neither did the Arabs. Or the Nubians for that matter. That distinction goes to the ancestors of the Fellahin, Sa3eadi and Baladi peoples of Upper Egypt.) Getting back to our topic: The reader should be familiar with the biblical account of David and Solomon. According to Galil's The Chronology of the Kings of Israel and Judah it was David who defeated the Philistines and Canaanites of the lowlands, conquered Jerusalem and established Israel as a nation around 1005-970 BC. After him, Solomon increased the prestige of Israel and raised Jerusalem into an imperial city dominated by the great Temple that is described so beautifully in 1Kings 6:1 - 6:37 around 970-931 BC. He also builds up the cities of Megiddo, Hazor and Gezer. The problems we encounter from the archaeological finds are these. For the time of David there is no evidence at all for his conquests and his empire. For the time of Solomon there have been no traces discovered of the Temple in Jerusalem, or any type of significant construction at all during the time of Solomon. The building activity at Meggido, Hazor and Gezer that is credited to Solomon doesn't happen until later. What exactly is going on? We do know that a man Dadua was leading a band of Habiru mercenaries agains the Canaanites at this time, according to the El-Amarna letter EA 256 from the British Museum - and we have extra proof from a Syrian stelae commemorating a victory by the King of Damascus over the Israelites where he [the King] boasts of his triumph over the House of David on the field of battle at a later time. So the proof (from other than the Bible) is there that a warlord named Dadua did become King of both Israel and Judah in a time of trouble. However, his reputation has definitely been padded upon retelling, for example; he is given credit for the slaying of the Philistine champion Goliath instead of Elhanan. "...Elhanan son of Jaare-Oregim the Bethlehemite killed Goliath the Gittite, who had a spear with a shaft like a weaver's rod." NIV The whole debate about Elhanan versus David could possibly be straightened out if we went to the original Tanaakh, instead of the Greek and then English translations - but unless someone out there knows a rabbi with one, we will have to keep wrestling with the passages in Samuel and Chronicles... Solomon is problematic. Jerusalem has been excavated over and over again in spite of political issues and the evidence for a tenth century metropolis has not been proven. The conclusions drawn by the director of the Institute of Archaeology at Tel Aviv is: "the most optimistic assessment.. tenth century Jerusalem.. is perhaps not more than a typical hill country village." This is not simply a matter of not finding the fabled Temple, the city itself doesn't exist as described! However, in the upper half of the highlands of Canaan, the fabled lost ten tribes of Israel were busy. After "supposedly" rejecting the rule of Solomon's successor Rehoboam they set about creating a state that became the regional power in the aftermath of Pharoah Sheshonq's destruction of the Canaanite kingdoms. The evidence shows that the under the royal dynasty known as the Omrides, major cities were built on a scale not seen in the Levant before. Samaria, the capital city, was founded around an immense artifical acropolis that covered five acres topped by a large palace complex. Meggido and Hazor, the cities whose fortifications had been incorrectly attributed to Solomon are now linked to this era of the Omrides - and they also have massive fortifications and citadels. Underground shafts carved out beneath the cities provided safe and easy access to the city springs in the event of siege. These palatial hubs were supported by a population estimated at around 350,000, centered mostly in the fertile hill country around Samaria. The survival of Omride Israel depended on horses, chariot power specifically. Pillared buildings have been discovered within the fortifications that are of equal importance and size as the palaces. These have been identified as stables. Megiddo specifically appears to have been a center for horse breeding. In 853 BC, King Shalmaneser III made the first attempt of Assyria to conquer the region. Though his (Shalmaneser) victory monument at the city of Nimrud claims victory against no less than "...2,000 chariots, 10,000 footsoldiers of Ahab the Israelite..." the truth of the matter is Shalmaneser quickly withdrew from the region after the inconclusive battle of Qarqar against Ahab and his allies. Omride Israel took part in the economic upsurge of the area brought about the influence of the Phoenicians and Greeks. This was a rare time in history for the Levant when it was free of imperial domination, whether Egyptian or Messopotamian, and the peoples of the region were able to enjoy their natural wealth and trade connections without interference. However, and most damning in the eyes of the later chroniclers of Judah, there wasn't much difference between Israel and it's Canaanite neighbors. Omri's successor, Ahab married the Phoenician princess Jezebel and openly encouraged worship of the Canaanite deities. More disturbing was the enthusiasm displayed by the Omride Israelites for human sacrifice, a practice that had been renounced by the Jews. When Hiel of Bethel rebuilt Jericho during Ahab's reign he "laid it's foundations at the cost of his youngest son." We can safely assume that the practice of foundation sacrifices was also followed in the construction of the other Omride cities. When the book of Kings was compiled during the reign of King Josiah of Judah, Israel was no more. The Assyrians led by Shalmanesser V had eradicated the northern kingdom of the Jews and led the ten tribes into captivity around 720 BC. The biblical authors were not going to credit the Omrides with creating a powerful and prosperous kingdom because of their practices. Instead the tale became a morality play of sin leading to destruction. Instead the glory was attached to the preceeding reigns of David and Solomon. As for Ahab and his foreign wife, a special fate is prophesized by Elijah the prophet: "Behold, I will bring evil upon you. I will utterly sweep you away... Anyone belonging to Ahab... the dogs shall eat." Ahab dies repulsing a Syrian attack and Fabius Josephus tells the tale: "...they took the dead body of Ahab to Samaria, and buried it there; but when they had washed his chariot in the fountain of Jezreel, which was bloody with the dead body of the king, they acknowledged that the prophecy of Elijah was true, for the dogs licked his blood, and the harlots continued afterwards to wash themselves in that fountain." Fabius Josephus, Antiquities of the Jews, Book VIII, Chapter 16, section 6 and "...Now when Jehu was come to Jezreel, Jezebel adorned herself and stood upon a tower, and said, he was a fine servant that had killed his master! And when he looked up to her, he asked who she was, and commanded her to come down to him. At last he ordered the eunuchs to throw her down from the tower; and being thrown down, she be-sprinkled the wall with her blood, and was trodden upon by the horses, and so died. When this was done, Jehu came to the palace with his friends, and took some refreshment after his journey, both with other things, and by eating a meal. He also bid his servants to take up Jezebel and bury her, because of the nobility of her blood, for she was descended from kings; but those that were appointed to bury her found nothing else remaining but the extreme parts of her body, for all the rest were eaten by dogs." Fabius Josephus, Antiquities of the Jews, Book IX, Chapter 6, section 4 Follow-up on Lake Chad I'm looking at "The History Atlas of Africa" as I write, this reference book has lots of nice maps and illustrations covering all of African history from the first humans to the latest developments. However, each and every map of the African continent that is presented in the atlas shows only the environmental reality of our present time. Lake Chad, one of the topics of the last article, remains fixed throughout all the maps - no expansion or contraction is taken into account and the inland sea "five times the size of the Caspian" is firmly relegated to the status of mythology and ignored. What a shame. In the last two thousand years Lake Chad has gone through some dramatic changes, and may soon go through the greatest change of all - by disappearing due to continuing droughts and over irrigation. I now find myself referring back to my own article "Krakatau version 1.0, Part 3" to back up this point. Sure enough, even though I was more focused on the side effects of a wetter African climate, I do note weather patterns that would have had an impact on the Sahel region of Africa. "The climactic change brought not only immediate drought, but was then followed by increased rainfall to regions that were normally dry. The climate change brought about by the volcanic eruption of Kapi Krakatau in 536 AD would have been an aberration of perhaps decades. A far greater environmental impact on the size of Lake Chad would have been brought about by longer term climactic changes such as the Little Ice Age of 1550-1700 when the average temperature in Europe dropped by one to three degrees. Unfortunately, I have found little or no research on the effects of African weather and climate at this time so I can't verify that statement... Update: Yes I can: The following is from this site:
So we can safely say that Lake Chad could have indeed qualified at various times as an inland sea. It would be nice to have some more of the historical data used by Sharon Nicholson - but I will satisfy myself with the the Chinese map known as Da Ming Hun Yi Tu. |
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