Ham, Shem, and the First Dynasty of Babylon

Ham, Shem, and the First Dynasty of Babylon

http://neros.lordbalto.com/ChapterSix.htm

Ham, Shem, and the First Dynasty of Babylon

Chapter Six: Ham, Shem, and the First Dynasty of Babylon

Dr. Geiger, speaking of the old Parsi calendar observes that
"probably the half-year was more employed in civil life than the complete year."
Now whether the observation be entirely correct or not, we can,
I think at any rate, assume that the division of the year
into two equal halves is an old one.—Bâl Gangâdhar Tilak, The Orion

We have already had occasion to quote from Johann Kepler in regard to the 20-year conjunctions of Jupiter and Saturn. The authors of Hamlet's Mill also reproduce the following table of his:

4000	BC	Adam	Creatio mundi
3200		Enoch	Latrocinia, urbes, artes, tyrannis
2400		Noah	Diluvium
1600		Moses	Exitus es Aegypto. Lex
800		Isaiah	Aera Graecorum, Babyloniorum, Romanorum
0		Christ	Monarchia Romana, Reformatio orbis

We see that Kepler was barking up the wrong cosmic tree, so to speak, for the cycle that we have noticed in the current work is based on 600 years and not 800 as he thought. Isaiah, therefore, should be replaced by Cyrus at 600 BC, but some of the other members of this gallery of ancient personages are correct, at least as far as Noah and "Christ" are concerned, though, as we shall see in Chapter Eight, their dates are off. We have already seen that the birth of Moses occurred in the year 1225 BC, though here, surprisingly, he has the wrong man, the actual avatar being Joshua, namesake of a later one named Yeshua.

Chronology of the Patriarchs from the Beginning of the 1st Dynasty of Babylon until the Birth of Abraham

	Event	Year BC
	Founding of (Amorite) First Dynasty of Babylon. Sumuabum becomes king	ca 1830
	Sumulael becomes king of Babylon	ca 1816
	Shamshi-Adad I becomes king of Assyria	ca 17861
	Sabium becomes king of Babylon	ca 1780
	Apil-Sin becomes king of Babylon	ca 1766
	Ishme-Dagan becomes king of Assyria	ca 1753
	Cometary event	1752
	Sin-muballit becomes king of Babylon	ca 1748
	Birth of Shem (revised biblical chronology)	1740
	Ham (Hammu-rabi) becomes king of Babylon (Low Chronology)	1728
	Hyksos invade Lower Egypt	1718
	Ishme-Dagan flees to Babylon under Hammurabi. Asshur-dugul becomes king of Assyria	ca 1713
	Bel-bani becomes king of Assyria	ca 1707
	Libaya becomes king of Assyria	ca 1697
	Birth of Arpachshad (revised biblical chronology)	1690
	Shem (Samsu-iluna) becomes king of Babylon (Low Chronology)	1685
	Sharma-Adad becomes king of Assyria	ca 1680
	Birth of Shelah	1672
	Iptar-sin becomes king of Assyria	ca 1668
	Bazaya becomes king of Assyria	ca 1656
	Birth of Eber (Ibiranu I of Ugarit)	1655
	Lullaya becomes king of Assyria	ca 1628
	Arpachshad (Abi-eshu) becomes king of Babylon (Low Chronology)	1647
	Birth of Peleg	1640
	Tree-ring event. End of Middle Bronze. End of Xia Dynasty, rise of Shang in China. Events described in book of Job	1628
	Birth of Reu	1625
	Arpachshad dies at age 67 (revised biblical chronology)	1623
	Shu Ninua becomes king of Assyria	ca 1622
	Shu Ninua builds Nineveh	after 1622
	Abi-eshu dies (Low Chronology). Ammi-ditana becomes king of Babylon	1619
	Birth of Serug (Sharru-kinu, "true king")	1609
	Sharma-Adad II becomes king of Assyria	1608
	Shelah dies at age 67. Erishum III becomes king of Assyria	1605
	Birth of Nahor ben Serug (Niqmepa II of Ugarit)	1594
	Shamshi-Adad II becomes king of Assyria	1592
	Ishme-Dagan II becomes king of Assyria	1586
	Eber dies at age 71	1584
	Ammi-saduqa becomes king of Babylon	1582
	Birth of Terah	1580
	Venus Tablet of Ammi-saduqa	1574
	Shamshi-Adad III becomes king of Assyria	1570
	Asshur-nerari I becomes king of Assyria	1554
	Birth of Abraham	1545
	End First Dynasty of Babylon. Egyptians defeat Hyksos at Sharuhen. Begin Egyptian 17th Dynasty on Crete	1531
1641 years before Tiglath-Pileser I (1145-1106).

The reader deserves an explanation at this point, for we have obviously massaged the data in a manner not unlike that used by the great M. Baillie, which earned him and others the not so flattering title of "calculators." I will make no apologies here. Baillie was essentially right and everyone else was, and still is, wrong. The following is basically a mathematical extension of our previous discovery of the application of an unnoticed multiplication of the biblical timeline by a factor of 2. I noticed the first clue to this pattern when I looked at the age of Terah when he died at Harran before the departure of Abraham. There is no way he could have been 102 if he was born in 1580 and Abraham left Harran in 1508. No matter what scale one uses, we are still looking at a mathematical impossibility. Fairly obviously, the age at Terah's death must have been multiplied here by 3 rather than 2. What positively amazed me was that all of the peculiar ages and periods encountered in the chapters of Genesis before Abraham could be explained by the introduction of succeedingly larger multiplications by even factors of the number 12, just another indication of a sexagesimally oriented Mesopotamian hand in this little mathematical puzzle.

The early books of the bible are not the only places where king-lists have been artificially extended by factors derived from the base-60 numbering system. An analogous process occurred with the early "mythical" dynasties of Mesopotamia, though the factors there are much larger, 1200 and 90, so that these dynasties appear even more mythological than those of the bible. They do, however, underscore the resort to a sliding time scale where early Middle Eastern records are concerned, serving to confirm our own interpretation of the absurdly long lifespans of the Hebrew patriarchs, as well as the smaller, though no less anomalous, expansions of the overall timeline. The following should clarify what is going on, chronologically, in the bible without necessarily explaining exactly why its authors went to so much trouble to obscure the true dimensions of the history presented there. That, however, is a matter of some import, for it serves as a key to determining which chronological documents are genuine and which are forgeries, rationalizations, or simply wishful thinking. The nature of this key is cryptographic, or kabbalistic, to use a Medieval term.

Decryption and Correction of the Ages and Lifespans of the Patriarchs

Lived (BC)	Name	Age at Death	Factor	Actual Age	Age at Birth of Son	Factor	Actual Age
3262–3185/ca 3565?	Adam (Atum/Adamu)	930	x12	77.5	130	x4	32.5
~400 years?	[gap in record?]
3230–3154	Seth (Set)	912	x12	76	105	x4	26.2
3204–3129	Enosh	905	x12	75.4	90	x4	22.5
3181–3106	Kenan/Cain	910	x12	75.8	70	x4	17.5
3164–3090	Mahalalel/Mehujael	895	x12	74.5	65	x4	16.2
3148–3068	Jared/Irad	962	x12	80.1	162	x4	40.5
3108–3078	Enoch	365	x12	30.4	65	x4	16.2
3091–3011	Methuselah/Methushael	969	x12	80.7	187	x4	46.7
3045–2981	Lamech	777	x12	64.7	182	x4	45.5
2999–2920	Noah (Menes)	950	x12	79.1	500	x12	41.6
~1200 years	[gap in record]
1740–1657	Shem (Samsu-iluna)	500	x6	83.3	100	x2	50
1690–1623	Arpachshad (Abi-eshu)	403	x6	67.1	35	x2	17.5
1672–1605	Shelah	403	x6	67.1	30	x2	15
1655–1584	Eber (Ibiranu I)	430	x6	71.6	34	x2	17
1640–1571	Peleg	209	x3	69.6	30	x2	15
1625–1556	Reu	207	x3	69	32	x2	16
1609–1543	Serug	200	x3	66.6	30	x2	15
1594–1555	Nahor (Niqmepa II)	119	x3	39.6	29	x2	14.5
1580–1512	Terah	205	x3	68.5	70	x2	35
1545–1458	Abraham (Ibiranu III)	175	x2	87.5	100	x2	50
1495–1405	Isaac (Mempsasthenoth)	180	x2	90	60	x2	30
1465–1392	Jacob (Yaqaru)	147	x2	73.5
	Solomon and Before		x2			x2
	Rehoboam and After		x1			x1

It is apparent that the original records from which this chronological sequence was taken were not denominated in years. Take, for example, Peleg and Reu. They both lived to be 69 years old. Yet the records were detailed enough to allow us to learn that they lived to be 209 and 207 4-month Egyptian-style seasons respectively. Though the Egyptians did in fact have three seasons—spring, summer, and winter—this does not necessarily mean that the progressively larger units we find in the bible are the result of sheer accident or mistranslation, for there is a pattern here, a progression, that can only be explained by a conscious effort to encode and protect the relevant data. Someone with knowledge of the cryptographic arts on a par with the Phoenicians intentionally encoded the data to prevent its corruption or intentional alteration. A mere glance at Talmudic, apocryphal, and pseudepigraphical documents where the absurd ages of the patriarchs have been woven into the narrative gives ample demonstration of the tendency toward such falsification and the efficient manner in which this hidden device renders them detectably defective. From this point on, the minimum test for possible legitimacy in these documents must be that they either give figures in realistic units or their use of unrealistic units must be innocent—that is, like the bible, there is no internal evidence that the author actually realized the absurdity of the timescale, that lunacy having been added later as a security device (and a means of closing the gap between Noah and Ham). There can be no better evidence than this that the biblical timeline is not simply the family history of a rude assembly of wandering shepherds but a secure repository of the genealogical birthright of the rulers of a nation, descended from kings, princes, and hereditary high priests.

Returning to the table, note that "Age at Birth of Son" does not necessarily indicate the birth of the first son. This table represents the ancestors of its later members. In this sense it is a family history. It is not a genealogy in the classical sense, though the overall structure represented by the old testament is genealogical, i.e., it presents the descendants of a single antecedent and not the ancestors of a single individual. Also, from internal evidence, primogeniture was not always practiced among the people described. 

We can draw some preliminary conclusions. The most obvious is that Noah was meant to stand out. Only he is not treated identically to everyone else. Only his sons do not follow the smoothly decreasing pattern from x4 to x2 to x1. Only in his case has his age at the birth of his son been multiplied by the full factor of 12. Noah obviously marks a critical point in the development of the narrative, and of the history of the world described. We may find a fairly cogent explanation of the importance of Noah and his ark in Hamlet's Mill.

The first ark was built by Utnapishtim in the Sumerian myth; one learns in different ways that it was a cube ... measuring 60 x 60 x 60 fathoms .... In another version, there is no ark, just a cubic stone, upon which rests a pillar which reaches from earth to heaven. The stone ... is lying under a cedar, or an oak, ready to let loose a flood, without obvious reasons. Confusing as it is, this seems to provide the new theme. In Jewish legends, it is told that "since the ark disappeared there was a stone in its place ... which was called foundation stone." ... And it is said to lie above the Waters that are below the Holy of Holies.

Hildegard Lewy's researches on Eben Shetiyyah brought up a passage in the Annals of Assur-nasir-apli in which the new temple of Ninurta at Kalhu is described as founded at the depth of 120 layers of bricks down "to the level of the waters," or, down to the water table. This comes back to the waters of the deep in their natural setting. But what people saw in them is something else again. If David and the Assyrian king dug down to subsoil water, so did the builders of the Ka'aba in Mecca. In the interior of that most holy of all shrines there is a well, across the opening of which had been placed, in pre-Islamic times, the statue of the god Hubal. Al-Biruni says that in the early Islamic period this was a real well .... The statue of Hubal had been meant to stop the waters from rising. According to the legends, the same belief had once been current in Jerusalem.... But Mecca tells more.... Lewy points out that ... the god Hubal was Saturn, and that the Holy Stone ... had the same role, for it was a cube, hence originally Saturn.

Noah is generally considered to be mythological, the last of the 10 antediluvian kings. An equivalent list is found in various Mesopotamian sources and, though their first member varies, he is fairly transparently the prototype for the biblical Adam—Aloros, Alulium, Aialu. Intermediate between these two extremes would appear to be the Greek Atlas, the first king of Atlantis in their mythology. Various examples of this list are given in Chapter Eight. What we appear to be looking at in the early chapters of the bible is a set of three people, perhaps kings, certainly individuals of some renown, all of whom claim to be descendants of the final antediluvian king. Whether these three gentlemen were actually brothers is not immediately obvious. What we may reasonably begin to suspect at this point is that Shem, the progenitor of Abraham and his descendants, lived somewhere in the neighborhood of the Persian Gulf. We might even climb farther out on this limb and entertain the notion that it was Abraham who brought the story with him that would later be incorporated, along with material from the Egyptian records of a similar local flood, in the bible.

I wrote the above before I became aware of the work of A. H. Sayce. He says in his Monument Facts and Higher Critical Fancies, "The Biblical writer must have had the Babylonian version before him—if not in its literary form, at all events in some shape or other—for he has deliberately excluded and implicitly contradicted the polytheistic elements contained in it.... The Babylonian account ... must have been known in Canaan long before Moses was born. Indeed, it must have been familiar to Abraham himself before he migrated from Ur." Sayce also describes the similarities and differences between the Code of Hammurabi and the laws of Moses.