Biblically Compatible Archaeology and Geography

    by    Damien F. Mackey         “ASSYRIOLOGISTS have for some years past come to the conclusion that the dynasty to which Hammurabi belonged was not indigenous …”.   Stanley A. Cook weighs up the arguments for the dynasty of King Hammurabi to have been either Northern Semitic or Arabian ( The Laws of Moses and the Code of Hammurabi ): https://archive.org/stream/lawsofmosescodeo00cookrich/lawsofmosescodeo00cookrich_djvu.txt :   … the question of the origin of the dynasty of Hammurabi becomes one of peculiar importance for the study of the Code. If it could be proved that the dynasty was North Semitic, and therefore of the same stock as the later [sic] Phoenicians, Moabites, and Israelites, might it not be plausible to suppose that the Code was based upon legal institutions which were familiar to those peoples? But the question in the present state of knowledge cannot be placed beyond dispute, and there a...

  by   Damien F. Mackey       It is gratifying for me to find that King Ahab had, in his two El Amarna [EA] manifestations, also - as Lab’ayu and pharaoh Amenhotep IV (Naphuria) (my revision) - two prominent sons.         King Ahab   He actually had many more than just the two sons, but the others came to grief all at once. “Now Ahab had seventy sons in Samaria” (2 Kings 10:1). These were all slain during the bloody rampage of Jehu (vv. 1-10). “So Jehu killed all who remained of the house of Ahab in Jezreel, and all his great men and his close acquaintances and his priests, until he left him none remaining” (v. 11). Prior to this, Ahab had been succeeded on the throne by his two prominent sons. We read about them, for instance, at: https://bible.org/seriespage/7-my-way-story-ahab-and-jezebel   Yet their influence lived on in their children. And this is often the saddest side effect of lives l...

  by   Damien F. Mackey           Lab’ayu is the author of only El Amarna [EA] Letters 252-254. But to whom were these letters actually being addressed?           It is presumed that all three of the EA letters of Lab’ayu (252-254) were addressed to a pharaoh, either Amenhotep III or IV (Akhnaton). But these letters contain neither any specific reference to a pharaoh, nor do they include (as do other EA letters) the pharaonic throne names, respectively, Nimmuria (for III) and Naphuria (for IV).   EA 252 is simply addressed “To the king, my lord”. EA 253 is simply addressed “To the king [my lord,] my [sun]”. EA 254 is simply addressed “ To the king, my lord and my Sun”.   The intended recipient of these three letters could be any of the Great Kings of the EA archive, Tushratta, for instance. He, my biblical Ben-Hadad:   Ben-Hadad I as ...