by
Damien F. Mackey
“This distribution has interesting features that tend to validate the basic premise
of Chaldaean location. It forms a coherent and compact geography
that makes sense. The towns of the various tribes are located in specific areas
that match Assyrian description, with Bit-Yakin closest to the sea, Bit Amukanni
in the obviously geographically correlated modern Amuq Valley, with Bit Sa’alli and Bit-Silani towns just to the north where Tiglath Pileser III described them
on his way to attack Dur-Atkharas, capital of Bit-Amukanni. The Amuk Valley
has been known by that name from earliest times until the present”.
Royce (Richard) Erickson
While I had expected this book to be primarily about a revision of ancient history and archaeology, the geographical factor became more and more imposing until it began to rise up and swamp The Fertile Crescent like a new Flood.
When writing the early part of my book, A History of the Fertile Crescent, I had been dissatisfied with the thought that “Chedorlaomer king of Elam” of Genesis 14 had been able to hold in check for 12 years the kingdoms of Pentapolis (14:4) – all this achieved from far distant Elam.
Sumerian Geography in Chaos
(6) Sumerian Geography in Chaos | Damien Mackey - Academia.edu
Having already moved the kingdom of Akkad - a coalitional ally of Chedorlaomer’s - much further to the NW than is conventionally held, with Akkad itself now being recognised as the N Syrian port city of Ugarit (IKAT), I had wondered if the “Elam” to which Chedorlaomer was connected might be a place different from the usual Elam.
Was there another Elam, I wondered, geographically closer to the land of Canaan?
Such would facilitate Chedorlaomer’s conquest of the Pentapolitan Canaanites.
Helam, against which King David had marched in his war with the Syrian, Hadadezer (2 Samuel 10:16-17), was one consideration for a re-located Elam that came to mind. But, without anything more substantial to support my view of two places called Elam, I had to let the matter rest for the time being.
It may no longer rest.
As I wrote last year:
Just three days ago (First Friday, 7th July 2023), I came across a tectonic article by Royce (Richard) Erickson that, instead of positing two countries “Elam”, picked up holus bolus and re-located the whole of Elam (and Susa with it) to southern Anatolia. I refer to his article at academia.edu
A PROBLEM IN CHALDAEAN AND ELAMITE GEOGRAPHY
(5) A PROBLEM IN CHALDAEAN AND ELAMITE GEOGRAPHY | Royce Erickson - Academia.edu
potentially the most important article ever written on ancient geography (as I noted in a Message to the author).
Below I shall take some key parts of Royce Erickson’s article with a few comments included where I think these might be useful:
Introduction – A Geographic Anomaly
…. The concept that Persia (Parsua) and Media may have originated at a radically different location from what history tells is completely unlooked for by the scholarship of the last 2000 years, not to mention present day Iranians. The ultimate cause of this confusion is a mistaken idea of the location of ancient Elam, which had cascading effects on the geographic concepts of not only Media and Persia, but also on those many other nations and cities of that era and region, including Kutu, Ellipi, Pekod, Lullubi, Zamua, Karalla, and Mannae. Additionally, this distortion strongly affects the modern historical narratives of post-Hittite Anatolia and Syria. ….
According to Greek tradition, other Median major cities were Laodicea, Rhages ,and Apamea, all three not far from Ecbatana. These are their later classical Greek names; their original Median names are unknown. Modern scholars tentatively locate these sites near Tehran, based on the assumption that Agbatana was in Iran, but with admittedly very sparse historical or archaeological support.
Mackey’s comment: I can’t help noticing that Apamea and Laodicea also occur in Syria.
Regarding Persia, Royce Erickson writes:
…. we find in central Anatolia today two towns with the modern Turkish names of Pazarkaye and Khorasi not far from Abadaniye. I propose that Pazarkaye is the modern site of ancient Persian Pasargadae, and Khorasi (pronounced Khorashi) is on the site of a proposed Persian town named after either Cyrus I or Cyrus II, Persian kings whose names were pronounced “Kurush.”
….
Chaldaea, Elam and the Neo-Assyrian Empire
The path to this realization started with a general interest in Bronze Age history, and a specific interest in the ancient Chaldaea, a somewhat mysterious land associated with Mesopotamia and mentioned a few times in the Old Testament, primarily as the land from which Abram migrated to Haran, then Canaan. The accepted location and ethnicity of ancient Chaldaea always posed serious problems for reasons not initially pertinent to the thrust or this paper, but they soon served to touch off a cascading series of inquiries that were heading in a totally unexpected direction.
Further investigation of these issues led to the strong conviction that conventional accepted Chaldaean geography was very questionable. This conviction rapidly grew to involve Elamite geography as well. Finally, the problem spread to a large part of the Near East. ‘
….
Among the most effective and stubborn enemies of Assyria during most of this period were the Chaldaeans and Elamites. These two nations, close geographic neighbors, sometimes vied with Assyria for the prize of Babylon, the great center of wealth and culture for all of Mesopotamia. As time went on these conflicts became increasingly a fight for mere survival against the Assyrian juggernaut, driving Chaldaea and Elam into frequent alliance, often enlisting other nations as well. Despite these combinations, the Chaldaean and Elamite homelands were devastated repeatedly by Assyrian armies. Suffering near complete destruction on multiple occasions, elements of both nations survived to participate in the final complete destruction of Assyria and its cities, in alliance with the Medes, Scythians and probably Persians as well. Seemingly the whole world combined for this effort, but it was only possible because Assyria was suffering from a long-term civil war.
….
In the particular case of Chaldaea, this Assyrian penchant for detail brings us to the crux of the problem. With all the Neo-Assyrian data available for study, none of the dozens of Chaldaean urban sites identified by the Assyrians have been positively located by modern scholars in the areas one would expect: at the head of the Persian Gulf for Chaldaea; and in what is now southwest Iran for Elam.
….
Scholarly Consensus on the Location of Chaldaea
Based on Assyrian and Babylonian annals, the consensus of modern scholarly opinion is that the Chaldaeans were a Semitic people from the south, perhaps Arabia, who emigrated to Mesopotamia around 900 BC. They are first mentioned in Assyrian records by Shalmaneser III around 850 BC. He called them “Kaldu.” The exact location of their settlements in relation to Mesopotamia is not clear from the evidence. Modern scholars believe they settled in southern Babylonia adjacent to the north end of the Persian Gulf, in the large marshy delta area formed by the mouths of the Tigris and Euphrates.
We know for certain that whatever area the Chaldaeans operated out of, it was conveniently located for what happened next.
They gradually infiltrated Babylonian lands, politics, business, religion and government over a period of decades. They eventually achieved the kingship on several occasions only to be ejected by the Assyrians, who felt they had a proprietary interest in Babylonia, the cultural center of Mesopotamia. The Assyrians deeply resented “foreign” rule in Babylon, preferring to dominate it themselves from a distance.
The Biblical figure Merodach Baladan was one of these intermittent Chaldaean kings of Babylon. He confronted the Assyrians politically and militarily on numerous occasions. They removed him from the Babylonian throne twice. Always in a search of allies against Assyria, he tried to recruit the Judaean king Hosea, who wisely declined. He ultimately failed, but other Chaldaean kings and nobles continued the struggle. As the conflicts intensified over time, the Assyrians made increasing efforts with varying success to eradicate the Chaldaeans and their allies in their various homelands.
Returning to the question of Chaldaean geography, many factors led historians inexorably to the consensus view:
1. Proximity to Babylon. Chaldaea had to have been near Babylonia, where Chaldaeans were present as outsiders in considerable numbers, and played a significant role in Babylonian culture and politics, to some extent as a dominant caste.
2. Proximity to Elam. If we believe detailed Assyrian records, it is clear Chaldaea was also located directly adjacent to Elam, as shown on the map (Figure 2). Since the large and powerful kingdom of Elam has always been unquestionably been located by historians in southwest Iran and along the Northern Persian Gulf, the only feasible location for Chaldaea seemed to be the area at the northern end of the gulf and the Tigris-Euphrates delta, near ancient Ur.
3. Proximity to a sizeable body of water. From Assyrian narratives we know that in addition to their common land border, Chaldaea and Elam were separated in part by a fairly large navigable body of water which played an important role in the struggles between Assyria and both Chaldaea and Elam. The Assyrians referred to named ports on either side of this body. The northern Persian Gulf seemed to fit this description perfectly.
4. Direction and Endpoint of Chaldaean Migration. The Chaldaeans are assumed to be Semites who migrated to Mesopotamia from the south (Arabia), making settlement in southern Mesopotamia a natural development.
5. Biblical Ur of the Chaldees. Abram’s home city, Ur of the Chaldees, is assumed by scholars to be the same as Sumerian Ur (or Uruk), located and excavated close by to the conventional location of Chaldaea.
These are persuasive points, but despite knowing the names of dozens of Chaldaean cities and towns from Assyrian records, none has ever been located, not to mention excavated, despite the fact that many of them are known to have been walled and strongly fortified.
Mackey’s comment: This unfortunate situation had led professor Gunnar Heinsohn (RIP) to identify the enigmatic Chaldeans as the (similarly enigmatic) Sumerians, a view that I would follow for a time.
Royce Erickson continues:
Neither have any of the hundreds of Chaldaean villages reported to have surrounded them. No archaeological remains or texts have been uncovered in the area that can be identified with any certainty as “Chaldaean.” Matching the geography of the proposed homeland with references in Assyrian military accounts proved difficult. In the same area where masses of earlier Sumerian and archaeological finds and texts have been recovered, the absence of Chaldaean material evidence is mystifying.
Some assume Chaldaean sites were buried under the mud of the growing swamps of the Tigris-Euphrates delta, or swallowed up by the Persian Gulf itself. This lack of evidence has been unresolved for so long than many accept unsupported early assumptions almost without question.
Alternate locations for Chaldaea have never really been considered due to the apparent historical necessity demanded by the factors listed above.
Mackey’s comment: Now, as he tackles the problem of the Chaldeans, and then Elam, Royce Erickson’s article becomes really compelling:
Proposed Actual Location of Chaldaea
Figure 4 below illustrates my proposed alternative location for Chaldaea in comparison to the currently accepted consensus. Figure 4 – Comparison of currently accepted location of Chaldaean land and tribes with the proposed alternative: Consensus View – Tagged in yellow; Proposed Alternative – Tagged in White
Not fully convinced of the conventional view due to this lack of material evidence and other factors, I decided to search an area I considered particularly likely, Syria and southern Anatolia, for Chaldaean cities, towns and geographic features referenced in numerous campaign accounts. The rationale was a suspicion that the Chaldaean people and language were not Semitic, but Hurrian. This view is not unprecedented but rare in modern accounts. Therefore I used Google Map and other available historical maps and data to search known modern Turkish and Syrian site names in the area just south of the center of gravity of the ancient Hurrian nations and tribes – the land centered on northwest Syria. The idea was to match modern with ancient sites based on name matching and matching geographic relationships. Other internet resources and books provided databases of later Armenian, Greek, Roman and Byzantine names for the same location that could also be used to match Chaldaean names. From Assyrian campaign narratives I collected a list of Assyrian place names for Chaldaea and allied Aramaean tribes numbering more than seventy sites, some mentioned on several occasions by multiple kings during separate campaigns. I looked at the campaign records of Ashurnasirapal, Shalmaneser III, Tiglath Pileser III, Sargon II, Sennecherib, Esarhaddon and Assurbanipal dating from approximately 850 to as late as 640 BC. A total of 70 Assyrian names of Chaldaean and Aramanean sites were identified from these sources. There are undoubtedly additional site names that were missed. But working with the limited list available, 32 certain or very likely matches based on name correlation and other geographic factors were very rapidly identified. ….
Figure 5 – Chaldaean Sites in Northwest Syria
Fig 5 above provides a visual representation of this data. It is the distribution of the Chaldaean and associated Aramaean sites in northwest Syria and adjoining Turkish areas that were recorded by the Assyrians during their Chaldaean campaigns.
This distribution has interesting features that tend to validate the basic premise of Chaldaean location. It forms a coherent and compact geography that makes sense. The towns of the various tribes are located in specific areas that match Assyrian description, with Bit-Yakin closest to the sea, Bit Amukanni in the obviously geographically correlated modern Amuq Valley, with Bit Sa’alli and Bit-Silani towns just to the north where Tiglath Pileser III described them on his way to attack Dur-Atkharas, capital of Bit-Amukanni. The Amuk Valley has been known by that name from earliest times until the present.
Assyrian accounts describe numerous sieges and battles in Bit-Yakin and Bit-Amukanni occuring in an area of extensive marshes. Scholarly opinion has used this information to support its identification of the northern end of the Persian Gulf, which has extensive marshes, as the land of Chaldaea.
But the area I have identified as Chaldaea was also famous for its large area of marshes, represented on the map (Figure 5) by the large lake. The lake was drained during the 20th century but remains a waterlogged area to this day. In the bronze and iron ages it was a large marsh/swamp area, formed by the confluence of several rivers into the Orontes River immediately north of Dur-Yakin.
An arm of the Mediterranean Sea, the Gulf of Iskenderun, provides the body of water bordering Chaldaea per Assyrian description. Bit-Agusi lands centered around the strong fortress of Arpad, which blocked the westward path of Assyrian armies heading for Bit Yakin and Bit Amukani, the heart of Chaldaean resistance to Assyria. Allied Aramaean tribes, which Assyrians also locate in the path from Assyria to the Chaldaean tribes, show up right where they are expected to be. These include the Puqudu, Yatbur and Khindaru lands just north of Bit-Amukanni. According to the current scholarly consensus all but one or two of the sites listed and displayed should be found in the area centered on the north end of the Persian Gulf in Iraq, but none has ever been located there. Attempts to deduct their locations at the north end of the Persian Gulf has met with no success.
Despite the availability of detailed Assyrian military accounts, modern scholars often find it very difficult to reconcile specific campaign accounts with the accepted Chaldaean and Elamite geography. In the case of Sargon IIs lengthy and wide-ranging campaign against Merodach Baladan, the Chaldaean king of Babylon, eminient historians could not make Sargon’s narrative of his maneuvers work without postulating that he or his scribes mistook the Euphrates for the Tigris on two occasions, which seems highly unlikely, and that Sargon had divided his forces in order to conduct two or more independent simultaneous campaigns, when in fact, Sargon himself wrote nothing to justify this assumption. When Sargon’s campaign is viewed in light of the proposed alternate location of Chaldaea in northwest Syria and Elam in Anatolia, confusion between the Tigris and Euphrates goes away, as does the necessity to postulate the division of Sargon’s army and the conduct of two independent campaigns.
Where Was Elam?
The Assyrian political and geographic data, when correlated with north Syrian and Turkish sites, provides more than enough evidence to propose a Chaldaean geography as discussed. However, this location is hundreds of miles from the putative Elam in southwest Iran, where it has long been located by historians, perhaps for over 2000 yrs. Chaldaea cannot possibly have been so far away from Elam. We know from many Assyrian campaign accounts that Chaldaea and Elam were close allies, sharing a common border. Assyrian campaigns travelled across the borders of the two countries from one to the other, and back again. Some Chaldaean towns were described by the Assyrians as near or on the common border. Assyrian campaign accounts simply did not make sense with these two nations separated by a vast distance, not to mention the absence of a shared body of water between the two.
The proposed location of Chaldaea seemed unsupported, until it gradually became clear that the only way it could work was if the accepted historical location of Elam was itself greatly displaced from its actual ancient location. In their campaigns against Elam the Assyrians had also named dozens of Elamite cities and provinces by name, the vast majority of which historians have not been able to convincingly locate in western Iran. Susa, the capital of the Elamite Empire at the time of the Neo-Assyrian kings, has been identified by historians with a recently discovered complex of religious and palatial ruins located in Iran at the foot of the Zagros mountains. Although the site structures are impressive and some excavated Elamite documents were uncovered there, the amount and quality of identifying evidence gives the impression of being inadequate even to the archaeologists working the site.
With a growing suspicion the Elam was misplaced in accepted historical geography, a breakthrough was needed to provide a geographic starting point for further research. The story of the port of Nagite provided that breakthrough.
The Port of Nagite
In 705 BC the great Assyrian King Sennecherib, son of Sargon II, was coronated in Ninevah. He was an aggressive and very active monarch, whose first priority after securing the throne was to march on Babylon to overthrow the Chaldaean king, Merodach Baladan of Bit-Yakin, who had taken advantage of Sargon II’s death to reclaim the throne of Babylon with the aid of high-ranking sympathizers in the city. He had done this before at Sargon’s accession only to be promptly thrown out by that monarch. This was not the first or the last time the Chaldaeans would succeed in doing this, nor was it the first or last time the Assyrians would throw them out. Merodach was nothing if not persistent. Sennecherib’s first attempt failed. In 703 BC, after some preliminary maneuvering by the armies of both sides, Merodach Baladan was forced to flee to his homeland of Bit-Yakin, where he and his Aramaean allies were soon besieged by Sennecherib. After a bloody battle outside the walls the fortress city was stormed and captured, but Merodach Baladan managed to escape to the nearby coast and flee a short distance by ship to the Elamite port of Nagite, where he was given asylum by his Elamite allies. Years later he would emerge to challenge the Assyrians once again, but for the time being he was safely out of their reach.
According to multiple Assyrian records Nagite was one of several seaports on the Elamite coast across the body of water from Chaldaea. Historians assume Nagite and the other ports were located somewhere along what is now the Iranian coast on the east side of the Persian Gulf, but predictably none of them has ever been found.
There are many historical maps of pre-Ottoman Anatolia displaying towns with their classical Greek and Roman names, as well as later Armenian variants. There I found along the south coast of Cilicia the fortified port city of Nagidos, also referenced on Google Maps as an archaeological site at the modern Turkish town of Bozyazı in Mersin Province. This apparently Greek port is a short distance by sea from the proposed Chaldaean coast. The significance of this find cannot be overestimated. Further research of the area revealed that this site was known to archaeologists to be the much older Hittite town of Nahite. These unarguable geographic facts pointed to the possibility that the Anatolian Cicilian coast was the actual Elamite coast. Fig. 6 below contrasts the conventional and actual locations of Nagite (Nagidos) and the implications for the location of Elam. Once a fairly accurate location for Elam was posited based on this information, the correlation of Assyrian names of Elamite cities, towns and regions with modern locations in and around Anatolian Cilicia came thick and fast. As before, the sheer volume of convincing matches was astounding. Of the 160 Assyrian names for Elamite sites I collected, 85 of them can be correlated with modern sites in Turkey based on a convincingly close similarity of names and locations combined with revealing details of the Assyrian campaigns. As with the earlier catalogue of Chaldaean and Aramaean sites provided in Table 2, the table below provides original Assyrian site names, variations of those names, including later Armenian and Greek variants, modern matched site locations in Turkey by name, matching criteria, Assyrian kings attesting to the site, and national/provincial subgroup affiliation. I will precede the presentation of this data with a few notes on the historical, political and military significance of Elam in the ancient Near East.
Figure 6 – Consensus Versus Proposed Route of Flight to Nagite
The word “Elam” is an Akkadian term meaning “highlands” or “highlanders.” This term was used by Assyrians, Babylonians and Jews, among others. The earlier Sumerian name for Elam meant the same thing. The Elamite name for themselves was “Haltamte,” meaning unknown. None of these appellations provides much information on location, since the Near East is surrounded by highlands on the northwest, north, northeast and southeast. These are the Taurus, Armenian and Zagros mountains, a near continuous chain over a thousand miles long. As stated previously, the Elamites have long been thought to have inhabited southwest Iran, where the plains to the East of the Tigris meet the Zagros mountains, and along the Eastern side of the Persian Gulf: a long held universal belief that this paper attempts to refute.
Elamites were first recorded by Sumerians and Akkadians before 2500 BC, almost as soon as when accurate written records first emerged. They spoke a unique language unrelated to any other as far as we know and enjoyed a level of civilization similar, if not quite equal to, that of the Sumerians and Akkadians, sharing many cultural traits. They were also at times an expansive and militaristic society, equal players in the great power games of Mesopotamia and surrounding areas. During certain eras Elamite political and military power was dominant over the whole area, although they never successfully achieved a “world empire” like the Sumerians and Akkadians, or the much later Neo-Assyrians or Persians.
They were known to be warlike and competent in military affairs. Ancient Sumeria and the Akkadian Empire were often in conflict with them. Elam was the greatest power for hundreds of years after the fall of the Akkadian and Ur III empires around 2000 BC. Later, the great Hammurabi of Babylon, at first a vassal and ally of the Elamite King, threw off his yoke before establishing the first Babylonian Empire in approximately 1760 BC. During other lengthy periods of history Elam was for one reason or another quiescent, barely mentioned in the documents of the time. During the Neo-Assyrian Empire period starting around 900 BC Elam reemerged as a powerful nation, but definitely at a disadvantage against ferocious Assyria. As described earlier they allied themselves with nearby Chaldaean and Aramaean tribes in desperate resistance to Assyria.
Below is the data collected on Assyrian-attested Elamite cities, towns and regions that can be matched with a high level of confidence to modern locations in Turkey.
….
A review of the Table 2 and a quick glance at the supporting map demonstrates that an extremely large number of Assyrian-reported Elamite sites have classical and modern name equivalents in Anatolia. As with the Chaldaean exercise, the distribution of these sites is coherent, representing almost the whole southern half of central and western Anatolia, an area previously dominated by the Hittite Empire. Furthermore these sites share spatial relationships to each other that are confirmed by Assyrian records.
For instance, the Elamite towns listed by the Assyrians as within a district called Rashi all appear in modern locations in close proximity to each other, just as would be expected of towns within a common district. These include Bubilu, Raza, Raba, Kummana and Durmishamash, all in the Adana region of Cilicia. A further look at Figure 7 demonstrates that there was a very well-defined border between Elam and Chaldaea (and its Aramaean allies) as demonstrated by the relative positions of towns, and that the two nations were separated by a common body of water, now referred to as the Gulf Iskenderun.
All five of the most important historically important Elamite towns can be located in Anatolia: Susa, Madaktu, Hidalu, Awan and Anshan. Susa, the capital during the Neo-Assyrian period, and known to be the closest of these Elamite cities to Chaldaea and thence to Babylon and Assyria, is represented by Sis (Shishan) in Cilicia. Madaktu (Kayseri) and Hidalu (Kundullu) were described by the Assyrians as being in the distant Elamite hinterland from Susa. The equivalent modern sites of Kayseri and Kundullu agree with this description, being 90 miles to the north and 230 miles to the east of Kozan, modern Sis, respectively.
Awan was a very early Elamite capital well known to the Akkadian King Rimush about 2400 AD, who campaigned there. He described Awan as being separated from Susa (Sis) by 3 rivers. He pursued the King of Elam between the two cities and defeated his army by the “Middle River.” The modern Turkish town of Avanos is in fact the proposed site of Elamite Awan. It is separated from modern Kozan (Susa) by three north-south running rivers, the Goksu, Zamanti and Damas, over a total distance of 100 miles – a very good fit to Rimush’s narrative.
Anshan was the capital of Elam before Susa. It’s supposed location in southwest Iran has long been guessed at, but until now never determined. Recently it has been linked to some finds at an archaeological site in the area of Shiraz and the ruins of Persepolis. Even more than the supposed ruins of Susa in Iran, the evidence for its identification to date is meager.
According to the Assyrians, Anshan lay beyond Hidalu when travelling from Madaktu, and close to part of Media. There is a town in Turkey that meets this description, being beyond modern Kundullu (Hidalu) when travelling from Kayseri (Madaktu). Its name is Avgan, a possible name match for Anshan, but more compelling is its location, which sits amidst the modern sites of several proposed Median towns (Arakuttu, Ushu, and Zibiya) in Anatolia. ….
[End of quote]
It is yet far too early even to begin to grasp the ramifications of this massive geographical plate tectonics movement as set in motion by Royce (Richard) Erickson.
What does it mean for Babylon, for instance?
But what is certain is that I shall have, geographically, to re-cast my book,
A History of the Fertile Crescent
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