by
Damien F. Mackey
Now, this was more like it – at last, a firmer base for King Hammurabi of Babylon as a younger contemporary of kings David and Hadadezer, and thus situated in
c. C10th BC (about 1450 years later than Hammurabi’s first placement in c. 2400 BC). This was the biblical link for which Dr. Courville had been searching.
(i) To which Era does Hammurabi belong?
This question already presents us with a significant problem.
The chronology of King Hammurabi has been shifted about to such an extent that revisionist scholar Dr. Donovan Courville had described the king as “floating about in a liquid chronology of Chaldea” (The Exodus Problem and its Ramifications, 1971).
Starting at c. 2400 BC, historians have shifted Hammurabi about, now finally settling his reign (at least for now) at c. 1792 to c. 1750 BC.
Dr. Courville, however, looking to establish the era of Hammurabi solidly with the assistance of a biblical synchronism, hit on the time of Joshua for Hammurabi, and consequently lowered him by some three centuries, to c. 1450 BC.
This was based on the fact that Hammurabi was a known (from the Mari Letters) contemporary of a King Jabin of Hazor. And was not Jabin of Hazor a contemporary and foe of Joshua? (Joshua 11:1-12).
Indeed, a Jabin king of Hazor was a contemporary of Joshua.
The trouble is, though, that Jabin was apparently a generic name for rulers of Hazor, and there was another one of them some years later, during the Judgeship of the prophetess Deborah (Judges 4:2-24).
In his ground-breaking article, “The Dating of Hammurabi” (C&AH Proc. 3rd Seminar of Catastrophism and Ancient History, Uni. of Toronto, 1986), Dean G. A. Hickman finally managed to fasten a definitive chronological anchor to King Hammurabi, to save him any more from “floating about”.
Hammurabi’s older contemporary was the mighty Shamsi-Adad I of Syro-Assyria.
The latter was the Syrian, Hadadezer, against whom King David would vigorously fight (2 Samuel 8:3-12).
Shamsi-Adad I’s father, Uru-kabkabu (or Ilu-kabkabu), was Hadadezer’s father, Rekhob (or Rehob) (8:3). Thus, Urukab-kabu = Rekhob.
Now, this was more like it – at last, a firmer base for King Hammurabi of Babylon as a younger contemporary of kings David and Hadadezer, and thus situated in c. C10th BC (about 1450 years later than Hammurabi’s first placement in c. 2400 BC).
This was the biblical link for which Dr. Courville had been searching.
But the Jabin of Hazor of the Mari Letters was not the one at the time of Joshua, nor was he the one at the time of Deborah.
He was a third Jabin, one contemporaneous with kings David and Solomon.
Hickman’s thesis, of course, would need a fuller development.
Developing this new history
I have since identified the powerful Amorite ship-building merchant-king of the time, Iarim-Lim, as King Hiram, ally of David and Solomon.
And I have identified Zimri-Lim of Mari as King Solomon’s persistent foe, Rezin, whose father, Eliada, fits very well name-wise with Zimri-lim’s father, Iahdu-Lim.
An inverted Zimri is not unlike Rezin (Zimri, Rizim).
Thanks to this handful of synchronisms, I am convinced that Dean Hickman was the one to solve the problem of the era of King Hammurabi.
(In iv, I shall be adding some other most important biblical characters to this list).
The conventional chronology has set Hammurabi a whopping eight centuries too early.
And Dr. Courville, despite his good intentions, had set Hammurabi about half a millennium too early.
This has vitiated some of Dr. Courville’s fine work of revision, and that of those who have followed him, such as his fellow conservative Christian scholars, Drs. David Down and John Osgood.
Conclusion: King Hammurabi was a contemporary of King Solomon of Israel.
(ii) Ethnicity of King Hammurabi
This, again, may come as something of a surprise.
Hammurabi, reputedly the King of Babylon, was not a native Babylonian.
Ethnically, he was a western Semite.
This is apparent from what Hammurabi calls himself, “King of the Amorites”:
https://www.newworldencyclopedia.org/entry/Amorites
“One stele of Hammurabi has been found as far north as Diyarbekir, where he claims the title "King of the Amorites".”
Articles about Hammurabi tell us the same thing. His dynasty was “Amorite”:
https://www.britannica.com/biography/Hammurabi
“Hammurabi, also spelled Hammurapi … sixth and best-known ruler of the 1st (Amorite) dynasty of Babylon …”.
Herbert A. Storck has drawn some conclusive connections between the Hammurabic Dynasty and the Amorite family of Abraham-Early Assyrians in his important article, “The Early Assyrian King List, The Genealogy of the Hammurapi Dynasty and the “Greater Amorite” Tradition” (C&AH, 1986).
Hammurabi and his dynasty were not native Babylonians, as one might have imagined, but were Semitic Amorites.
(iii) The name, “Hammurabi”
The earlier romantic notion that Hammurabi was to be identified with the biblical “Amraphel king of Shinar” at the time of Abram (Genesis 14:1) is no longer well supported. Thus we read, for instance:
The International Standard Bible Encyclopedia also states, “There would therefore appear to be no sound reason for maintaining that Amraphel can be identified with Hammurabi, particularly as such a procedure is unsubstantiated by Mesopotamian archeology and history.
If Hammurabi were really Amraphel, it is difficult to see why he should be occupying a subordinate position to that of Chedorlaomer, unless Hammurabi happened to be a crown prince at the time. But here it has to be recognized that the Palestinian expedition itself has not been discovered to date among the recorded campaigns of Hammurabi [sic]. The identity of Amraphel king of Shinar must therefore remain uncertain for the moment.”
The New Bible Dictionary states, “The equation with Hammurapi is unlikely.”
Nelson’s Illustrated Bible Dictionary states, “While some have tried to identify Amraphel with Hammurabi, founder of the first Babylonian dynasty, all efforts to identify him or pinpoint the location of Shinar have failed.”
The New Unger’s Bible Dictionary states of Amraphel, “formerly generally identified with Hammurabi the Great of the First Dynasty of Babylon (c. 1728-1689). This Amraphel-Hammurabi equation always was difficult linguistically but is now also disproved chronologically.”
According to what was determined above in (i), following Dean Hickman, an identification of Hammurabi with the biblical Amraphel is quite impossible on - apart from other considerations (name, geography, etc.) - chronological grounds.
Roughly a full millennium would separate Amraphel, at the time of Abram, from Hammurabi, at the time of King Solomon.
D. D. Luckenbill tells this of “The Name Hammurabi” (JAOS, Vol. 37 (1917), p. 251):
“The name Hammurabi was explained by a late Assyrian scribe as equivalent to kimtu rapaštu (kim-ta ra-pa-aš-tum) 'the wide- spread people,' VR 44”.
This meaning of the name, Hammurabi, is not entirely incompatible with the description of Abram’s new name, Abraham, “Father of Many Nations”.
Moreover, I cannot help but see a similarity in the names Abraham and Hammurabi.
At least one writer has made such a comparison:
https://opensiuc.lib.siu.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1701&context=ocj
“Why should Hamu-Rabi be confused with the Biblical Amraphel? Each name has four consonants, yet only two in common. It seems to me that it would be easier to identify Hamu-Rabi with Abraham, since their four consonants are the same. Ibra-Hamu is a paranomasism that is not difficult”.
None of this, of course, is to suggest (on my part, at least) that Hammurabi was Abraham.
New World Encyclopedia, again, has suggested that these (Hammurabic) Amorites had worshipped the God of Abraham, El Shaddai:
https://www.newworldencyclopedia.org/entry/Amorites
“Amorites worshiped, among others, the moon-god Sin, and Amurru, from whom their name may be taken. Amurru is sometimes described as a shepherd and the son of the Mesopotamian sky-god Anu. He is called Bêl Šadê ('Lord of the mountain') and 'He who dwells on the pure mountain.' Accordingly, it has been suggested by some scholars that Amurru might be the closely related to the Biblical El Šaddāi, the heavenly mountain deity of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob”.
Given Herbert A. Storck’s connections between the Hammurabic Dynasty and the Amorite family of Abraham, name and worship similarities between these two entities, though vastly separated in time, would not be an impossibility.
(iv) Geography of King Hammurabi’s era
In (i) I listed such biblical characters who I (following Dean Hickman) believe appear in the mis-dated C18th BC conventional era of King Hammurabi.
These were:
Shamsi-Adad I = Hadadezer;
Uru-Kabkabu = Rekhob;
Iarim-Lim = Hiram;
Zimri-Lim = Rezin;
Iahdu-Lim = Eliada
Unaccounted for here, most surprisingly, are both David and Solomon of Israel.
I had this mighty pair uppermost in mind when I noted: “In iv, I shall be adding some most important other biblical characters to this list”.
Since first compiling the above list of a handful of biblico-historical characters, and always with David and Solomon in mind, I have now some further identifications to add, and these concern David and Solomon. The two are too important to be left out.
I had long wondered, for instance, if the contemporaneous Dadusha, of very Davidic name (Dadu), could be King David himself. The trouble was, Dadusha was a king of Eshnunna. And, try as I might, I could not see how Eshnunna, seemingly so firmly based in central Mesopotamia, could be shifted to Israel (Judah).
We know that ‘faith can move mountains’ (Matthew 17:20-21), but nations …?
This eventually led me into identifying Nimrod’s city Akkad, no longer in Sumer where it has never been found, as the port city of Ugarit on the Syrian Mediterranean coast.
Dilmun, reputedly in the Bahrain region, I now identified as the famous port of Tyre:
Ugarit (Egyptian IKAT =) Akkad;
Dilmun (Greek TYLOS =) Tyre.
The dominoes were falling, and I was eventually able to conclude, as well, that neither Lagash nor Eshnunna (the realm of Dadusha) were to be found in southern or central Mesopotamia.
Lagash and Eshnunna were/was in fact the same mighty fort city of Lachish in Judah.
As far back as 2007, I had already identified Lachish as Sargon II of Assyria’s “Ashdod” (cf. Isaiah 20:1), whilst the coastal Philistine city of Ashdod was distinguished by Sargon II as Ashdod-by-the-Sea (Ashdudimmu).
Now, perfectly could be fitted together Lachish (Lagash) = Ashdod (Eshnunna).
(A minor substitution of ‘n’ for ‘d’ will turn Ashdudda into Eshnunna/Ashnunna).
Conclusions I have drawn from all of this:
King David could be both Dadusha and Naram-Sin (a ‘Beloved’ name, like David) of Eshnunna, whose religious capital appears to have been Girsu, presumably Jerusalem.
Dadusha’s son, Ibal-pi-el, would then, presumably, be King Solomon.
I have also identified Solomon as the temple-building Gudea, of Lagash (= Lachish).
This stripping from southern Mesopotamia of some of its most cherished (supposed) cities (e.g., Akkad; Lagash; Girsu; …) will have some huge ramifications for the future.
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