Transcript The Footprints of Nimrod in the Ancient World
The Footprints of Nimrod in the Ancient World
K. G. Powderly Jr.
When names move from language to language, certain rules generally apply...
The hard consonants remain most stable
Followed by easily transformed “softer” consonants, like N to M, R to D, F to V —or P, B to V —or D, or close hards like D to T,
Vowels and the softest consonants, like H, are like silly putty
Nimrod’s name takes many forms, some as titles
Close association exists between the Sumerian King of Uruk ( Erech ), Enmerkar and the Genesis Nimrod , in which there are more historical similarities than theoretical problems...
En-mer-kar has the same consonants (NMR) if you consider that the “rolling R” had an RD effect that shows up elsewhere in Genesis 10-11 (Rhodanim is sometimes rendered Dodanim), then he also has the D
Kar is Sumerian for hunter, and may be a title
En and Nim (or Nin) are both words for lord in the priestly or deified sense (the name Ninurta means both fish and
Lord Who Completes the Foundation
—the first being the name’s original meaning, the second what it later came to mean. The Hebrew form of it came to mean Let Us Rebel.)
Ancient Uruk —the Erech of Genesis 10 A statuette of one of Uruk’s kings (right)
Striking similarities between Nimrod and Enmerkar...
Both are associated with the building of a “tower”
Both are in accounts (one Sumero-Akkadian, the other Hebrew) that describe the confounding of languages from a single original tongue
Both are described as “great hunters”
Both are described as having been the ruler of Uruk (the Erech of Gen. 10) early in their careers
Both are described as military expansionists
Both are associated with the goddess Inanna / Ishtar by Sumero-Akkadian myth and by Hebrew legends
Was the great warrior-hunter god Ninurta a deified Enmerkar / Nimrod?
There are also some problems that require adequate examination...
Enmerkar is the 2 nd King of Uruk in a 2 nd Flood dynasty preceded by a long 1 st post Dynasty
Archeology seems to show evidence of lengthly occupation of Mesopotamia before Enmerkar
Archaeological evidence seems to suggest a fairly wide human dispersion by Enmerkar’s time
While it is impossible to harmonize all of the documentary evidence —much of it being polytheist historic revisionism —there is a need for more robust YE Creationist historical models for this period
There are lines of inquiry that may help explain these problems in the future...
On the dynastic question, there are no hero epics of the 1 st Dynasty, even though one king in it —Etanna— was said by the list to have been “taken into heaven”
Hero epics begin suddenly, and prolifically with Meshkiagashar, Enmerkar, Lugalbanda, Dumuzi and Gilgamesh —the first 5 kings of the 2 nd Uruk Dynasty
Some scholars suggest the 1 st and 2 nd Dynasties were contemporary with each other because the 1 st Dynasty names are mostly Akkadian, while the 2 nd Dynasty names are Sumerian, which greatly shortens the portrayed time between the Flood and Enmerkar
More on Nimrod and Enmerkar...
The fact that Genesis 10 does not list Nimrod with Cush’s 5 other sons in verse 7, but only after Raamah’s son’s (Cush’s grandsons), in a special parenthetical verse, allows for the possibility that Nimrod was a grandson or great grandson of Cush
Enmerkar’s father, Meshkiagasher, is also quite possibly a Sumerian representation of Cush
It is important to remember that the inspired original autograph of Genesis gives us true truth, but not often exhaustive detailed explanation —we need to be conscious of the assumptions we carry to the text even as we seek to interpret it straightforwardly
Genesis on Nimrod
Gen 10:7 And the sons of Cush were Seba and Havilah, and Sabtah, and Raamah, and Sabtecha. And Raamah's sons were Sheba and Dedan. Gen 10:8 And Cush fathered Nimrod; he began to be a mighty one in the land. Gen 10:9 He was a mighty hunter before Jehovah; so it is said, Even as Nimrod the mighty hunter before Jehovah. Gen 10:10 And the beginning of his kingdom was Babel, and Erech, and Accad, and Calneh, in the land of Shinar. Gen 10:11 From that land he went forth to Assyria and built Nineveh, and Rehoboth the city, and Calah, Gen 10:12 great city. and Resen between Nineveh and Calah, which
is
a
The Other Cities of Nimrod
Akkad as a city is undiscovered, but it is likely a region name rather than a city. Calneh has not been identified Rehoboth means room or space —likely the expanded part of Nineveh. Resen is an outpost on the road to Kalhu Ziggurat at Nineveh Kalhu (Calah in Genesis)
Babel or Bab-ilu
means “Gate of God” in Akkadian—the earliest known Semitic Language. It was virtually synonymous to the Temple of Etemenanki , “The Foundation of Heaven and Earth” Nun-Ki Ziggurat at Eridu “The more the gods become like men, the easier it is for men to believe the gods. When both have only human appetites, then rogues may worship rogues...” Miller 1977 The Sumerian term Etemenanki was used to describe both the ziggurat temple at Eridu and the later great Babylonian temple of Marduk. This might mean the original Babel is at Eridu, Sumer’s 1 st city, instead of Babylon —or it may be that the reconstructed Babylon totally excavated the original away, but that would be most untypical because all Mesopotamians built over and included their older temples when they expanded
As for the archaeological suggestions of long post-Flood human habitation and dispersal...
The questions should be studied by YEC archaeologists in detail, though tentative possibilities are...
That what are often taken for hundreds or more years of previous habitation may actually represent rebuilding and remodeling over a much shorter time...
Especially with immediate post-Flood longevity and rapid population growth
Some human expanse beyond Mesopotamia is not unthinkable —refusal to “scatter abroad” could have been driven by Nimrod’s propaganda magnifying dangers to small clans that had already moved away, and it is not clear that lack of dispersal was the heart of the revolt anyway
Sumer’s Revisionist Theo-history:
Enmerkar’s Grandson Gilgamesh Slays the Flood sending Monster “Hu-Wa-Wa”
Hu-Wa-Wa is described as a humaniform monster (not a dinosaur) who dwelt west of Mesopotamia in the cedar forests of what is now Lebanon. Sumer
still feared him (This doesn’t mean that Nimrod didn’t hunt dragons too)
Hu-Wa-Wa sent floods
Is Hu-Wa-Wa a post-Babel mockery of Noah’s God Ya-Ha- WaH?
Sumerian depictions of
Hu-Wa-Wa
A Temporary Historical Backlash
or
Son Nimrod Sacks Papa Cush
Shem temporarily gains an upper hand in Akkad and exiles Nimrod with his father Cush, or...
Nimrod sacks Cush himself, and sends him, with his other sons, and troublesome ancestors into exile by sea
Meshkiaggasher the father of Enmerkar “vanished into the sea” according to the Sumerian accounts
Gilgamesh later finds the Sumero Akkadian “Noah” on Dilmun, on or near the Island of Bahrain
This “Noah” may be Ham, or possibly Noah, or Shem— people politically troublesome to Nimrod’s revisionist history and his claims as God-King, but who would even be more troublesome as martyrs if executed
Advantages of the “Temporary Semitic Backlash” Hypothesis:
It gives Shem and Japheth a window to bring enough short-lived order to the post-Babel chaos to divide the lands to the 70 original tribes of Genesis 10, as it is hard to imagine how they could do this without holding Nimrod back in some way
The mythologies of Sumer, Canaan, and Egypt are defined by central “mother-son” deities in which the “son” is in some sense the return of a “father” either killed or in some other way lost—in Egypt the myth takes the form of an “avenging son” of Osirus— Horus “Aha” the Falcon
These myths differ as they spread —they are not “resurrected gods”—Osirus remains in the underworld as its god, Sumer’s Dumuzi (Tammuz) is returned from Underworld without dying at the plea of his grieving wife Inanna (Akkadian Ishtar)
Like the reforms of Josiah in Judah, this temporary victory did not have popular support —a “son of Nimrod” overthrew it quickly
The ‘Exodus’ of Cush and Nimrod
Dilmun
Ninurta = “fish” in Assyrian, while Narmer = “catfish” in Egyptian
Earliest Pharaohnic Dynasty
comes from
Cush
Boat petroglyphs from southern Egypt —Invaders from across the Red Sea into a “New Cush” colony “This Falcon tribe (of Horus) had certainly originated in Elam (Susiana), as indicated by the hero and lions on the Araq knife handle. They went down the Persian Gulf and settled in ‘the horn of Africa.’ There they named the ‘Land of Punt,’ sacred to later Egyptians as the source of the race. The Pun people founded the island fortress of
Ha-fun
which commands the whole of the coast, and hence came the
Legend―the Genesis of Civilisation
, David Rohl, 1998, pp. 304-305
Punic
or
Phenic
peoples of classical antiquity. ... Those who went up the Red Sea formed the dynastic invaders of Egypt entering by the Kuseir-Koptos road. Others went on to Syria and founded Tyre, Sidon and Aradus, named after their home islands in the Persian Gulf.”
Rohl’s Migration Map
David Rohl is NOT a YE Creationist or even a Supernaturalist, but he favors a corrected Egyptian chronology that fits the Old Testament much better than Manetho’s “Long Chronology”
Boats were sacred to the pharaohs of the Egyptian “Old Kingdom,” particularly the 1
st
Dynasty though to that of Pyramid-builder Khufu
Unlike the Egyptian-type boats (left & right) Earlier boats, like earlier pyramids had a much more Sumerian style The earlier Sumerian-styled square-hulled boat in a Southern Egyptian petroglyph Egypt’s earliest pyramid
The 1 st Pharaoh, Horus-Aha (a.k.a. Menes), son of Narmer, united Upper & Lower Egypt with a Sumerian styled “pear-shaped” mace The Gebel el Arak Knife, found in “Upper (Southern) Egypt,” has square-hull ships, Sumerian dogs, and a “beast-master” clad in Sumerian hair-style and long coat The “Narmer Pallette” shows Narmer executing his foes with a pear-shaped mace. Note the long-necked animals looping necks in a common Sumerian motif
The Footprints of Nimrod appear on 2 levels: historical & mythical
In Egypt he shows mythically as Osirus, but historically as Narmer
Both myth systems should be read as hostile revisionist theo history to the God of Noah
In Sumer he appears mythically as the war-god Ninurta, but historically as Enmerkar
Osirus is “deceived” by his “evil” uncle/brother Set, killed, and dismembered to prevent any “magical reanimation” (one wonders if “Set” might not be a title of Shem as the appointed “Son of Seth”)
Osirus’ wife Isis hid their son Horus while she chased down the separated pieces of Osirus’ corpse, sewed them back together (except the phallus, which was eaten by fishes), and re-animated him to become God of the Underworld —not a resurrected god who made appearances “to over 500 people” in the world of the living
Egypt’s religious ritual is modeled on this entire account
Nimrod is the prototype “god-emperor”
As such, he has set the mold for human history —at least as far back as extra-Biblical sources can go. Only the Bible goes “outside the box” to give us the freedom & clarity to escape the abyss of that tyranny Osirus (green because he’s dead) and Isis blessing a falcon headed pharaoh entering the Underworld
Incurably religious Humanity —even in America— has yet to outgrow this mold on its own