by
Damien F. Mackey
“[Nabonidus]
saw in this sacred enclosure [Ebabbar] a statue of Sargon …
half
of its head was missing …. Given his reverence for the gods and
his
respect for kingship, he … restored the head of
this
statue, and put back its face”.
According to a late chronographic document concerning Babylon emanating from either
the Seleucid or Parthian age, King
Nabonidus had found a damaged statue of Sargon of Akkad the head of which he had
carefully restored by his artisans.
In this particular
document, Sargon of Akkad is distinguished from his “son”, Naram-Sin - though I
believe, and have written to the effect (e.g. article below), that Sargon and
Naram-Sin were one and the same powerful king.
We read from this late document:
https://www.livius.org/sources/content/mesopotamian-chronicles-content/cm-53-chronographic-document-concerning-nabonidus/
…. [3] in the month of Ululu, [...] of this
same year, in the Ebabbar, the temple of Šamaš, which is in Sippar,
and in which kings among his predecessors had searched in vain for ancient
foundation - the ancient dwelling place [...] of his kingship that would make
his heart glad - he revealed to him, to his humble servant who worshiped him,
who was constantly in search of his holy places, the sacred enclosure of
Naram-Sin, Sargon's son, and, in this same year, in a propitious month, on a
favorable day, he laid the foundations of the Ebabbar, the temple
of Šamaš, above the sacred enclosure of Naram-Sin, Sargon's son,
without exceeding or shrinking a finger's breadth.
He saw Naram-Sin's
inscription and, without changing its place, restored it and appended his own
inscription there.
[4] He saw in this
sacred enclosure a statue of Sargon, the father of Naram-Sin: half of its head
was missing, and it had deteriorated so as to make its face hardly
recognizable. Given his reverence for the gods and his respect for kingship, he
summoned expert artisans, restored the head of this statue, and put back its
face. He did not change its place but installed it in the Ebabbar and initiated
an oblation for it. ….
[End of quote]
Now, King Nabonidus of Babylon was none other than Nebuchednezzar ‘the
Great’ according to my revision. And Sargon of Akkad, the ancient ‘Humpty Dumpty’,
whose head the eccentric Babylonian king was, however, able to ‘put back together
again’, was the biblical Nimrod himself, perhaps the world’s first dictator-emperor.
See e.g. my article:
Nimrod a
"mighty man"
Nimrod and Nebuchednezzar, though well separated in time the one
from the other, do compare well to the extent of they both being great builders
of a “Babel”, of a Babylon, who regarded themselves as gods, who defied the One
God, and who were punished – perhaps even while their lips were bespeaking their
own praises (cf. Genesis 11:6-7; Daniel 4:31).
King
Nebuchadnezzar was a despot who would tolerate no rivals or equals, a man who
had deified himself and demanded to be worshipped as a god.
He was a
ruler who manifested the character of Nimrod himself who originally founded
Babylon [sic] and Assyria and built the Tower of Babel.
Babylon in
fact had its roots in Nimrod’s ancient empire. In Babylon you could have any
religion you liked, and there were many religions, provided the god you
worshipped was not greater than the King himself.
Nebuchadnezzar was the head of the pantheon of gods in
Babylon. In his estimation of himself there was no other god higher than
himself. Nebuchadnezzar, like many other rulers in the Bible and in history,
was a major type of the Antichrist ….
[End of quote]
In “Nimrod a
"mighty man"” I argued that, just as the biblico-historical
Nebuchednezzar requires a handful of mighty kings, his alter egos, in fact, to complete the awesome potentate, so, too,
does biblical Nimrod require to be united to his various ‘parts’ (‘faces’) comprising
some of the most famous names from early dynastic history (Sargon, Naram-Sin,
Shulgi, etc.). Thus I wrote:
The biblical
Nimrod has, at least as it seems to me, multi historical personae, just as I have found to have been the case with the much
later (Chaldean) king, Nebuchednezzar.
The historical
Nebuchednezzar - as he is currently portrayed to us - needs his other ‘face’,
Nabonidus of Babylon, for example, to complete him as the biblical “King
Nebuchadnezzar” (or “Nebuchadrezzar”); Nabonidus being mad, superstitious, given to dreams and omens, statue-worshipping, praising
the god of gods (ilani sa
ilani); having a son called “Belshazzar”.
The
biblico-historical Nebuchednezzar also needs Ashurbanipal to fill out in detail
his 43 years of reign, to smash utterly the nation of Egypt –
Ashurbanipal also having a fiery furnace
in which he burned people.
But
Nebuchednezzar also needs Esarhaddon (conquering
Egypt again) whose mysterious and
long-lasting illness is so perfectly reminiscent of that of Nebuchednezzar
in the Book of Daniel; Esarhaddon especially being renowned for his having built Babylon.
Nebuchednezzar
has other ‘faces’ as well, he being Nabopolassar, the careful archaeologist (like Nabonidus), fussing over the proper alignment of temples and other
buildings, and as the so-called Persian king, Cambyses, also named “Nebuchednezzar”, again quite mad, and being a known conqueror of Egypt. And we need to dip
into Persia again, actually the city of Susa, to find Nebuchednezzar now in the
Book of Nehemiah as the “Artaxerxes king
of Babylon” reigning in his 20th to 32nd years (cf.
Nehemiah 2:1 and 13:6).
Extending
matters yet still further, our necessary revisionist folding of ‘Neo’ Babylonia
with ‘Middle Kingdom’ Babylonia has likely yielded us the powerful (so-called)
Middle Babylonian king Nebuchednezzar I as being another ‘face’ of the ‘Neo’
Babylonian king whom we number as Nebuchednezzar II.
In similar
fashion, apparently, has our conventional biblico-history sliced and diced into
various pieces, Nimrod the mighty hunter king.
[End
of quote]
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