by
Damien F. Mackey
It surely follows from my latest article (20th April, 2023):
Sumerian Geography in Chaos
(6) Sumerian Geography in Chaos | Damien Mackey - Academia.edu
that historians will not be able to give a definitive account of who the Sumerians were, from whence they originated, and what was the basis of their language.
Nita Gleimius will introduce the enigmatic Sumerians with the phrase commonly used for them, “The Sumerian Problem” (2022):
https://www.thecollector.com/sumerian-problem/
The Sumerian Problem(s): Did the Sumerians Exist?
Did the Sumerian civilization really exist? Were they immigrants? And why is their language so unique?
Oct 22, 2022 • By Nita Gleimius, BA Ancient Near Eastern Cultures & Biblical Archaeology
Controversies regarding the Sumerian people — generally called “The Sumerian Problem” — started almost as soon as their civilization was rediscovered. After almost two centuries of discoveries and interpretations, and the deciphering of ancient cuneiform texts from various ancient Near Eastern sources, the very existence of the Sumerians as a distinct nation is still questioned today by some learned scholars.
Add to this the various theories about ancient aliens and mysterious teachers, and we have a veritable melting pot of beliefs, myths, and interpretations that defy logic. Many Assyriologists and Sumerologists, like Thorkild Jacobsen and Samuel Noah Kramer, have contributed immensely to the unraveling and interpretation of facts from conjecture. They started to create a semblance of order using the conglomeration of information from archaeology, cuneiform texts, guesswork, and unsubstantiated theories. But even they had to guess and make assumptions.
What Is the Sumerian Problem?
Discovering our ancient roots is enlightening and wonderfully exciting, one clue leads to a discovery, which leads to another clue, which leads to another discovery, and so on — almost like a top-selling mystery novel. But imagine that your favorite mystery or crime novelist suddenly ends a book without tying up the pieces — and with some crucial pieces of the mystery still missing. Without crucial evidence, without enough hints to lead you further, you may check and recheck if you were right in your analysis and tentative conclusions. Sometimes archaeologists end up with just such a mystery.
In the case of the Sumerians, the problems started from the very beginning; their very existence, their identity, their origin, their language, and their demise have all been questioned. Once most of the archaeological and linguistic fraternities agreed that a previously unknown group of people had in fact settled in southern Mesopotamia (modern Iraq) before 4000 BCE, theories abounded.
Scholars theorized, reasoned, and debated. Instead of arriving at a reasonable potential geographic location, questions and mysteries multiplied. The issue became several issues. The Sumerian Problem became so emotional for some scholars that they attacked each other openly and personally. The media had a field day, and the scholarly war became in itself part of the problem.
The truth is that a civilization that lasted for more than 3,000 years [sic] would inevitably have gone through deep changes — in social, political, cultural, and economic terms. It will have been affected by outside factors such as the physical environment, contact with and incursions from outsiders, and pestilence. It would also have been impacted by population growth patterns, cultural changes, habits, the natural diffusion of immigrant cultures, as well as thought patterns, religious influences, internal strife, and wars among city-states.
Mackey’s comment: Problems, questions, are arising due to a greatly over-expanded chronology and to an uncertain geography, making it impossible to be really definite about the situation. Hence the question below: Why Is There a Problem?
How then can we define such a multiplex of societal epochs as one single civilization? Were the Sumerians rough and robust outsiders that took over an already refined and more advanced southern Mesopotamian society?
Background: Why Is There a Problem?
After thousands of years of nomadic and semi-nomadic seasonal settlements created by hunter-gatherers, some settlements in southern Mesopotamia were settled all year round. From around 4000 BCE there appears to have been a relatively rapid development in agriculture, culture, and technology.
Mackey’s comment: The Great Agricultural Leap had begun before this, at Karaca Dağ.
See e.g. my article:
Great Leap to Agriculture made by Noah’s family in mountains of SE Turkey
(9) Great Leap to Agriculture made by Noah’s family in mountains of SE Turkey | Damien Mackey - Academia.edu
Low-lying Sumer was still, at that stage, under the influence of the vestiges of the Flood. Far from being the Cradle of Civilisation, its settlement was relatively later.
Nita Gleimius continues:
Crops were planted using irrigation: canals diverted rivers, channels ran from rivers to crop fields, and furrows led water into the fields. A simple plow was converted into a seeder plow which could do both jobs at once — and could be pulled by draught animals.
By 3500 BCE agriculture was no longer so labor-intensive, and people could direct their attention to other occupations. Urbanization and specialization in the manufacturing of goods such as ceramics, farm implements, boat building, and other crafts led to cities being built around large religious centers by 3000 BCE. Why and where did this burst of innovation come from?
Various Biblical scholars and treasure hunters have actively searched the ancient Near East for proof of Biblical stories and to find legendary riches from ancient civilizations. Scholars and historians from as far back as Herodotus knew well enough about the Assyrians and the Babylonians. Nobody, though, knew that these civilizations inherited their advanced cultures from a still older civilization.
Mackey’s comment: Assyrian Nineveh was surely settled before Sumer (which is not the biblical “Shinar”) was (Genesis 10:10, 11).
Assyria was called “the land of Nimrod” (Micah 5:6).
Nita Gleimius continues:
Though the Sumerians were gone and forgotten, their legacy was very much alive. It had passed down through other geographic locations …
Mackey’s comment: Even its own supposed geographic locations belonged far away elsewhere.
… and through social, political, and economic developments as empires came and went through the ages that followed.
….
The Sumerian Language Quest
The discovery of Ashurbanipal’s library at Nineveh and the subsequent translation of its texts revealed three distinct languages written in similar cuneiform script. Assyrian and Babylonian were distinctly Semitic, but a third Semitic script contained words and syllables that just did not fit into the rest of its Semitic vocabulary. This language was Akkadian with non-Semitic Sumerian phraseology interlaced. Excavations at Lagash and Nippur provided plenty of cuneiform tablets, and these were entirely in this non-Semitic language.
Researchers noted that the Babylonian kings called themselves the kings of Sumer and Akkad. Akkadian was accounted for, so they named the new script Sumerian. Then they found tablets with bilingual texts, believed to be from school exercises. Although these tablets were dated to the first millennium BCE, long after Sumerian as a spoken language had ceased to exist, it continued as a written language similar to the use of Latin today.
Identifying and deciphering Sumerian did not solve the problem of their origins. The language is what is known as a language isolate — it fits into no other known language group. Instead of clarifying the origins of the Sumerians, it added to the confusion.
Scholars have identified many Semitic names among the place names used by the Sumerians for some of their greatest cities. Ur, Uruk, Eridu, and Kish are but a few of these. This could mean that they moved into places that were already settled — or it could mean that they kept the place names given to these cities by their conquerors — the Akkadians and the Elamites — after regaining their independence. The Elamites, though, were also a non-Semitic speaking people, and the identified names are Semitic.
Another scholarly argument is that some of the earliest words from the Sumerian language are from the most primitive phase of their agricultural development. Many words are names for local southern Mesopotamian animals and plants. This may mean that the Sumerians were primitive immigrants settling into a more advanced culture (the Ubaid culture).
They then later adopted the culture of their host country and developed it further with more innovations. Another argument in favor of this hypothesis is that the Sumerian words for these above objects are mostly one syllable, whereas the words for more sophisticated objects have more than one syllable, indicating the more advanced culture of another group.
Samuel Noah Kramer has argued that the Ubaid culture in the region was already advanced when the Sumerians arrived. The Ubaid culture, he posited, came from the Zagros mountains, and amalgamated over time with several Semitic groups from Arabia and elsewhere. After the Sumerians conquered this more advanced Ubaid culture, they and the Sumerians together achieved the heights that we now assign to the Sumerian civilization.
More Sumerian Origin Hypotheses
Archaeological finds from the earliest levels of Sumerian civilization, such as the oldest Eridu temple structures, confirms that southern Mesopotamian culture is similar from at least the Ubaid Period right through the giant leaps towards urbanized civilization. There is no sign of any outside material in these earliest levels, and a lack of foreign pottery clinches it.
On the other hand, some theorists maintain that religious structures like ziggurats appear in Sumer only in the late Uruk period. The time selected by the immigrant theorists for the Sumerian arrival in the already flourishing Ubaid Period of southern Mesopotamia. ….
The hypothesis that the Sumerians came from a homeland beyond the Persian Gulf towards the East has been floated on and off since their identification. This theory is popular with those who do not believe that the Sumerians would have traveled across the hinterland of Mesopotamia all the way to the tip of the land where resources are more limited. Another southern origin idea posits that the Sumerians were Arabs who lived on the east coast of the Persian Gulf before their home was flooded after the last ice age.
Other scholars theorize that their skills with metalwork — for which there were zero resources in Sumer — and the building of high places (ziggurats), indicate that their homeland must have been in the mountains. The most popular theory here points to the foothills and plains of the Zagros mountains — today’s Iranian plateau.
Others suggest that they may be related to the original peoples of ancient India. They find similarities between the Sumerian language and the Dravidian group of languages from this region.
Mackey’s comment: Very much needing to be factored in here as well is the noticeable similarity between Sumerian and Chinese:
Ancient Chinese History and the Book of Genesis. Part Four: Chinese and Sumerian
(9) Ancient Chinese History and the Book of Genesis. Part Four: Chinese and Sumerian | Damien Mackey - Academia.edu
To the north, we have several areas that could be likely candidates if the Sumerians were immigrants to southern Mesopotamia. The areas around the Caspian Sea, Afghanistan, Anatolia, the Taurus mountains, Northern Iran, Kramer’s trans-Caucasian area, Northern Syria, and more.
Mackey’s comment: So much guesswork here.
Might I suggest trying “Northern Syria” (above)/ southern Turkey?
Kings David and Solomon
With the geography of Sumer (supposedly) unscrambled, we are surprised to find deeds pertaining to the Israelite kings, David and Solomon, in the Eshnunna and Lagash tales of the c. C18th BC, with Solomon appearing even well before that, in the c. C22nd BC.
But, given the apparently long history of this region - artificial though it all may be - we would expect to find other Israelite/Judean history there as well.
And that we surely do.
But I shall need an article supplementary to this one to cover it.
This is what I have previously written on David, Solomon and Eshnunna, Lagash.
*****
One of the most important contributions to the revision of ancient history, with a keen reference to the Bible, has been Dean Hickman’s re-location of King Hammurabi of Babylon from, originally, c. 2400, now c. 1800 BC (conventional dating) - with some revisionists opting for c. 1450 BC, the time of Joshua - to the era of kings David and King Solomon (c. 1000 BC, standard dating).
Dean Hickman most helpfully identified the powerful Assyrian ruler of the time, Shamsi-Adad I, as the biblical (Syrian) king, Hadadezer, against whom King David successfully campaigned (2 Samuel 8:3).
And Hickman skilfully identified Hadadezer’s father, Rekhob (or Rehob), as Shamsi-Adad’s father, Uru-kabkabu (Urukab = Rekhob).
Surely, so I then thought, kings David and Solomon must also be historically identifiable amongst these supposed C18th BC kings and their wars.
A tentative thought of mine was that King Solomon may have been King Jabin of Hazor (Mari Letters) at this time, seeing that Solomon had control of that city (I Kings 9:15).
Unfortunately, several good revisionist historians, ignoring Dean Hickman’s work, have identified this Jabin with the one at the time of Joshua (11:1), thereby throwing their revisions right out of kilter, by about half a millennium.
Jabin was a generic name for rulers of Hazor, and there was another such Canaanite king at the time of Deborah (Judges 4).
King Solomon may have taken the name as well when he gained control of Hazor. Or, this Jabin may have been another Canaanite king under that name whom Solomon conquered.
The Mari Letters do not name places further south than this, so any reference to Solomon may have associated him with one of his northern cities (closer to Mari), rather than to Jerusalem much further to the south.
Of more pressing interest to me, though, was that there was a king with a David-like name, who was, again like King David, an opponent of Shamsi-Adad I (Hadadezer).
The name David means “Beloved”:
https://www.abarim-publications.com/Meaning/David.html
I refer to a King of Eshnunna, Naram-Sin (“Beloved of” the Lord) – the Syrians interchanged Sin and El.
Even closer to David’s name was Dadusha of Eshnunna of the same approximate era.
Hence, I badly wanted Eshnunna re-situated from Sumer to the region of Jerusalem.
The trouble was that Eshnunna seemed firmly situated in Central Mesopotamia, to the north of Sumer.
But that was not to be the end of the story.
I had, in my university thesis (2007) distinguished between two forts named Ashdod, the well-known coastal one belonging to the Philistines, known in Sargon II’s Annals as Ashdudimmu, “Ashdod-by-the-Sea”, and another Ashdod that Sargon II’s General (Turtan) captured (Isaiah 20:1), which I determined to have been the famous Lachish.
It needs to be noted that Lachish was second in importance to Jerusalem itself:
https://www.baslibrary.org/biblical-archaeology-review/31/4/8
“Among cities in ancient Judah, Lachish was second only to Jerusalem in importance. A principal Canaanite and, later, Israelite site, Lachish occupied a major tell (mound) 25 miles southwest of Jerusalem, nestled in the foothills of Judah (the region known as the Shephelah)”.
Eventually it struck me that my combination, Ashdod-Lachish, had to be the supposed Sumerian combination of Eshnunna-Lagash. (Friend Robert R. Salverda, at the same time, had come to the conclusion that Lagash was Lachish).
Now, with Eshnunna as Ashdudda (merely requiring an n and d interchange), or Ashdod (Lachish), then Dadusha king of Eshnunna could certainly be King David. Thanks to Dean Hickman’s revision, Dadusha was now an approximate contemporary of King David.
But why Lachish and not Jerusalem for David (Dadusha)?
Well, it is an indication of the importance of Lachish. However, some Sumeriologists think that Lagash was not the capital, but that Girsu, the religious centre, actually was.
The religious centre, Girsu, therefore, with Lagash secondary to it, must be Jerusalem.
This has since led me to the realisation that the land of Sumer needs to be de-nuded of some of its most famous names. Places that seemingly just drop out of history.
That is because they did not belong there in the first place.
Seth Richardson, refers to them as ‘falling off the political map’. Thus I wrote on this:
Amazingly - though not really surprisingly under the circumstances - Lagash and Girsu seem to ‘fall permanently off the political map’, according to Seth Richardson (and that is because they do not belong on this map):
Ningirsu returns to his plow: Lagaš and Girsu take leave of Ur (2008)
(5) Ningirsu returns to his plow: Lagaš and Girsu take leave of Ur (2008) | Seth Richardson - Academia.edu
The Ur III state came to its end through a series of passive defections of individual provinces over the course of about twenty years, rather than by any single catastrophic event. This pattern of defections is nowhere better reflected than in the gradual progression of provinces abandoning the use of Ibbi-Sîn’s year names over his years 2–8.
Among the cities that fell away from the control of Ur in those years were Girsu and Lagaš, where Ur III year names are not attested after Ibbi-Sîn’s sixth year. …. Like Puzriš-Dagān and Umma (but unlike Larsa, Uruk, Isin, and Nippur), these cities seemingly fell permanently off the political map of lower Mesopotamia following their departure from Ur’s control, never again the seat of significant institutional life to judge by the low number of texts and inscriptions coming from the sites. At the same time, it is difficult to assert from evidence that any hardship or conflict either precipitated or resulted from Lagaš-Girsu’s decamping from Ur’s authority; no especial difficulty marks the event. ….
Considering that Puzrish-Dagan and Umma likewise fall off the map, we may need now to begin critically examining these two places as well.
Happily, for Sumeriologists and the like, Larsa, Uruk, Isin, and Nippur, seem to be firmly established in Sumer.
Though I would distinguish between the well-known Sumerian Uruk and the Urukku seemingly associated with Girsu (my Jerusalem) as its sanctuary.
(Ur, Uruk, appear to have been very common ancient names, widely distributed).
Also to be distinguished, in this context, are the Sumerian Ur and the home of Abram, “Ur of the Chaldees”, which is Urfa (Şanliurfa) in SE Turkey, far from Sumer.
Finally, given my view (and that of others) that Jerusalem was the same site as the antediluvian Garden of Eden, then the Gu-Edin (Guedena) over which the king of Lagash, Eannatum (yet to be identified), and the king of Umma, fought, could perhaps be a reference to the region of Jerusalem (or some place closely associated with it).
[End of quotes]
When the Jews were exiled to Sumer, their history must have become known, but re-cast in Sumerian fashion, with Sumerian pronunciations replacing Hebrew ones.
King Dadusha’s famous stele, honouring the god, Adad, might lead one to think that David (if Dadusha) was an idolater.
But some think that this stele would have been set up, instead, by Dadusha’s son, Ibal-pi-el, who must then be King Solomon himself, who did apostatise, and who did build polytheistic and idolatrous shrines (I Kings 11:1-13).
Or, it might simply be that the god, Adad, was the best name representation for the God of Israel in that SE part of the ancient world.
Some commentators suggest that King David, rather than Hadadezer, set up his boundary stele, at the Euphrates (2 Samuel 8:3): “Moreover, David defeated Hadadezer son of Rehob, king of Zobah, when he [meaning David] went to restore his monument at the Euphrates River”.
King Solomon
I have most tentatively identified King Solomon above with Jabin king of Hazor (the Mari Letters). And, somewhat more confidently, with Ibal-pi-el of Eshnunna.
Most confidently, I have identified King Solomon, in Eighteenth Dynasty Egypt, as Senenmut, adviser (consort?) to the female pharaoh, Hatshepsut. See e.g. my article:
Solomon and Sheba
(3) Solomon and Sheba | Damien Mackey - Academia.edu
I also suggested in this article that the sage king Solomon has been appropriated by the Greeks as the Athenian statesman (using Hebrew laws, no less), Solomon.
Senenmut is often considered by historians to have been ‘the real power behind the throne’ of Egypt.
Conventional historians, however, have no hope whatsoever of identifying any of the above characters (presuming any of them be legitimate) with King Solomon. To do so, they would need to cross geographical boundaries and timelines. Thus:
C18th BC Syro-Palestine, as Jabin of Hazor and/or Ibal-pi-el of Eshnunna.
C15th BC Egypt, as Senenmut during the Eighteenth Dynasty. Not to mention
C11th BC Jerusalem, as the biblical King Solomon.
Naturally, this throws into absolute chaos the conventional archaeology.
And so we get puerile statements by the likes of Israeli professor Israel Finkelstein: “Now Solomon. I think I destroyed Solomon, so to speak. Sorry for that!”
(Draper, R., “Kings of Controversy”, National Geographic, December 2010, p. 85).
Doubtlessly, there will be other intriguing manifestations of the great king as well, including possibly in a pseudo AD ‘history’ (Charlemagne?, Suleiman?).
Now, with Lagash re-identified as the Judean Lachish, then a supposedly much earlier character of note emerges as a prime candidate for King Solomon the Temple builder.
I refer to:
Gudea ensi of Lagash
We now have to locate ourselves back in c. 2100 BC, although the dating of Gudea is almost as liquid as has been that of Hammurabi of Babylon.
Gudea is variously dated to c. 2144-2124 BC (middle chronology), or c. 2080–2060 BC (short chronology).
I am going to date him closer to c. 950 BC – about 1200 years lower than the earliest conventional estimate for him.
“Parallels between Gudea’s and Solomon’s account include … taxing the people; costly imports; divine word requiring obedience; detailed description of opulent furnishings; consecration; installation of divine majesty into temple; speech by ruler at consecration imploring divine bounty; specification of ruler’s offering …”.
Diane M. Sharon
Having the ancient city of Lagash rudely transferred from deep in Sumer, to be re-located 1300-plus km (as I estimate it) westwards, as the fort of Lachish, as I have proposed to be necessary in articles such as:
As Ashduddu (Ashdod) is to Lachish, so, likewise, is Eshnunna to Lagash
(7) As Ashduddu (Ashdod) is to Lachish, so, likewise, is Eshnunna to Lagash | Damien Mackey - Academia.edu
then it comes as no surprise - in fact, I would have expected it - to learn that Gudea’s Temple hymn has Jewish resonances.
It just remains to be determined with which prominent Jewish builder, Gudea – {a name that looks like Judea, but supposedly means: “the messenger or the one called by the god, or “the receiver of revelation”, meaning “the prophet”} – may have been.
Diane M. Sharon, who has dated the era of Gudea about a millennium too early, has nevertheless written most interestingly at the beginning of her 1996 article, “A Biblical Parallel to a Sumerian Temple Hymn? Ezekiel 40–48 and Gudea”:
Ezekiel’s remarkably detailed vision of the future temple as described in chapters 40–48 is unique in Biblical literature. …. However, it bears undeniable resemblance to the ancient Near Eastern genre of Sumerian temple hymns, and to one example in particular. …. This example, commonly referred to as the Gudea Cylinders, was written at about 2125 B.C.E. to commemorate the building of a temple to the god Ningirsu by Gudea, king of Lagash. …. It recounts a vision received by Gudea in a dream, in which he is shown the plan and dimensions of the temple he is to build. While in fundamental ways these texts are quite different, this paper will focus on the common features of theme, structure, and detail shared by these two documents.
We will focus first on the major themes which are common to Ezekiel and Gudea, addressing especially the association of the temple with abundance, and particularly with water as a symbol of fertility associated with the temple. We will also address a second theme in common, the concern with gradations of purification and consecration.
Ezekiel’s vision of the restored temple is the culmination of his prophetic mission, which spanned more than twenty years during the sixth century B.C.E. …. The burden of his message in most of his book is the inevitability of the destruction of Jerusalem, the death of most of Judah’s inhabitants, and the scattering of the pitiful remainder. ….
But from the time God tells Ezekiel to watch for a refugee bearing the news of Jerusalem’s downfall, Ezekiel begins to prophesy against Israel’s enemies. …. While his message can never be described as comforting, Ezekiel does convey hope as he begins at this point to sketch the outlines of an Israel restored to her land with a new heart and a new spirit for the honor of her God (37:22, 26–28, 32).
Ezekiel’s final chapters, dazzling in their graphic description of the divine majesty re-establishing residence in the magnificent re-sanctified precincts of a rebuilt temple, conclude with an unmistakable allusion to fertility and abundance (47:9–12).
In notably parallel circumstances [sic], Gudea’s temple-building occurs toward the end of the seventy- or eighty-year domination of Sumer by a people known as the Gutians. …. The Gutian invasion, described in the Sumerian lament, “The Curse of Agade,” … resulted in dire famine for Sumer, with “misery, want, death and desolation thus threatening to overwhelm practically all ‘mankind fashioned by Enlil’.” ….
After these decades of oppression, the Sumerian people experience a renewal. Gudea builds a temple at the direction of the storm god Ningirsu. …. The temple’s construction and consecration represent the presence of the god’s blessings of abundance among the people … and may indeed have the same “redemptive” implications as Ezekiel’s visionary temple, that of a people rebuilt at long last after devastation by an invader and many years of foreign oppression. ….
For Gudea, the temple is a sign of the divine presence, bringing with it abundance. …. Ningirsu promises: ….
….
When to my house, the house honored in all lands,
the right arm of Lagash,
the thunderbird roaring on the horizon—
Eninnu, my kingly house,
O able shepherd Gudea, you put effectively the hand for me,
I shall call up a rain …
that from above it bring for you abundance;
and the people may spread hands with you on the abundance.
May with the laying of the foundations of my house abundance come! ….
It is interesting that in both texts at least part of the promised abundance takes the metaphoric form of being showered from above. In fact, an important parallel between the two works is the repetition of all types of water images, many associated with fertility, and some—notably thunderstorms and water flowing from the earth— also associated with the appearance of the divinity.
In the Sumerian hymn, water images abound. The overflow of the river signals to Gudea that the god wants something of him. …. Gudea floats down the river in a barge, seeking the clarifying oracle and stopping at different stages on the way to appease the tutelary gods with bread and libations of clear water. …. The clan (area) of the goddess Nanshe, another divinity invoked in Gudea’s dream, is described as “superabundant waters spreading abundance,” i7-mah a-diri hé-gál-bi pàr-pàr. …. Repeatedly, the heart of a god is referred to as a flood, or as a river overflowing. …. And the god Ningirsu, himself the personification of the thundercloud and the overflowing river, is invoked with unmistakable references to waters of fertility. ….
In the final chapters of Ezekiel, YHWH, too, partakes of this image of divine abundance associated with water, though to be sure the associations are attenuated and not always clear-cut. For example, in Ezekiel’s second vision of theophany, the sound of God’s voice is compared to the sound of “the voice of mighty waters,” … (43:2). Ezekiel compares this theophany to his first experience many years before, both specifically located by the river Chebar. ….
But by far the most dramatic water image in the book of Ezekiel is manifestly associated with fertility and abundance: that of the river issuing from beneath the visionary temple in 47:1–12. Moshe Greenberg remarks that Ezekiel’s celestial architect leads Ezekiel from the modest origin of the spring and measures its growth into “an unfordable river after a 4,000-cubit flow through a desert!” …. Greenberg is impressed with the connection between this flow of water and miraculous abundance, and notes:
This vision specifically connects Temple and fertility and singles out for transformation the most barren tract of land—the wilderness of Judah—and the body of water most inhospitable to life, the Dead Sea, a dramatic exhibition of God’s beneficent presence in the temple. ….
Raphael Patai is also impressed by this association between the temple and fertility, and he was the first to make this particular connection between Ezekiel’s vision and Gudea’s temple. ….
Both Gudea and Ezekiel are deeply concerned with purification. …. All those who are “impure” … are banished from Gudea’s city, and the king consecrates the city and the ground on which he will build his temple with fire and with incense. ….
In a sense, for Ezekiel, the people will have already been purified by an ordeal by fire in the destruction and exile. Nevertheless, purification and gradations of holiness are still a major concern of Ezekiel’s, never more apparent than in this vision of the Temple rebuilt.
According to Greenberg, the very design of Ezekiel’s visionary Temple reflects the prophet’s focus upon sanctity. Greenberg comments that: ….
The Temple proper expresses gradation of holiness by the successively narrowing entrances to its inner parts. Along the border between the two courts rooms and zones are appointed for activities which if not properly contained might violate the grades of holiness.
God’s blessing follows closely upon the consecration of the temple. Once the temple is completed and the degrees of holiness are appropriately defined and contained in their designated locations within the visionary edifice, the full abundance which seems contingent on proper sanctification bursts forth in the form of the spring of water emerging from the south side of the altar. ….
Gudea’s god also makes abundance contingent upon the completion of the temple, and the Sumerians enjoy gradually increasing abundance as the temple construction progresses. For Gudea’s people, abundance begins from the moment the foundation of the temple is laid; … and, of course, when the temple is completed, abundance rains down and is also raised from the earth in the form of grain. ….
It is possible to view the gradually increasing abundance which follows the progress of building Gudea’s temple as an expression of the same idea in a different metaphor as the abundance which follows the carefully designated degrees of holiness embodied in the design of Ezekiel’s visionary temple.
The divine command in both instances is for an edifice which expresses in its design (in Ezekiel’s case) or in its process of construction (in Gudea’s case) the idea of progressive sanctification. Upon the achievement of the final sanctification in both cases, the divine blessing of abundance pours forth in the form of fertilizing water.
In addition to these two major themes of, first, associating temple with both water and abundance, and, second, preoccupation with degrees of sanctity, the structural pattern of the temple vision in Ezekiel shares much in common with the structure of the Gudea hymn. ….
Let us first summarize the common structural pattern, and then we will examine specific details. The common structural pattern consists of seven points:
1) annunciation to the seer in a vision or a dream of the divine desire to have a temple built; ….
2) a precise blueprint received in an altered state of consciousness at the hand of a divine “architectural assistant”;
3) concern throughout with purification, consecration, and ritual/ cultic renewal;
4) installation of the divine majesty into the completed edifice;
5) assignment of specific duties to designated temple personnel;
6) ultimate consecration of the temple for service to the divinity; followed, finally, by
7) the divine blessing in the form of abundance expressed in water imagery.
The idea of a cosmogonic pattern for temple archetypes is recurrent in the critical literature of comparative mythology … and has been seen in biblical and ancient Near Eastern literature as well. ….
Several of the points outlined in the scholarly literature as they relate to food narratives or to edifice construction in Mesopotamian and Biblical literature apply as well to the accounts we have been considering in Ezekiel and Gudea, specifically, the associations among temple, water, and abundance; the divine request for a temple as conveyed to a king or priest; the requirement for cultic purification; and the celebration of a recurring annual ritual of re-consecration. ….
Taken together with other scholarly studies on temple models of the ancient Near East reflected in Hebrew scripture … the correspondences among so many sacred constructions from so many different, though related, cultures in the ancient Near East suggest an implicit, if not explicit, paradigm for the structure and function of “Temple” that was operative over a long period and at many levels. The several biblical accounts that correspond to this hypothetical model may be adduced as evidence that Hebrew scribes and prophets were familiar with this genre and incorporated it into their writings.
Before proceeding to consideration of our third task, the examination of parallels in the details of the two texts, it is worthwhile noting that the structure and details of Gudea’s building program also bear great resemblance to other temple construction accounts in the Bible, specifically Solomon’s activity described in 1 Kgs. 5:1–9:9 and Hezekiah’s reconstruction and repair of the temple outlined in 2 Chronicles 29–31.
While a deeper analysis must wait, a summary of the parallels might be illuminating for the reader of the present paper. Parallels between Gudea’s and Solomon’s account include: … taxing the people; costly imports; divine word requiring obedience; detailed description of opulent furnishings; consecration; installation of divine majesty into temple; speech by ruler at consecration imploring divine bounty; specification of ruler’s offering; feast of seven days; and divine exhortation to moral and ethical behavior by ruler and subjects. ….
