by
Damien F. Mackey
Albright … published a more satisfactory translation than had hitherto been
possible by discerning that its author had used a good many so-called ‘Canaanite’ words
plus two Hebrew proverbs! EA 252 has a stylised introduction … and in the first 15 lines utilises only two ‘Canaanite’ words. Thereafter, in the main body of the text, Albright noted (and later scholars have concurred) that Lab’ayu used only about 20% pure Akkadian, “with 40% mixed or ambiguous, and no less than 40% pure Canaanite”.
“W.F. Albright, in full William Foxwell Albright, (born May 24, 1891, Coquimbo, Chile—died Sept. 19, 1971, Baltimore, Md., U.S.), American biblical archaeologist and Middle Eastern scholar, noted especially for his excavations of biblical sites”.
I find that professor Albright - although a scholar working within the restricting confines of the conventional model of archaeologico-history - had the unusual ability sometimes to burst through the seams of that model and make some very insightful new observations.
One of his (as Dr. Albright’s) most remarkable forays beyond the tight walls of convention was his important synchronisation of the first pharaoh of Egypt, Menes, or Min (conventionally dated to c. 3100 BC), with the latter’s conqueror, Naram-Sin (conventionally dated to c. 2250 BC), of the famous Sargonid dynasty of Akkad. See my article:
Dr. W.F. Albright’s Game-Changing Chronological Shift
This synchronisation by Dr. Albright involved a massive shift in time of conventional dating to the tune of about a millennium.
It all at once brought into synthesis, the First Dynasty of Egypt; the Akkadian Dynasty; and the era of Abram and everything associated with that Patriarch, more accurately, though, to be dated to c. 1900 BC:
Narmer a Contemporary of Patriarch Abraham
Narmer a Contemporary of Patriarch Abraham. Part Two: Narmer as Naram Sin
Albright also was an early one to suggest a location, not in southern Mesopotamia (Sumer), for the biblical land of Shinar. This may perhaps, in part, have prompted Dr. Anne Habermehl’s important re-location of Shinar, a suggestion that I have enthusiastically embraced. See my:
Tightening the Geography and Archaeology for Early Genesis
Habermehl wrote in her article: “Where in the World Is the Tower of Babel?” with mention of Albright: https://answersingenesis.org/tower-of-babel/where-in-the-world-is-the-tower-of-babel/
Some early voices had dissented from the idea that Shinar was in the south. Fraser (1834, pp. 216–217) opined that putting the Tower of Babel in the same place as Babylon (Fraser refers to Beke 1834, pp. 24–26) was a novel idea and “an erroneous notion” because then Ararat would have been north of Babel and not east of it. Later on, Albright (1924) wrote a paper to show that Shinar was basically the ancient kingdom of Hanna, a territory in Northern Syria, bordered by the Euphrates on the west. Gemser (1968, pp. 35–36) thought that “Sanhara . . . seems to have been one of the four major powers in Northern Syria after the fall of the state of Mari.” We will further discuss locating Shinar in this northern area later on in this paper. ….
And Albright even went rather close to realising that some of the El Amarna [EA] correspondents were writing in Hebrew. Here is what I wrote about it in my university thesis:
A Revised History of the Era of King Hezekiah of Judah
and its Background
(Volume One, pp. 87-88):
Lab’ayu’s Speech
Lab’ayu is thought to have been no timid lackey of pharaoh, at least according to Albright:221 “The truculence of Labaya’s tone in writing to the court contrasts oddly with the grovelling subservience of most Palestinian chieftains”. Most grovelling of all
perhaps was Abdi-Ashirta himself, who had written to pharaoh during a time of crisis:
LETTER 64: To the king, my lord, say. Thus says Abdi-Ashtarti [Ashirta], the servant of the king: At the feet of my king, my lord, I have fallen seven times ... and seven times in addition, upon breast as well as back. May the king, my lord, learn that enmity is mighty against me ....
Like Lab’ayu, the biblical Ahab could indeed be an outspoken person, bold in speech to both fellow kings and prophets (cf. 1 Kings 18:17; 20:11). But Lab’ayu, like all the other duplicitous Syro-Palestinian kings, instinctively knew when, and how, to grovel …. Thus, when having to protest his loyalty and readiness to pay tribute to the crown, Lab’ayu really excelled himself:222 “Further: In case the king should write for my wife, would I refuse her? In case the king should write to me: “Run a dagger of bronze into thy heart and die”, would I not, indeed, execute the command of the king?”
Lab’ayu moreover may have - like Ahab - used Hebrew speech. The language of the EA letters is Akkadian, but one letter by Lab’ayu, EA 252, proved to be very difficult to translate.223 Albright,224 in 1943, published a more satisfactory translation than had hitherto been possible by discerning that its author had used a good many so-called ‘Canaanite’ words plus two Hebrew proverbs! EA 252 has a stylised introduction in the typical EA formula and in the first 15 lines utilises only two ‘Canaanite’ words. Thereafter, in the main body of the text, Albright noted (and later scholars have concurred) that Lab’ayu used only about 20% pure Akkadian, “with 40% mixed or ambiguous, and no less than 40% pure Canaanite”. Albright further identified the word nam-lu in line 16 as the Hebrew word for ‘ant’ (nemalah), נְמָלָה, …the Akkadian word being zirbabu. Lab’ayu had written: “If ants are smitten, they do not accept (the smiting) quietly, but they bite the hand of the man who smites them”. Albright recognised here a parallel with the two biblical Proverbs mentioning ants (6:6 and 30:25).
Ahab likewise was inclined to use a proverbial saying as an aggressive counterpoint to a potentate. When the belligerent Ben-Hadad I sent him messengers threatening: ‘May the gods do this to me and more if there are enough handfuls of rubble in Samaria for all the people in my following [i.e. my massive army]’ (1 Kings 20:10), Ahab answered: ‘The proverb says: The man who puts on his armour is not the one who can boast, but the man who takes it off’ (v.11).
“It is a pity”, wrote Rohl and Newgrosh,225 “that Albright was unable to take his reasoning process just one step further because, in almost every instance where he
detected the use of what he called ‘Canaanite’ one could legitimately substitute the term ‘Hebrew’.”
Lab’ayu’s son too, Mut-Baal - my tentative choice for Ahaziah of Israel (c. 853 BC) …- also displayed in one of his letters (EA 256) some so-called ‘Canaanite’ and mixed origin words. Albright noted of line 13:226 “As already recognized by the interpreters, this idiom is pure Hebrew”. Albright even went very close to admitting that the local speech was Hebrew:227
... phonetically, morphologically, and syntactically the people then living in the district ... spoke a dialect of Hebrew (Canaanite) which was very closely akin to
that of Ugarit. The differences which some scholars have listed between Biblical Hebrew and Ugaritic are, in fact, nearly all chronological distinctions.
But even these ‘chronological distinctions’ cease to be a real issue in the Velikovskian context, according to which both the EA letters and the Ugaritic tablets are re-located to the time of the Divided Monarchy.
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