by
Damien F. Mackey
King Ahab, the
husband of the notorious Queen Jezebel, was, in my opinion,
the troublesome
Lab’ayu of El Amarna.
Revisionist
choices for Lab’ayu
While revisionists tend to
consider El Amarna’s Lab’ayu as being
a king of Israel, they differ as to which
king he may have been.
David
Rohl thought that Lab’ayu might have been King Saul,
before the monarchy became divided. A blogger has commented on this:
http://anarchic-teapot.net/2013/03/david-rohl-how-to-fail-a-test-of-time/
“The
main argument in Rohl’s book is that Labayu, a Hapiru/’Apiru (no,
the name is not related to the name Hebrew) chieftain who ruled
Shachmu (the Biblical city of Shechem) mentioned in several Amarna Letters (and
himself writing three of them) is the same person as the Biblical King Saul,
and that the whole Amarna period is the same as the Early Monarchic Period of
Israel.
“Anyone
familiar with the chronologies will notice a slight problem there: the Amarna
period is dated to c. 1391-1323 BCE, and the Israelite Early Monarchic Period
to c. 1000-926 BCE (all dates are Middle Chronology where applicable)”.
Emmet
Sweeney thought that Lab’ayu might have been King Baasha of
Israel, who reigned before Omri had made Samaria the capital of Israel (Empire
of Thebes, Or, Ages in Chaos Revisited, p. 83):
“…
in the Book of Kings we read: “And Jeroboam [I] built Shechem in mount Ephraim,
and dwelt there …” (I Kings 12:25). This, from the point of view of the present
reconstruction, is a crucial clue. Shechem remained Israel’s capital – more or
less – for only two generations, until after the death of Baasha, when Omri
built Samaria (I Kings 16:245-25) …”.
As for Dr. Immanuel Velikovsky, he had almost nothing to say about Laba’yu,
for, according to Sweeney again (op.
cit., p. 82):
“It is strange, and significant,
that Velikovsky makes no mention of Labayu, save for a passing reference in a
footnote. Yet any reading of the Amarna documents makes it very clear that this
man, whose operations centre seems to have been Shechem - right in the middle
of historical Samaria – was a figure of central importance at the time; and
that he must figure prominently in any attempt to reconstruct the history of
the period”.
Both King Saul (most certainly)
and even Baasha, are too early, however, to be candidates for Lab’ayu in relation to my location of
the El Amarna era of Egypt’s Eighteenth Dynasty - according to my
re-assessment, Baasha (and a fortiori, Saul)
had died significantly earlier, during the reign of pharaoh Amenhotep II.
The reign of King Ahab, on the
other hand - who has been my own preference for the king of Israel most suitable for being Lab’ayu - had lasted into about the first decade of Amenhotep III
of the El Amarna era. “The earlier Amarna letters, dating from the reign of
Amenhotep III, are full of the activities of a king named Labayu” (Sweeney, ibid.).
Lab’ayu and Abdi-hiba
The King of Jerusalem (Urusalim) who features in the EA letters
at this approximate time is Abdi-hiba, whom
I would firmly identify with (following Peter James) King Jehoram of Judah.
Now, previously I have written as
a general observation about some of the EA letters for this approximate time:
One is
surprised to find upon perusing these letters of Abdi-hiba, that -
despite Rollston’s presumption that Abdi-hiba’s “the king, my lord”
was an “Egyptian monarch” - no Egyptian ruler appears to be specifically named
in this set of letters. Moreover, “Egypt” itself may be referred to only once
in this series (EA 285): “ … Addaya has taken the garrison that you sent in the
charge of Haya, the son of Miyare; he has stationed it in his own house in Hazzatu and has sent 20 men
to Egypt-(Miṣri)”.
When we include the lack of any reference to Egypt in the
three letters of Lab’ayu (252-254) … and likewise in the two letters of
the woman, Baalat Neše - ten letters in all - then we might be
prompted to reconsider whether the extent of Egyptian involvement was as much
as is generally claimed.
Now, King Jehoram came to the
throne only after the death of King Ahab of Israel. That remains the case even
in the chronology of Philip Mauro (The
Wonders of Bible Chronology), according to which Jehoram was already
reigning alongside his father, Jehoshaphat. Thus:
…. 0826..Ahab killed in battle with Syrians
................Ahaziah [I]
................Jehoram [J] reigns for Jehoshaphat
…. 0825..Jehoram [I]
…. 0821..Jehoram [J] reigns with Jehoshaphat
…. 0817..Jehoram [J] sole king
So, if Emmet Sweeney were correct
in these other statements of his, that (op.
cit., ibid.): “… Labayu … waged continual warfare against his neighbors –
especially against Abdi-Hiba, the king of Jerusalem …”, and again (p. 84):
“Labayu’s long suffering opponent, the king of Jerusalem, is commonly named
Abdi-Hiba”, then I would have to question, on chronological grounds, my
biblical identifications of Laba’yu
and Abdi-hiba.
However, when we check the five
letters of Abdi-hiba (EA 285-290), we
find that it is not Lab’ayu now, but
rather “the sons of Lab’ayu” (EA 287
and 289), who are giving trouble to the king of Jerusalem.
Lab’ayu (Labaya) himself
is mentioned only once by Abdi-hiba, but this appears to be a
reflection back to an event in the past, “he was giving” (EA 289): “Are we to act like Labaya when he was giving the land of
Šakmu to the Hapiru?”
Moreover, Shuwardata of Keilah will liken Abdi-hiba to the now deceased Lab’ayu (EA 280): “… Labaya, who used to
take our towns, is dead, but now another Labaya is Abdi-Heba, and he seizes our
town”.
So it seems that the coast may
be bright and clear for identifying Lab’ayu,
who died just prior to the reign of Abdi-hiba
(= King Jehoram of Judah), as follows:
Lab’ayu as King Ahab of Israel
Continuing
on in my thesis (2007) assessment, I proceeded to give my view of who king Ahab
of Israel was in the EA series. As far as I was concerned, Ahab was clearly the
same as EA’s powerful and rebellious Lab’ayu
of the Shechem region. He was a far better EA candidate for Ahab
than was Rib-Addi
(Dr. Velikovky’s choice for Ahab), in my opinion, and indeed a more
obvious one – and I am quite surprised that no one has yet taken it up.
Lab’ayu
is known to have been a
king of the Shechem region, which is very close to Samaria (only 9 km SE
distant).
Cook
has made this most important observation given the criticisms of Dr. Velikovsky
by conventional scholars who insist that the political situation in Palestine
in the EA era was nothing at all like that during the Divided Monarchy period:
“… that the geopolitical situation at this time in the “(north) [was akin to
that of the] Israelites of a later [sic] time”.”
Lab’ayu
is never actually
identified in the EA letters as king of either Samaria or of Shechem.
Nevertheless, Aharoni has designated Lab’ayu
as “King of Shechem” in his description of the geopolitical
situation in Palestine during the EA period (Aharoni, of course, is a
conventional scholar writing of a period he thinks must have been well
pre-monarchical):
In the
hill country there were only a few political centres, and each of these ruled
over a fairly extensive area. In all the hill country of Judah and Ephraim we
hear only of Jerusalem and Shechem with possible allusions to Beth-Horon and
Manahath, towns within the realm of Jerusalem’s king.
…
Apparently the kings of Jerusalem and Shechem dominated, to all practical
purposes, the entire central hill country at that time. The territory
controlled by Labayu, King of Shechem, was especially large in contrast to the
small Canaanite principalities round about.
Only one
letter refers to Shechem itself, and we get the impression that this is not
simply a royal Canaanite city but rather an extensive kingdom with Shechem as
its capital. ….
Ahab’s “two sons” in El
Amarna
It is gratifying for me to find that King Ahab had,
in his El Amarna [EA] manifestation, as Lab’ayu, two
prominent sons.
Two
regal sons
Overall, Ahab had
many sons. “Now Ahab had seventy sons in Samaria” (2 Kings 10:1).
But
these others came to grief all at once, all slain during the bloody rampage of
Jehu (vv. 1-10).
“So
Jehu killed all who remained of the house of Ahab in Jezreel, and all his great
men and his close acquaintances and his priests, until he left him none
remaining” (v. 11).
Prior
to this, Ahab had been succeeded on the throne by his two prominent sons.
We
read about them, for instance, at:
https://bible.org/seriespage/7-my-way-story-ahab-and-jezebel
“Yet
their influence lived on in their children. And this is often the
saddest side effect of lives like Ahab’s and Jezebel’s. Two sons of Ahab and
Jezebel later ruled in Israel. The first was Ahaziah. Of him God says, “And he
did evil in the sight of the Lord and walked in the way of his father and in
the way of his mother and in the way of Jeroboam the son of Nebat, who caused
Israel to sin. So he served Baal and worshiped him and provoked the Lord God of
Israel to anger according to all that his father had done” (1 Kgs. 22:52,
53).
The
second son to reign was Jehoram. As Jehu rode to execute vengeance on the house
of Ahab, Jehoram cried, “Is it peace, Jehu?” Jehu summed up Jehoram’s reign
with his reply: “What peace, so long as the harlotries of your mother Jezebel
and her witchcrafts are so many?” (2 Kgs. 9:22)”.
The
short-reigning Ahaziah was, in turn, succeeded by Jehoram.
Lab’ayu (my Ahab in EA), likewise, had two prominent sons, as is
apparent from the multiple references by the correspondent Addu-qarrad to “the
two sons of Lab'aya [Lab’ayu]” in EA Letter 250:
http://fontes.lstc.edu/~rklein/Documents/labaya_files/labaya.htm
“EA 250:
Addu-qarrad (of Gitti-padalla) ….
To
the king my lord, say: message from Addu-qarrad your servant. At the feet of
the king my lord, seven and seven times I throw myself. Let the king my lord
know that the two sons of the traitor of the king my lord, the two sons of
Lab'aya, have directed their intentions to sending the land of the king into
ruin, in addition to that which their father had sent into ruin. Let the king
my lord know that the two sons of Lab'aya continually seek me: "Why did
you give into the hand of the king your lord Gitti-padalla, a city that Lab'aya
our father had taken?" Thus the two sons of Lab'aya said to me: "Make
war against the men of Qina, because they killed our father!
And
if you don't make [war] we will be your enemies!" But I responded to those
two: "The god of the king my lord will save me from making war with the
men of Qina, servants of the king my lord!" If it seems opportune to the
king my lord to send one of his Grandees to Biryawaza, who tells him: "Go
against the two sons of Lab'aya, (otherwise) you are a traitor to the
king!" And beyond that the king my lord writes to me: "D[o] the work
of the king your lord against the two sons of Lab'aya!" [..]. Milki-Ilu
concerning those two, has become [..] amongst those two. So the life of
Milki-Ilu is lit up at the introduction of the two sons of Lab'aya into the
city of Pi(hi)li to send the rest of the land of the king my lord into ruin, by
means of those two, in addition to that which was sent into ruin by Milki-Ilu
and Lab'aya! Thus say the two sons of Lab'aya: "Make war against the king
your lord, as our father, when he was against Shunamu and against Burquna and
against Harabu, deport the bad and exalt the faithful! He took Gitti-rimunima
and opened the camps of the king your lord!" But I responded to those two:
"The god of the king my lord is my salvation from making war against the
king my lord! I serve the king my lord and my brothers who obey me!" But
the messenger of Milki-Ilu doesn't distance himself from the two sons of
Lab'aya. Who today looks to send the land of the king my lord into ruin is
Milki-Ilu, while I have no other intention than to serve the king my lord. The
words that the king my lord says I hear!”
EA
correspondences pertaining to Lab’ayu, such as this one, are generally
presumed by historians to have been addressed to pharaoh Akhnaton (= Amenhotep
IV, EA’s Naphuria).
No pharaoh, however, is actually referred to
in these letters, as I observed before.
Mut-Baal
Tentatively, I had suggested, in my postgraduate thesis (2007):
A Revised History of the Era of King Hezekiah of Judah
and its Background
that
the one son of Lab’ayu actually named in the EA correspondence, Mut-Baal,
may have been Ahab’s older son, Ahaziah (Volume One, pp. 87-88):
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: … “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.
…. Albright
… 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 … “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: … “As already recognized by the interpreters, this
idiom is pure Hebrew”. Albright even went very close to admitting that the
local speech was Hebrew: ….
...
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.
And
on pp. 90-92 of my thesis, I wrote regarding:
Lab’ayu’s Sons
There are several letters that refer to the “sons of
Lab’ayu”, but also a small number that, after Lab’ayu’s death, refer specifically to “the two sons of Lab’ayu”
(e.g. EA 250). It follows from my reconstruction that these “two sons of
Lab’ayu” were Ahab’s two princely sons, Ahaziah and Jehoram; the former
actually dying in the same year as his father.
Only one of the sons though, Mut-Baal of Pi-hi-li (=
Pella, on the east bank of the Jordan), is specifically named. He, my tentative
choice for Ahab’s son, Ahaziah … was the author of EA 255 & 256.
Campbell … rightly sensing that “Mut-Ba‘lu’s role as
prince of Pella could conceivably coincide with Lab‘ayu’s role as prince of
Shechem …”, was more inclined however to the view that “Mut-Ba‘lu would not be
in a prominent enough position to write his own diplomatic correspondence until
after his father’s death”.
But when one realises that Lab’ayu was not a petty ruler, but a powerful king of Israel - namely, Ahab, an
Omride - then one can also accept that his son, Mut-Baal/Ahaziah could have been powerful enough in his own right (as either
co-rex or pro-rex) to have been writing his own diplomatic letters.
That Ahaziah of Israel might also have been called Mut-Baal is interesting. Biblical scholars have sometimes
pointed out, regarding the names of Ahab’s sons, that whilst Jezebel was known
to have been a fierce persecutor of the Yahwists, Ahab must have been more
loyal, having bestowed upon his sons the non-pagan names of ‘Ahaziah’ and
‘Jehoram’. Along similar lines, Liel has written in her ADP context:
One
reason for the use of the generic Addu in place of the actual DN, especially in
correspondence between nations worshipping different deities, might have been
to avoid the profanation of the divine name by those who did not have the same
reverence for it. This would be the case especially for the Israelites. Even
Israelites such as Ahab, who introduced Baal worship, did not do so, in their
estimation, at the expense of YHVH, Whom they continued to revere. Ahab gave
his children (at least those mentioned in the Bible) names containing YHVH:
Jehoram, Ahaziah, Jehoash and Athaliah. He also showed great respect and
deference to the prophet Elijah.
The truth of the matter is that Ahab called Elijah “my
enemy” אֹיְבִי (1
Kings 21:20).
…. Moreover, if, as I am claiming here, Ahaziah were
in fact EA’s Mut-Baal
- a name that refers to
the Phoenicio-Canaanite gods Mot and Baal - then such arguments in favour of Ahab’s supposed
reverence for Yahwism might lose much of their force.
Given the tendency towards syncretism in religion, a
combination of Yahwism and Baalism (e.g. 1 Kings 18:21), we might even expect
the Syro-Palestinians to have at once a Yahwistic and a pagan name.
Scholars find that Mut-Baal’s kingdom, like that of his father, spread both east and
west of the Jordan. They infer from the letters that Lab’ayu had ruled a large area in the Transjordan that was
later to be the main substance of the kingdom of Mut-Baal. In EA 255 Mut-Baal writes to pharaoh to say he is to convey one of the latter’s caravans to
Hanigalbat (Mitanni); he mentions that his father, Lab’ayu, was in the custom of overseeing all the caravans that
pharaoh sent there. Lab’ayu could
have done so only if he controlled those areas of Transjordan through which the
caravans were to pass. The area that came under the rule of Mut-Baal affected territories both east and west of the Jordan.
In EA 256 we learn that the kingdom of Ashtaroth
bordered on Mut-Baal’s
(to the N and E:
Ashtaroth being the capital of biblical Bashan) and that this neighbour was his
ally.
That Mut-Baal held
sway west of the Jordan may also be deduced from EA 250, whose author complains
that the “two sons of Labayu” had written urging him to make war on Gina in
Jezreel (modern Jenin). The writer also records that the messenger of Milkilu “does not move from the sons of Labayu”, indicating to
pharaoh an alliance between these parties, which further suggests that Mut-Baal had interests west of the Jordan.
It will be seen from the above that the territory
ruled by Lab’ayu and his sons, which bordered on the
territories of Gezer in the west and Jerusalem in the south, also including the
Sharon coastal plain, reaching at least as far as the Jezreel valley/Esdraelon
in the north, and stretching over the Transjordan to adjoin Bashan, corresponds
remarkably well with the territories ruled by Ahab of Israel and his sons.
Mut-Baal, as a king of a region of Transjordania (no doubt as a
sub-king with his father) had been accused to the Egyptian commissioner, Yanhamu, of harbouring one Ayyab (var. Aiab); a name usually equated with Job. Could this though be a reference to his own father,
Ahab (by the latter’s biblical name)? Mut-Baal protested against this accusation, using the excuse that Ayyab - whom the Egyptian official apparently suspected of
having also been in the region of Transjordania - was actually on campaign
elsewhere [EA 256]: “Say to Yanhamu, my lord: Message of Mutbaal, your servant. I fall at the feet of my lord. How can
it be said in your presence: ‘Mutbaal has fled. He has hidden Ayab’? How can the king of Pella flee from the
commissioner, agent of the king my lord? As the king, my lord, lives ... I
swear Ayab is not in Pella. In fact, he has [been in the field] (i.e. on
campaign) for two months. Just ask Benenima…”.
It should be noted that kings and officials were
expected to ‘inform’ even on members of their own family. Lab’ayu himself had, prior to this, actually informed on one
of his fathers-in-law.233 These scheming ‘vassal kings’ were continually
changing allegiance; at one moment being reckoned amongst the habiru insurgents, then being attacked by these rebels - but,
always, protesting their loyalty to the crown.
Queen Jezebel in El Amarna
Baalat Neše, being the only female correspondent
of the El-Amarna [EA] series,
must therefore have
been a woman of great significance at the time.
Who was she?
Dr. Immanuel
Velikovsky had introduced Baalat
Neše as “Baalath
Nesse” in his 1945
THESES FOR THE
RECONSTRUCTION OF ANCIENT HISTORY
FROM THE END OF THE
MIDDLE KINGDOM IN EGYPT TO THE ADVENT OF ALEXANDER THE GREAT
According to Velikovsky:
113.
The el-Amarna Letters were
written not in the fifteenth-fourteenth century, but in the middle of the ninth
century.
114.
Among the correspondents of
Amenhotep III and Akhnaton are biblical personages: Jehoshaphat (Abdi-Hiba),
King of Jerusalem; Ahab (Rib Addi), King of Samaria; Ben-Hadad (Abdi-Ashirta),
King of Damascus; Hazael (Azaru), King of Damascus; Aman (Aman-appa), Governor
of Samaria; Adaja (Adaja), Adna (Adadanu), Amasia, son of Zihri (son of Zuhru),
Jehozabad (Jahzibada), military governors of Jehoshaphat; Obadia, the chief of
Jezreel; Obadia (Widia), a city governor in Judea; the Great Lady of Shunem
(Baalath Nesse); Naaman (Janhama), the captain of Damascus; and others. Arza
(Arzaja), the courtier in Samaria, is referred to in a letter.
Then he, in his Ages
in Chaos I (1952, p. 220), elaborated on why he thought Baalat Neše was, as above, “the Great
Lady of Shunem”.
I mentioned it briefly, as follows, in my university
thesis (Volume One, p. 93):
“Queen Jezebel
Velikovsky had, with typical ingenuity, looked to
identify the only female correspondent of EA, Baalat Neše, as the biblical ‘Great Woman of
Shunem’, whose dead son the prophet Elisha had resurrected (cf. 2 Kings 4:8 and
4:34-35). …. Whilst the name Baalat
Neše is usually translated as ‘Mistress of Lions’, Velikovsky
thought that it could also be rendered as “a woman to whom occurred a wonder”
(thus referring to Elisha’s miracle).
This female correspondent wrote two letters (EA 273, 274)
to Akhnaton, telling him that the SA.GAZ
pillagers had sent bands to Aijalon (a fortress guarding the NW approach to
Jerusalem). She wrote about “two sons of Milkili” in connection with a raid.
The menace was not averted because she had to write again
for pharaoh’s help”.
I continued, referring to Lisa Liel’s rejection of
Velikovsky’s hopeful interpretation of the name, Baalat Neše
(“What’s In A Name?”):
http://www.starways.net/lisa/essays/amarnanames.html
“Liel, in the process of linguistically unravelling the
Sumerian name of this female correspondent, points to what she sees as being
inaccuracies in Velikovsky’s own identification of her: ….
NIN.UR.MAH.MESH
This lady’s name is generally transcribed as “Baalat
Nese”, which means “Lady of Lions”. Velikovsky either saw a transcription where
the diacritical mark above the “s” which indicates that it is pronounced “h”
was omitted, or didn’t know what the mark meant.
[Since this character doesn’t show up well in HTML, I’ve
used a regular “s”. The consonant is actually rendered as an “s” with an
upside-down caret above it, like a small letter “v”.] [Liel’s comment]
He also took the “e” at the end of the word as a silent
“e”, the way it often is in English. Having done all this, he concluded that
the second word was not “nese,” but “nes,” the Hebrew word for miracle. He then
drew a connection with the Shunnamite woman in the book of Kings who had a
miracle done for her.
Liel’s own explanation of the name was partly this:
Flights of fancy aside, the name has in truth been a
subject of debate, so much so that many books nowadays tend to leave it as an
unnormalized Sumerogram. The NIN is no problem. It means “Lady,” the feminine
equivalent of “Lord.” Nor is the MESH difficult at all; it is the plural suffix
…. What is UR.MAH? One attested meaning
is “lion.” This is the source of the “Lady of Lions” reading. ….
Whilst Liel would go on to suggest an identification of (NIN.UR.MAH.MESH) Baalat Neše with “the usurper [Queen]
Athaliah”, my own preference then in this thesis was for Queen Jezebel. Thus I
wrote:
In a revised context Baalat
Neše, the ‘Mistress of Lions’, or ‘Lady of Lions’, would most
likely be, I suggest, Jezebel, the wife of king Ahab. Jezebel, too, was wont to
write official letters – in the name of her husband, sealing these with his
seal (1 Kings 21:8). And would it not be most appropriate for the ‘Mistress of
Lions’ (Baalat Neše)
to have been married to the ‘Lion Man’ (Lab’ayu)?
Baalat (Baalath, the goddess of Byblos)
is just the feminine form of Baal.
Hence, Baalat Neše may
possibly be the EA rendering of the name, Jezebel,
with the theophoric inverted: thus, Neše-Baal(at). Her concern for Aijalon, near
Jerusalem, would not be out of place since Lab’ayu
himself had also expressed concern for that town.
I am still holding to that identification of Baalat Neše, or
Neše-Baal(at), as
the biblical Jezebel.
Hiel of Bethel
Joshua 6:26: “At that time Joshua pronounced this solemn oath:
"Cursed before the LORD is the one who undertakes to rebuild this city,
Jericho: At the cost of his firstborn son he will lay its foundations; at the
cost of his youngest he will set up its gates".”
I Kings 16:34: “In
Ahab’s time, Hiel of Bethel rebuilt Jericho. He laid its foundations at the
cost of his firstborn son Abiram, and he set up its gates at the cost of his
youngest son Segub, in accordance with the word of the Lord
spoken by Joshua son of Nun”.
A clear demonstration of what I wrote in my article:
Joshua’s Jericho
https://www.academia.edu/31535673/Joshuas_Jericho
“The popular model today, as espoused by … David Rohl … arguing instead
for a Middle Bronze Jericho at the time of Joshua, ends up throwing right out
of kilter the biblico-historical correspondences” [,]
is apparent from Dr. Bryant Wood’s
critique (“David Rohl's Revised Egyptian Chronology: A View From Palestine”),
in which Bryant points out that Rohl’s revised Jericho sequence incorrectly
dates Hiel’s building level at Jericho to an apparently ‘unoccupied’ phase
there: http://www.biblearchaeology.org/post/2007/05/23/David-Rohls-Revised-Egyptian-Chronology-A-View-From-Palestine.aspx
…. LATE BRONZE IIB
Jericho
Rohl dates the next phase
of occupation at Jericho following the Middle Building to the LB IIB period
(314). He then equates this phase to the rebuilding of Jericho by Hiel of
Bethel (1 Kgs 16:34). Rohl is once again incorrect in his dating. The next occupational
phase at Jericho following the Middle Building dates to the Iron I period, not
LB IIB (M. and H. Weippert 1976). There is no evidence for occupation at
Jericho in the LB IIB period.
If Dr. Bryant Wood is correct here, then the city built by
the mysterious Hiel of Bethel must belong to the Iron Age “occupational phase”
of Jericho (Tell es-Sultan).
Who was this “Hiel of
Bethel”?
Hiel of Bethel who rebuilt
the city of Jericho (I Kings 16:34)
will be here identified as
King Mesha of Moab.
Does Mesha tell us straight out in his
inscription
that he built Jericho –
and with Israelite labour?
Chapter 16 of the First Book of Kings will, in the
course of its introducing us to King Ahab and his no-good ways as follows (vv.
30-34):
Ahab
son of Omri did more evil in the eyes of the Lord than any of those before
him. He
not only considered it trivial to commit the sins of Jeroboam son of Nebat, but
he also married Jezebel daughter of Ethbaal king of the Sidonians, and began to
serve Baal and worship him. He set up an altar for Baal
in the temple of Baal that he built in Samaria. Ahab
also made an Asherah pole and did more to arouse the anger of the Lord, the God of Israel, than did all the kings of Israel before him.
suddenly interrupt this description with its
surprising and bloody note about Hiel the Bethelite’s building of Jericho at
the cost of the lives of his two sons.
A surprising thing about this insertion (apart from
the horrific sacrifice of the sons) is that an otherwise unknown personage,
Hiel (unknown at least under this name), is found to be building a city at a
major and ancient site, Jericho (Tell es-Sultan), whilst the country is under
the rulership of two most powerful kings – an Omride in the north (Ahab) allied
to a mighty king of Judah in the south (Jehoshaphat).
How might this strange situation concerning Hiel
have come about?
Before my attempting to answer this question, I
should like simply to list a few of the more obvious reasons why I am drawn to
the notion that Hiel was a king of Moab, and that he was, specifically, Mesha.
We find that:
- A king of Moab,
Eglon, has previously ruled over a newly-built Jericho (MB IIB);
- Hiel and Mesha
were contemporaneous with King Ahab of Israel;
- Hiel and Mesha
were sacrificers of their own sons (cf. I Kings 16:34 and 2 Kings 3:27).
But, far more startling than any of this is the
following potential bombshell:
Does Mesha King of Moab tell
us straight out in his stele inscription that he built Jericho – and with
Israelite labour?
I have only just become aware of this bell-ringing
piece of information - after I had already come to the conclusion that Hiel may
well have been Mesha. It is information that may be, in its specificity, beyond
anything that I could have expected or hoped for.
And so we read at: http://christiananswers.net/q-abr/abr-a019.html
Later on
in the inscription he [King Mesha of Moab] says,
I built
Qeriho [Jericho?]: the wall of the parkland and the wall of the acropolis; and
I built its gates, and I built its towers; and I built the king's house; and I made banks for the water
reservoir inside the town; and there was no cistern inside the town, in Qeriho, and I said to all the people:
“Make yourself each a cistern in his house”; and I dug the ditches for Qeriho
with prisoners of Israel (lines 21-26).
Since
Mesha erected his stela to honor Chemosh in “this high place for Chemosh in Qeriho,” and since the
stela was found at Dhiban, identified as ancient Dibon, most scholars believe
that Qeriho was the name of the royal citadel at Dibon. Note that Israelite captives were used to cut the timber
used to construct Qeriho. ….
A Servant of the Syrians?
If King Mesha of Moab really had ruled the city of Jericho for
a time, as Hiel, then he would have been following an ancient tradition,
because another king of Moab, Eglon, had ruled over that same city roughly half
a millennium earlier.
Mesha of Moab and
Ben-Hadad I
A pattern that was determined (following Dr. John
Osgood) according to my recent article:
Eglon’s Jericho
of a King of Moab
governing Jericho for a time as a servant of a powerful ruling nation, is the same
basic pattern that I would suggest for my Hiel = Mesha.
Eglon had, as a subordinate king of the mighty
Amalekite nation, ruled over (MB IIB) Jericho “for eighteen years” (Judges 3:14).
Now, much later, with Syria this time as
the main power, Mesha will both build and rule over (presumably Iron Age)
Jericho - for an indeterminate period of time.
From a combination of information as
provided by the Mesha stele and the Old Testament, we learn that Mesha was
already king at the time of Omri of Israel, and that he continued on until
Jehoram of Israel.
During that period, Ben-Hadad I of Syria
was by far the dominant king. In fact I, in my thesis (Volume One, p. 66)
referred to him as “a true master-king”:
… the Velikovskian equation of EA’s Abdi-ashirta
as Ben-Hadad I would seriously contradict the
view that the latter was a relatively minor, though problematical, king in the
EA scheme of things; for Ben-Hadad I was no lesser king: “King Ben-hadad of
Aram gathered all his army together; thirty-two kings were with him, along with
horses and chariots” (1 Kings 20:1). Thirty-two kings! The great Hammurabi of
Babylon, early in his reign, had only ten to fifteen kings following him, as
did his peer kings. Even the greatest king of that day in the region, Iarim
Lim of Iamkhad, had
only twenty kings in train. …. But Ben-Hadad’s coalition, raised for the siege
of Ahab’s capital of Samaria, could boast of thirty-two kings. Surely Ben-Hadad
I was no secondary king in his day, but a ‘Great King’; the
dominant king in fact in the greater Syrian
region - a true master-king.
With an extraordinary “thirty-two kings” in
Ben-Hadad’s following, might it not be going too far to suggest that one of
these follower-kings was the contemporaneous Mesha of Moab?
If so, any incursion by king Mesha into Israelite
territory (Bethel, Jericho) - and we recall that Mesha boasted of having
Israelite captives - would have become possible presumably (and only?) with the
assistance of Ben-Hadad I, who caused much trouble for king Ahab of Israel in
the earlier part of the latter’s reign. For example (I Kings 20:1-3):
Now
Ben-Hadad king of Aram [Syria] mustered his entire army. Accompanied by
thirty-two kings with their horses and chariots, he went up and besieged
Samaria and attacked it.
He sent messengers into the city to Ahab king of Israel,
saying, “This is what Ben-Hadad says: ‘Your silver and
gold are mine, and the best of your wives and children are mine’.”
Different geography
King Mesha of Moab, who I
consider to have been a follower-king of the mighty Syrian master-king,
Ben-Hadad I, appears to have had a chequered career
in relation to the Omrides,
now being subservient, now in revolt.
If Mesha were Hiel, as I am
saying, then it must have been during one of his upward phases - when Ben-Hadad
was in the ascendant- that he was able
to build at Jericho.
In other articles I have discussed geographical
perspective. How, for instance, the one person who had ruled over two lands,
say Egypt and southern Canaan, could be written of as “Pharaoh” by someone
writing from an Egyptian perspective,
but by a Semitic (Hebrew) name by one writing from a Palestinian perspective.
And that, too, is the gist of my reasoning as to how
one represented by a Hebrew name (Hiel), and a Palestinian location (Bethel),
in the First Book of Kings, could be designated by a Moabite name (Mesha) in
the Second Book of Kings, and there located in the foreign land of Moab.
But the location and identification of some of the
places to which Mesha refers are, as a according to the above, “a matter of conjecture”.
No apparent mention of “Bethel”, the town with which
Hiel is associated. Earlier we referred to Dr. John Osgood’s view that Bethel
was the same as Shechem – a town that we have found figuring importantly in the
EA letters associated with Laba’yu, my
Ahab.
Now, according to EA letter 289, written by Abdi-hiba of Jerusalem, Lab’ayu had
actually given Shechem to the rebel hapiru:
“Are we to act like Labaya when he was giving the land of
Šakmu to the Hapiru?”
The cuneiform ideogram for the hapiru
(or habiru) is SA GAZ which occurs in EA sometimes as Sa.Gaz.Mesh,
which Velikovsky thought to relate to Mesha himself (Ages in Chaos, I, p. 275):
“… “sa-gaz”, which ideographically can also be
read “habatu”, is translated “plunderers”, or “cutthroats”, or “rebellious
bandits” … sometimes the texdt speaks of “gaz-Mesh” as a single person … and
therefore here Mesh cannot be the suffic for the plural. I shall not translate
Mesh … because it is the personal name of King Mesha …”.
King Mesha, unable to make any progress against
Israel in the days of the powerful Omri, was able to make deep inroads into
Israelite territory later, however, when he was powerfully backed (I think) by
Ben-Hadad I and the Syrians (before Ahab had defeated them).
