Isaac Fried:
You wrote: “I am sorry, but I have to ignore everything you say about
"Elamite, Sumerian, Babylonian or otherwise" as I have no way of independently
verifying its veracity.”
O.K., if we are going to limit ourselves to Biblical Hebrew, there is one
of the four attacking rulers at Genesis 14: 1 whose Patriarchal nickname
should make perfect sense in Biblical Hebrew. That ruler’s historical name
was “Aziru”. That’s the same name as the Biblical Hebrew name “Ezra” at I
Chronicles 4: 17. The Hebrew spelling is (ZRH. In the cuneiform of the
Amarna Letters, that same name, with the same west Semitic meaning, comes out
as a-zi-ra or a-zi-ru or a-zi-ri. The Phoenician and Punic versions of
this name are simply (ZR. The name in all of these cases means “to help”,
and its implied meaning is “[God] Helps”. So this is a good Biblical
Hebrew name that is the historical name of one of the four [hated] attacking
rulers.
But what is the Patriarchal nickname of this west Semitic-speaking Amorite
princeling ruler of the northern Lebanon state of Amurru? If the “four
kings against five” at Genesis 14: 1-11 is an accurate written record by a
contemporary of the Second Syrian War, which was fought in Year 14 [“in the
14th year”, per Genesis 14: 5, one year after the “Year 13” referenced at
Genesis 14: 4], then the nasty, apt Patriarchal nickname of Aziru, the
Amorite princeling ruler of Amurru, is: )MRPL MLK $N(R.
A. “Amrapel”/)MRPL
“Amrapel”, the name of one of four attacking rulers at Genesis 14: 1, 9,
is )MRPL. That is a west Semitic name that should be analyzed as being a
slightly abbreviated form of )MR plus )PL. Historically, this must be
Aziru, the Amorite ruler of Amurru in northern Lebanon, who unfortunately often
operated in Syria and ended up being forced to become a Hittite puppet
when the Hittites conquered Syria in the Great Syrian War [Year 12] and the
Second Syrian War [Year 14]. Thus the key concepts we should look for in
this name and title are (i) “Amorite, Amurru”, (ii) who brought “gloom and
darkness” to northern Lebanon by (iii) mucking around too much in “Syria”,
eventually being forced to become a Hittite puppet.
1. )MR here is almost certainly the proper name “Amurru”, which is
spelled as follows in the Amarna Letters: a-mu-ri. “Amorite” in Hebrew is
)MR-Y, where the -Y is a suffix denoting a people. The 3-syllable country
name a-mu-ri, which is a play on “Amorite” [having the same root], would be
expected to be spelled )MR in Hebrew, and those are precisely the first
three letters of this name. )MR here likely means: “an Amorite [princeling]
from Amurru”.
2. If the last part of this name, PL, is taken to be an abbreviated form
of )PL [a view which, interestingly enough, Gesenius held], then )PL = “
darkness, gloom, misery, misfortune”. [See for example Psalm 91: 6.]
Thus the full name, )MR -- )PL, abbreviated as )MRPL, means: “an Amorite
[princeling who brought] gloom and darkness [to] Amurru”.
B. “Shinar”/$N(R, which may originally have been $NXR
If Genesis 14: 1-11 is truly ancient as a written text, then it must have
originally been recorded in cuneiform. Cuneiform writing did not usually
differentiate between gutturals such as Hebrew heth/X or Hebrew ayin/(. When
this ancient cuneiform text was transformed into alphabetical Hebrew in
the 1st millennium BCE, it would be a pure guess what guttural the third
letter had been intended to be. The 1st millennium BCE scribe here guessed
wrong, writing down Hebrew ayin/(, when in fact Hebrew heth/X had likely been
intended.
$NXR very likely means “Syria”, and is an attested Hurrian name:
$a-an-xa-ri. Gelb and Purves, “Nuzi Personal Names” (1943), p. 124a. The
expected Hebrew spelling of $a-an-xa-ri, being a 4-syllable Hurrian personal
name that references “Syria”, consists of the following four Hebrew letters:
$NXR. If that third letter was mistakenly recorded as an ayin/( in the
received alphabetical Hebrew text, due to cuneiform heth not distinguishing
between Hebrew heth/X and Hebrew ayin/(, then there’s an exact,
letter-for-letter match here.
“Amrapel”/Aziru was an “Amorite” princeling who brought “gloom and
darkness” to “Amurru” by spending too much time mucking about in “Syria”, at
Tunip and Damascus; he eventually found himself being forced to become a
Hittite vassal in the aftermath of the Great Syrian War. “King of Syria” is
a mocking title, meaning that by spending so much time making raids and
small-time alliances with Hurrian princelings in Syria [especially in allying
with the Hurrian princeling ruler of Qadesh on the Orontes, Aitakkama, who
was a Hittite puppet], this Amorite princeling eventually forfeited the
prior independence of Amurru [in northern Lebanon].
Note that historically Aziru, though he’s supposed to only be the ruler of
northern Lebanon, keeps on showing up in Syria [either Damascus or Tunip]
in the Amarna Letters: “Aziru, the son of Abdi-A$irta, is in Damascus along
with his brothers.” EA 107: 20-28. “Message of Aziru…. I was residing
in Tunip…. I swear I was residing in Tunip.” EA 161: 11-34. [Tunip was
located in the Orontes River Valley, whose Biblical name is “Valley of the
Tilled Fields”/Valley of Siddim. That’s the locale of the fighting in the “
four kings against five”.] In the Amarna Letters, Aziru also constantly
talks about warring with the princelings of Nuhasse near the Orontes River
Valley in Syria. So Aziru cut quite a big figure in south-central Syria
through Year 14, especially in the Orontes River Valley area in west-central
Syria, rather than confining himself, as he should have, to Amurru in
northern Lebanon.
One of the most famous Amarna Letters is Akhenaten’s blistering Amarna
Letter EA 162, which reams out the Amorite Aziru for consorting with the
Hittites and for consorting with the Hurrian princeling who as of Year 13 was
a
Hittite puppet in Syria, Aitakkama: “Why are you at peace with a ruler
[Aitakkama] with whom the king [pharaoh Akhenaten] is fighting? …What happened
to you among them that you are not on the side of the king, your lord? …
If for any reason whatsoever you prefer to do evil, and if you plot evil,
treacherous things, then you, together with your entire family, shall die by
the axe of the king.” 22-38. To quote Wm. Moran’s mini-summary of this
letter at p. 250 [regarding the second sentence above]: “This seems to be a
reference to an initial contact with the Hittites…before Aziru’s final
capitulation as a Hittite vassal.” Akhenaten at lines 68-77 then sets forth
a series of sarcastic, nasty nicknames to make clear his disgust with the
fact that Aziru is consorting with Hittite sympathizers. [See Robert
McRoberts here.
http://suite101.com/article/aziru-and-the-dynasty-of-amurru-a378682] Genesis
14: 1 has even nastier, and more brilliant, nicknames in showing
the early Hebrew author’s similar disgust with the four attacking rulers,
whose actions in Year 14 seemed to imperil the future independence of
Canaan itself. If you’re talking truly nasty nicknames, you’re talking
Amarna
Letter EA 162: 68-77 and Genesis 14: 1, both of which reflect Years 13-14
and the ominous Syrian Wars.
“Amrapel king of Shinar” is a nasty Patriarchal nickname that means: “an
Amorite [princeling who brought] gloom and darkness [to] Amurru [by
spending too much time mucking about with Hurrians and Hittites in] Syria”. “
Amrapel” is a west Semitic name, befitting the fact that Aziru was a native
west Semitic-speaking Amorite. “Shinar” is a foreign Hurrian name from
Syria, befitting the fact that Aziru threw in his lot with the Hurrian
princeling Aitakkama, who famously was one of the first Hittite puppets in
Syria
in Year 13, with Aziru eventually suffering that same fate of becoming a
Hittite puppet. As such, the name and title “Amrapel king of Shinar” fit
Aziru perfectly in Year 14.
Jim Stinehart
Evanston, Illinois
_______________________________________________
b-hebrew mailing list
[email protected]
http://lists.ibiblio.org/mailman/listinfo/b-hebrew
