Kissimmee Homeschooling

The Sumerians called themselves “the black headed people” and their land, in cuneiform script, was simply “the land” or “the land of the black headed people”. In the biblical Book of Genesis Sumer is known as Shinar. According to the Sumerian King List, when the gods first gave human beings the gifts necessary for cultivating society, they did so by establishing the city of Eridu in the region of Sumer. While the Sumerian city of Uruk is held to be the oldest city in the world, the ancient Mesopotamians believed that it was Eridu and that it was here that order was established and civilization began.

 

Eridu Oldest known civilization 

 

Eridu is an archaeological site in southern Mesopotamia (modern Dhi Qar Governorate, Iraq). Eridu was long considered the earliest city in southern Mesopotamia and is still today argued to be the oldest city in the world.Located 12 km southwest of Ur, Eridu was the southernmost of a conglomeration of Sumerian cities that grew about temples, almost in sight of one another.  The king list gave particularly long rules to the kings who ruled before a great flood occurred, and shows how the center of power progressively moved from the south to the north of the country.  We can see throughout all ancient people the consistency of mentioning a "Great Flood".  There also seems to be a time distinction between events that occorued prior to the "Great Flood" and those that occured after.

 

Ubaid and Proto-Euphrateans-5900-3800 BC

 

There is an ongoing debate as the origin of the first settlers in Sumer.  The first settlers in this area were not Sumerians but a people of an origin whom archaeologists believe the Sumerians are descendants of the people they have called the Ubaid people (from the excavated mound of al-Ubaid where the artifacts were uncovered which first attested to their existence) or the Proto-Euphrateans (Proto means early or original, which designates them as earlier inhabitants of the region of the Euphrates River).  These discoveries give us the understanding that the original people or early people near the Euphrates River settled there and have been called by Archeologists as the Ubaid People.  These are the same people that are believed to be the descendants of the Sumerians.  So where did the people of the Euphrates come from?  Many theories are still being debated as archeological sites near these areas are explored but our journey will help guide you in drawsing some fascinating conclusions of the eariest known civivilzations to mankind.  

 

The first farmers in southern Mesopotamia are known as the Ubaid culture. The earliest cities in the Middle East were far to the south of the Golden Crescent, at the Sumerian sites of Uruk and Ur near the mouth of the Euphrates, and usually dated to the Ubaid culture some time in the fifth millennium BC. The 'Ubaid culture is characterized by particular styles of painted pottery. The Ubaid culture was the first agricultural settlers who moved into the region that became Sumer. Ubaid Culture is characterised by large village settlements and the appearance of the first temples in Mesopotamia. The Ubaid Culture developed as a result of increasing sophistication in irrigation techniques. Early Ubaid culture is characterized by the development of new techniques for growing crops in a comparatively arid area. Late Ubaid culture saw the beginnings and rapid northward spread of urbanization.

 

The Ubaid culture received its name from a small site near Ur, Tell Al Ubaid, where it was first identified by Woolley in the 1920s. One of the oldest cities in the world, the excavations of Fuad Safar and Seton Lloyd between 1946 and 1950 revealed some 14 m of occupation dating to the Ubaid Culture (i. 5000-3800 BC).

 

The earliest settlement of the southern alluvial flood plain in the late 6th millenium was a people called proto-Euphrateans. This Ubaid culture developed between 5900-5500 and 4300-3800 BC from the site at Ubaid. From there, it expanded to the west. Settlements in southern Mesopotamia dating from possibly as early as 4800 to 3500 BC are assigned collectively to the Ubaid culture, although similar pottery remains in Turkey extend the Ubaid people to as far back as 6200 BC. This prehistoric Ubaid Culture had a long duration beginning before 5000 BC and lasting until the beginning of the Uruk Period around 3800 BC.

 

The Ancestral Sumerian Problem

 

The Sumerians were the first known ethnic group inhabiting Mesopotamia. It does not mean that they must have been the first settlers in that region, but is the simple result of the fact that it was they who had invented the system of writing and thus were able to make their ethnicity known to modern scholars. Their origin was a subject of very intensive debate which began more than a century ago. Many authors tried to solve the “Sumerian problem” with the help of the available archaeological, linguistic, and even osteological data, but without any universally accepted conclusion. The main problem lies in the frequent confusion of linguistic, ethnical, cultural, and political components of self-identification of any human grup.

 

The discussion about the origins of the Sumerians began in 1874, when Joseph Halévy argued that the recently discovered archaic language was only an ideographical system of denoting the Akkadian language belonging to the Semitic family (cf. Cooper 1991:48).  It is interesting that in the discussion about the “Sumerian race” very important reports by Sir Arthur Keith (1927, 1934; cf. Molleson, Hodgson 2003) were almost completely neglected. In his study of the skulls from Ubaid (Chalcolithic) and Ur (Bronze Age) Keith also observed the continuity of Mesopotamian population since the 4th millennium BCE till the modern times and suggested possibility of Iranian or even Indian affinities. Some differences between two sites, which were close in space but somewhat distant in time, were explained as the effect of invasion of more dolichocephalic peoples from the Arabic Pensinsula. However, in conclusion Keith stated that there is no difference between the alleged Sumerians (from Ur) and the Semites (from Kish).

 

Nimrod, the Mighty Warrior

 

The life of Nimrod has been amplified significantly by the writings of Jasher which inform us that the strength and valor of the mighty warrior was attributed to the possession of one of the sacred relics of the House of Noah, the “garments of skins which God had made for Adam and his wife, when they went out of the garden.”  (Book of Jasher, translated, Artisan Sales, PO Box 1497,Thousand Oaks, CA., 91360, 1988, p. 15)  This sacred relic had been entrusted to the care by Enoch, then to Methuselah, and then Noah.  In the possession of the Noah, the garments now over 1650 years old, were stolen by Ham, and given in secret to his eldest son, Cush.  When Nimrod was twenty years old, he was given these garments by Cush at the age of twenty, it states, “God gave him (Nimrod) might and strength, and he was a mighty hunter in the earth, yea, he was a mighty hunter in the field, and he hunted the animals and he built altars, and he offered upon them the animals before the Lord” (Book of Jasher, ibid. p. 15) With this apparent divine power, this tribal family with Nimrod as their leader sought to increase their power and influence over his brethren and cousins, first subduing the House of Japheth,  With four hundred and sixty men of war including hired mercenaries, he conquered and consolidated the first historical civilization in the post-diluvium era.  Shinar was the first of the royal cities who were extensively built and became the visible symbol of the unchallenged reign of Nimrod.  His fame spread throughout the land, the symbol kingship was placed upon his head and the era of the god-kings was begun.  Rather than give credit to the Source of his power, he consolidated the power and glory unto himself,

 

“and all nations and tongues heard of his fame, and they fathered themselves to him, and they bowed down to the earth, and they brought him offerings, and he became their lord and king, and they all dwelt with him in the city of Shinar, and Nimrod reigned in the earth over all the sons of Noah, and they were all under his power and counsel.  And all the earth was of one tongue and words of union, but Nimrod did not go in the ways of the Lord, and he was more wicked than all the men that were before him, form the days of the flood until those days.” (Book of Jasher, ibid, p. 16.)

 

The first world government was formed and the seeds of world religious and political dominance were instilled in the power of the priestly hierarchy, and the roots of the Chaldi, the secret wise ones were installed.

 

The empire of Nimrod was centralized in the Mesopotamian valley.  “His kingdom in the beginning consisted of Kish, Babel, Erech, and Accad, all of them in the land of Shinar. From that land he migrated to Asshur and built Nineveh, Rehoboth-Ir, Calab, and Resen, a great city between Nineveh and Caleh.”  (Genesis 10:10-11) 

 

The walls of Erech (Uruk)  were built on the foundation of a pre-Flood city.  Gilgamesh claimed, from his reading of tablets engraved on Lapis lazuli and secreted in a “copper tablet box”  loosened with “the ring-bolt made of bronze” that  this city was built by the seven sages or patriarchs of the Cainite prediluviun society and was not the city of his possessions. (Gardner, John and John Maier, Gilgamesh, Alfred A. Knopf, Inc. New York, 1984 Tablet I, Lines 4-6, 22-25)

 

Birth of Abram

 

In the height of the military prowess of the Nimrodian dynasty, the prince of the military hosts was led by the capable leadership of the Terah, the high priest of Ur, the royal heir to the House of Shem, and later high priest of Harran. and a leader which the “king and the princes loved him, and they elevated him very high… and dignified him above all his princes that were with him. (Book of Jasher 7:49,51. ibid, p. 16)

 

At the pinnacle of greatness, second in command of the empire of Sumer, Terah was wed to Amthelo, the daughter of Cornebo.  To this union wasborn a son, Abram.  In celebration of his birth, a great party was thrown and the guest lists included heads of state(wise men) and conjurors.  The evening of the party,  they witnessed an exploding star which came from the east which caused a vast luminescence and rapidly spread and covered the whole night time sky on the Mesopotamian delta.  This spectacular celestial scene prompted the wise men, the Magi,  to give their oracular interpretation to Nimrod that Terah's  son, Abram would become powerful and kill all the kings of the earth, an international dynastic coup. 

 

Nimrod, the king of Kish,  offered Terah a bribe to purchase Abram, which included a  gold and silver enough to fill Terah’s house, with the knowledge that Abram would be killed.  A three day waiting period was given for consultation, and during that time, a son of Terah’s servant was substituted for Abram.  The king immediately threw the child down and dashed the head against a stone, secure in his mind that a future political coup had been prevented. 

 

Abram was secreted out of the city to a rural cave hideout with his mother and nurse and there lived 10 years in exile and isolation.  At the onset of puberty, Abram  left his family and traveled north near the site of the Great Ship south of the Ararat Mountains, where Noah and Shem apparently were living in the same area.  There he " learned the instruction of the Lord and his ways, …and Abram served Noah and Shem his son for a long time,” (Book of Jasher 9:5, ibid, p. 19.) isolated from the cosmopolitan center of higher learning of Shinar.  Within the foothills of the Armenian mountains, visible in the distance the peaks of Ararat, and within the political influence of the tribal mountain people, the Khaldini of Urartu, Abram received the instruction and wisdom of Yahweh Elohim.  This Wisdom passed from Adam to Methuselah, directly to Noah and then to Abram.  The oral traditions and the tablets of the Book of Adam were studied and learned by the young man, Abram. 

 

Ur of the Chaldeans (Khaldinis)

           

David Fasold, his book, The Ark of Noah, while detailing the archeological finds of a ship remains in Armenia  and describing the path of the drogue stones, or stone anchors depicting the path of this ancient ship, gives his thoughts on the Armenian connection of Abram.  The area of Armenia lies north of the Mesopotamian valley in the area of Lake Van.  An ancient historian of the Armenian, Moses Khorenatsi, called by some the “Herodotus of the Armenians” noted that the local tribesmen called themselves Hai, pronounced by the people in the Lake Van region as Kh(o)ai, meaning Ram.  They recognized themselves as the People of the Ram and their supreme deity was (K)Hal-di.  Thus was derived the land of the original Khaldini, later corrupted by Greeks in the times of Achaemenian to Chaldea.  (Fasold, David, The Ark of Noah, Wynwood Press, New York, NY, 1988. p 184) 

 

According to Josephus, Shem, the third son of Noah, had five sons who colonized the land from the Euphrates delta valley to the Indian Ocean.   The Persians were in descent from Elam, and the Elamites.  The Assyrians came from Asshur who dwelled in Nineveh.  Arphaxad  descendants were called the Arphaxadites, now known as the Chaldeans.  The Syrians came from the Aramites, or the son Aram and the Lydians were in descent from the son, Laud, and his descendants, the Laudites.(Josephus,  Flavius, The Complete Works of Josephus, translated William Whiston A.M., Kregel Publication, Grand Rapids, Michigan, 49501,  1981, p. 33)

 

David Fasold, believes that the thirteen B.C.E. Urartu was in reality the area of the Khaldini and consistent with the claims of descent from Arphaxad, born twelve years after the flood from an offshoot of Kesed, reputed son of Nahor (Fasold, Ibid. p. 185)  In the Book of Jubilees, it confirms this idea with a long genealogy 

 

Terah as noted earlier resided in Harran, and was the oracle high priest of the temple of Harran, copied after the divine city of Nippur.  Tell Harran, recognized as a typical tell in the Mesopotamian valley, located eighteen kilometers from the modern Syrian border therefore became the focal center of the  Abram story, the area of his roots, in the land of the People of the Ram from the House of Terah.  In Daniels time, the Chaldeans spoke Syriack (Daniel 2:4 KJV), now known as Armenian, or the language of ancient Syrian.  In the Jewish Kabballah, when the divine visitors announced to Abram that Sarai, his wife was in child, he laughed and said, “No! Not Sarah! As a child, my Lord, I spent much time jesting with the young men of the mountains of Urartu.  Yes, I played satire with the men of Ur…” (Fasold, Ibid, p. 186) In Ezekiel’s day, (Ezekiel 1:3 KJV, Greek spelling) the land of the Chaldeans was by the river Kebar, or in Ur Kasdim by the modern Khabor River in upper mesopotamian valley.  Therefore Ur of the Chaldeas was the area above the bifurcation of the Euphrates River in the area of Padan Aram, near the Khabor River and the Syrian border in the town of Harran, now known as Tell Harran.  The people are known today as Armenians, who spoke the ancient language of Syriack in the land near the mountains of Urartu. The linkage of Abram to Ur of Sumeria and Ur in Chaldea which has puzzled historians and archeologists for years, may reside in the fact that Abram probably lived and received social notoriety in both the rural and cosmopolitan region.

 

Terah, the Oracle Priest

 

Terah was a worshipper of Marduk, the celestial warrior god, Mars.  The Tower of Babel was dedicated to this orbiting celestial proto planet, which returned to an avenging destructive path to earth about every 52-54 years.  Imagine the fear, respect and terror created by this protoplanet as every two years it made a commentary pass by over the earth. Each pass by was closer and closer until its nearest and most destructive orbital visit came on a fifty plus year anniversary.  An entire governmental department of that early Shinar was devoted to scientific evaluation of this cometary visitor. This department included the conjurors, which developed a whole system of predictive celestial sciences and the Magi, wise men, who studied the philosophical, religious, and sociological implication of these semi-centennial visits.  Rituals and religious symbolism was developed to appease Marduk (Mars) and what better than to fashion images in stone or wood and use them in effigies to be placed in their homes for worship.  This is the earliest historical depiction of idol worship (Jasher 9:7) 

 

In his urban estate, Terah built twelve large statues, which resided in his private temple, constructed of stone and wood and no doubt reflected the highest quality of artistry and craftsmanship in the Shinar peninsula.  Each effigy represented a deity for the month, representing the calenderic system utilized in Nippur,  developed since the Noachian flood and the catastrophe which forced the earth to a new and further orbit from the sun increasing the yearly calendar from 290 to 300 days per year to 360 days per year.  The Zodiac system was begun, and Terah came from a long line of Oracle priests and the first disciples of the Zodiacian secret mysteries.

 

In the Book of Jasher, it recounts the story of  Arphaxad, who had a son by Rasuja, named Kainan, not to be confused with Kainan, the son of Ham and father of the Canaanites.  This Kainan came under the special tutelage of his father and learned the art of writing.  One day on the foothills, he uncovered a stone stele with writings which he soon identified as the writings of the Watchers, the fallen angels, who wrecked such genetic havoc in the antediluvian world.  These writings included the “astrology of the sun and the moon and the stars and in all the signs of heaven” (Jubilee 8:3, compare with Book of Enoch 8:1) Kainan hid the writings from the knowledge of Noah butpassed the secret mysteries to his son, Kesed and then to his son, Ur, the builder of the city of Era of the Chaldeas.  It was Ur, who transported this information to the new mystery religion of the Chaldeas and was the first to sculpt molten images for worship.  The formation of idol worship was started by Ur, the father of the Chaldeas.

 

  The author of the Book of Jubilee, viewed behind the super-dimensional aspects of the story, stating, “And the prince Mastema gave his power to make all this, and through the angels who had been given under his hand, he sent out his hand to do all wickedness and sin and all transgression, and to destroy and to murder and to shed blood over the earth.”  (Jubilee 11:5)

 

The priestly dynasty passed down through the daughter of Ur, called On, who was the mother of Nahor, the grandfather of Abram.  The traditions were then passed on to Terah and Abram.  While Abram was secreted away from the deadly grasp of Nimrod, he learned the art of writing and the mysteries and secrets of the heavens from his father.   The oracular mysteries were confined within the dynasty of his family.  The power and social acclaim were his birthright.

 

Even so, Abram went to live with Noah and Shem who resided in the foothills of the Armenian mountains and resided there for thirty nine years.  It was stated that “Abram knew the Lord from three years old” (Jasher 9:6) In his youth he also pondered the meaning of worship the sun and the moon but came to the thoughtful conclusion that the Creator God was greater than these. In the solitude of the Armenian hillside, the true worship of the Creator God  and the family traditions in the family of Adam, preserved and transcribed  by Noah were given to Abram. 

 

At the age of fourteen, a plague of ravens settled in the hillside and began to eat the grain as it was being sown and cast across the fields in the springtime.  As soon as they cast the grain, the bird would eat it up and the villagers knew that a disaster harvest was ahead.  Wherever Abram went, he had the magic to dispel the ravens, which flew in great clouds.  By diligently working with his countrymen, he saved the harvest and his fame went throughout the land. That winter, Abram, designed a novel invention to be placed on the crook-timber of the plows whereby they would drop seed into furrows and the ravens could not find the seed to eat.  Thus at the age of fifteen, Abram became the inventor of the seed furrow planter. 

 

During this era the massive building project of the empire was the Tower of Babel.  In the plains of Shinar, the inhabitants of early Sumer now numbering about six hundred thousands citizens (Jasher 9:23)began the first national work building program using mortar and brick.  The megalithic (giant stones) era of the antediluvian era was over.  The land of Sumer did not have limestone as quarried in Egypt and so brick, bitumen used, as mortar became the commercial building material.  Their ruler, Nimrod, who gained power and prominence using the hand wrought garments made by Yahweh Elohim, now began to believe the power and glory of his reign and thought to assume the role of a national god, an imperial  monarch.   It was the national custom to create your god, the first ‘me’ generation.  “And the inhabitants of the earth made unto themselves, at that time, every man his god; gods of wood and stone. (Jasher 9:6)  

 

The arrogance turned to vengeance as the Sumerian war lords, comforted in the security of their borders turned their attention thinking they could fight the Elohim who has brought the flood ten generations prior.  Their ruler, now ruling over seven generations of inhabitants by subjugating his cousins and imposing a military rule, now sought to fight the ‘gods’ in the heaven in direct assault by building a tower up to their abode in the clouds and using it as a military staging ground. 

 

Tower of Babel

 

In Genesis, the second time recorded that the Lord God is translated as a plurality, said, Let us do down there and confuse their speech…” (Genesis 11:7)  This was amplified by the author of Jasher by stating “to the seventy angels who stood foremost before him, to those who were near to him, saying, Come let us descend and confuse their tongues, that one man shall not understand the language of his neighbor, and they did so unto them.” (Jasher 9:32)  It is of interest that scholars suggest that seventy tribes or nations came out of the Tower of Babel experience.

 

Elohim to the ancient writers, though monotheistic in their understanding of a Supreme God and Creator, also viewed the pantheon of supernatural beings created by and in the presence and at the service of the Almighty One, as gods consistent with the Sumerian world view of religious thought.  Yahweh Elohim, the manifestation of the Elohim to mankind, was viewed by the Hebrew thought as reflective of the One God, yet the message and visual imagery came many times by emissaries sent by the direct charge of the  Elohim.  That they, the angelic beings created in the higher dimensions who served next to the Creator God, would at times be viewed as God, was not inconsistent with the postdiluvian Hebrew thought. 

 

The debacle of the ultimate catastrophic collapse of the Tower of Babel including earthquakes, massive earth fissuring which swallowed up a third part of the tower, also included a strange phenomenon in which the population became aphasic to their mother tongue, they could hear, but could not comprehend, and when they spoke, their language was different.  Was it the role of the angels to carry a new root language to each different family tribe with impressions of oracular vibrations still unknown to this day?  Some scholars have suggested that language was by mental telepathy and that the telepathic powers of the brain were diminished so man had to communicate by oral speech.  From Babel, they migrated and settled in new homelands: the Indus Valley, China, Egypt, the proto-Mediterranean  basin and Meso-America.

 

The empire of Nimrod was dispersed, vast migrations moved out to all corners of the globe. The early Sumerian empire was subdued,  but the power of Nimrod was not broken.  His heart was hardened and his people consolidated around him. Yet the glory days were over and fading fast.  The world, as envisioned by Hancock, in Footprints of the Gods,  had already been mapped, explored and the cardinal points had been determined.  Pangea was still intact, her subterranean crust fractured by the Noachian flood, and the continental drift had not yet begun. 

 

The post-Babel empire of Nimrod was significantly reorganized and whereas before the Babel debacle, Nimrod controlled his empire by the might of his own sword, he now sought military alliances to maintain primacy in the military-diplomatic arena. Nimrod’s subjects also renamed their leader, Nimrod, to Amraphel. According to the author of Jasher, the title of Amraphel was given because, “at the tower his princes and men fell through his (Nimrod’s) means”  (Jasher 11:6)  One of Nimrod/Amraphel’s earliest allies was the king of Elam, Chedorlaomer, who had subdued the children of Ham who lived in the vail of Shiddon in the cities of the plains. 

 

The Return of Abram to Sumeria

 

Still in his youth, at the age of forty nine, as sexual maturity took longer to achieve in those days, Abram knew it was time to return to the land of his family.   It was the first jubilee (forty-nine years) of Abram’s life when Nahor, Abram’s grandfather died.  A large family reunion was called in Sumeria.  Peleg, the great grandfather of Nahor had died a year earlier.  The name of Peleg meant ‘division’. Upon his birth, the continents of the earth were split and were divided and upon his death, the Babel experience caused the massive migration and division of the children of Noah.  The political unrest was settling down and Nimrod, now called Amraphel with his allies were finishing the consolidation of the remnant of his post-Babel empire. 

 

Abram, now absent from his fathers house for thirty-nine years and commencing the celebration of his fiftieth birthday, he returned to the funerary celebration of his noted grandfather, also revered sage and priest of the Sumerian cults.  It was at this funeral celebration that the religious  reformationist, Abram sought to start a revolt in the Sumerian religious hierarchy.  At his father home, Abram watched and observed the twelve statues of Terah, noting that by placing food before the altars, the idols were unable to reciprocate and eat.  He confronted his father, who acknowledged that the religious and political power was so interwoven in the early Sumerian culture, that to initiate such a reform would be political and personal suicide for him and his family. 

 

Abram settled down, and married his half-sister, Sara, while Nahor also married, Milcah, the daughter of Harran, and they both started their own families.   One day, Abram took a hatchet and destroyed all the idols except the largest central idol in which he placed the hatchet.  He then told his father that when placing the food before the idols they all reached and grabbed the food before the senior idol was able to reach the food, so he therefore chopped them up.  The fact that Terah did not believe his son, only highlighted the fact even Terah did not believe the idols were capable of any animate activity.

 

This incident was transmitted by Terah to the king, Nimrod, who had Abram imprisoned after Abram directly implicated the king with the religious deception, “O foolish, simple and ignorant king, woe unto thee forever.  I thought thou wouldst teach thy servants the upright way, but thou hast not done this, but hast filled the whole earth with thy sins and the sins of thy people who have followed thy ways.”  (Jasher XI:56-57)  This admonition turned to warning, “if thy wicked heart will not hearken to my words to cause thee to forsake thy evil ways, and to serve the eternal God, then wilt thou die in shame in the latter days, thou, thy people and all who are connected with thee, hearing thy words or walking in thy evil ways.” (Jasher XI: 60)

 

Ten days later, Abram with his brother Haran, now eighty-two years old, were thrown in a fiery furnace.  Haran was implicated by his father, Terah, as the instigator of the initial deception/ploy of switching the boy Abram for a servant’s son, who was then earlier killed by the king.  As reminiscent in the later incident of Shadrack, Meshack, and Abednego, Abram was not killed in the fiery inferno, but his brother was reduced to ashes.

 

Three days in the fiery inferno, before the Akkadian multitudes, Abram stayed according to ancient sources.  After this, Nimrod asked “Abram, O servant of the God who is in heaven,”…”come hither before me”. (Ibid XII:32) Abram was sent away in peace with many gift, gold, silver and pearls including many of the king’s servants including Oni, and the most faithful one, Eliezar plus three hundred men.

 

Two years of peace reigned between Abram and Nimrod until one day Eliezar heard rumors within the court of Nimrod that an assassination attempt was to be made on Abram’s life.  The king had a prophetic dream that Abram came after him with a sword and when he turned around, he threw an egg on him, which became a river, which drowned his troops.  The river turned back into an egg from which came forth birds, which came down and plucked out the eyes of Nimrod as he was escaping from the scene of battle.   A wise man in the court of Nimrod, Anuki, interpreted the dream that Nimrod/Amrophel and Abram would one day meet on the battlefield in the vale of Siddim and Abram would destroy not only his troops but the hardened warriors of his three allies after their victory over the Kings of the Cities of the Valley of Siddim.  The memory of the exploding star fifty two years prior came back to the king, vowing now to eliminate Abram not only as a rival to the throne but as an enemy of the empire

 

Abram realizing that he would not dissuade his father to destroy the idols decided to appoint himself the vindicator of God’s justice.  One night he arose in the middle of the night and set the whole temple complex on fire.  The fires leapt high engulfing all the idols and religious icons when his brother ran into the complex trying to save the idols.  The ceilings collapsed and his brother Nahor died in the flames.  His two brothers were now dead and Terah knew that Abram was his only salvation. Some biblical critics have blamed Abram for the death of his brothers, Nahor, in the temple inferno, and Harran, earlier in the fiery furnace and for if he had only tempered his reformationist zeal, and both of his brother’s life might have been spared. 

 

Abram flees Ur Casidim (Khaldini)

 

The exodus from Ur Casidim by Abram and the family of Terah was one in haste.  This fact has puzzled theologians for centuries, not knowing the threat of assassination on Abram by Nimrod as depicted in the book of Jasher.   With the death of Nahor in the fiery temple inferno and Haran in the fiery furnaces of Nimrod of Casidim at the age of eighty two, Abram, along with his family and retinue, fled again to the house of Noah, who along with Shem  had persuaded Terah to leave Ur Casidim and head towards Canaan. There they settled or started a new city,  Harran, named for Abram’s deceased brother.  It was near the entrance to Canaan and Lebanon yet out of the political sphere of Nimrod’s saboteurs.

 

Terah  retired away from the cosmopolitan area of Sumer and went back to the foothills of  the Taurus Mountain in northwestern Armenia.  There he built a new estate and temple complex at Harran. Tel Harran, now identified in the Ebla tablets was a noted town of commerce, built at the major northern crossroad center between Sumer and western Asia.  The temple complex built in Harran has been reconstructed by archeologists and noted to be a mirror image of the central Sumerian religious complex to Nannar/Sin in Ur.

 

What is of interest in the saga of the dream of Nimrod, is that the wise man, a Chaldi, who interpreted the dream was called Anuki.  This returns us to the works of Zecharia Sitchin in which the nameAnnukian referred to those peoples who initially colonized earth as inhabitants when they came from the planet, Marduk, and was translated from Sumerian as “Those who from Heaven to Earth came.”  (Sitchen, Zecharia, When Time Began,  Avon Books, The Hearst Corp., NY p. 10) According to the author of the Book of Jubilees, a tenth of spirits forms of the antediluvian Nephilim with the Angel Mastema were allowed to interact not physically but in the spirit with the inhabitants of the post-flood era. (Jasher 10:8)  

 

Abram, the Scion of the Sumerian Head of State.

 

At the age of seventy five, Abram is living in the vicinity of Harran and possibly at this time he assumed kingship at Damascus, a noted foreigner with an armed retinue.  Here we see a family involved in the political and religious life of Sumeria, a high class family of noble birth who lived and mingled with the high echelons of Sumerian society.   Nicholas of Damascus, reporting in his fourth book states,“Abram reigned at Damascus, being a foreigner who came with an army out of the land above Babylon called the land of the Chaldeans.  But after a long time he got up, and removed from the country also with his people, and went into the land the called the land of Canaan but now the land of Judea” (italics supplied) (Fasold, Ibid. p. 186.)

 

For fourteen years, Abram lives on the corridor of the fertile crescent before descending into the land of Shem’s inheritance, Canaan.  On a crystal clear night, he was observing the heavens to predict the rains and seasonal changes, when the Lord spoke to him.

 

“Get the out of thy country, and from thy kindred and from thy father’s house, unto a land that I will shew thee; and I will make of thee a great nation and I will bless thee, and make thy name great; and thou shalt be a blessing: and I will bless them that bless thee, and curse him that curseth thee; and in thee shall all families of the earth be blessed.”  (Gen 12:1-3)

 

AB RAM , his Sumerian name meant “Father’s Beloved”.  Terah, his father, not only was the head of the royal hosts of Nimrod, but also high priest of Ur and accepted in the highest ranks

to performs the religious ceremonies at Nimmiru.

 

The Abram as some picture in the Hebrew scriptures was not a marauding nomad.   When arriving in Egypt, he is immediately taken to the presence of the king of Egypt. From there he engages in social, scientific and political discourse and negotiates treaties with dignitaries at high levels.  When cohabitating with the Canaanites, we find Abram careful to avoid local conflicts even with local rights such as water wells.  Here we see a person trained in the fine arts of negotiation and diplomacy.

 

Ancient linguists early compared the Hebrew word Ibri with the word Hapiru which the Egyptian, Assyrian and Babylonians in the seventeenth and eighteenth century called groups of western Semites who pillaged and invaded the borders of the civilized city states. They were the bandits of the era.   Yet when we see Abraham becoming involved in the War of the Kings, he refuses to take any booty for himself, reflecting the high conduct of a person of his stature. 

 

The Royal Lineage of Abram

 

Here was a family of royal lineage, who claimed descent from the first born from the House of Shem: Arphaxad, Selah, Eber, Peleg, Reu, Serug, Nahor, Terah, and Abram. Yet it is to Eber in which thebiblical name Hebrew or Ibri is derived which gives the family of Abraham its greatest identity.  Sitchen claims that the root word means “to cross” and rather than the Semitic origin we must look to Sumerian linguists for the meaning.   He therefore directs us to look to the biblical suffix i when applied to a person means “a native of”.  Therefore Gileadi meant a native of Gilead.  In the same token, Ibri meant a native of the place called “Crossing”, which was the Sumerian name for Nippur: NI.IB.RU.  To Sitchen, this was the Original Navel of the Earth, the pre-diluvium center of civilization.  When transferring linguistics from Sumerian to Akkadian/Hebrew, the n was dropped off. So Abram, the Ibri, was actually Abram of Ni-ib-ri, a man of Nippurian origin. (Sitchen, Zechariah, The Wars of Gods and Men, Avon Books, The Hearst Corp. 1350 Avenue of the Americas, New York, NY 10019  p. 294-295)  

 

Nippur was noted in ancient Sumerian society as a consecrated city, the navel or center of  Sumerian religious society.  It was the nerve center where astronomy was utilized and entrusted to the priestly caste and where the Nippurian calendar originated as soon as the orbits of the post-diluvium sun, earth, and moon were calculated.  Scholars know today this calendar was synthesized about 4000 BC in the age of Taurus.  The Hebrew calendar was derived from this Nippurian calendar as it based its origin on the beginning year of 3760 BC (where 1997 is the Jewish year of  5757) The Jewish sages recount that these are the years that have passed “since counting [of years] began” (Ibid p.296)   

 

So Abram, turned his sights and the destiny of his family south, to the land of the Canaanites.  A new era in his life was about to begin.  The identity as the son of the Sumerian Oracle Priest would soon evolve in the life of a Western Potentate, and one who had a special destiny to fulfill.