This is my twenty-ninth monthly teaching letter and continues my third year of publication. With my last teaching letter, we covered more materials concerning the archaeological finds at Mari and Nuzi. These finds have added much in understanding the accounts of the Patriarchs of Genesis. Fifty to seventy-five years ago, many were trying to claim the Bible stories were simply myths handed down from generation to generation; that there were never actual persons such as Abraham, Haran, Nahor, Serug, Peleg, Terah. Since the discoveries of Mari and Nuzi, you don’t hear much about these “higher critics” anymore. There probably are a few uninformed, preposterous, harebrained impostors still making such arguments, but Mari and Nuzi have shut the mouths of the majority of the so-called “experts.” There was another important archaeological find, discovered in 1974-1976, called Ebla, which we will be investigating shortly; if not in this letter, in the next one. This find also silenced the catcalls of the impudent skeptics. With these discoveries in archaeology, there is no more room for doubt that the Bible is true. We also discussed more information concerning the Canaanites. We brought more archaeological testimony that the “Princes’ Wall” did exist during the time of the Egyptian Sinuhe. With what we presented in lesson #28, not only can you know, beyond all doubt, that the Patriarchs existed, but you can understand heretofore ambiguous and problematical passages in Scripture.
THE DEMISE OF EDOM
As you may remember, from the last few lessons, I am trying to set the stage for the subject of Esau-Edom. We simply cannot understand the entire story of Esau, unless we understand his previous and surrounding contemporary history. In order to play with a full deck of cards, it will be necessary to put all the players in their places. Sorry to say, there are many making comments about this subject with a very limited knowledge of what was going on. They think, because they read a couple of verses in the Bible, they are some kind of an authority.
WHAT IN THE WORLD WAS GOING ON?
Once in a while, when reading various sources of information along a certain subject, someone sometimes has the ability to portray, and sum up, a situation in very few words. Such a summation is made by the book, 6,000 Years Of The Bible by G. S. Wegener, page 34, © 1963:
“But although Hammurabi’s empire represented an enormous concentration of power, it did not survive for long. First the Hittites invaded Babylon from the region of the Black Sea, in the far north, and shortly afterwards the Kassites and Hurrians swept across Iran. The Hyksos, operating from Egypt, occupied parts of the country adjoining their own, and after their expulsion from the Nile the pursuing Egyptians themselves invaded Mesopotamian territory. And all the time the Aramaeans, tribes of Semitic bedouins who came raiding across the border, were a constant threat. (More on the Hyksos later.)
“It was the natural course of Mesopotamian history: a perpetual up and down of fortune, an unending confusion and tangle of peoples and tribes. Conquerors came and went; civilizations were born and died; cities and empires were built and crashed again. It was not until 1100 B.C. that another single and all-embracing state arose again in the land of the Tigris and Euphrates. This was the empire of the Assyrians.”
It might be well to go back and read this quotation again. If you can comprehend these last two paragraphs, you have mastered a portion of history that otherwise might take a considerable amount of reading and study to understand. We have to understand we cannot nail down any one group of people to one location for all time. It must be remembered that people are portable. In such an environment, as described above were Abraham and his kin living; especially among the many tribes of people, like the Hurrians and Kassites, who were sweeping into the country. If you have read my last two lessons, you have an idea what type of people these Hurrians and Kassites were. Furthermore, when the Assyrians came into power, this same book says on the same page: “Their rulers felt no scruples in their choice of political expedients. They uprooted whole races and transplanted them in alien lands.”
TIME FRAMES
A person on my mailing list for this Watchman’s Teaching Letter is in the process of writing a Bible commentary. He gave me permission to quote from his unfinished manuscript. On page 20 he comments:
“Because of the changes made to the lengths of the Patriarchs’ lifetimes, a great latitude must be given with regards to chronology in this section. The Masoretes made changes to the Holy Scriptures sometime after the Crucifixion but before about 300 A.D. Ephrem the Syrian testified to this and accused the Jews of subtracting at least 600 years from the text in order to deny that Yahshua was the Messiah who had come at the appointed time. This appointed time of course was based upon a cabalistic numerology.
“There are, however, great amounts of archeological evidence that can and will be used to bring some light to this somewhat hazy period. It is hoped that through the use of such materials a greater understanding can be achieved concerning the lives of our Patriarchs.”
If the above is true, then Noah’s flood would extend back to about 2948 B.C. instead of 2348 B.C., as stated in most Bibles according to Ussher. Some Bibles omit the chronology from Noah on back to Adam. Actually, the date given by Adam Rutherford’s Pyramidology of 3265 B.C. fits the history of Greece and Egypt much better. Also, the Septuagint and Samaritan texts agree essentially with Rutherford’s figures. (See lesson #25) This chronology is important because it is the particular time period we are dealing with. You see, it is important to understand the approximate timing of events leading up to Esau. You may wonder what the history of Egypt has to do with Esau-Edom. Before we are through, you will begin to understand; it has everything to do with Esau-Edom.
HURRIANS & HITTITES BOTH HAD MONGOLIAN FEATURES
This, in itself, should tell a story, for they must have been interrelated to each other in some way. This would explain much about the story of Esau, for Scripture seems to indicate a Horite (Hurrian) and a Hittite connection with his wives. For more on the depiction of the Hittites (which agrees with what I documented in lesson #25), I will quote from Researches Into The Ethnic Origins Of Israel by C. F. Parker, B.A., page 37:
“It must be confessed that they (the Hittites) were not a handsome people. They were short and thick of limb, and the front part of their faces was pushed forward in a curious and somewhat repulsive way. The forehead retreated, the cheekbones were high, the nostrils were large, the upper lip protrusive. They had, in fact, according to the craniologists, the characteristics of a Mongolian race. Like the Mongols, moreover, their skins were yellow and their eyes black. They arranged the hair in the form of a ‘pigtail’ which characterises them on their own and the Egyptian monuments quite as much as their snow-shoes with upturned toes. In Syria they doubtless mixed with the Semitic race, and the further south they advanced the more likely they were to become absorbed into the native population. The Hittites of Southern Judah have Semitic names and probably spoke a Semitic language. Kedesh continued to bear to the last its Semitic title, and among the Hittite names which occur further north there are several which display a Semitic stamp.” (If one could observe one of Esau’s wives today, she probably would look somewhat like an Albanian Turk.)
WHERE DID ALL THESE PEOPLE COME FROM?
For information on where all these various ethnic groups of people were coming from, I will quote short excerpts from a book entitled The First Great Civilizations by Jacquetta Hawkes. I will be using the information from this book as a critical review, and will be checking information from other sources to verify whether or not the following is correct:
Page 61: “We are concerned with the peoples of a vast river system over some two thousand years of their history. Changes in political power between one area and another, frequent foreign infiltrations, the seizure of sovereignty by invaders, even the rise and fall of dynasties, deeply affected social and cultural life. This was even truer for Mesopotamia than for the more secure and isolated Egypt ... it would be impossible to understand the experience and outlook of the population without some knowledge of the often violent political events in which their states were involved and which were a matter of life and death to countless families.”
Page 65: “The two written sources (‘Sumerian King List’ & ‘Vulture Stele’ of Eanatum) taken together have made it possible to reconstruct a considerable part of the dynastic histories of some half-dozen cities of the Plain, including Ur, Umma, Lagash, Uruk and Kish. The King List also assigns one dynasty to Mari, and here again excavation has confirmed that this Semitic city away to the north on the Middle Euphrates was indeed an outpost of Sumerian cultural influence in Early Dynastic times.”
Page 66: “Another element in a repeating pattern beginning in Early Dynastic times was, as we have seen, fighting the Elamites, a people who owed much of their culture to Sumer, emulated her and yet were often to be her enemies. Yet another, and one far more important for the future, was the first major penetration of Sumer by Semites, the outcome of one of the most persistent features in all history: the drift of tribes from the western deserts into the settled land of Mesopotamia.” (about 2700 B.C.)
Pages 71-72: (about 2260 B.C.) “It is said that greatness often misses a generation. Sargon’s grandson, Naram-Sin, the fourth in the dynasty, must have inherited much of his grandfather’s drive and ambition. He came to the throne in about 2260 B.C. and was to rule for thirty-seven years .... It may also refer to his northern frontiers, for he went up into Zagros to subdue a mountain people, the Lulubum (neighbours of the Gutians). ...
“ ... The King of Akkad (Shar-kali-sharri’s modest title) claimed a victory over them, but a letter of the time addressed apparently to a provincial governor, gives a very revealing picture of the true condition of the land ‘You shall plough the fields and look after the cattle. It is no good saying ‘yes, but there are Gutians about and so I cannot plough my field.’ Set up patrols of watchmen every half mile and then plough your field. If armed bands advance there will be local mobilization and you must then have the cattle driven into the city.’ ... According to literary tradition, the luckless Shar-kali-sharri, last of Sargon’s line, was murdered in a palace intrigue. Among the four contenders for his throne, one was a Gutian king ... The Gutians were now ruling over a considerable part of Mesopotamia, including the northern Plain. They adopted the cuneiform script and Akkadian language for their official inscriptions, but these ‘mountain dragons’ appear to have remained essentially barbarous. They are known to have destroyed much, including the city of Assur, and to have created nothing. No temple or palace, no style of art, no valuable innovation of any kind has been attributed to them.”
Page 73: “Yet it was not to be given to Lagash either to free the north from the Gutians or to preside over the last flare of Sumerian greatness before the centre of power shifted irrevocably to the north. Within a decade of Gudea’s death his city seems to have been losing ground, and a place in history as the liberator of the land from the mountain dragons went instead to Utuhengal of Uruk. After having seized Ur, this king marched against the Gutians and gave them battle in the extreme north of Sumer, near the limits of their own territory. His victory must have been complete, for the Gutians were thrown out of Mesopotamia and never again played any significant part in her history.”
Page 74: (about 2200 B. C.) “The campaigns (by Ur-Nammu) were not altogether aggressive. The lands of the east of the Tigris were suffering a dangerous influx of foreigners. These were the Hurrians from the northern mountains. They had been entering peacefully for a century and more (there was even an enclave of them in Nippur as early as 2200 B.C.) but now they came in larger numbers. It was probably due to the strong military policy of Ur that they did not penetrate the Plain and repeat the success of the Gutians.
“For eighty years the empire of Ur maintained its inward stability, and its downfall when it came was largely due to attack from without. The Hurrians had been held in check, but now the pendulum of invasion was to swing back to the west — from mountain enemies to desert enemies.”
THE AMORITES
Page 74: (about 2027 B.C.) “The Amorites (Sumerian Martu and Akkadian Amurru) had been drifting into Mesopotamia since the days of Sargon. These nomad Semites can in fact be seen as successors to the Akkadians, but they appear to have been less ready to settle and become good citizens ... Marauding bands of Amorites were beginning to reduce the empire to chaos.”
Page 81: (about 1595 B.C.) “Yet the fall of the dynasty (Hammurabi) and the subsequent confusion may have opened the way for the seizure of lasting power by the Kassites. For another intrusion of Indo-European history into that of Mesopotamia we have to return to the Hurrians, last seen being held in check by the Third Dynasty of Ur. These people, whose original home was probably in the Armenian mountains, spoke a language that was neither Semitic nor Indo-European. The eastern tribes that harried Shamshi-Adad and his son were probably predominantly Hurrian, and Hurrian texts of about this time are known from Mari. After the reign of Ishme-Dagon, Assyrian history sinks into obscure doldrums, and it seems that was due to a great influx of Hurrians — who were actually in a majority in some cities and were numerous in Assur itself. A large force of them also swept across northern Mesopotamia, reaching the Syrian coast and influencing the petty state of Palestine.
“Perhaps from the first it was pressure from Indo-European peoples that caused incursions by the Hurrians, and they may soon have acquired chariot-driving Indo-European leaders. Certainly when, rather before 1500 B.C., Mitanni emerged into history as a centralized Hurrian state, it was dominated by such an Indo-European ruling aristocracy. Names of Mitannian kings can be derived from Sanskrit, while the alien divinities they introduced into the old Sumeriancum-Semitic pantheon had names well known from the Vedic literature of India.”
THE EGYPTIAN CONNECTION
Pages 81-82: (about 1400-1500 B.C.) “In the fifteenth and fourteenth centuries B.C., Mitanni extended from the Zagros to the Mediterranean and the kings of Assyria were no more than her vassals. It was the hostile policy of Mitannian kings against Egypt that provoked Thutmose III to march to the Euphrates. Later they made friends with the Egyptians and three generations of princesses, with hundreds of followers, made the hazardous journey to Thebes, where they were given in marriage to Pharaoh and lived out their days in the royal harem.
“ ... Yet the Hurrians did not disappear from history. Away to the north in their Armenian homeland they entrenched themselves and built up the kingdom of Urartu. Here something of their culture, and an Urartian language very close to the Hurrian of Mitanni was preserved.”
“MOUNTAIN DRAGONS”
If all the above is true, we have a very interesting situation, for from this, we deduce that the “Gutians” were considered “Mountain Dragons.” It also appears that the Hittites, Hurrians and Kassites were all Mongolian “Mountain Dragon People.” I believe that I can prove, with the help of the Bible, that the Hittites were also “Mountain Dragons.” Sometimes it is necessary to use the backdoor approach to bring these things to light. For this I will use Revelation 12:9 where the dragon is mentioned:
“And the great dragon was cast out, that old serpent, called the devil, and Satan, which deceived the whole world: he was cast out into the earth, and his angels were cast out with him.”
We are told in verse 4 of this same chapter:
“... the dragon stood before the woman which was ready to be delivered, for to devour her child as soon as it was born.”
We don’t have to guess who this dragon which stood before the woman (Israel, represented in the person of Mary) was. It was none other than Herod the half-Edomite, who in turn was a descendant of these “dragon people” spoken of above. In Revelation 12:3 he is called the “red dragon.” The “red” color is the color of Esau. Esau was born red and he has carried that color right down to today’s communism. Not only did the dragon people marry with Esau, but they also married with the Egyptian Pharaohs. I am persuaded that the Egyptian Pharaoh who enslaved the Israelites was serpent seed. I am persuaded that these Mountain Dragons were descendants of Cain. We can be rather of sure about this fact because Revelation 12:9 places the dragon, the serpent, the Devil, and Satan all in the same category as one type of being or people. If all this is true, it accounts for the very cruel treatment that Pharaoh dealt out, and the slaughter of the Israelite children in Egypt just in the same manner as Herod’s. The Dragon People are still doing it to our children today. All of this goes right back to Genesis 3:15 where hatred was pronounced between the children of Satan and the children of Eve. This is a war to the death. This “enmity” will continue until one party or the other is completely destroyed. Every time you see a white woman wheeling a half-breed child down the street or through a store in a stroller, you can know the Dragon People are winning!
MORE BIBLE EVIDENCE
At this point I wish to present to you a mistranslated passage found in Hebrews 11:24-26 in the KJV. It reads as follows:
“24 By faith Moses, when he was come to years, refused to be called the son of Pharaoh’s daughter; 25 Choosing rather to suffer affliction with the people of God, than to enjoy the pleasures of sin for a season; 26 Esteeming the reproach of Christ greater riches than the treasures of Egypt: for he had respect unto the recompence of the reward.”
The translators being so used to translating the Greek word #5547 (anointed) as “Christ”, overlooked the fact that the children of Israel were also called “anointed.” (1 Samuel 2:35; 1 Chronicles 16:22; Psalm 105:15; Psalm 132:17). The word should not have been “Christ” in verse 26, but “mine anointed” or “Israel.” Let’s reread verse 26 as it should have been translated:
“26 Esteeming the reproach of the anointed greater riches than the treasures of Egypt: for he had respect unto the recompence of the reward.”
Now, being that we are aware that Moses was saying he would rather suffer with his people Israel than to be a son of Pharaoh’s daughter and enjoy all the riches of Egypt, it makes all the difference in the world in this correctly translated verse.
I know I have brought you the long way around on this one. What is important to understand, in this instance, is that the Israelites were Yahweh’s “anointed” and the Egyptians weren’t. If the persecuting pharaoh was of Satanic-dragon seed, this was especially pertinent.
CHECKING JACQUETTA HAWKES’ DOCUMENTATION
For the next part of this story, I am going to quote from The Bible As History by Werner Keller, © 1956. Keller gives additional information, that, not only did the Egyptians mix with the Hurrians, as stated by Hawkes, but they also mixed with the Hittites. I will be using excerpts from pages 96-103:
“The multicolored army of mercenaries which the Egyptians controlled, consisting of Negroes, Asiatics, and Nubians, marched on northward through Canaan. The new Pharaohs had learned a lesson from the bitter experience of the past. Never again would their country be taken by a surprise attack [like the Hyksos]. Egypt lost no time in creating a buffer state far in advance of its frontier posts. The remainder of the Hyksos empire was crushed, and Palestine became an Egyptian province. What had once been consular stations, trading posts, and messengers’ quarters in Canaan and on the Phoenician coast became permanent garrisons, fortified strong points, and Egyptian fortresses in a subjugated land ...
“ ... Previously, all who lived outside of the Nile Valley were contemptuously described as ‘Asiatics’, ‘Sand ramblers’, ‘cattle breeders’ — people not worthy of the attention of a Pharaoh. Now, however, the Egyptians became more affable. They began communications with other countries. Hitherto that had been unthinkable; among the diplomatic correspondence in the archives of the palace of Mari, there was not one single item from the Nile ...
“The advance of the Egyptians brought them eventually to Syria, indeed, to the banks of the Euphrates. There, to their astonishment, they came up against people of whose existence they had no idea. The priests searched in vain through the ancient papyrus rolls in the temple archives and studied without result the records of the campaigns of earlier Pharaohs. Nowhere could they find even a hint about these unknown Mitanni ...
“Shortly before 1400 B.C. the warlike Mitanni (Hurrian) proposed a peaceful settlement with the Egyptians. The enemy became a friend. The kings of Mitanni turned their attention purposefully to dynastic politics. With great pomp and lavish gifts they sent their daughters down to the Nile and married their princesses to the Pharaohs. In three successive generations of rulers Indo-Aryan(?) (meaning Hurrian) and Egyptian blood was mixed for the first time ...
“What was the reason for the unexpected desire for peace on the part of the warlike Mitanni? The impulse came from the outside. Their kingdom was suddenly threatened with war on two fronts. A second powerful opponent began to storm the frontiers with his armies from Asia Minor in the northwest. This was a nation about which scholars until this century knew hardly anything, but which plays a considerable part in the Old Testament — the Hittites ... Their long hair hung over their shoulders like a full-bottomed wig; on top sat a high-dented cap; their short aprons were fastened with a wide belt and their shoes had pointed toes.
“When Subbiluliuma, King of the Hittites, marched southeast with a powerful army about 1370 B.C., the days of the kingdom of Mitanni (Hurrian) were already numbered despite all their clever dynastic politics. Subbiluliuma crushed the kingdom of the warlike charioteers, compelled it to pay tribute, and then pressed on further to the mountains of the Lebanon in the north of Canaan. Overnight, as it were, Egypt had a new, equally powerful neighbor in Syria thirsting for victory ...
“Using the inviting bed and throne of the Pharaohs as bait — and what attractive bait! — she tried to take the wind out of the sails of her powerful new neighbors by discouraging their warlike intentions. Hittite warriors had just made an attack on Amqa, the fertile country between Lebanon and Anti-Lebanon.
“Mursilis dictated: ‘When the Egyptians heard of the attack on Amqa, they were alarmed. To make matters worse, their lord [Tutankhamun] had just died. But the widowed Queen of Egypt sent an ambassador to my father and wrote him the following letter: ‘My husband is dead and I have no son, I am told that you have many sons. If you send me one of your sons, he could become my husband. I do not wish to take one of my servants and make a husband of him’ ... ‘Since my father was so fine a king, he complied with the lady’s request and sent her the son she asked for.’
“Fate prevented the successful conclusion of this unusual offer of marriage. Both the royal throne and the bed of Anches-en-Amun remained empty, since the candidate was murdered on his way to Egypt.
“Seventy-five years later another offer of marriage on this same Halys-Nile axis had a happy ending, although the prelude to it, which was the din of battle and the clash of weapons, pointed to a different conclusion. Ramesses II, who was called the ‘Great’, set out with his army for Palestine and Syria. He intended to deal with the hated Hittites once and for all ...
“... In 1280 B.C. the Hittites and the Egyptians concluded the first nonaggression and mutual defense pact in world history. The good understanding was cemented at top level by the marriage of Ramesses II to a Hittite princess ... Then came a [Ramesses II] messenger to inform His Majesty. He said: ‘Behold, even the great Prince of Hatti! [Hittites] His eldest daughter is on her way, and she brings untold tribute of all kinds ... They have reached His Majesty’s frontiers. Let the army and the dignitaries come to receive her!’ ...
“A large delegation was dispatched to the north of Palestine to bring back the bride. Yesterday’s enemies became brothers: ‘So the daughter of the great Prince of Hatti came to Egypt. While the infantry, charioteers, and dignitaries of His Majesty accompanied them, they mingled with the infantry and charioteers from Hatti. The whole populace from the country of the Hittites was mixed up with the Egyptians. They ate and drank together; they were like blood-brothers ...
“The children of Israel must have been eye witnesses of the ceremonial arrival of the bridal procession in the city of Pi-Ramses-Meri-Amun, which means ‘The House of Ramses the Beloved of the god Amun.”
There you have it, the Egyptian Pharaohs (just like Esau-Edom) absorbed both Mongolian-Hurrian and Mongolian-Hittite blood along with much of the population of Egypt. Now, for some excerpts from an article in the National Geographic magazine of April, 1991, entitled “Ramses the Great”:
Page 9, The physical description of Ramses I: “He was about five feet eight inches in height — one of the taller pharaohs. He had a strong jaw; a beaked nose, a long thin face. That was not typical of earlier pharaohs. He probably looked more like the people of the eastern Mediterranean. Which is not surprising, because he came from the Nile Delta, which had been invaded in the past by peoples from the east.”
Ramses undoubtedly had Hurrian blood in his veins. Because the Hittite infusion did not happen until Ramses II, he probably didn’t have any Hittite blood, unless the Hittites had mixed with the Hurrians earlier on.
Page 30, A Hittite type metalworking complex found at Pi-Ramses: “‘This is not an Egyptian design’, says Pusch. ‘It looks just like those the Hittites carried in the Battle of Kadesh. We found bronze chisels and hammers next to it. I can draw only one conclusion. Hittite craftsmen were producing Hittite weapons in the capital of Egypt. They were probably working side by side with Egyptians ...’”
Page 10, Ramses II family: “His principal wife, the lovely Nefertari, quickly produced a son. His second favorite wife, the clever Istnofret, soon delivered another. Within ten years each wife had borne at least five sons and several daughters. His other wives may have accounted for another five to ten sons and as many daughters.”
What is so strange about the story of Ramses II is Nefertari died quite young. Following her, two of his sons, who were to succeed him died before his death. Then, at least another ten of his sons died. All of this brings up the question: Was there some kind of battle going on between Nefertari and Istnofret to see which one’s posterity would be next on the throne? If there was, it wasn’t the first, nor would it be the last such struggle. More to come on Egypt in future lessons.
