* We know that to Herodotus (v. 55) Susa was the city of
Memnon, and that Strabo attributes its foundation to
Tithonus, father of Memnon. According to Oppert, the word
Memnon is the equivalent of the Susian Umman-anîn, “the
house of the king:” Weissbach declares that “anin” does not
mean king, and contradicts Oppert’s view, though he does not
venture to suggest a new explanation of the name.
** Gen. xiv. Prom the outset Assyriologists have never
doubted the historical accuracy of this chapter, and they
have connected the facts which it contains with those which
seem to be revealed by the Assyrian monuments. The two
Rawlinsons intercalate Kudur-lagamar between Kudur-nakhunta
and Kudur-mabug, and Oppert places him about the same
period. Fr. Lenormant regards him as one of the successors
of Kudur-mabug, possibly his immediate successor. G. Smith
does not hesitate to declare positively that the Kudur-mabug
and Kudur-nakhunta of the inscriptions are one and the same
with the Kudur-lagamar (Chedor-laomer) of the Bible.
Finally, Schrader, while he repudiates Smith’s view, agrees
in the main fact with the other Assyriologists. On the other
hand, the majority of modern Biblical critics have
absolutely refused to credit the story in Genesis. Sayce
thinks that the Bible story rests on an historic basis, and
his view is strongly confirmed by Pinches’discovery of a
Chaldæan document which mentions Kudur-lagamar and two of
his allies. The Hebrew historiographer reproduced an
authentic fact from the chronicles of Babylon, and connected
it with one of the events in the life of Abraham. The very
late date generally assigned to Gen. xiv. in no way
diminishes the intrinsic probability of the facts narrated
by the Chaldæan document which is preserved to us in the
pages of the Hebrew book.
In the thirteenth year of his reign over the East, the cities of the Dead Sea—Sodom, Gomorrah, Adamah, Zeboîm, and Belâ—revolted against him: he immediately convoked his great vassals, Amraphel of Chaldæa, Ariôch of Ellasar,* Tida’lo the Guti, and marched with them to the confines of his dominions. Tradition has invested many of the tribes then inhabiting Southern Syria with semi-mythical names and attributes. They are represented as being giants—Rephalm; men of prodigious strength—Zuzîm; as having a buzzing and indistinct manner of speech—Zamzummîm; as formidable monsters**—Emîm or Anakîm, before whom other nations appeared as grasshoppers;*** as the Horîm who were encamped on the confines of the Sinaitic desert, and as the Amalekites who ranged over the mountains to the west of the Dead Sea. Kudur-lagamar defeated them one after another—the Rephaîm near to Ashtaroth-Karnaîm, the Zuzîm near Ham,**** the Amîm at Shaveh-Kiriathaim, and the Horîm on the spurs of Mount Seir as far as El-Paran; then retracing his footsteps, he entered the country of the Amalekites by way of En-mishpat, and pillaged the Amorites of Hazazôn-Tamar.
* Ellasar has been identified with Larsa since the
researches of Rawlin-son and Norris; the Goîm, over whom
Tidal was king, with the Guti.
** Sayce considers Zuzîm and Zamzummîm to be two readings of
the same word Zamzum, written in cuneiform characters on the
original document. The sounds represented, in the Hebrew
alphabet, by the letters m and w, are expressed in the
Chaldæan syllabary by the same character, and a Hebrew or
Babylonian scribe, who had no other means of telling the
true pronunciation of a race-name mentioned in the story of
this campaign, would have been quite as much at a loss as
any modern scholar to say whether he ought to transcribe the
word as Z-m-z-m or as Z-w-z-vo; some scribes read it
Zuzîm, others preferred Zamzummîm.
*** Numb. xiii. 33.
**** In Deut. ii. 20 it is stated that the Zamzummîm lived
in the country of Ammon. Sayce points out that we often find
the variant Am for the character usually read Ham or
Kham—the name Khammurabi, for instance, is often found
written Ammurabi; the Ham in the narrative of Genesis would,
therefore, be identical with the land of Ammon in
Deuteronomy, and the difference between the spelling of the
two would be due to the fact that the document reproduced in
the XIVIIth chapter of Genesis had been originally copied from
a cuneiform tablet in which the name of the place was
expressed by the sign Ham-Am.
In the mean time, the kings of the five towns had concentrated their troops in the vale of Siddîm, and were there resolutely awaiting Kudur-lagamar. They were, however, completely routed, some of the fugitives being swallowed up in the pits of bitumen with which the soil abounded, while others with difficulty reached the mountains. Kudur-lagamar sacked Sodom and Gomorrah, re-established his dominion on all sides, and returned laden with booty, Hebrew tradition adding that he was overtaken near the sources of the Jordan by the patriarch Abraham.*
* An attempt has been made to identify the three vassals of
Kudur-lagamar with kings mentioned on the Chaldæan
monuments. Tidcal, or, if we adopt the Septuagint variant,
Thorgal, has been considered by some as the bearer of a
Sumorian name, Turgal= “great chief,” “great son,” while
others put him on one side as not having been a Babylonian;
Pinches, Sayce, and Hommel identify him with Tudkhula, an
ally of Kudur-lagamar against Khammurabi. Schrader was the
first to suggest that Amraphel was really Khammurabi, and
emended the Amraphel of the biblical text into Amraphi or
Amrabi, in order to support this identification. Halévy,
while on the whole accepting this theory, derives the name
from the pronunciation Kimtarapashtum or Kimtarapaltum,
which he attributes to the name generally read Khammurabi,
and in this he is partly supported by Hommel, who reads
“Khammurapaltu.”
After his victory over Kudur-lagamar, Khammurabi assumed the title of King of Martu,* which we find still borne by Ammisatana sixty years later.** We see repeated here almost exactly what took place in Ethiopia at the time of its conquest by Egypt: merchants had prepared the way for military occupation, and the civilization of Babylon had taken hold on the people long before its kings had become sufficiently powerful to claim them as vassals. The empire may be said to have been virtually established from the day when the states of the Middle and Lower Euphrates formed but one kingdom in the hands of a single ruler. We must not, however, imagine it to have been a compact territory, divided into provinces under military occupation, ruled by a uniform code of laws and statutes, and administered throughout by functionaries of various grades, who received their orders from Babylon or Susa, according as the chances of war favoured the ascendency of Chaldæa or Elam. It was in reality a motley assemblage of tribes and principalities, whose sole bond of union was subjection to a common yoke.
* It is, indeed, the sole title which he attributes to
himself on a stone tablet now in the British Museum.
** In an inscription by this prince, copied probably about
the time of Nabonidus by the scribe Belushallîm, he is
called “king of the vast land of Martu.”
They were under obligation to pay tribute, and furnish military contingents and show other external marks of obedience, but their particular constitution, customs, and religion were alike respected: they had to purchase, at the cost of a periodical ransom, the right to live in their own country after their own fashion, and the head of the empire forbore all interference in their affairs, except in cases where the internecine quarrels and dissensions threatened the security of his suzerainty. Their subordination lasted as best it could, sometimes for a year or for ten years, at the end of which period they would neglect the obligations of their vassalage, or openly refuse to fulfil them: a revolt would then break out at one point or another, and it was necessary to suppress it without delay to prevent the bad example from spreading far and wide. The empire was maintained by perpetual re-conquests, and its extent varied with the energy shown by its chiefs, or with the resources which were for the moment available.
Separated from the confines of the empire by only a narrow isthmus, Egypt loomed on the horizon, and appeared to beckon to her rival. Her natural fertility, the industry of her inhabitants, the stores of gold and perfumes which she received from the heart of Ethiopia, were well known by the passage to and fro of her caravans, and the recollection of her treasures must have frequently provoked the envy of Asiatic courts. Egypt had, however, strangely declined from her former greatness, and the line of princes who governed her had little in common with the Pharaohs who had rendered her name so formidable under the XIIth dynasty. She was now under the rule of the Xoites, whose influence was probably confined to the Delta, and extended merely in name over the Said and Nubia. The feudal lords, ever ready to reassert their independence as soon as the central power waned, shared between them the possession of the Nile valley below Memphis: the princes of Thebes, who were probably descendants of Usirtasen, owned the largest fiefdom, and though some slight scruple may have prevented them from donning the pschënt or placing their names within a cartouche, they assumed notwithstanding the plenitude of royal power. A favourable opportunity was therefore offered to an invader, and the Chaldæans might have attacked with impunity a people thus divided among themselves.* They stopped short, however, at the southern frontier of Syria, or if they pushed further forward, it was without any important result: distance from head-quarters, or possibly reiterated attacks of the Elamites, prevented them from placing in the field an adequate force for such a momentous undertaking. What they had not dared to venture, others more audacious were to accomplish. At this juncture, so runs the Egyptian record, “there came to us a king named Timaios. Under this king, then, I know not wherefore, the god caused to blow upon us a baleful wind, and in the face of all probability bands from the East, people of ignoble race, came upon us unawares, attacked the country, and subdued it easily and without fighting.”
* The theory that the divisions of Egypt, under the XIVth
dynasty, and the discords between its feudatory princes,
were one of the main causes of the success of the Shepherds,
is now admitted to be correct.