Pinches and Sayce read the name of the Elamite king, Kukukumal, Kudurlakhmal, and identify it with Chedorlaomer. Pinches so reads it, hesitatingly; Sayce, confidently. There is no reason for so reading it, except the desire to discover Chedorlaomer. The first three syllables are represented in the cuneiform by the same sign—a sign the most frequent value of which is ku. It does sometimes have the value dur, but never lakh. King reads it Kukukumal, and there is really no reason for reading it otherwise.
Another name which occurs twice is written in the two places with a slight difference of spelling. It is according to the most natural reading of the signs, Arad-Malkua, or Arad-Malaku. Sayce and Pinches read Eri-eaku and identified him with “Arioch, king of Elassar,” (Gen. 14:1). While this is a possible reading, it is only secured by giving to the signs their Sumerian, instead of their Semitic values, and, as the documents are in Semitic, this is probably wrong. The name is to be read Arad-Malkua. Another name, Tudkhula, which occurs in the first document, has been identified by the same scholars with “Tidal, king of the nations” (Gen. 14:1), but in this text there is no evidence that Tudkhula was a king at all, and the identification is purely fanciful. It should be noted also that Arad-Malkua, the supposed Eri-eaku, does not himself take any part in the wars here recorded; it is his son, Dursil-ilâni, who is represented as a contemporary of Kukukumal, the supposed Chedorlaomer.
It should be further noted that these documents represent a complete conquest of Babylon by Elam—a conquest in which Babylon itself is laid desolate. It is not certain just what part Dursil-ilâni played in the story. He may have been a vassal king under Kukukumal, or the Babylonian upon whom the hopes of the people centered, to free them from the yoke of Elam. It is clear, however, that the events mentioned in these documents are not in harmony with the supposition that these monarchs acted as allies of Hammurapi in the invasion of Palestine. Hammurapi is excluded from the account. Kukukumal conquered and desolated the very city in which Hammurapi had his throne. Kukukumal must, accordingly, have lived at some other period of the history, and the supposed confirmation of the account of the fourteenth chapter of Genesis has not yet been found.
As already stated, these tablets are not earlier than the fourth century B. C. The events which they record were probably much later than the time of Abraham. Babylon is called by its Cassite name, Kar-duniash, a name which it did not bear until some hundreds of years after the time of Hammurapi. Many times in the course of Babylonian history was the country overrun by Elam, and there is no real reason to suppose that the war here referred to belongs to the age of Hammurapi.
CHAPTER X
JACOB AND JOSEPH
Appearances of these Names in Babylonian and Egyptian Records. “The Tale of the Two Brothers”; Its Bearing on the Story of Joseph in Genesis. Letters to a Ruler Like Joseph. The Seven Years of Famine. Inscription Showing Preparation for Famine.
1. Jacob.