by Damien F. Mackey - June 2009

The archaeologists gave their verdict [2]:

1. Ze-ev Herzog on the Exodus – 'a history that never happened'.
   
2. Bill Dever on Jericho – 'Joshua destroyed a city that wasn't even there'.
   
3. Sturgis on Davidic Jerusalem – 'After a century and a half of surveying, digging and sifting, almost no clear archaeological evidence for King David's capital has come to light'.
   
4. Israel Finkelstein on United Monarchy Jerusalem – 'There is almost no evidence for the tenth century. There is almost no evidence for Solomon. Jerusalem at this time was probably a very small village, or a very poor town'.

We get the point. "The things that you're liable, to read in the Bible, they ain't necessarily so". So let the archaeologists continue to dig for the right things in all the wrong places, blindly following their faulty timelines, leading to nowhere; whilst we fossick judiciously in all the right places.

There is in fact plenty of 'evidence for King Solomon'. Our own research has shown that the reigns of David and his son, Solomon, were truly awesome, dominating much of the then known world. Let us recapitulate what we have learned, but now, also, expand upon this:

Who was King Solomon?

In stark contrast to the impoverished view of conventional archaeology, Solomon was magnificently multi-facetted. He was:

Introduction Who was King Solomon?

1. In Israel

Solomon, whom the Bible also names, Jedidiah ('Beloved of the Lord', 2 Samuel 12:25), was the third king of Israel, after Saul of Benjamin and Solomon's own father, David of Judah. Solomon was therefore a Jew. Jewish tradition attributes to Solomon (Hebrew Shelomoh, Shlomoh) other names as well. It - supported by Christian tradition - proposes, for instance, that Solomon was the enigmatic "King Lemuel" of Proverbs 31:1. In that case Lemuel's attentive "mother", also mentioned in 31:1, would be Queen Bathsheba, mother of Solomon (cf. 1 Kings 2:13). The meaning of the Hebrew name, Lemuel, 'Belonging to [or of] God' (for "the Lord loved him", 2 Samuel 12:24), is entirely compatible with that of Jedidiah.

2. In Egypt

We have shown in our revolutionary revised article, The House of David", and in other articles, too, that the great king Solomon also wielded an enormous influence over Egypt. He was the powerful, ubiquitous and royal Senenmut (Senmut), consort of Hatshepsut, who was also the biblical "Queen of Sheba". Emmet Sweeney's view that "Sheba" may derive from the name She.wa, for Thebes [30], may just possibly (though there are also arguments against it) be preferable to our former view that "Sheba" pertained to the queen's own name – a view nonetheless allowable according to the Hebrew grammatical construction). Emmet's view would at least be consonant with the New Testament's geographical description of her as "The Queen of the South" (Matthew 12:42; Luke 11:31).

We owe it to Ed Metzler Thebes for having shown, too, that Solomon was pharaoh Thutmose II, husband of Hatshepsut, and that king David was pharaoh Thutmose I, father of both Thutmose II and Hatshepsut (whom we have further identified as the biblical Abishag). Solomon thus married his half-sister. Metzler has even claimed that the name, Thutmosis, traditionally 'son of [the god] Thoth', pertains to David (i.e. Thut = Dwd, Dud) the Messiah (i.e., mes). Thus Metzler wrote [90]:

Eighteenth-dynasty Egypt may evolve as the Israelite dynasty, ushered in by King Saul's marriage to the daughter of Ahmosis, the biblical Achima'atz, and King David's identity with Thutmosis I: Dhwty-ms is David the Messiah!

Metzler is quite aware of the actual Egyptian meaning of the element ms or mes. "Of course, the bilateral hieroglyph `mes' means `child' in Egyptian, but', he adds, "[it] may be used to write Hebrew "Messiah"."

Though this seems to us to be stretching things a bit, it does need to be kept in mind, as far as names go, that Senenmut (our Solomon in Egypt), loved, as we have previously noted, to make "uncommon substitution of certain hieroglyphics and [also exhibited a] penchant for creating cryptograms as for example to the throne name of Hatshepsut, `Makera'.

In other words, Senenmut did play around with names.

Brooklyn Museum gives the following example of this very linguistic situation offline at Example.

Kneeling Statue of Senenmut

Senenmut, a powerful official of the female pharaoh Hatshepsut, commissioned at least twenty-five statues of himself. This innovative statue type, which shows him holding a divine symbol, was offered to Montu, the god of Armant, in petition for Hatshepsut's well-being and his own eternal reward. The image, which depicts a cobra resting on a pair of upraised arms and crowned with a cow's horns and a sun disk, is identified in the inscription as Renenutet, a goddess of harvest and nourishment. However, it can also be read as a cryptogram for Maatkara, Hatshepsut's throne name—a visual pun made possible by the close relationship between Egyptian hieroglyphic writing and art.

Is the name Senenmut also such a cryptogram?

More obviously do we think that Metzler may be stretching things linguistic when he further claims that the name 'Solomon' actually contains the Egyptian theophoric element, Amon. Thus she-el Amon or shel Amon (= Solomon), according to Metzler.

Now, whilst it would be most intriguing indeed to discover that the name 'Solomon' was in fact Egyptian, it must be said that the Hebrew version of the name 'Solomon' does not even contain the equivalent of the letter n (Hebrew nun). [Though the n may be supplied in the Akkadian version of the name, as Šulman (Shulman). [See 5].

Another interesting (though perhaps also over hopeful) speculation is that David was in fact the original Thoth (Egyptian Djehuti; a name very much like Yehudi/Yehudah = Judah/Jew). See offline e.g. David's names.

But again in this case, one would have to ask why it translates as 'son of [or 'child of'] Thoth', instead of, say, 'Thoth the wise one'.

These Thutmoside rulers of Egypt are conventionally dated to c. 1505-1455 BC, but re-dated by us to c. 1000 BC. They, masters of using coalitions, kept in place much of the native Egyptian administration and infrastructure, and even seemed to have allowed to some extent the retention of Egyptian protocol and religious practices.

Historians have noted a certain sensitivity and refinement (even softness) in portraits of both Thutmose II and Senenmut. This would probably be appropriate to one who was of so scholarly and intellectual a cast of mind as was Solomon.

3. In Greece

The Greeks appropriated the wise King Solomon into their 'history' (folklore) as Solon the Lawgiver , Lost and Found Cultural Foundations of Western Civilization of the C6th BC. That the names 'Solomon' and 'Solon' are close is quite apparent from the fact that the two names can often be found together in alphabetical name lists. Plato's account in the Timaeus of Solon's being instructed by the Egyptians about Greek history may have it the wrong way round, if Solon were Solomon. It was Solomon who wrote in detail about the Egyptians in the Book of Wisdom, where he called them "a cursed seed from the beginning" (Wisdom 12:11). Anyway, Solon's laws were apparently Jewish in nature, as E. Yamauchi has clearly shown ("Two Reformers Compared: Solon of Athens and Nehemiah of Jerusalem"); and this is an area of research that could benefit from further comparisons still.

[Anatoly Fomenko, in his History: Fiction or Science?, 2005, has also concluded that Solon was Solomon, but his revised chronology (for this period at least) is way too ridiculous, as it seems to us, for scholars to be able take it seriously].

4. In Babylonia

Recently, we have shown that King Solomon also kick-started Babylonian civilisation, especially the great city of Babylon itself, as the most potent king: Hammurabi. His dynasty has made the name of Babylon famous for all time. A Net article tells of the marvellous effect upon Babylon - and indeed upon Mesopotamian history itself - of this great statesman-scholar as statesman:

As soon as the conquest of Sumer and Accad was completed Hammurabi showed himself the statesman even more than the soldier. He displayed extraordinary care in the development of the resources of the land, and in thus increasing the wealth and comfort of the inhabitants. The chiefest of his great works is best described in his own ringing words - the words of a conqueror, a statesman, and a patriot: "Hammurabi, the powerful king, king of Babylon,... when Anu and Bel gave unto me to rule the land of Sumer and Accad, and with their scepter filled my hands, I dug the canal Hammurabi, the Blessing-of-Men, which bringeth the water of the overflow unto the land of Sumer and Accad. Its banks upon both sides I made arable land; much seed I scattered upon it. Lasting water I provided for the land of Sumer and Accad. The land of Sumer and Accad, its separated peoples I united, with blessings and abundance I endowed them, in peaceful dwellings I made them to live." …. This was no idle promise made to the people before the union of Sumer and Accad under the hegemony of Babylon, but the actual accomplishment of a man who knew how to knit to himself and his royal house the hearts of the people of a conquered land. There is a world of wisdom in the deeds of this old king. No work could possibly have been performed by him which would bring greater blessing than the building of a canal by which a nearly rainless land could be supplied with abundant water. After making the canal, Hammurabi followed the example of his predecessors in Babylonia and carried out extensive building operations in various parts of the land. On all sides we find evidences of his efforts in this work. In Babylon itself he erected a great granary for the storing of wheat against times of famine [comment: shades of the patriarch, Joseph, in Egypt] -- a work of mercy as well as of necessity, which would find prompt recognition among oriental peoples then as now. The temples to the sun god in Larsa and in Sippar were rebuilt by him; the walls of the latter city were reconstructed "like a great mountain" -- to use his own phrase-and the city was enriched by the construction of a new canal. The great temples of E-sagila in Babylon and E-zida in the neighboring Borsippa showed in increased size and in beauty the influence of his labors. There is evidence, also, that he built for himself a palace at the site now marked by the ruin of Kalwadha, near Baghdad.

But these buildings are only external evidences of the great work wrought in this long reign for civilization. The best of the culture of the ancient Sumerians was brought into Babylon, and there carefully conserved. What this meant to the centuries that came after is shown clearly in the later inscriptions. To Babylon the later kings of Assyria look constantly as to the real center of culture and civilization. No Assyrian king is content with Nineveh and its glories, great though these were in later days; his greatest glory came when he could call himself king of Babylon, and perform the symbolic act of taking hold of the hands of Bel-Marduk. Nineveh was the center of a kingdom of warriors, Babylon the abode of scholars; and the wellspring of all this is to be found in the work of Hammurabi.

But if the kings of Assyria looked to Babylon with longing eyes, yet more did later kings in the city of Babylon itself look back to the days of Hammurabi as the golden age of their history. Nabopolassar and Nebuchadrezzar acknowledged his position in the most flattering way, for they imitated in their inscriptions the very words and phrases in which he had described his building, and, not satisfied with this, even copied the exact form of his tablets and the style of their writing. In building his plans were followed, and in rule and administration his methods were imitated. His works and his words entitle him to rank as the real founder of Babylon.

… Hammurabi reigned fifty-five years according to the King Lists, but forty-three years according to a native document which comes to us from his own dynasty. … [End of quote]

Note the Solomonic-like recognition above for Hammurabi: "There is a world of wisdom in the deeds of this old king".

Hammurabi [450] was, like Solon, a lawgiver of note with a strong religious bent. But Hammurabi apparently was not a native Babylonian. We take up the Net article again:

The names of the kings of this dynasty are very peculiar when one thinks that they are set down as native rulers over the city of Babylon. The origin of Zabu and its meaning are very doubtful, Apil-Sin and Sinmuballit are good Babylonian names, but the other eight are most certainly not Babylonian at all. This at once raises the question as to the nationality or race of these kings. The names would seem to suggest that the men who bore them were not Babylonian, but had come from some other branch of the great Semitic family. This seems now to be quite probable. Their names are for the most part to be connected with the Canaanite branch of the Semitic family, and it seems probable that they owe their origin to an invasion of Babylonia by the same race that peopled the highlands of Canaan. How and when they settled in Babylon remains obscure. … [End of quote]

Indeed, the members of this dynasty were closely "connected with the Canaanite branch of the Semitic family". They were Aramaean, as were the Jews.[472] But they probably did not actually 'settle in Babylonia'. For there is no attested, established complete archaeology in Babylon for Hammurabi's dynasty, conventionally known as the First Babylonian Dynasty. As King Solomon, Hammurabi, according to our view, dominated Babylon largely from afar, by working through local infrastructure, agencies and coalitions (as did the first two Thutmosides and Senenmut in relation to Egypt).

The exact meaning and even rendering of the name 'Hammurabi' seems to be the cause of difficulty for scholars. [480]

In our previous series of articles on hammurabi as king Solomon we may perhaps have overlooked the obvious: viz. that the name 'hammurabi' is nothing other than the name 'abraham'.

Would it not have been most fitting for Solomon to have chosen, as his Babylonian name, the name of the great Patriarch (Abra[ha]m) who had apparently once dwelt in southern Mesopotamia, in Ur of the Chaldeans (cf. Genesis 11:31). Herb Storck has, in his fine article [530], established a link between the descendants of Abraham and the early Hammurabic dynasty. One of his proposed identifications is that of Zuabu (of the Assyrian King List) with Su-abu or Sumu-abum (Genealogy of Hammurabic Dynasty), the apparent founder of the "First Babylonian Dynasty".

Now, virtually the same name, as Sumu'epuh (= Sumu-abum) occurs in the Yamkhad dynasty for the same approximate era. This Sumu'epuh is the father, or an ancestor, of Iarim-Lim, whom we have previously identified with king Hiram, the great ally of David and Solomon. And this Iarim-Lim is in turn followed by a Hammurabi. A possible explanation is that the "First Babylonian Dynasty" was in fact, initially, the powerful Hiram's Amorite dynasty, into which David (presumably Sin-muballit) and Solomon (Hammurabi) had married, thereby perhaps eventually appropriating the dynasty to themselves. This, coupled with Storck's information, is the best explanation that we can come up with at this stage for the pre-Hammurabic names of this dynasty. According to our Net article again, using conventional dates, the early part of this dynasty is in fact most obscure, with even some of its members never actually designated as 'king' (emphasis added):

The name of the first king of Babylon is given in the Babylonian King Lists as Sumu-abi (about 2454-2440 B. C.) …. of whom we know nothing. We have likewise no historical inscriptions of his immediate successors, and our only knowledge of their reigns is to be obtained from the fragmentary notes of contract tablets, which sometimes give indications of the life of the people. From the inscriptions of later kings we also get word of some building operations of two of them. These kings are Sumu-la-ilu (about 2439-2405 B. C.), who built six strong fortresses in Babylon, and Zabu (about 2404-2391 B. C.), who erected in Sippar of Anunit the temple of Edubar to the city's deity. After Zabu there was apparently all attempted revolution, for we get hints that a certain Immeru … attempted to ascend the throne. His name does not appear on the King List, and it is probable that he was not able to gain a secure position in the kingdom. The next rulers are Apil-Sin (about 2390-2373 B. C.) and Sin-muballit (about 2372-2343 B. C.), whose reigns are likewise unknown to us.

It is a noteworthy fact that in the large numbers of business documents which have come down to us out of the period of this first dynasty of Babylon, none of these rulers down to Apil-Sin is called king and Sinmuballit only in the form of a passing allusion in one single tablet. It is difficult to explain this fact unless we accept the view that the real kingdom of Babylon did not begin until Hammurabi had driven out the Elamites and so won for himself the title borne by the old kings of Ur, Isin, and Larsa. ….

The Elamites were firmly fastened in the country, and would hardly give it up without a struggle. The activity displayed by these Elamite princes in building was an indication of how much they valued their new possessions. We are not yet in possession of facts enough to enable us to follow the movements of Hammurabi in his conquest of the country. The struggle was probably brief and without distinction. The people of the kingdom of Sumer and Accad had no genuine national life, no divine patriotism. When one king passed they cared not, and as willingly paid taxes to another, if only he made them no heavier. The Elamites were soon driven out of Babylonia, and Hammurabi assumed the titles of king of Sumer and Accad, king of the Four Quarters of the World, as well as the old title, king of Babylon. The ready acquiescence of the people in the new rule of Hammurabi and the new leadership of the city of Babylon is shown conclusively by the entire absence of any uprising or of any attempt to throw off the yoke. The time was ripe for the overturning of the old Sumerian state, and in Hammurabi was found the man for the new era. The manner of the conquest is unknown to us, and in the knowledge of the fact we must rest content.

We know very little about the government of the country which Hammurabi had thus organized into a consolidated kingdom or empire.

That he had petty princes or viceroys under him is made clear by sundry letters and dispatches to such officials which have come down to us. …. But it is still impossible so to order these little fragments as to gain complete or satisfying pictures of his relation to them. …. [End of quote]

Regarding the meaning of the "fully Akkadian" name of Hammurabi's father, Sin-muballit [660], we find that it meant, "The god Sin is the giver of life". Now, since the Aramaeans are known to have equated their god, El, with the name Sin, then this, king David's Akkadian name, as we are proposing, could just as well have meant "God is the giver of life". This would be a most appropriate appellation for king David, who would write, in Psalm 21:4: "[The king, David] asked you for life; you gave it to him – length of days forever and ever."

[According to offline newadvent.org Sin-muballit's name is ideographically written as Amar-Pal"].

Chronology

Complicating further the whole matter of the first dynasty of Babylonia is the fact that there are two king lists - there is a Babylonian King List A and a Babylonian King List B - and these give contradictory reign lengths. There is also the Babylonian Chronicle, which is a late source. This whole scenario - which seems to have an element of the 'apocryphal' about it - cannot really inspire confidence; a view that seems to be shared by the Net article:

… our confidence in the length of reigns given to kings in the first dynasty has been somewhat shaken by the discovery of the Babylonian Chronicle, in which Hammurabi receives forty-three years instead of fifty-five years, we may feel a reasonable doubt as to the accuracy of these long reigns.

Yet, despite all of the obscurity, everything we know points to Hammurabi's reign as being long, peaceful and prosperous - the rule of a most enlightened monarch who left an enduring legacy:

Hammurabi had indeed builded well. North and south together acknowledged the dominion of his successors. Peace at home and abroad gave leisure for the pursuit of literature, art, and science. This great silent period gives the necessary time for the progress in all these things, which is evidenced by the works no less than the words of the following centuries. From the peace and stability which his genius achieved we must now turn to the turmoil which ensued when his influence was finally overcome. Yet it was overcome in part only; the city of Babylon, which he had made great, so continued. Its supremacy there was none to question. It was only the constant effort of men to possess it and all that its traditions covered and contained. … [End of quotes]

An important chronological consideration: A very good reason (and we did not address this in our previous articles on Hammurabi) why, from a conventional point of view, Hammurabi could not possibly have been considered to have reigned as late as king Solomon (C10th BC), is that Hammurabi is known to have pre-dated certain Shutrukid Elamite rulers who, in turn, are thought to have belonged to the C12th BC, significantly before the birth of Solomon. King Shutruk-Nahhunte (c. 1165 BC, conventional dating), for instance, clearly pre-dated Hammurabi, because - as we learn from [840] M. van de Mieroop - the Elamite king actually took back to Elam as booty the famous Law Code of King Hammurabi:

It is certain, however, that Shutruk-Nahhunte invaded Babylonia around 1155 and terminated the reign of the last Kassite king. He brought back an enormous quantity of spoils from all the important cities there, including some of the most famous early Babylonian monuments, such as the stele of Naram-Sin and the law code of Hammurabi. Many of these monuments were inscribed with an Elamite text commemorating this deed, identifying where they were taken and that they had been presented to the god Inshushinak by Shutruk-Nahhunte. This explains why so many Babylonian monuments were excavated in Susa. …

Shutruk-Nahhunte handed kingship over to his son Kutir-Nahhunte, who in somewhat later Babylonian sources is accused of plundering that country and stealing the statue of Marduk. His brother and successor, Shilhak-Inshushinak, claimed to have raided Babylonia and Assyria repeatedly ….

But all of this did not occur in the C12th BC, as convention imagines, but in the C8th BC, centuries after the reign of king Solomon. The presumed C12th BC dynasty Shutrukids were in fact the same as the strong Elamite succession of rulers of virtually identical names at the time of Sargon II/Sennacherib of Assyria.

There is no serious chronological problem with locating Hammurabi to the C10th BC.

The conventional chronologists and archaeologists have created the problems by their grossly over-inflating Mesopotamian dynastic history. Their C12th BC history is, as said, a duplication of the C8th BC, for the purpose of filling in the unwanted time gaps. Fortunately we have, as our sure guide, the accurate history of the Bible's historical books. We'll take the Bible's version of history any day, for we have learned that 'the things that you're liable to read in the conventional archaeologists' 'bible', mostly ain't necessarily so'.

Hammurabi's Dynasty

We have proposed - albeit most tentatively - an explanation for Hammurabi's predecessors. Now, in considering the names that come after him in the lists, we hit a snag.

The Hammurabic 'Succession'

It is not sufficient, in a revision of history, to propose an alter ego for a specific individual (e.g. Hammurabi for Solomon), when that person belongs to a known dynasty, unless one is also able satisfactorily to account for the entire dynasty within that new context. Hammurabi's five alleged successors are thought to have continued on after Hammurabi's demise for another 150 years or so (c. 1750-1600, conventional dating). Now, in our revised historical context, with these presumed five kings post-dating Solomon (= Hammurabi), died c. 925 BC, then that creates a real 'log jam' for example with the strong Kassite rulers of Babylonia (Karduniash) known from the el-Amarna correspondence (re-dated by the revision to approximately the mid-C9th BC). [880] One might argue that, because Hammurabi's dynasty was basically western Aramaean, ruling Mesopotamia from afar, with possibly limited archaeology in Babylon itself, then there was a geographical space that the Kassite rulers could easily fill after Hammurabi.

Another possible explanation - the one that we are now going to consider - is that Hammurabi's supposed successors were not necessarily individual and/or linear. Here we shall be proposing - and this will be done most tentatively again, and entirely in the nature of a 'working paper' only, by way of trying to resolve the 'log jam' now generated by the revision - that the so-called First Babylonian Dynasty was not a true dynasty in relation to Mesopotamia, but that it was basically the United Kingdom of Israel: viz. Saul perhaps (could he be, for instance, Sumu-la-El?); David (Sin-muballit); but most especially King Solomon (Hammurabi) himself.

Here we are going to make the new suggestion that the latter part of this dynasty basically pertains to the person of Hammurabi, and that, for instance, Samsuiluna, the supposed son and successor of Hammurabi, was simply, again, Hammurabi/Solomon himself. There does not appear to be any hard evidence (apart from the sequence of names in the Babylonian lists) to confirm that this Samsuiluna was in fact a son of Hammurabi. Once again so little is known about Samsuiluna, as indeed appears to be the case with Hammurabi's family in general. "Only scanty information exists about [Hammurabi's] immediate family: his father, Sin-muballit; his sister, Iltani; and his firstborn son and successor [sic?], Samsuiluna, are known by name". Offline: Samsuiluna.

And what about Hammurabi's wife? Who was she? Ask this question of one of the search engines on the Internet and you will come up with a blank.

There does not appear to be much extant biographical evidence for Samsuiluna (c. 1749-1712, conventional dating), whose name apparently means: "The Sun is our god" [900],

1. despite the fact that he is known from preserved regnal dates to have reigned for about 38 years, almost as long as Hammurabi himself, and
   
2. despite his obvious power.

With Samsuiluna, according to CAH, "... the evidence becomes scantier, while the connexions of events are hidden and the chronology is undefined. No more than occasional glimpses are revealed by the date-formulae, themselves not always completely reliable …." [910] What a sad picture! But now we are going to propose, most tentatively of course, that Samsuiluna was not in fact the son of Hammurabi, but that he was Hammurabi himself, and that the 'scanty evidence' for Samsuiluna needs to be supplemented by the far more substantial evidence for Hammurabi.

The name Samsuiluna is at least more superficially mindful of Solomon than is the name Hammurabi (just as Senenmut is by comparison with Thutmose, in the case of Egypt).

What encourages us to propose an identification of Samsuiluna with Hammurabi is the case of Rim-Sin, who, it seems, may well have been duplicated. Thus CAH, with reference to the reign of Samsuiluna (emphasis added):

Rim-Sin … was an ephemeral [sic?] figure …. His interest resides in his name and what is related about him – that he instigated revolt in Iamutbal, and had been made king of Larsa. Both of these circumstances relate so nearly to the actual history of Rim-Sin, the last king of the Larsa Dynasty [in Hammurabi's time], that it has long been a question whether this was not the same person, seeking revenge upon Babylon in his latest days. But Rim-Sin of Larsa is credited with an exceptionally long reign of over sixty years before his overthrow by Hammurabi, so that only by unlikely assumptions … can his life be extended to the reign of Samsuiluna ….

Of course if Samsuiluna were Hammurabi, then not a single extra year need be added to Rim-Sin's known long reign.

The deeds of Samsuiluna largely pertain, like Hammurabi's, to the building of walls, forts and canals in southern Babyonia, like Hammurabi, and to battles to secure the region. Thus, according to Our Net article again:

When [Hammurabi's] long reign was ended the son of Hammurabi [sic] entered into his father's labours. Samsu-iluna (about 2287-2253) seems to have followed closely in the footsteps of Hammurabi. He tells us of building in Nippur and in other cities-some of them still unknown to us-of increasing the size of Babylon itself, and of continuing the works upon canals. … The profound peace which Hammurabi achieved by arms continues through his reign and into the reigns of his successors. We have no historical inscriptions, for the records which have come down from their reigns are the so-called contract or business tablets, from which no connected story has yet been made out. From them we learn of the high civilization of the country and of its continued prosperity. The names of these kings, with their approximate dates, can only be set down until some future discovery reveals records with a historical meaning.

Samsuiluna was similarly (like Hammurabi himself) involved in legal matters and administration. See for instance the texts in the Yale Babylonian collection offline at Yale's Samsuiluna And his prayers, too, were just like those of Hammurabi, with similar reference to himself as a 'shepherd' and a person of great 'wisdom'. For example:

A hymn to Enlil for Samsu-iluna (Samsu-iluna F): translation
SEGMENT A

^1-8 O king, foremost one of An, chosen in his holy heart, Samsu-iluna, king, foremost one of An, chosen in his holy heart, ...... rites ...... august, ......, joyful, supreme, assiduous, with head high on the gold-decorated throne of ...... kingship, who sits majestically ...... in its midst in heroic strength, Samsu-iluna: An, the mighty king of heaven, the august judge, has assigned you a great destiny, and has made you to pass your life with a secure crown.
^9-17 He is the man to whom Enlil has given ...... and the shepherdship over the widespread people, the beloved (?) shepherd of Nibru, the constant servant of E-kur; he is the trustworthy farmer of the house of Asalim, who takes care that provisions do not cease in E-saj-ila. For you to exercise your divine powers of shepherdship in the Land, Enlil has placed the foreign lands at your feet. Obedient to Utu, beloved (?) of Inana, Samsu-iluna, the king whose fate is never altered by Enlil, my king, at the command uttered by Enlil, Enki and Asalim, Zababa, Lugal-gu-dua, the king who builds temples, ...... the rebel lands ......

SEGMENT B

^1-9 Ickur, the net of the foreign lands ...... made the foreign countries praise him duly, and made the mighty ...... manifest. Samsu-iluna, the good hero, lordly one of his Land, has wisely co-ordinated decisions for the Land. From the banks of the Tigris and the banks of the Euphrates, to the shores of the sea ...... and the banks of its rivers, men ...... Samsu-iluna. In E-kur, the house of Enlil, ...... he has taken his seat on his dais of joy. Enlil, it is sweet to praise you. Enlil, give my king a brilliant destiny and years of life! Grant him as a gift a life of long days!

See offline here. [End of quotes]

Abieshu

We asked before about Hammurabi's wife. Strangely, she is completely unknown. Equally curious is the case of Senenmut in Egypt, who is thought to have remained a bachelor all of his life. Now, that is most unlikely. And, in our revised context, Senenmut, as king Solomon, was, for starters, married to his very half-sister Abishag, who was also Hatshepsut (and the biblical "Queen of the South"). Must not the same have been the case for Hammurabi, given that we have identified him with Solomon? His sister was one Iltana. Might she not also be Abishag (a name of disputed meaning)? Possibly interesting is that Samsuliuna's supposed successor was Abieshu΄; a name somewhat like Abishag. If they be the same, Abieshu΄ and Abishag - and this is admittedly most speculative and tentative - then with Abieshu΄ (perhaps being a woman in male guise like Hatshepsut as pharaoh of Egypt) we might still be within the time of Hammurabi/Solomon. A most interesting conjecture, at least.

It is just possible that the remaining names in the dynasty all pertain to the multi-facetted Solomon himself (his son, the great Thutmose III, rather than the ephemeral Rehoboam in Jerusalem, is another possibility for one or more names). The final name in the dynasty, Samsuditana, might be just another name for Samsuiluna (Solomon). The Hittite invasion of Babylon during the reign of Samsuditana might then pertain to the incident of the Kassites, led by Gandash or Gaddash, with whom Samsuiluna (Hammurabi) had clashed. Since this invasion may have occurred in about the 9th year of king Samsuiluna [960], it may not actually have had very much bearing on the Jewish control of Babylon, which really gathered pace at the beginning of king Hammurabi's third decade of rule. [970]

Solomon/Hammurabi must assuredly also have wielded some major influence over Assyria. We know in fact that he had control over Ashur and Nineveh. We suggest that he might have been the original 'Shalmaneser' (Shulmanu-ashared), perhaps meaning 'Solomon is Chief". Velikovsky had identified the Beth Šulman [Shulman] references pertaining to Jerusalem in the el-Amarna correspondence with "The House of Solomon". If king Solomon were a Shalmaneser, then his identity and deeds would need to be extracted from one of the earliest of the several kings bearing that famous name. Solomon could not, for instance, be the Shalmaneser (generally designated I) who was the father of Tukulti-Ninurta I, since this era was a bit too late for Solomon.

Conclusion

Basically, here, we have proposed that the multi-facetted king Solomon may have taken the name of Abraham (Hammurabi) as ruler of Babylonia, and that the so-called First Babylonian Dynasty, an Aramaean dynasty, was largely Jewish and pertaining to (centred around) the United Monarchy of Israel. This is all quite contrary of course to the received archaeological view regarding the dearth of evidence for Israel's United Monarchy, for example Israel Finkelstein on the subject: 'There is almost no evidence for the tenth century. There is almost no evidence for Solomon'. Wake up, archaeologists!

[2] David Rohl, The Lost Testament, pp. 5-6.

[30] Sweeney, Emmet, Empire of Thebes, p. 32.; Discovering Mosaistics, p. 200, n. 32

[90] Metzler offline at Thebes

[450] Hammurabi's conventional dating, 1792-1750..

[472] How are the Jews connected with the Aramaeans/Aramaeans? Well, the name Aram is of the line of the son of Noah, Shem, Gen. 10:22,23. We have Shem > Aram > Uz, Hul, Gether, Mash. Then from the time of Abraham we read that Abraham and Nahor were brothers. Starting with Nahor we have, Nahor > Huz, Buz, Kemuel the father of Aram, Gen. 22:20,21.
The other line leading to Aram comes from Jacob (Israel) > Juda(s) > Phares > Esrom > Aram > Aminadab > Naasson > Salmon > Booz > Obed > Jesse > David (Matthew 1:3-6). - - Since Judas was an older brother of Joseph, and Joseph's time is about from 1699 - 1589 BC, the older brother Judas must have died before. Since David was king ca. 1010 - 970 BC, the line must cover some 640 years, making each generation ca. 60 years long, which is not impossible but a bit long. There must have been a number of last sons to a given father born to him late in life, but there was a Aram in that line. This later `Aram' must have lived ca. 1470 - 1380(?). Time wise he could be the originator of the line of the Arameans/Aramaeans and that way these people were of the Jewish (Judas) line.
To make Aram of the Canaanite branch must rely on the Aram of the earlier period, the line of Shem or Nahor. The Aram of Shem's line would have lived ca. 2250 BC and the Aram of Nahor's line, ca. 1850 BC.

[480] See online previous papers in this series.

[530] Proc. 3rd Seminar Catastrophism & Ancient History, Toronto, 1986, pp. 43-50.

[660] Books: (books.google.com.au/books?isbn=1405126604..)

[840] M. van de Mieroop, A History of the Ancient Near East ca. 3000-323 BC, p. 177.

[880] The mighty Assyrian conquerors of Babylon of the same era, such as Tukulti-Ninurta I, may be - according to our revision - the same as the aforementioned Kassites (hence not further exacerbating the 'log jam'.

[900] Books: (books.google.com.au/books?isbn=8170173256...). See also our online encyclopedia

[910] Cambridge Ancient History, (3rd edn, II, i. "the evidence becomes scantier, while the connexions of events are hidden and the chronology is undefined. No more than occasional glimpses are revealed by the date-formulae, themselves not always completely reliable …."

[960] According to CAH, ibid..; Offline: Samsu-Iluna).

[970] Historian L. Austine Waddell, Makers of Civilization in Race and History, offline at Book. He claims that the First Babylonian Dynasty is actually Indian. More likely the Indians, given their reasonably close geographical proximity to Mesopotamia, picked up the names from their neighbour, and added them to their own king lists.