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179 Samuel “took the oil-filled horn and anointed him to reign over Israel.” The choosing of the young David, who was shepherding his father’s flock, to be shepherd over Israel was doubly sym- bolic, for it harks back to the golden age of Sumer. Its kings were called LU.GAL, “Great Man,” but they strove to earn the cherished title EN.SI, “Righteous Shepherd.” That, as we shall see, was only the beginning of David’s and the Temple’s links to the Sumerian past. David began his reign in Hebron, south of Jerusalem, and that, too, was a choice filled with historic symbolism. The previous name of Hebron, the bible repeatedly pointed out, was Kiryat Arba, “the fortified city of Arba.” And who was Arba? “He was a Great Man of the Anakim’—two biblical terms that render in Hebrew the Sumerian LU.GAL and ANUNNAKL. Starting with passages in the book of Num- bers, and then in Joshua, Judges, and Chronicles, the Bible reported that Hebron was a center of the descendants of the “Anakim, who as the Nefilim are counted,” thus connecting them to the Nefilim of Genesis 6 who intermarried with the Daughters of Adam. Hebron was still inhabited at the time of the Exodus by three sons of Arba, and it was Caleb the son of Jephoneh who captured the city and slew them in behalf of Joshua. By choosing to be king in Hebron, David estab- lished his kingship as a direct continuation of kings linked to the Anunnaki of Sumerian lore. He reigned in Hebron for seven years, and then moved his capital to Jerusalem. His seat of kingship—the “City of David’—was built on Mount Zion, just south of and sepa- rated by a small valley from Mount Moriah (where the plat- form built by the Anunnaki was, Fig. 83). He constructed the Miloh, the Filling, to close the gap between the two mounts, as a first step to building, on the platform, Yahweh’s temple; but all he was allowed to erect on Mount Moriah was an al- tar. God’s word, through the Prophet Nathan, was that be- cause David had shed blood in his many wars, not he but his son Solomon would build the temple. Devastated by the prophet’s message, David went and “sat before Yahweh,” in front of the Ark of the Covenant (which The Day of the Lord