Page Content (OCR)
74 The Bible begins its report of that great international war by listing the kings and kingdoms of the East who “came and made war” in the West: And it came to pass in the days of Amraphel king of Shine’ar, Ariokh king of Ellasar, Khedorla’omer king of Elam, and Tidhal the king of Goyim. The group of tablets named the Khedorla’omer Texts was first brought to scholarly attention by the Assyriologist Theophilus Pinches in a lecture at the Victoria Institute, London, in 1897. They clearly describe the same events that are the great international war of Chapter 14 of Genesis, though in much greater detail; it is quite possible, indeed, that those tablets served as the source for the biblical writers. Those tablets identify “Khedorla’omer king of Elam” as the Elamite king Kudur-Laghamar, who is known from histori- cal records. “Ariokh” has been identified as ERI.-AKU (“‘Ser- vant of the Moon god”), who reigned in the city of Larsa (biblical “Ellasar’”); and Tidhal was identified as Tud-Ghula, a vassal of the king of Elam. There has been over the years a debate regarding the iden- tity of “Amraphel king of Shine’ar’; suggestions ranged all the way to Hammurabi, a Babylonian king centuries later. Shine’ar was the constant biblical name for Sumer, not Baby- lon, so who, in the time of Abraham, was its king? I have convincingly suggested in The Wars of Gods and Men that the Hebrew should be read not Amra-Phel but Amar-Phel, from the Sumerian AMAR.PAL—a variant of AMAR.SIN— whose Date Formulas attest that he did indeed, in 2041 B.c.k., launch the War of the Kings. That fully identified coalition, according to the Bible, was led by the Elamites—a detail corroborated by the Mes- opotamian data that highlights the reemerging leading role of Ninurta in the struggle. The Bible also dates this Khedorla’omer Invasion by observing that it took place fourteen years after the previous Elamite incursion into THE END OF DAYS