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284 evil kings). The improbability of Astour's suggestion was soon pointed out in other scholarly publications; and with that, the interest in the Khedorla ‘omer Texts died again. Yet the scholarly consensus that the biblical tale and the Babylonian texts drew on a much earlier, common source impels us to revive the plea of Pinches and his central argument: How can cuneiform texts, affirming the biblical background of a major war and naming three of the biblical kings, be ignored? Should the evidence—crucial, as we shall show, to the understanding of fateful years—be discarded simply because Amraphel was not Hammurabi? The answer is that the Hammurabi letter found by Scheil should not have sidetracked the discovery reported by Pinches, because Scheil misread the letter. According to his rendition, Hammurabi promised a reward to Sin-Idinna, the king of Larsa, for his "hero- ism on the day of Khedorla'omer." This implied that the two were allies in a war against Khedorla'omer and thus contemporaries of that king of Elam. It was on this point that Scheil's find was dis- credited, for it contradicted both the biblical assertion that the three kings were allies and known historical facts: Hammurabi treated Larsa not as an ally but as an adversary, boasting that he "over- threw Larsa in battle," and attacked its sacred precinct "with the mighty weapon which the gods had given him." A close examination of the actual text of Hammurabi's letter re- veals that in his eagerness to prove the Hammurabi-Amraphel identification. Father Scheil reversed the letter's meaning: Ham- murabi was not offering as a reward to return certain goddesses to the sacred precinct (the Emutbal) of Larsa; rather, he was demand- ing their return to Babylon from Larsa: speaks thus Hammurabi regarding the goddesses who in Emutbal have been behind doors from the days of Kudur-Laghamar, in sackcloth attired: When they ask them back from thee, to my men hand them over; The men shall grasp the hands of the goddesses; To their abode they shall bring them. The incident of the abduction of the goddesses had thus occurred in earlier times; they were held captive in the Emutbal "from the THE WARS OF GODS AND MEN To Sin-Idinna