Page Content (OCR)
298 in astronomy." (If Berossus, the Babylonian historian, had indeed referred to Abraham, the significance of the inclusion of the He- brew Patriarch in Babylonian chronicles far exceeds the mere notation of his knowledge of astronomy.) All during the ignominious years of Shulgi's reign, the family of Terah stayed at Harran. Then, on Shulgi's demise, the divine order came to proceed to Canaan. Terah was already quite old, and Nahor, his son, was to stay on with him in Harran. The one chosen for the mission was Abraham—himself a mature man of seventy- five. The year was 2048 B.C.; it marked the beginning of twenty- four fateful years—eighteen years encompassing the war-filled reigns of the two immediate successors of Shulgi (Amar-Sin and Shu-Sin) and six years of Ibbi-Sin. the last sovereign king of Ur. It is undoubtedly more than mere coincidence that Shulgi's death was the signal not only for a move by Abraham, but also for a realignment among the Near Eastern gods. It was exactly when Abraham, accompanied (as we learn later) by an elite military corps, left Harran—the gateway to the Hittite lands—that the exiled and wandering Marduk appeared in "Haiti land." Moreover, the remarkable coincidence is that Marduk stayed there through the same twenty-four Fateful Years, the years that culminated with the great Disaster. The evidence for Marduk's movements is a tablet (Fig. 99) found in the library of Ashurbanipal, in which an aging Marduk tells of his erstwhile wanderings and eventual return to Babylon: O great gods, learn my secrets. As I girdle my belt, my memories remember: I am the divine Marduk, a great god. I was cast off for my sins. to the mountains I have gone. In many lands I have been a wanderer: From where the sun rises to where it sets I went. To the heights of Hatti-land I went. In Hatti-land I asked an oracle [about] my throne and my Lordship: In its midst [I asked]: "Until when?" 24 years, in its midst. I nested. The appearance of Marduk in Asia Minor—implying an unex- pected alliance with Adad—was thus the other side of the coin of Abraham's rush to Canaan. We learn from the balance of the text THE WARS OF GODS AND MEN