Narratives

1. The discoveries of Oriental archaeology have come with a rude shock to disturb both the conclusions of this imperfectly-equipped criticism and the principles on which they rest. Dr. Schliemann and the excavators have revealed to an incredulous world that Troy of Priam which had been relegated to cloud- and, and have proved that the traditions of Mykenean glory, of Agamemnon and Menelaos, and even of voyages to the coast of Egypt, were not fables but veritable facts.

In Greek mythology, Priam (/ˈpraɪ.əm/; Greek: Πρίαμος, Príamos, pronounced [prí.amos]) was the king of Troy during the Trojan War and youngest son of Laomedon.

Priam was originally called Podarces and he kept himself from being killed by Heracles by giving him a golden veil embroidered by his sister, Hesione. After this, Podarces changed his name to Priam. This is a folk etymology based on πριατός priatos, "ransomed" from πρίασθαι priasthai, "to buy."

In Iliad Book 3, Priam tells Helen of Troy that he once helped King Mygdon of Phrygia defend against the Amazons.

When Hector is killed by Achilles, the Greek warrior treats the body with disrespect and refuses to give it back. Zeus sends the god Hermes to escort King Priam, Hector’s father and the ruler of Troy, into the Greek camp. Priam tearfully pleads with Achilles to take pity on a father bereft of his son and return Hector’s body. He invokes the memory of Achilles’ own father, Peleus. Priam begs Achilles to pity him, saying "I have endured what no one on earth has ever done before — I put my lips to the hands of the man who killed my son." Deeply moved, Achilles relents and returns Hector’s corpse to the Trojans. Both sides agree to a temporary truce, and Achilles gives Priam leave to hold a proper funeral for Hector, complete with funeral games. He promises that no Greek will engage in combat for nine days, but on the twelfth day of peace, the mighty war between the Greeks and the Trojans would resume.

Priam is killed during the Sack of Troy by Achilles' son Neoptolemus (also known as Pyrrhus). His death is graphically related in Book II of Virgil's Aeneid. In Virgil's description, Neoptolemus first kills Priam's son Polites in front of his father as he seeks sanctuary on the altar of Zeus. Priam rebukes Neoptolemus, throwing a spear at him, harmlessly hitting his shield. Neoptolemus then drags Priam to the altar and there kills him too.

It has been suggested by Hittite sources, specifically the Manapa-Tarhunta letter, that there is historical basis for the archetype of King Priam. The letter describes one Piyama-Radu as a troublesome rebel who overthrew a Hittite client king and thereafter established his own rule over the city of Troy (mentioned as Wilusa in Hittite). There is also mention of an Alaksandu, suggested to be Paris Alexander (King Priam's son from the Iliad), a later ruler of the city of Wilusa who established peace between Wilusa and Hatti (see the Alaksandu treaty).

2. It was not so long ago that the account of the campaign of Chedor-laomer and his allies in Canaan was unhesitatingly rejected as a mere reflection into the past of the campaign's of later Assyrian kings. Even the names of the Canaanite princes who opposed him were resolved into etymological puns. But the tablets of Babylonia have come to their rescue. 

Khammurabi, whose name is also written Ammurapi, has left us autograph letters, in one of which he refers to his defeat of Kudur-Laghghamar in the decisive battle which at last delivered Babylonia from the Elamite yoke.

Chedorlaomer, also spelled Kedorlaomer (/ˌkɛdərˈleɪəmər/; Hebrew: כְּדָרְלָעֹ֫מֶר‎‎ Kəḏārlā‘ōmer, "a handful of sheaves"),[1] is a king of Elam in the book of Genesis Chapter 14. He is recorded as, allied with three other kings,[3] campaigning against five city kingdoms in response to an uprising in the days of Abraham.

The name Chedorlaomer is associated with familiar Elamite components, such as kudur, meaning “servant”, and Lagamar who was a high goddess in the Elamite pantheon.

The linguistic origins of the name Chedorlaomer may be traced to Persian or Assyrian names. There is a linguistic agreement in the Persian pronunciation for Kĕdorla`omer, pronounced ked·or·lä·o'·mer. The association to Assyrian names are Kudurlagamar and Kudur-Mabuk, a ruler in Larsa from 1770 BCE to 1754 BCE. However, the 1906 Jewish Encyclopedia stated that, apart from the fact that Chedorlaomer can be identified as a proper Elamite compound, "all else is matter of controversy" and "the records give only the rather negative result that from Babylonian and Elamite documents nothing definite has been learned of Chedorlaomer."

The Battle of the Vale of Siddim, also often called the War of Nine Kings or the Slaughter of Chedorlaomer, refers to an event in the Hebrew Bible book of Genesis 14:1-17 that occurred in the days of Abram and Lot. The Vale of Siddim was the battleground for the cities of the Jordan River plain revolting against Mesopotamian rule.

Whether this event occurred in history has been disputed by scholars. According to Ronald Hendel, "The current consensus is that there is little or no historical memory of pre-Israelite events in Genesis."

3. When at Niffer and Telloh monuments both of Sargon of Akkad and of his sone were brought of light, proved that this "creature of myth" lived in an age of advanced culture and in the full blaze of history. At Niffer he and his son Naram-Sin built a platform of huge bricks, each stamped with their names, and at Telloh clay belle have been discovered, bearing the seals and addresses of the letters which were conveyed during their reigns by a highly organized postal service along the highroads of the kingdom. Numberless contract-tablets exist, dated in the year when Sargon "conquered the land of the Amorites", or accomplished some other achievement; and a cadastral survey of the district in which Telloh was situated, made for the purpose of taxation, incidentally refers to "the governor" who was appointed over "the Amorites".

Sargon of Akkad (Akkadian Šarru-ukīn or Šarru-kēn; sometimes known as "Sargon the Great"[4]) was the first ruler of the Semitic-speaking Akkadian Empire, known for his conquests of the Sumerian city-states in the 24th to 23rd centuries BC.[3]

He was the founder of the "Sargonic" or "Old Akkadian" dynasty, which ruled for about a century after his death, until the Gutian conquest of Sumer.[5] The Sumerian king list makes him the cup-bearer to king Ur-Zababa of Kish. His empire is thought to have included most of Mesopotamia, parts of the Levant, besides incursions into Hurrite and Elamite territory, ruling from his (archaeologically as yet unidentified) capital, Akkad (also Agade).

Sargon appears as a legendary figure in Neo-Assyrian literature of the 8th to 7th centuries BC. Tablets with fragments of a Sargon Birth Legend were found in the Library of Ashurbanipal.

Sumerian legend

The Sumerian-language Sargon legend contains a legendary account of Sargon's rise to power. It is an older version of the previously-known Assyrian legend, discovered in the 1974 in Nippur and first edited in 1983.

The extant versions are incomplete, but the surviving fragments name Sargon's father as La'ibum. After a lacuna, the text skips to Ur-Zababa, king of Kish, who awakens after a dream, the contents of which are not revealed on the surviving portion of the tablet. For unknown reasons, Ur-Zababa appoints Sargon as his cup-bearer. Soon after this, Ur-Zababa invites Sargon to his chambers to discuss a dream of Sargon's, involving the favor of the goddess Inanna and the drowning of Ur-Zababa by the goddess. Deeply frightened, Ur-Zababa orders Sargon murdered by the hands of Beliš-tikal, the chief smith, but Inanna prevents it, demanding that Sargon stop at the gates because of his being "polluted with blood." When Sargon returns to Ur-Zababa, the king becomes frightened again, and decides to send Sargon to king Lugal-zage-si of Uruk with a message on a clay tablet asking him to slay Sargon.[43] The legend breaks off at this point; presumably, the missing sections described how Sargon becomes king.[44]

The part of the interpretation of the king's dream has parallels to the biblical story of Joseph, the part about the letter with the carrier's death sentence has parallels to the Greek story of Bellerophon and the biblical story of Uriah.

Birth legend

Illustration of the Assyrian Sargon legend (1913): The young Sargon, working as a gardener, is visited by Ishtar "surrounded by a cloud of doves".

A Neo-Assyrian text from the 7th century BC purporting to be Sargon's autobiography asserts that the great king was the illegitimate son of a priestess. Only the beginning of the text (the first two columns) are known, from the fragments of three manuscripts. The first fragments were discovered as early as 1850.[46]

Sargon's birth and his early childhood are described thus:

"My mother was a high priestess, my father I knew not. The brothers of my father loved the hills. My city is Azupiranu, which is situated on the banks of the Euphrates. My high priestess mother conceived me, in secret she bore me. She set me in a basket of rushes, with bitumen she sealed my lid. She cast me into the river which rose over me. The river bore me up and carried me to Akki, the drawer of water. Akki, the drawer of water, took me as his son and reared me. Akki, the drawer of water, appointed me as his gardener. While I was a gardener, Ishtar granted me her love, and for four and ... years I exercised kingship."

Similarities between the Sargon Birth Legend and other infant birth exposures in ancient literature, including Moses, Karna, and Oedipus, were noted by psychoanalyst Otto Rank in 1909. The legend was also studied in detail by Brian Lewis, and compared with a number of different examples of the infant birth exposure motif found in European and Asian folk tales. He discusses a possible archetype form, giving particular attention to the Sargon legend and the account of the birth of Moses. Joseph Campbell has also made such comparisons.

Sargon is also one of the many suggestions for the identity or inspiration for the biblical Nimrod. Ewing William (1910) suggested Sargon based on his unification of the Babylonians and the Neo-Assyrian birth legend. Yigal Levin (2002) suggested that Nimrod was a recollection of Sargon and of his grandson Naram-Sin, with the name "Nimrod" derived from the latter.

Historical Process