on the topic of semites continued:
Secret History of the World said:According to “experts”, Sargon of Akkad reigned approximately 2,334-2,279 BC, and was one of the earliest of the world’s great empire builders, conquering all of southern Mesopotamia as well as parts of Syria, Anatolia, and Elam (western Iran). He established the region’s first Semitic dynasty and was considered the founder of the Mesopotamian military tradition.
Sargon is known almost entirely from the legends and tales that followed his reputation through 2000 years of cuneiform Mesopotamian history, and not from any documents that were written during his lifetime. The lack of contemporary record is explained by the fact that the capital city of Agade, (note the homophonic similarity to Arcadia) which he built, has never been located and excavated. It was destroyed at the end of the dynasty that Sargon founded and was never again inhabited, at least under the name of Agade.
According to a folktale, Sargon was a self-made man of humble origins; a gardener (think “gardens of the Hesperides”) having found him as a baby floating in a basket on the river, brought him up in his own calling. His father is unknown; his mother is said to have been a priestess in a town on the middle Euphrates. (Note all the similarities to the story of Moses as well as Perseus.) Rising, therefore, without the help of influential relations, he attained the post of cupbearer to the ruler of the city of Kish, in the north of the ancient land of Sumer. (Notice the clue of the cup here.)
The event that brought him to supremacy was the defeat of Lugalzaggisi of Uruk (biblical Erech, in central Sumer). Lugalzaggisi had already united the city-states of Sumer by defeating each in turn and claimed to rule the lands not only of the Sumerian city-states but also those as far west as the Mediterranean. Sargon became king over all of southern Mesopotamia, the first great ruler for whom the Semitic tongue known as Akkadian, rather than Sumerian, was natural from birth.
Sargon wished to secure favorable trade with Agade throughout the known world and this, along with what was obviously a very energetic temperament, led Sargon to conquer cities along the middle Euphrates to northern Syria and the silver-mining mountains of southern Anatolia. He also took Susa, capital city of the Elamites, in the Zagros Mountains of western Iran, where the only truly contemporary record of his reign has been uncovered.
As the result of Sargon’s military prowess and ability to organize, as well as of the legacy of the Sumerian city-states that he had inherited by conquest, and of previously existing trade of the old Sumerian city-states with other countries, commercial connections flourished with the Indus Valley, the coast of Oman, the islands and shores of the Persian Gulf, the lapis lazuli mines of Badakhshan, the cedars of Lebanon, the silver-rich Taurus Mountains, Cappadocia, Crete, and perhaps even Greece.
During Sargon’s rule, his Akkadian language became adapted to the script that previously had been used in the Sumerian language, and there arose new spirit of writing evident in the clay tablets and cylinder seals of this dynasty. There are beautifully arranged and executed scenes of mythology and festive life. It could be suggested that this new artistic feeling is attributable directly to the Semitic influence of Sargon and his compatriots upon the rather dull Sumerians. In contrast to the Sumerian civilization, in Sargon’s new capital, military and economic values were not the only things that were important.
The latter part of his reign was troubled with rebellions, which later literature ascribes, predictably enough, to sacrilegious acts that he - like Solomon - is supposed to have committed; but this can be discounted as the standard cause assigned to all disasters by Sumerians and Akkadians alike. The troubles, in fact, were probably caused by the inability of one man, however energetic, to control so vast an empire. There is no evidence to suggest that he was particularly harsh, nor that the Sumerians disliked him for being a Semite. What’s more, the empire did not collapse totally, for Sargon’s successors were able to control their legacy, and later generations thought of him as being perhaps the greatest name in their history. What is most interesting is that Sargon attributed his success to the patronage of the goddess Ishtar, in whose honor Agade was erected.
Sargon’s story sounds a lot like a combination of the Biblical stories of Moses, David and Solomon and certainly, there is evidence of infusion of Semitic traditions into the culture of the Sumerians. We also wish to consider the the fact that Sargon was the first “semite.” Nowadays “Semitic peoples” are generally understood to be, more or less, individuals of Middle Eastern origins: Jews and Arabs predominantly. That is to say, to be an Arab or a Jew is to be “Semitic.”
In recent years the idea has taken hold that the Ashkenazi Jews are really Turkish and not Jews at all. Recent genetic studies place the Ashkenazi as closest in kinship to Roman Jews on one side, who are just a small step away from Lebanese non-Jews, and Syrian non-Jews on the other. The Syrian non-Jews are very close to the Kurdish Jews and the Palestinian non-Jews - i.e. the “Palestinians.”
What actually seems to have happened is that when the Khazar kingdom “converted” to Judaism, they invited Jewish rabbis to come and teach them how to be proper Jews. These rabbis, being “proper Jews,” took Khazar wives, mixing with the Khazar population in this way. Additionally, after the fall of the Khazar kingdom, Yiddish-speaking “Jewish” immigrants from the west (especially Germany, Bohemia, and other areas of Central Europe) - which would include Roman Jewish lines, began to flood into Eastern Europe, and it is believed that these newer immigrants intermarried with the Khazars. Thus, Eastern European Jews have a mix of ancestors who came from Central Europe and from the Khazar kingdom. The two groups (eastern and western Jews) intermarried over the centuries.
In this sense, the Ashkenazi Jews are, indeed, descendants of the Israelites through the male line.
Analysis of the Y chromosome has already yielded interesting results. Dr. Ariella Oppenheim of the Hebrew University in Jerusalem said she had found considerable similarity between Jews and Israeli and Palestinian Arabs, as if the Y chromosomes of both groups had been drawn from a common population that began to expand 7,800 years ago.
About two-thirds of Israeli Arabs and Arabs in the territories and a similar proportion of Israeli Jews are the descendents of at least three common prehistoric ancestors who lived in the Middle East in the Neolithic period, about 8,000 years ago. This is the finding of a new study conducted by an international team of scholars headed by Prof. Ariella Oppenheim, a senior geneticist in the Hebrew University’s hematology department and at Hadassah Hospital in Jerusalem. In the study, soon to be published in the scientific journal ‘Human Genetics,’ the researchers probed the history of Jewish and Arab men by analyzing the genetic changes in the Y chromosome.[…]
The results of the study, says Prof. Oppenheim, ‘support the historical documentation according to which the Arabs are descendents of an ancient population of the country and that a large proportion of them were Jews who converted to Islam after Islam reached Eretz Israel in the seventh century CE.’ […]
They […] discovered that Jews and Arabs have common prehistoric ancestors who lived here until just the last few thousand years..[…] In view of the small geographical area of Israel and the Palestinian Authority, the researchers were surprised to discover that some Palestinians on the West Bank have a unique genetic trait that is reflected in a relatively high frequency of certain genetic signs. This fact indicates that they are the descendents of people who have lived here for a few hundred years at least. […] Dr. Filon says that the unique genetic trait is characteristic of a population that has lived in the same place for many generations.”
Data on the Y chromosome indicates that the males originated in the Middle East, while the mothers’ mitochondrial DNA seems to indicate a local Diaspora origin in the female community founders.
We have analyzed the maternally inherited mitochondrial DNA from each of nine geographically separated Jewish groups, eight non-Jewish host populations, and an Israeli Arab/Palestinian population, and we have compared the differences found in Jews and non-Jews with those found using Y-chromosome data that were obtained, in most cases, from the same population samples. The results suggest that most Jewish communities were founded by relatively few women, that the founding process was independent in different geographic areas, and that subsequent genetic input from surrounding populations was limited on the female side. In sharp contrast to this, the paternally inherited Y chromosome shows diversity similar to that of neighboring populations and shows no evidence of founder effects. These sex-specific differences demonstrate an important role for culture in shaping patterns of genetic variation and are likely to have significant epidemiological implications for studies involving these populations. We illustrate this by presenting data from a panel of X-chromosome microsatellites, which indicates that, in the case of the Georgian Jews, the female-specific founder event appears to have resulted in elevated levels of linkage disequilibrium.
The emerging genetic picture is based largely on two studies, […] that together show that the men and women who founded the Jewish communities had surprisingly different genetic histories.[…]
A new study now shows that the women in nine Jewish communities from Georgia, the former Soviet republic, to Morocco have vastly different genetic histories from the men. […] The women’s identities, however, are a mystery, because, unlike the case with the men, their genetic signatures are not related to one another or to those of present-day Middle Eastern populations.[…]
The new study, by Dr. David Goldstein, Dr. Mark Thomas and Dr. Neil Bradman of University College in London and other colleagues, appears in The American Journal of Human Genetics this month.... His [Goldstein’s] own speculation, he said, is that most Jewish communities were formed by unions between Jewish men and local women, though he notes that the women’s origins cannot be genetically determined.[…]
Like the other Jewish communities in the study, the Ashkenazic community of Northern and Central Europe, from which most American Jews are descended, shows less diversity than expected in its mitochondrial DNA, perhaps reflecting the maternal definition of Jewishness. But unlike the other Jewish populations, it does not show signs of having had very few female founders. It is possible, Dr. Goldstein said, that the Ashkenazic community is a mosaic of separate populations formed the same way as the others.[…]
‘The authors are correct in saying the historical origins of most Jewish communities are unknown,’ Dr. [Shaye] Cohen [of Harvard University] said. ‘Not only the little ones like in India, but even the mainstream Ashkenazic culture from which most American Jews descend.’[…] If the founding mothers of most Jewish communities were local, that could explain why Jews in each country tend to resemble their host community physically while the origins of their Jewish founding fathers may explain the aspects the communities have in common, Dr. Cohen said.[…]
The Y chromosome and mitochondrial DNA’s in today’s Jewish communities reflect the ancestry of their male and female founders but say little about the rest of the genome... Noting that the Y chromosome points to a Middle Eastern origin of Jewish communities and the mitochondrial DNA to a possibly local origin, Dr. Goldstein said that the composition of ordinary chromosomes, which carry most of the genes, was impossible to assess.
These studies suggests the idea that some of the early ancestors of the ancient Levant and Mesopotamian civilizations originated in the region of Armenia and moved southwards - that they were “Semitic” the same way Sargon was. Further, the Tanach records extensive evidence of intermarriage between Jews and ancient peoples who originated in eastern Anatolia, such as the Hittites and Hurrians (including the Jebusites of Jerusalem). The Edomites who were of mixed Hebrew and Hurrian ancestry were also absorbed into the Jewish people. The Armenians and Kurds are the descendants of people who remained in Eastern Anatolia, Armenia and Kurdistan, subsequently intermarrying with the Turks and neighboring peoples. So, we see the idea of the “Ten Lost Tribes,” or even the “Thirteenth Tribe” to be myths exploded by the science of genetics.
The problem is, of course, that all existing studies fail to compare modern Jewish populations’ DNA to ancient Judean DNA. The question remains: If Sargon was the “original Semitic ruler,” was he a Semite as we understand Semites today? The next question that occurs to us is: Did Sargon, as a conqueror, impose a language and cultural expression on a genetically different people, the Sumerians, who had already imposed their own language and culture on the indigenous population of the Fertile Crescent?
What we notice most particularly is that Sargon was said to have come “from the North” and that he worshipped the Goddess Ishtar. Also, when we think of the word “Semitic” in terms of the Green language, we naturally wonder if it doesn’t imply something that was “half” of one thing and “half” of another?
The question then becomes: Who were the Sumerians that absorbed and adopted the Semitic language and cultural expressions, adapting them to their own use?
The Sumerians were a non-Semitic people who, judging by archaeological remains, were generally short and stocky, with high, straight noses and downward sloping eyes. Many wore beards, but some were clean-shaven. These people apparently migrated to the Fertile Crescent - they suddenly appeared in the area - and immediately established what was, for a long time, considered to be the first real ‘Civilization’. They built cities, step-pyramid-temples, large residences and economic facilities. They referred to themselves as the “black-headed people” as if to emphasize their difference from the indigenous population who, one might assume, were not black-headed.
The picture painted by the archaeological record of the Sumerian City-State civilization before Sargon is one of constant strife between these cities, especially the most prominent ones: Kish, Erech, Ur, Adab, and later Lagash and Umma. Constant warring weakened the Sumerians until “the kingship was carried away by foreigners” such as the king of Awan, Sargon of Akkad, the Gutians, the Elamites, and eventually Hammurabi. Sargon of Akkad, the first Semite, was then, a “foreigner” to the Sumerians who had (as we will see) a rather “lengthy” history prior to the Semitic influence.
It is quite curious that despite their sense of nationalism and the sharing of a common identity, the “black-headed people” were unable to unite in order to resist the conquerors. What is even more ironic is the fact that, even though they were unable to resist being conquered and ruled - in fact - by foreigners, the Sumerian culture was, to a great extent, assimilated by the conquerors by the adoption of their customs, script, and literature, including many of their religious myths.
The cultural “soul” of a people can be found in their stories, myths, and rituals. The stories of Sumer, as inscribed on its clay tablets, allow us to reconstruct, at least partially, a process of dynamic development that took place over many centuries. Some experts propose that Sumerian storytelling was indebted to the wandering Semitic tribes, who, being allegedly “illiterate”, had the narrative memory capacity of “illiterate peoples”. It is suggested by such experts that these Semites often entertained their more “civilized” Sumerian hosts by “elling tales around the campfire” or in the market place. It is then suggested that these stories were then written down by Sumerian scribes, who attempted to categorize the material into orderly groups of continuous narrative. Obviously, the “wandering, illiterate Semites” weren’t quite so backward since they conquered the Sumerians and their influence actually gave the Sumerian civilization a cultural boost. What is more likely is that the writing of the Sumerians was developed for economic and military purposes, which was the purview of the “god” and his priests. It was only after the incursions of the Semites that a literary tradition began, and the development of writing proceeded in such a way that it could be utilized for literature.
The experts tell us that the Sumerians themselves had no real “sense of history” even though they had invented writing. This opinion is arrived at due to the fact that the Sumerians had recorded a sort of “history,” in the form of a King list that was, to understate the matter, astonishing.
The Sumerians’ relationship with their gods was the driving force in the rise of their civilization. The very reason for the existence of Sumer and her people seemed to lie with these strange and mortal ‘deities’. The very reason for being was to serve the appropriate deity.
The Sumerian religion was more like a feudal covenental relationship with an overlord than the mystical worship of a god as we would understand religion today. For the Sumerian, worship of the gods meant complete servitude - the very purpose for which mankind was (according to the Sumerians) created by the Sumerian gods.
According to the Sumerians, the city-states had been founded by the gods far back in time and it was the gods who had given the Sumerians, “the black-headed people“, all the tools and weapons and marvelous inventions of their culture. For the Sumerians, everything that they had - cities, fields, herds, tools, institutions - had always existed because the gods had created all of it before they had created the black headed people to run things as their slaves. This immediately makes one think of the only people who claim an origin as slaves: the Jews.
This “slave-master” Religion was the central organizing principle of the city-states, each city belonging to a different deity who was worshipped in a large temple. According to the Sumerians, even if the gods might prefer to be just and merciful, they had also created evil and misfortune and there was nothing that the black-headed people could do about it. Judging from the Sumerian Lamentation texts, the best one could do in times of trouble would be to “plead, lament and wail, tearfully confessing his sins and failings.” Their family god or city god might intervene on their behalf, but that would not necessarily happen even if the rules were carefully followed. After all, man was created as a broken, labor saving, tool for the use of the gods and at the end of everyone’s life, lay the underworld, a dreary place like the Sheol of the early Hebrews.
According to the Sumerians, their gods were very intelligent, extremely long-lived and yet, very mortal beings. This is evident in their king lists. According to the Sumerians, the time before the flood was said to be a period of 432,000 years. Two kings from after the flood that are listed were Gilgamesh and Tammuz. The legends of Tammuz were so well-liked that they were assimilated to the pantheon of Babylon and later became the model for Adonis to the Greeks. Gilgamesh became the hero of the Babylonian epic poem which bears his name, and which also contains an account of the flood.
Until recently, these king lists and the names in them were thought to be purely mythic, but in the 1930’s, Sir Leonard Woolley, while excavating a building at Ur on the Ubaid level, found an inscription indicating that the structure had been erected by the son of the founder of the First Dynasty of Ur, a person up till that time regarded as fiction. Gilgamesh, too, has inscriptions telling of the buildings he built.
The “King-List” is divided into dynastic periods that are city-state oriented as apparently regards the seat of central power. The most startling of these sections is the list dealing with the pre-deluge Kings . Eight Annunaki Kings are listed, as are five city-states where centralized rule apparently was seated. Length of rule is given in what is known as a “sar”. All of the remaining King-List sections have the length of rule measured by years. The “sar” was equivalent in length to 3,600 years.
... to be continued next post